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I looked through the Vostroyan dictionary on lexicanum and I found only two real words there.
Firstly, "rahzvod". This word really exists in Russian (развод) but it means divorce or nasty joke. And not the alcoholic drink like vodka.
Secondly, "zadnik" (задник). In Russian it isn't a derogatory term and means a theatre backdrop.
The word "chevek" resembles "chelovek" (человек) which means simply human.
And I think Vostroya itself is derived from "ostry" (острый) which means sharp. The female form for "ostry" will be "ostraya".

Here I give some Russian phrases with translations. You can use them to give your Vostroyans more authentic look:
За Императора! = For the Emperor!
За Империю Человечества! = For the Imperium of Man!
Слава Императору! = Glory to the Emperor!
Император сохрани! = The Emperor protects!
Востроя = Vostroya
Востроянские Первенцы = Vostroyan Firstborn
Технотриархия = Techtriarchy, the Vostroyan government
Железный Герцог = Iron Duke (Baneblade name)
Неустрашимый = Dauntless (Baneblade name)
Умри! = Die!
Убей! = Kill!

Vostroyans are not Russians...
They are supposed to have that feel but they aren't suppose to be Russians...

No they aren't Russians definitely but even GW feel that English writings do not suit Vostroya (their tanks don't have any writings except letter V in the last IG Codex)
And Russian writings will continue that feel for the whole army.

Farseer Petriel wrote:I looked through the Vostroyan dictionary on lexicanum and I found only two real words there.
Firstly, "rahzvod". This word really exists in Russian (развод) but it means divorce or nasty joke. And not the alcoholic drink like vodka.
Secondly, "zadnik" (задник). In Russian it isn't a derogatory term and means a theatre backdrop.
The word "chevek" resembles "chelovek" (человек) which means simply human.
And I think Vostroya itself is derived from "ostry" (острый) which means sharp. The female form for "ostry" will be "ostraya".

Here I give some Russian phrases with translations. You can use them to give your Vostroyans more authentic look:
За Императора! = For the Emperor!
За Империю Человечества! = For the Imperium of Man!
Слава Императору! = Glory to the Emperor!
Император сохрани! = The Emperor protects!
Востроя = Vostroya
Востроянские Первенцы = Vostroyan Firstborn
Технотриархия = Techtriarchy, the Vostroyan government
Железный Герцог = Iron Duke (Baneblade name)
Неустрашимый = Dauntless (Baneblade name)
Умри! = Die!
Убей! = Kill!

I like this, well done brother... Слава Императору!!!

Thanks!
Спасибо!

Farseer Petriel wrote:No they aren't Russians definitely but even GW feel that English writings do not suit Vostroya (their tanks don't have any writings except letter V in the last IG Codex)
And Russian writings will continue that feel for the whole army.

Yeah but they don't speak or write Russian, like the rest of the Imperium they speak Low Gothic (which is basically english) and High Gothic (which is basically Latin). Don't confuse naming and language for the same thing.

It's written in Lexicanum that they speak their own language very, very loosely based on Russian.
And Abnett in Eisenhorn says that there are many languages in the Imperium such as Carthaen and Vessorine.

Farseer Petriel wrote:
And Abnett in Eisenhorn says that there are many languages in the Imperium such as Carthaen and Vessorine.

All of which are linguistically derived from High Gothic (Latin) or Low Gothic (English). Latin is a Romance language. English is Germanic. It would be physically impossible for the Vostroyans to have developed a Slavic language from either of the two.

chaos0xomega wrote:All of which are linguistically derived from High Gothic (Latin) or Low Gothic (English). Latin is a Romance language. English is Germanic. It would be physically impossible for the Vostroyans to have developed a Slavic language from either of the two.

To be fair ... all of the world's languages can be traced back to only two roots. Did you know that Germanic as well as Slavic are both subdivisions of the same language family?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages

I see no real problem with Petriel's idea. Of course it is just one interpretation, but it is not impossible. So I commend him on the effort of giving people some Cyrillyc lines to scribble on their tanks!

chaos0xomega wrote:All of which are linguistically derived from High Gothic (Latin) or Low Gothic (English). Latin is a Romance language. English is Germanic. It would be physically impossible for the Vostroyans to have developed a Slavic language from either of the two.

Vessorine is supposed to resemble Arabic as khanjar (a nickname of Pontius Glaw) is an Arabic word. I don't know exactly about Carthaen but suggest that it's inspired by Welsh because Arianhrod and Angharad are both Welsh names.
We can't say how the Vostroyan language had developed but it sounds like Slavic and has at least two Russian (but with different meanings) words in it. And it was influenced by English because a verb for "khek" (a swear) is "khekking" and "-ing" ending is obviously English. And the existence of Vostroyan language doesn't mean that they don't speak Gothics.
IMHO Cyrillic (and many other non-English and non-Latin) writings will help expand the 40k universe and give a sense that Galaxy is a really large place.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Yeah but they don't speak or write Russian, like the rest of the Imperium they speak Low Gothic (which is basically english) and High Gothic (which is basically Latin). Don't confuse naming and language for the same thing.

Actually English and Latin are just how they are represented..... It's been said that High Gothic and Low Gothic are closer to East Asian / Pacific Languages then they are to Western languages. The only reason that we see it as Latin is due to the fact that GW is an English Company, and I very much doubt many Englishmen would be able to read kanji(although I'm sure some can)....

Thaanos wrote:Actually English and Latin are just how they are represented..... It's been said that High Gothic and Low Gothic are closer to East Asian / Pacific Languages then they are to Western languages.

Hum, where exactly was this claimed? It would seem a bit ... contradictory.

Farseer Petriel wrote:And the existence of Vostroyan language doesn't mean that they don't speak Gothics.

But even if they don't, the need for translators is canon. That's the primary reason for why an emissary of the Orders Dialogous is accompanying each Imperial crusade / greater warfleet.

I'd actually go as far as saying that Gothic is generally only spoken by people who were educated above average, such as nobles, clerics, adepts and Schola graduates.

That's been stated by several authors over the years. What we read in the books as English/Latin hybrids is just an approximate, and sometimes literal, translation from High and Low Gothic, which are linguistically related to Chinese, Pacific Islander languages and English.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/High_Gothic
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Low_Gothic

It's something of a joke, though, of course, as the GW writers are not literally translating anything from any extra-terrestrial source or anything of the sort, but it's nice to see them get a bit convoluted with the structure of the language.

Hah, I actually have read the ancient Rogue Trader rulebook, but that part had eluded me so far!

That said, according to the descriptions given on the Lexicanum pages, elements of the Chinese should only be found in Low Gothic? Referring to the "oriental" aspects that get added to the High Gothic English/European/Pacific mix.

Doesn't seem to contradict the actual representation as much as I had feared. Words such as "generatorium" are English + Latin, and even though the other elements are underrepresented, both of these languages could be found in Gothic as explained on that page. An example of the Arabic could be found in the Cadian "Kasr" (Qasr) though - even has a similar meaning. And then we have the Slavic example mentioned in this very thread.

Thaanos wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

Yeah but they don't speak or write Russian, like the rest of the Imperium they speak Low Gothic (which is basically english) and High Gothic (which is basically Latin). Don't confuse naming and language for the same thing.

Actually English and Latin are just how they are represented..... It's been said that High Gothic and Low Gothic are closer to East Asian / Pacific Languages then they are to Western languages. The only reason that we see it as Latin is due to the fact that GW is an English Company, and I very much doubt many Englishmen would be able to read kanji(although I'm sure some can)....

HWAH!? Can you source that please? And I mean an actual source, not two Lexicanum articles that don't have any citations of their own (and are thus completely invalid as anything other than a source of possible fan fiction). Given that every official GW rules publication (the stated sole source of canon) represents Low Gothic as English and High Gothic as Latin (in models, artwork, and etc.) that means they are, respectively, English and Latin. I have yet to see Cyrillic, Polynesian, etc. depicted anywhere in official sourced work.

And again, back to the names and use of words sourced as Arabic or Russian, again, it means nothing. My last name is Hungarian, yet I speak English. My former roommates name was Hebrew, yet he is Christian... and doesn't speak Hebrew. The German word for French Fries is Pommes Frites, a French word. German is Germanic, French is Romantic. The words Soviet and Czar are of Russian origin, yet it is used throughout the English speaking world. Sushi, Sashimi, Teriyaki, etc. are all Japanese words, yet they are used in English. Just because the words are derived from a linguistic source other than English/Low Gothic does not mean that the language spoken is derived from something other than Low Gothic. Every fluff source I have seen that mentions encountering a human language other than Gothic mentions that it is derived from Gothic.

chaos0xomega wrote:The words Soviet and Czar are of Russian origin, yet it is used throughout the English speaking world.

Didn't you just wonderfully described how Gothic could end up incorporating these languages? It's an ongoing evolution, and regardless of how many hardcore traditionalists are trying to "save" their country's language (and there's a number of such bullheads in Germany, for example), it keeps getting changed by inventing new words or adapting them from other languages. And this is how a language like Gothic could come into existence*.

The above-mentioned Qasr, for example, is only the Arabic version of the Latin "castrum". It's all tied together. Just that few people realize where their language comes from and how many roots it has.

(*: although it could, in theory, also have been a deliberate attempt to combine several languages into a universal one, as was tried with Esperanto)

It's true that many worlds have their own native language and gothic. I think it's the law that gothic be taught and learned. Also they probably get intermingled after a while.

The representation idea seems very complicated and needless. If something is written in English and sounds like English it's obviously English. The tabletop game and video games prove this.
chaos0xomega, the article about planet Vostroya was written by Steve Parker, author of the Rebel Winter novel. Though he claims that he doesn't represent GW or BL he has no reason to confuse fans so this information can be considered canon.
Prooflink: http://z11.invisionfree.com/The_Firstborn_Mod/index.php?showtopic=466&st=0&#entry3593647

Interesting read, though I still see nothing that says they speak anything other than a Gothic derived language, further evidenced by the use of the word 'Shiny' which (AFAIK) is not Russian.

Farseer Petriel wrote:chaos0xomega, the article about planet Vostroya was written by Steve Parker, author of the Rebel Winter novel. Though he claims that he doesn't represent GW or BL he has no reason to confuse fans so this information can be considered canon.
Prooflink: http://z11.invisionfree.com/The_Firstborn_Mod/index.php?showtopic=466&st=0&#entry3593647

Now, I'm all for cool ideas and such, but false claims of canon are not helpful at all. Black Library authors frequently go against both novels of their colleagues as well as even GW studio material - simply because they think their idea is cool (there's your reason).

I've summed up a few quotes from BL/FFG writers and both former as well as current GW employees in this thread, if you're interested.

And as I mentioned there: If you like an interpretation of licensed material, roll with it. I certainly would, because I like your idea. But it's not canon, it still is just one interpretation. Nobody who doesn't agree has to accept it, and just like Black Library novels contradict themselves, other fans will have other interpretations for this topic as well. All I can say is that I, personally, deem it possible and think it would make a great, characterful addition.

HWAH!? Can you source that please? And I mean an actual source, not two Lexicanum articles that don't have any citations of their own (and are thus completely invalid as anything other than a source of possible fan fiction). Given that every official GW rules publication (the stated sole source of canon) represents Low Gothic as English and High Gothic as Latin (in models, artwork, and etc.) that means they are, respectively, English and Latin. I have yet to see Cyrillic, Polynesian, etc. depicted anywhere in official sourced work.

Both of those Lexicanum posts list Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader as their sources. GW has also never stated that Gothic is English and Latin.

Personally, I'm not offended by the fact that English is not the primary language of the Dark Future. It's inevitable that, in some 20,000 years, the people of Earth, and/or our extra-terrestrial territories, will speak a language that is wholly alien to us now. Keep in mind that 20,000 years in the future is twice again the entirety of recorded human history to date. I don't have to tell you that Sumerian is wholly unintelligible to anyone who hasn't studied it extensively, in any language. Unlike the Romance languages or the various pan-Asiatic languages, it bears no resemblance to any other language in its region surviving into the modern world. Heck, no modern language even attempts to construct its phonetics based on the Sumerian model... and it's only been ~10,000 since Sumer was a thing.

The Gaelic dialects are another example. Though they are self-similar (ie, Irish, Scots Gaelic, Cymric and Brettonic are similar to one another), they bear no resemblance to any other language of Europe, apart from modern terms and concepts "adopted" into the Gaelic languages.

For the 40k setting, reading into the articles about High and Low Gothic referenced, we learn that human colonists during the Dark Age of Technology often founded colonies based around a small sub-sect of society, religious traditions, ethnic groups and similar divisions, and would often resurrect otherwise-dead or historic languages as a matter of pride or identity. We saw much the same thing in our own world in the first half of the 20th century when Irish nationalism, and the resulting Easter Rebellion, brought Irish Gaelic back from the dead, as a language. The New Age movement of the 1970s, and the sudden surge in people claiming Irish ancestry, further drove this language into the spotlight, and now there are more speakers of the Irish language than ever before in its history.

So, in the DAOT, we have a million million human colonies, some speaking English, some Chinese, some Swahili, some Irish and Scots Gaelic, some Arabic, some four kinds of Vedic languages, some Sino-Japanese conglomerates, and others speaking entirely in Klingon... and every other imaginable mish-mash of human languages, some entirely made up (like Tolkien Elvish).

Then the Emperor comes along and unites all of these groups under one common cause, and needs to establish a common language. High Gothic, being the language that all of the tech-manuals of the DAOT were written in, is chosen as the "official language", and the various regional dialects of all of these colonies debase it into what we now refer to as "Low Gothic". Even in the current 40K, two people may speak Low Gothic, but because one is from Necromunda and the other is from Fenris, they may be entirely unintelligible to one another. Much in the same way that someone from the Louisiana bayou country and a person from New Jersey will not be able to understand one another.

The representation idea seems very complicated and needless. If something is written in English and sounds like English it's obviously English. The tabletop game and video games prove this.

Except it isn't. What you're seeing/reading is a "translation", by GW, of the fictional "Gothic" languages into Anglo-Latin syntax constructions for its Earth-based audience.

When we read a GW publication or a BL novel, and it mentions a "chronolog" (a clock or wristwatch), they don't, in High or Low Gothic, call it "a chronolog". This is simply what GW refers to as its translation from Low Gothic into something an English-speaking person can recognize and understand.

Yes, it's a bit geeky and very "meta", but there it is. As to being needlessly complex? Well, this *is* GW we're talking about.

I think that when we read english in the background we are in fact reading low gothic that has been translated for us. When we read High Gothic we are actually reading High Gothic. That would be stuff like Adeptus Ministorum and stuff like that.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I think that when we read english in the background we are in fact reading low gothic that has been translated for us. When we read High Gothic we are actually reading High Gothic. That would be stuff like Adeptus Ministorum and stuff like that.

This. Take Badab War 2 for example. Carcharadons Astra is the stated High Gothic name of a Space Marine chapter there. Carcharadons Astra, not 'Chiang-Kai Shu Mei' or some other non-latin sounding thing. Its stated, flat out, the low Gothic translation is "Space Sharks". Nowhere have I ever seen any indication (I haven't found anything in Rogue Trader which states it btw, would have been real nice to ACTUALLY cite a page in the article...) that this 'Low Gothic' English is actually translated from another language for convenience sake.

It's possible. However they don't speak English in Star Trek or Star Wars for example, and it is being translated for us. They may say something along the lines of translating wookie into Basic is X and we understand it X but that doesn't make Basic English. It just means it has once again been translated into English for us.

They don't speak English in Star Trek? Where did you get that from? At several points throughout the various TV series English is referenced by name... (T'Pol telling someone to speak English for example, or Zefram Cochrane being surprised that the crew of the Enterprise spoke English, etc.) Unless you mean the aliens, which can be explained by the function of a universal translator...

