Roleplay Languages Tree

[Sander 3155]

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.....)

[christman 2220]

this is so cool holy shit

[Aesopian 1080]

godly

[ECS1999 945]

Cool post! (Don't mind my previous comment, i edited it because i am blind :>)

[Lirinya 2587]

so this is what you do in your spare time, sander

[Sander 3155]

26 minutes ago, Lirinya said:

so this is what you do in your spare time, sander

Shhhhh

[Samler 1024]

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.

[NightcastorKitty 1196]

Dear God. 

[Morigung-oog 2283]

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

[tadabug2000 3494]

Good stuff!

[Sander 3155]

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.

[_pr0fit 2944]

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.

[Sander 3155]

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.

[Samler 1024]

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'? 

[TaytoTot 1127]

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