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Made in sg
Gavin Thorpe





I often see English inscriptions on Imperial objects. GW is, after all, an English company.


But the Imperium is said to use Gothic. Gothic is said to be
...represented for our purposes as twenty-first century English in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, though in fact it would be utterly unintelligible to English-speakers after tens of thousands of Terran years of linguistic drift and hybridisation with other languages.




Wouldn't it then be highly incongruous and out of place to see English text?



I think it's almost as bad as accidentally seeing movie mistakes like this:




What do you guys think?


This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/04/09 05:58:17


 
   
Made in au
Hardened Veteran Guardsman





Maybe 38,000 years in the future English is just called gothic. High gothic is the proper british speak, and low gothic is american/aussie/football ooligan speak. Or maybe they put in it english so we can actually read it. You pick.

If you allow yourself to be killed and ingested, your soul is forfeited. 
   
Made in sg
Gavin Thorpe





Mudrat wrote:
Maybe 38,000 years in the future English is just called gothic. High gothic is the proper british speak, and low gothic is american/aussie/football ooligan speak.

read the OP again


Mudrat wrote:
Or maybe they put in it english so we can actually read it.


They do. But to inscribe it on an in-universe object?
   
Made in au
Hardened Veteran Guardsman





Maximus Bitch wrote:
Mudrat wrote:
Maybe 38,000 years in the future English is just called gothic. High gothic is the proper british speak, and low gothic is american/aussie/football ooligan speak.

read the OP again


I'm sorry, but I don't get the difference. There is no guarantee that 38,000 years in the future 'gothic' language is anything like the old german one. For all we know, 40k gothic could be closer to todays Korean. GW writing in english is likely mainly due to their general tendency to avoid doing additional work.

If you allow yourself to be killed and ingested, your soul is forfeited. 
   
Made in sg
Gavin Thorpe





Mudrat wrote:
Maximus Bitch wrote:
Mudrat wrote:
Maybe 38,000 years in the future English is just called gothic. High gothic is the proper british speak, and low gothic is american/aussie/football ooligan speak.

read the OP again


I'm sorry, but I don't get the difference. There is no guarantee that 38,000 years in the future 'gothic' language is anything like the old german one. For all we know, 40k gothic could be closer to todays Korean. GW writing in english is likely mainly due to their general tendency to avoid doing additional work.


When you said "in the future English is just called gothic", that confuses people.

Maybe, but we have Ork cuneiform, Eldar sigils, Necron glyphs
   
Made in au
Ancient Space Wolves Venerable Dreadnought






Mudrat wrote:
Maximus Bitch wrote:
Mudrat wrote:
Maybe 38,000 years in the future English is just called gothic. High gothic is the proper british speak, and low gothic is american/aussie/football ooligan speak.

read the OP again


I'm sorry, but I don't get the difference. There is no guarantee that 38,000 years in the future 'gothic' language is anything like the old german one. For all we know, 40k gothic could be closer to todays Korean. GW writing in english is likely mainly due to their general tendency to avoid doing additional work.


The British Empire took back its strength under the command of a female Aussie "Goth" how said Goth got command is lost to history as is the term "Aussie". Being an Aussie and possessing a very Aussie sense of humour the Goth decreed the conquest to be in the name of "Gothica" and when asked if she would rename the planet as well replied "It's a holey terror". Paper pushers - misunderstanding the Aussie accent, heard and wrote " Holy Terra".
The rest, as they say "is history".

I don't break the rules but I'll bend them as far as they'll go. 
   
Made in au
Anti-Armour Swiss Guard






Newcastle, OZ

We don't tend to call things a "holy terror".

if it's not a good place to be, it's said to be "f*****' rooted".

It does have a nice ring to it, though - better than that stodgy old choirboy dead language ...

I'm OVER 50 (and so far over everyone's BS, too).
Old enough to know better, young enough to not give a ****.

That is not dead which can eternal lie ...

... and yet, with strange aeons, even death may die.
 
   
Made in fr
Trazyn's Museum Curator





on the forum. Obviously

Maximus Bitch wrote:


They do. But to inscribe it on an in-universe object?


Yeah, so we can read what it says on an in-universe object.
This is no different from Germans speaking English in some WW2 films. Its just for convenience.

What I have
~4100
~1660

Westwood lives in death!
Peace through power!

A longbeard when it comes to Necrons and WHFB. Grumble Grumble

 
   
Made in sg
Gavin Thorpe





 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Maximus Bitch wrote:


They do. But to inscribe it on an in-universe object?


Yeah, so we can read what it says on an in-universe object.
This is no different from Germans speaking English in some WW2 films. Its just for convenience.


But 40k images should show what they look like in-universe. I don't see them inscribing English on Necron and Eldar things.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/04/09 09:20:59


 
   
Made in fr
Trazyn's Museum Curator





on the forum. Obviously

Maximus Bitch wrote:
 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Maximus Bitch wrote:


They do. But to inscribe it on an in-universe object?


Yeah, so we can read what it says on an in-universe object.
This is no different from Germans speaking English in some WW2 films. Its just for convenience.


But 40k images should show what they look like in-universe. I don't see them inscribing English on Necron and Eldar things.


Maybe its because Eldar and Necrons are not human societies using a human language that's supposedly derived from several ancestral human languages.
Its hard to call something alien when they are clearly using a familiar text. The Imperium is definitely not alien.
Note that for the sake of convenience, aliens speak english / your friendly local language. Their text is still in alien. Like German in WW2 films.

I personally would have preferred necrons to speak exclusively in binary, hex or even ASCII, but that's just me.

This message was edited 6 times. Last update was at 2017/04/09 09:38:40


What I have
~4100
~1660

Westwood lives in death!
Peace through power!

A longbeard when it comes to Necrons and WHFB. Grumble Grumble

 
   
Made in sg
Gavin Thorpe





 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Maximus Bitch wrote:
 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Maximus Bitch wrote:


They do. But to inscribe it on an in-universe object?


Yeah, so we can read what it says on an in-universe object.
This is no different from Germans speaking English in some WW2 films. Its just for convenience.


But 40k images should show what they look like in-universe. I don't see them inscribing English on Necron and Eldar things.


Maybe its because Eldar and Necrons are not human societies using a human language that's supposedly derived from several ancestral human languages.
Its hard to call something alien when they are clearly using a familiar language. The Imperium is definitely not alien.


Eldar and Necron thought and meanings are not entirely alien to us humans, Eldar and Necron dialogue are commonly found in 40k.

Gothic is said to be unintelligible to English speakers too. Almost like an alien, foreign language.

Besides, they should portray in-universe things as they appear in-universe right?


It would be like visiting a Chinese speaking country, taking photos, and then photoshopping English words onto all the Chinese text.

Maybe like what Google is doing:


This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/04/09 10:06:25


 
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka






Besides, they should portray in-universe things as they appear in-universe right?


Since the universe doesn't exist, they can portray it as they see fit. The point of the artwork is to convey an emotional theme or an allusion to European medieval art, culture and sensibilities. The text is part of that. You can't convey much if all the writing is meaningless symbols.

If you insist, just think of it as someone painstakingly going through all the pictures and translating the text into something you can read.

Why should Necrons communicate in our computer codes (you could argue that binary might be "universal", but not hexadecimal and certainly not ASCII)? They're not computers. They should communicate in whatever language they spoke before they were machines. Remember, the whole point of the Necrons is that they adopted machine bodies to achieve immortality, then realised they'd given up their emotions and "souls". They're like Pinocchio, or Data - they want to be living beings again; a thematic opposition to the Adeptus Mechanicus, and a warning which the Mechanicus has failed to understand.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/04/09 11:00:36


 
   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut




The language of Gothic and High Gothic are portrayed as English and faux Latin respectively to give a sense of how one derived from the other within the 40K universe. There is no indication it is actually English or Latin. It is similar to how in Star Wars, they speak English and they talk of X-Wing fighters, even though they are supposedly speaking Galactic Basic and writing using Aurebesh (which has no letter that looks like X).
   
Made in au
Infiltrating Broodlord





GW once described it more akin to the asian languages
   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut




GodDamUser wrote:
GW once described it more akin to the asian languages


I don't have my copy of the original Rogue Trader (and other books of that era like Book of the Astronomicon) handy at the moment, but I do recall a reference that the language was a very distant descendant of English that had absorbed Asian language influences. Of course over so many thousands of years, it is unrecognizable to English speakers. Ultimately the basic point is that GW use English so that we readers can understand what they read and write, not necessarily what they really use in the 40K universe.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/04/09 11:37:06


 
   
Made in sg
Gavin Thorpe





Iracundus wrote:
The language of Gothic and High Gothic are portrayed as English and faux Latin respectively to give a sense of how one derived from the other within the 40K universe. There is no indication it is actually English or Latin. It is similar to how in Star Wars, they speak English and they talk of X-Wing fighters, even though they are supposedly speaking Galactic Basic and writing using Aurebesh (which has no letter that looks like X).


First of all, I've made it clear from the get go that I know it is not actually English. C'mon man, you need to read more carefully.

And, Exactly! In Star Wars they write Aurebesh, though there is no such equivalent for the IoM.
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka






I did read your post. And I answered it.

Even in Star Wars, "aurebesh" isn't necessarily a different language. It's just a substitution cipher for words written in English (with 8 additional symbols representing common English letter pairs like CH and OO). In the case of numerals, it's not even that - just a fancy font.

But then, Star Wars doesn't use the specific written words to evoke the themes, unlike 40k. In Star Wars, what little written text we see is deliberately alien, to give the sense that the galaxy far, far away is alien The fact that you can't understand what it says is the point (although there are some easter eggs for nerds with patience and a comparison chart). By contrast, the text in 40k is deliberately trying to allude to historical themes; it's the words themselves that are important, not just the shapes of the symbols, and that familiarity is necessary.

Comparing written text in 40k to that in Star Wars misses the point, because the art directors are using it in completely opposite ways.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/04/09 12:02:11


 
   
Made in sg
Gavin Thorpe





 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Besides, they should portray in-universe things as they appear in-universe right?


Since the universe doesn't exist, they can portray it as they see fit.

Well, they did state that English does not appear within their own created universe.



 AndrewGPaul wrote:
The point of the artwork is to convey an emotional theme or an allusion to European medieval art, culture and sensibilities. The text is part of that. You can't convey much if all the writing is meaningless symbols.

I ask all these interesting questions, and then some people rush to the defense of a status quo that doesn't really exist, and sometimes I really have to doubt whether these people thought about this issue before I asked it, and doubt that they thought about it much before posting.

They have conveyed the allusions through the murals, clothes, objects and architecture, and most importantly, the fluff. They don't need to write English on the objects in-universe in order to convey that, and in fact, you don't often encounter in-universe English writing. Most of the art doesn't have it.


What about Necrons and Eldar? They could spell out "Dynasty" on the Necron structures instead of having fancy glyphs. But Necrons don't use English, and... neither does the Imperium.

In fact, Necron and Eldar glyphs were carefully designed to convey a theme without having to be intelligible.




 AndrewGPaul wrote:

Why should Necrons communicate in our computer codes (you could argue that binary might be "universal", but not hexadecimal and certainly not ASCII)? They're not computers. They should communicate in whatever language they spoke before they were machines. Remember, the whole point of the Necrons is that they adopted machine bodies to achieve immortality, then realised they'd given up their emotions and "souls". They're like Pinocchio, or Data - they want to be living beings again; a thematic opposition to the Adeptus Mechanicus, and a warning which the Mechanicus has failed to understand.


I'm sorry but I think you're going off topic here.


 AndrewGPaul wrote:

If you insist, just think of it as someone painstakingly going through all the pictures and translating the text into something you can read.


Yes I can, like what Google Translate is doing in the video I posted above.

But we're supposed to have in-universe "pict-captures", not edited photos.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 AndrewGPaul wrote:

But then, Star Wars doesn't use the specific written words to evoke the themes, unlike 40k.

In Star Wars, what little written text we see is deliberately alien, to give the sense that the galaxy far, far away is alien The fact that you can't understand what it says is the point (although there are some easter eggs for nerds with patience and a comparison chart).

By contrast, the text in 40k is deliberately trying to allude to historical themes; it's the words themselves that are important, not just the shapes of the symbols, and that familiarity is necessary.

Comparing written text in 40k to that in Star Wars misses the point, because the art directors are using it in completely opposite ways.


An allusion to the historical use of English you say? But to resolve this, we must turn to GW.

Have they ever said that they would deliberately inscribe English in-universe despite specifying that the IoM doesn't use English, and also hereby declaring that they would never come up with a Gothic script?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Andrew, its not like GW has never done scripts for 40k humans before.

The Fenrisians have their runic scripts.

