Mr_Rose wrote:In the old fluff, high gothic was the universal, official language taught in all Imperial institutions and low gothic is the term for the local dialects of the same root language, while many worlds /also/ had native languages of their own.
Essentially high and low gothic should be mutually intelligible in the same way Latin and Italian are(n't), and for much the same reason, while the local languages of each planet would require more than a phrase book to comprehend.
The third part, about the native languages, seems to have either been dropped or rolled into low gothic by mistake lately.
In the Roleplaying games, like Dark Heresy, Hight Gothic is Latin. To understand that question you must think in the pre-renacentist history, before the XVI century the books, the "literature" and the "science" was only writed and readed in latin and greek mostly. Even, long after Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes and other writers developed their own languages the latin was the language for the science and handbooks.
As I understand, the Latin is still in the official administratum and ministorum language in the medieval futuristic Imperium. Even if most people couldn´t understand it or spoke it. That´s the same status that the latin had in the european history. If you are a monk copying a codex from Saint August you don´t need to understand that words, you know that are sacred and you won´t change it.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Spetulhu wrote: Mr_Rose wrote:Essentially high and low gothic should be mutually intelligible in the same way Latin and Italian are(n't).
As I recall someone who took Latin in school will often be able to understand Italian (and Spanish etc), but the locals won't understand him so well. He has the benefit of knowing all the root words and theory while they just speak as they've done since whenever.
As spanish from the mediterranean coast I could understand Italian, Portuguese and French reasonably well. Romanic languages from other countries (Romania e.g.) evolved far from my understandment.
The original Latin, nowdays, could be understanded in lot of points but the Latin had a big problem to us. The latin, like the Russian, use the declinations to connect the words in a sentence. That´s the reason because the Google Translator sistem that the Black Library writers use to translate english to latin is very very bad.
For example, Aaron Demsky Bowden is one of my favourite writers and their Night Lords novels are awesome. But the famous motto "AVE DOMINUS NOX" is very very wrong. In Latin the declination determine that to connect the two words of the sentence, and explain that the Lords are lords of the Night (not in the night, or lords by night) the sentence must read AVE, DOMINI NOCTIS.
