Sander 3156 Popular Post Share Posted April 21, 2023 Hello everyone!Very simple 'guide' here; LOTC has a lot of roleplay languages - be they custom languages or roleplay-friendly equivalents of real life languages. With all these languages though, it can be hard to get a sense of what's what and how they're all related. For that reason I've made a 'language tree' that shows how various languages are related or derived from one another. While making this I've had countless people giving feedback about languages that were still missing or that should be moved to different spots, so by no means is this a definitive or perfect representation. Still, I think it can be helpful for a lot of people and it visualizes the rich variety of languages we have on LOTC! A few general points of elaboration about the tree: The colours generally represent language families like how you would have 'Slavic' and 'Germanic' language families in real life. These can sometimes come together as joint influences on a language, creating a mixed color. The tree is made from a Canonist point of view because it offers the most complete and coherent tree, that's the reason most languages trace back to Flexio. Depending on your character's interpretation of religion, the creation of the world etc. this might alter, but this is probably the most widely accepted view of things, even if it means Elven and Dwed stem from what's essentially Latin. There's a lot of languages on this tree, many of which are small or have fallen out of use. To list what each of them are would be a bit cumbersome, but I do believe all of these can either be found on the forum or wiki, so you can look up any you do not know! The 'languages' Harrenic, Jorenic, Ancient Southeron, Ancient Farfolk and Ancient Easterling are not literal languages, but moreso represent a step in the language evolution process that's muddled, consists of a plethora of minor theoretical languages, or represent a missing link. Ghanya doesn't look like Flexio, but to my knowledge there's no information on what languages link them. We know they must be linked though because the Southeron descend from Harren, hence the labels to represent these missing links If you have any questions, feel free to ask; I might answer them!(Also u better gimme +1, this was a hassle, I swear there's way too many unused languages that were made up at some point as part of lore that barely got used.....) 94 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
christman 2307 Share Posted April 21, 2023 this is so cool holy shit 6 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aesopian 1125 Share Posted April 21, 2023 godly 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ECS1999 955 Share Posted April 21, 2023 Cool post! (Don't mind my previous comment, i edited it because i am blind :>) 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lirinya 2657 Share Posted April 21, 2023 so this is what you do in your spare time, sander 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sander 3156 Author Share Posted April 21, 2023 26 minutes ago, Lirinya said: so this is what you do in your spare time, sander Shhhhh 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samler 1047 Share Posted April 21, 2023 What is the difference of 'Ancient Elven' and 'Elvish'? I think I would also had noted Blah and Ancient Elven closer due to at least one shared word, but that might be nit-picking. 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
NightcastorKitty 1210 Share Posted April 21, 2023 Dear God. 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morigung-oog 2358 Share Posted April 21, 2023 2 hours ago, Sander said: Hello everyone!Very simple 'guide' here; LOTC has a lot of roleplay languages - be they custom languages or roleplay-friendly equivalents of real life languages. With all these languages though, it can be hard to get a sense of what's what and how they're all related. For that reason I've made a 'language tree' that shows how various languages are related or derived from one another. While making this I've had countless people giving feedback about languages that were still missing or that should be moved to different spots, so by no means is this a definitive or perfect representation. Still, I think it can be helpful for a lot of people and it visualizes the rich variety of languages we have on LOTC! A few general points of elaboration about the tree: The colours generally represent language families like how you would have 'Slavic' and 'Germanic' language families in real life. These can sometimes come together as joint influences on a language, creating a mixed color. The tree is made from a Canonist point of view because it offers the most complete and coherent tree, that's the reason most languages trace back to Flexio. Depending on your character's interpretation of religion, the creation of the world etc. this might alter, but this is probably the most widely accepted view of things, even if it means Elven and Dwed stem from what's essentially Latin. There's a lot of languages on this tree, many of which are small or have fallen out of use. To list what each of them are would be a bit cumbersome, but I do believe all of these can either be found on the forum or wiki, so you can look up any you do not know! The 'languages' Harrenic, Jorenic, Ancient Southeron, Ancient Farfolk and Ancient Easterling are not literal languages, but moreso represent a step in the language evolution process that's muddled, consists of a plethora of minor theoretical languages, or represent a missing link. Ghanya doesn't look like Flexio, but to my knowledge there's no information on what languages link them. We know they must be linked though because the Southeron descend from Harren, hence the labels to represent these missing links If you have any questions, feel free to ask; I might answer them!(Also u better gimme +1, this was a hassle, I swear there's way too many unused languages that were made up at some point as part of lore that barely got used.....) Ily, Sander. Never leave again 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tadabug2000 3506 Share Posted April 22, 2023 Good stuff! 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sander 3156 Author Share Posted April 22, 2023 52 minutes ago, Samler said: What is the difference of 'Ancient Elven' and 'Elvish'? I think I would also had noted Blah and Ancient Elven closer due to at least one shared word, but that might be nit-picking. Afaik there have been a lot of small changes to the Elven language over the years, so the Elvish thats in use by some now is a bit different from the original. As for the connection with Blah, I was not aware of that, but if its not derived from it or decently influenced, then yeah its probably nit-picking. 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
_pr0fit 2945 Share Posted April 22, 2023 I'm not sure if you want this to be an irp or ooc guide, if its irp then ignore me, however if you would like a more correct guide, Jalfmarr'tal and Old Norlandic are inspired by the same culture and language ooc, but irp they are not at all related and neither one is a descendant or progenitor of the other, and the cultures for those two languages have nothing to do with each other, but, Lakian and Old Norlandic are related and Lakian is not related to Raev, despite their cultures being similar. I think this is really cool, and it would be neat if the staff could find somewhere for this information to be more easily accessible for future projects. Edit: Additionally, Old Norlandic would be a descendant language of Narvaukian. 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sander 3156 Author Share Posted April 22, 2023 4 minutes ago, _pr0fit said: I'm not sure if you want this to be an irp or ooc guide, if its irp then ignore me, however if you would like a more correct guide, Jalfmarr'tal and Old Norlandic are inspired by the same culture and language ooc, but irp they are not at all related and neither one is a descendant or progenitor of the other, and the cultures for those two languages have nothing to do with each other, but, Lakian and Old Norlandic are related and Lakian is not related to Raev, despite their cultures being similar. I think this is really cool, and it would be neat if the staff could find somewhere for this information to be more easily accessible for future projects. Edit: Additionally, Old Norlandic would be a descendant language of Narvaukian. While making this I received some feedback on how the “norlandic languages” relate to one another, and apparently its a bit controversial as to whats what. Part of the problem is indeed the matter of do you link them based on backstory or similarity? I don’t think I am well-versed enough in Norland’s lore to properly sort it out, but if you think you can, I welcome you to make your own visualization of how all those languages are related. 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samler 1047 Share Posted April 22, 2023 16 minutes ago, Sander said: Afaik there have been a lot of small changes to the Elven language over the years, so the Elvish thats in use by some now is a bit different from the original. Beyond the dark elven amelgamation of Ancient Elven and Blah- What changes has there been to the elven language and which group uses this 'elvish'? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TaytoTot 1168 Share Posted April 22, 2023 I didn't know Reinmaren was it's own language? I simply believe that's just the word for people who live there not a language. Though, I totally could be wrong 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts