Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Windbit 03-04-07, 09:00 PM	I've been doing a lot of planning for my first campaign world, as evidenced by the several posts I've made here. Come to think of it, maybe I should have just made one topic for all my questions...oh well, too late now. I'm planning on having an Asian-inspired area of my world that mixes Japanese, Chinese, and Korean culture, but I don't want to have a single culture with three different languages. What should I do?
sdragon1984 03-04-07, 09:15 PM	easy answer: have three seperate regions, each with their own culture and society. Another option is to say the cultures are race-specific: Elves are korean, humans are chinese, and dwarves are Japanese (as a rough example).
Darth Syntax 03-04-07, 09:20 PM	Well, you might want to consider creating a language that has the features you want use in naming of people, places, and the like. Have a look at the languages you want to draw from and go from there -- Some features to consider relatively restrictive syllable structure, Japanese, Korean and most Chinese languages do not allow for consonant clusters, or if they do, they tend to be very small. So you are not going to have a word like the English "sixths" or "strength". Possibly making it a tonal language (like Mandarin) And you don't have to build an entire language you know, just the sounds and the rules for how sounds can combine; and if you are feeling ambitious or you like this sort of thing, building a bit of vocabulary so that you have an idea what place names and personal names actually mean.
Windbit 03-04-07, 09:36 PM	Well, you might want to consider creating a language that has the features you want use in naming of people, places, and the like. Have a look at the languages you want to draw from and go from there That sounds like an incredibly daunting task...
Darth Syntax 03-04-07, 10:07 PM	Creating a complex and interesting grammar is the really difficult part, but building a "sound sketch" with some basic vocab is actually not all that scary. It just sounds like it. I would say maybe a day to do the reading up on the languages, and some basics of linguistics (wikipedia is good enough for that sort of thing). And maybe another day to get something put together. It could actually go a lot faster, depending on a variety of factors. It's not as though you are going to have to have your NPC's or your players actually speak in this language. It just needs to set the tone of the place for you. -- Possible example sound system and the like. I will be using english orthography here, so that it makes some sense, and you don't have to go hopping of find out what some of the crazy phonetic symbols mean. Stops: p b t d k g fricitives: s z sh zh h Affricates: ch j nasals: m n ng (like in sing) liquids: l r glides: w y Vowels: i, e, a, o, u (like in spanish, not in english) diphthongs: ai, ui, wo, yo Syllable structure V= vowel C = consonant V CV CV(m,n,ng,r,l,w,y) -- Sample lexicon derived from above sounds jan: person hewo: dog mon: cat chuima: fish gaim: river luing: city/settlement/fortress wodang: foreigner sugui: child chajo: soldier zolang: sword bom: armour chaga: shoe chagam: shoes gi: food yileng: magic no: red han: black nan: green hem: blue zo: yellow ban: walk son: think uiga: god Luing Nan Gaim: City of the Green River jan yileng: magic person 'wizard" uiga no: red god 'god of war?" -- Just an example off the top of my head. -- Another thing that might be worth looking into is using a real language, just not one of the three you mentioned, but one that evokes a similar feel. Tibetan perhaps? or Thai?
kryus 03-05-07, 12:04 AM	Take the dust off that atlas that is sitting in your public library and lookup the names of small obscure villages in the locations you wish to draw names from. If you really want to, add different suffixes or prefixes to the name depending on some silly rule. Like you add 'Won' as a prefix to all cities in china that starts with letters a,n,s,o,y and 'Lee' to all those staring with 'h,q,a,z,x'. Thus Shefu becomes Wonshefu and Hulei becomes Leehulei. Character Names: You can pull out history books to find this stuff (or wikipedia) and again you can twist the names with simple silly rules like removing letters and stuff. Just be consistent in the silly rule(s) you apply to a region.
mearrin69 03-05-07, 01:37 AM	Darth Syntax has got the right idea - in fact, just steal his :) Nice work. Actually some of your words are rather close to Chinese Mandarin, depending on how you 'Romanize' it. (jan = ren for instance) If you don't already know an Asian language this'd probably be the best way to approach it. M
Windbit 03-05-07, 07:38 AM	I guess I'll give it a shot...I sort of like the system where words are divided by dashes, like in Yuan-ti.