As for Star Wars, my understanding was that Galactic Basic was English with a different writing system.

To his credit, at least Tolkien made it clear that Westron was NOT English, but a distinct language translated to English... think more works of fantasy and sci-fi should do the same unless the setting makes it clear (A book set in Germany is clearly being translated from German...)

chaos0xomega wrote:They don't speak English in Star Trek? Where did you get that from? At several points throughout the various TV series English is referenced by name... (T'Pol telling someone to speak English for example, or Zefram Cochrane being surprised that the crew of the Enterprise spoke English, etc.) Unless you mean the aliens, which can be explained by the function of a universal translator...

That is all the work of a universal translator. Mini CPU made by the use of nano-tect and who can translate any language into any other language in real time. Even for a person that doesn't have one - the UT of other person will do that job for him ( like with Cochrane ).

And of course the only reason why everybody in every sci-fi is talking English is for people to understand.

Brother Coa wrote:That is all the work of a universal translator. Mini CPU made by the use of nano-tect and who can translate any language into any other language in real time. Even for a person that doesn't have one - the UT of other person will do that job for him ( like with Cochrane ).

Actually, no. English is the Federation standard language - you only need to look at the computer screens or various signs throughout the series and movies: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/English_language

You're spot on regarding Star Wars, though. That setting has nothing in common with Earth culture, and as such no linguistic connection is possible.

For Wh40k, however, we're back to Terran culture, so it seems reasonable that present day languages may find their way into Gothic - all to a different degree. It is quite possible that a mix of English and Latin is prevalent, with the influences of other languages being less common. They're almost universally related to each other, anyways.
Example -> Latin claustrum, which became the Arab qasr and the English castle and the German kastell etc ... all the same roots!

Lynata wrote:

Brother Coa wrote:That is all the work of a universal translator. Mini CPU made by the use of nano-tect and who can translate any language into any other language in real time. Even for a person that doesn't have one - the UT of other person will do that job for him ( like with Cochrane ).

Actually, no. English is the Federation standard language - you only need to look at the computer screens or various signs throughout the series and movies: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/English_language

Thanks for that.

You're spot on regarding Star Wars, though. That setting has nothing in common with Earth culture, and as such no linguistic connection is possible.

There is no Earth at all in Star Wars...so there can be no Earth cultures.

My interpretation of Vostroyan doesn't pretend to be canon, and I'm not offended by the fact that English is the primary language in 40k universe. My IG army has only English and Latin writings because it doesn't come from Vostroya or any other Slavic at least in appearance planet. I only suggest to use Russian for Vostroyans to make them more Slavic-looking (and this would be actual for Tallarn, Krieg and other planets with definite cultural references)
But the Vostroyan dictionary is canon because these words appear in the Rebel Winter which is a BL novel.
If English is only a representation of Gothic, why GW did invent new words such as chronolog, pict, vox, psyker etc. It would be much more understandable for modern people to call those things watch, photograph, walkie-talkie, psychic respectively. These words should be used by the Imperials as they were invented especially for 40k. I agree with Lynata's idea that English and Latin prevail in Gothics. Modern languages have many loanwords, especially with Greek and Latin roots. Even in Russian "Император" is derived from the Latin "Imperator" which means the Emperor.

Farseer Petriel wrote:But the Vostroyan dictionary is canon because these words appear in the Rebel Winter which is a BL novel.

Keep in mind that BL novels or other licensed products are not "canon". In most cases I would say we should be glad they aren't; I'm sure we could all do without backflipping Terminators, Multilaser-Marines, flirting Sisters and other such shenanigans. ADB, by now a rather accomplished BL author, actually wrote a pretty interesting blog post regarding this that you can find here, if you're interested.
As said, I would adopt that author's stance into my personal interpretation - but as it's just another novel there really is no "right" or "wrong" on this topic.

Farseer Petriel wrote:Modern languages have many loanwords, especially with Greek and Latin roots. Even in Russian "Император" is derived from the Latin "Imperator" which means the Emperor.

It's quite fascinating how it all ties together, isn't it?