Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Ok so from what I have seen it looks like its Latin, is this true? I want to know before I start paining saying onto my rhino and banners.

It's generally considered to be High Gothic, which I believe is similar to Latin in some ways. It's a pretty safe bet going with Latin names on Banners and Rhinos and such.

Unless it's SW.

It's Latin-esque but is not directly Latin. It's a mix, supposedly, of English, Chinese, the various European languages, and some various Pacific Islander languages. High Gothic is the language the tech-manuals were written in during the DAoT and the Golden Age of the Imperium, so continues to be held as a holy language.

You should be fine using real Latin phrases in painting and modeling jobs, as most players aren't going to be able to read them anyway.

BlapBlapBlap wrote:It's generally considered to be High Gothic, which I believe is similar to Latin in some ways. It's a pretty safe bet going with Latin names on Banners and Rhinos and such.

Unless it's SW.

I would love to have a translator for this. seems hard to find out how to speak....

What? Gothic?

It's hard to speak because it doesn't exist. It's not like Klingon or Tolkien Elvish and such, where enough of the fictional language existed in the various books/shows/whatever for fans to create an actual language out of with rules of grammar, vocabulary and all of the other things that go into making a language a language.

Of course, Tolkien did all the heavy lifting for Elvish, having created the language first, and the created a race around it, but I digress...

Gothic doesn't have this. There's no compilation of vocabulary, other than to take fragments of words, most of them in Latin, or Latin-esque terms, smash them together, to get a word out of it.

Then you have something like a "pict-caster" which is a camera, because it takes pictures (picts) and transmits them through the air, or a cable, to somewhere else (casting them forth). Or you get "chronolog" which is a watch, because it records time.

It's basically Latin, and any errors on the latin on GW's part is attributed to the fact that Gothic is not meant to exactly be latin. Quite a brilliant strategy really, well played GW.

The everday language of the Imperium is Gothic or more correctly speaking Low Gothic. It is portrayed as English.

High Gothic is the more formal language used in religious ceremonies and on monuments. It is portrayed as Latin.

However neither of these are English and Latin. In the original Rogue Trader, it is stated that these are translations and to show the relationship between them, since Low Gothic had an original basis in High Gothic but has since mutated and changed dramatically just as English has some Latin roots mixed in among all the other stuff it has absorbed.

Personally, I just assume they are talking in english...with engish accents...that's how I imagined rogue trader (god I wish I have never thrown that book away when I grew up) and that's what I stick with now!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Of course, I use Latin on all my tanks because it sounds awesome, but I try to use a silly saying in Latin so it sounds great if you don't know what it actually means...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Something like 'Vis Fries cum quod?' That always goes down well on a Hellhound!

As of the 31st millennium it was imperial gothic. Have no clue what it is in the 41st millennium.

its all Latin and old English (circa 1500-1700) but for stencil/word writing purposes go Latin its looks better and you can get an idea of what its saying.

They say it to be Gothic, though I'm quite uncertain what that means. High Gothic seems to be Latinized English where at mottled occasions the author writing it just tosses in a Latin word hoping for the best. Low Gothic seems to be another word for English.

I always thought it worked like this:

Low Gothic is Latin-esque, but bastardized.

High Gothic is Latin-esque with less bastardization but still not 100% Latin.

Lingua Technica is English, or English-esque, and considered holy by the Adeptus Mechanicus. This is why Titans / designs / etc. are usually in English (Mars-pattern, Leman Russ Vanquisher (as opposed to Conquestus or something), Forge Worlds (as opposed to Fabricatus Worlds or whathaveyou). Also STC is quite clearly an english abbreviation.

Many local dialects can be similar to modern-day national languages, for example Krieg might have it's Low Gothic hammered together with Germanic, or Valhallans with Russian. (Hence the location names).

For some reason that's how I've always thought it was

I rarely see Latin when guys speak Low-Gothic in fluff. But I see it at occasion in fluff when speaking High-Gothic, if the author just doesn't pull the Allo Allo solution. Have everyone speak English, and have nobody understanding the Brits. Also yeah, the Russian version of Low-Gothic f.ex. contains the more mundane Russian words like Dah, Njet, Vodka and such.

Iracundus wrote:However neither of these are English and Latin. In the original Rogue Trader, it is stated that these are translations and to show the relationship between them, since Low Gothic had an original basis in High Gothic but has since mutated and changed dramatically just as English has some Latin roots mixed in among all the other stuff it has absorbed.

Quoted to reiterate, as people seem to have ignored the principals..!

Low gothic is REPRESENTED as English in the game (or french, or german, depending on what language your codex is in!). This is the common speech of the Imperium, but individual worlds may still speak other languages, massively different dialects, etc. On some planets, low gothic may be the absolute standard. On other planets this language may be seen as 'exotic' and confined only to people who do business off world.

High gothic is REPRESENTED as Latin, and represents a ritual, official or religious language.

Nobody actually knows or has said what these languages sound like, or where their roots are. We can't even assume that they're a mixture of current languages, since we don't know enough of the history of the 40k world between now and the Golden Age of Technology, when mankind spread amongst the stars.

e.g. for all we know, the Golden Age of Technology may have been kickstarted by a culture that grew out of India, taking over the whole planet in around 4000AD and forcing everyone to speak their languages. Therefore, 'Gothic' sounds a bit like like Urdu, and 'High Gothic' sounds a bit like Hindi. We just don't know.

You know English is based in Latin, so seems to me like the following happened. Latin got to be the main language once more, then it changed into English eventually while the other dialects of low-Gothic retains a mottled assortment of loan-words from whatever language the author want.

Iracundus wrote:Nobody actually knows or has said what these languages sound like, or where their roots are. We can't even assume that they're a mixture of current languages, since we don't know enough of the history of the 40k world between now and the Golden Age of Technology, when mankind spread amongst the stars.

Sort of. We have been told that High Gothic is a mixture of some current languages, and that Low Gothic is a mix of even more of them.

And unless a totally new language springs out of nowhere with absolutely no roots in current speech and suplants everything, that's how it would have to be.

You know, IOM does have one good thing, the languages can be understood by each and everyone because Low Gothic is just different dialects, which means a Kriegman should understand a Cadian and wise-versa.

You know, IOM does have one good thing, the languages can be understood by each and everyone because Low Gothic is just different dialects, which means a Kriegman should understand a Cadian and wise-versa.

Ever been to the American South? Or the American Northeast? Or England?

There's over 300 different dialects and accents of English in that spread, and in some areas, have diverged so much that they are considered entirely different languages entirely.

Just because we all speak English doesn't mean we can communicate.

I guess you are right Psienesis. I speak Norwegian as my native tongue, and we have dialects I can only guess at what the hell people are saying. And at work I even has a co-worker with a dialect that wants me fetch a hammer, and use it on his mouth.

Still I have yet to hear English that I can't understand. Sure I don't like either Scottish or Irish English, but they are fully understandable.

DxM Scotty MxD wrote:As of the 31st millennium it was imperial gothic. Have no clue what it is in the 41st millennium.

Excellent and very definitive!

Can you tell me if the Chicago Cubs have won the World Series yet?

Still I have yet to hear English that I can't understand.

Let me take you round to some places in Louisiana, Alabama or central Georgia. You'll wonder if you are on Mars or not.

Psienesis wrote:

Still I have yet to hear English that I can't understand.

Let me take you round to some places in Louisiana, Alabama or central Georgia. You'll wonder if you are on Mars or not.

Dawn dere in Leesiana. Here in the United States our Television programs actually have subtitles for particularly bad southern accents so anyone that is watching from another part of the country can understand what they are saying.

I thought the people I was staying with in the Bayou were chewing on the words before they spit them out at me, and they thought I was talking two times faster than what is normal.

And that is one country (albiet a rather large one), imagine the differences in dialect across the entire galaxy.

In the Bayou, depending on how deep in you were, they might even have been speaking Creole... which is a combination of English, French and several African dialects from the slave days.

Backspacehacker wrote:Ok so from what I have seen it looks like its Latin, is this true? I want to know before I start paining saying onto my rhino and banners.

It is Latin based but has other languages mixed into it like how alot of languages now have strong latin bases like english french and spanish but as its said in the lore other "ancient" Terrian languages have been mixed into it

I believe there is no direct connection between the languages in 40k and any we would recognize today, however slightly. Consider that the time between the 41st millenium and today is roughly seven times as long as its taken us to go from the advent of writing to our present family of languages. It is nearly a third of the time it has taken us to develope into Homo Sapiens Sapiens from our predecessors! If we go back 38 thousand years in our past we still have Neandertals running around, are just about to start making cave paintings and haven't yet differentiated into much of the races we have today.

This is an enormous amount of time.

I subscribe to the view that Latin is merely a substitution to add a certain gravitas to ancient nature of the language in a manner we may understand in the western world. As for English, I would imagine this too is merely a substitution after all, when the books are published in German, don't the Orcs speak German!? Wouldn't the Orcs speak the common language of the reader? Wouldn't the Imperium?

If this were true, when written for a French audience, wouldn't it be possible to assume the base language of the Imperium might be based on French?

I honestly don't know if the books are translated or not, but it's a curious thought.

It used to be the very Latin-similar High Gothic.

These days, who knows? Half the Grey Knights models have stuff scrawled on them in English.