This Word Bearer has Colchisian runes all over his armour:




I assume these are Colchisian cuneiform:

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2017/04/09 12:18:26


 
   
Made in us
Judgemental Grey Knight Justicar




I'm not really sure what you want from people. We have written on them what is written on them. I think they should stick to using Latin or similar terms in the text but I think being able to read them is a plus also.

Should they not be in English? Probably.
Are they? Yes.
Do most people have a problem with it? Doesn't seem like it.

Where you want to go from there is up to you, I don't really see this as a background conversation rather than a "what's on the models" conversation.
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka






The comment on Necrons as a reply to CthuluIsSpy. What was that about not reading the posts?

Yes, the allusions are conveyed through other elements of the artwork - but the text is an important part of that.

Other races are supposed to be alien. The different writing glyphs are used - like in Star Wars - to denote Otherness. The actual information contained in those "words" is irrelevant. However the setting is from the Imperium's point of view - we're supposed to understand them.

Assuming all the artwork we see is "in-universe photographs" or even in-universe paintings, for that matter), why should we not assume they haven't been edited for clarity, when clearly all the written words have been?

Obviously they haven't come out and stated this in so many words. But why should they? The reasoning is clear. It's simply the same thing as is done whenever someone writes a fantasy or sf novel in a language the readers will understand. Films are almost always made in the language of the country they're made for, regardless of what language the characters would "really" speak (the only exception I can think of from Hoolywood is The Passion of the Christ, filmed in Aramaic and Latin). This is just the same, only the information is conveyed by visual means rather than auditory.

If you really want an answer why, you're going to have to go and ask the artists, but I bet the answer will be roughly what I've said.

Note that the point of displaying those runes is specifically to make them look like some obscure text that the reader can't understand - a bit like Minoan Linear A (although not like cuneiform, which has been deciphered).

I wonder if the cuneiform on the cover of that novel is lifted from an atual historical document, and if so, what it says? Probably someone's tax records.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2017/04/09 12:35:14


 
   
Made in gb
Courageous Space Marine Captain






Glasgow, Scotland

Maximus Bitch wrote:
Mudrat wrote:
Maybe 38,000 years in the future English is just called gothic. High gothic is the proper british speak, and low gothic is american/aussie/football ooligan speak.

read the OP again


Mudrat wrote:
Or maybe they put in it english so we can actually read it.


They do. But to inscribe it on an in-universe object?



Because inscribing a model or image with a made-up futuristic language that's hybridised from all other modern and ancient languages plus a few millennia of development from now would be impossible. They just write in English because everyone can understand English.

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Made in au
Liche Priest Hierophant







Who is to say that the current Latin/Roman characters aren't still used with High Gothic? The characters don't need to change for the Language to be unintelligible to modern English readers.

It's also likely that the pronunciation of characters would have changed over time.

Furthermore, not every word needs to be completely unintelligible for a language for the entire language to be utterly unintelligible.

Now Exterminatus, as an example, is a word that sounds similar to the English word Exterminate that is derived from the Latin Exterminatus... however in 40k Exterminatus means so much more than either of those 2 words. It's a very specific solution that describes the utter annihilation of an entire planet and all life upon it - and in some cases the planet itself. It isn't as broad of a term and in a way it's unintelligible at a glance to an English speaker. Not utterly, but it is but one word out of many. Additionally it might not be pronounced the way we normally hear it. It could - in 'reality' if such a word can be used - sound like garbled nonsense due to 38, 000 years of shifting pronunciations. Just look at the history of English with the great vowel shift. There are many words that we still use today that were pronounced completely differently. Combine that with Asian influences on pronunciation and several libraries worth of word that are probably have their roots in Asian dialects with Anglicised characters and it would make the language utterly unintelligible.

It's also possible the the structure and syntax is alien the English users too. Instead of being Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) it could be OVS, VSO, OSV, etc. or even something completely alien.

So there are a lot of ways it's possible for High Gothic to be utterly incomprehensible to English speakers while still be presented the way it is.



That being said there are many art pieces out there where it will be plain English and faux-Latin in a typically English structure... in those cases it's definitely for both the ease of the audience and the ease of the creator.
   
Made in sg
Gavin Thorpe





 AndrewGPaul wrote:
The comment on Necrons as a reply to CthuluIsSpy. What was that about not reading the posts?

I know, but it was off-topic.


 AndrewGPaul wrote:

Other races are supposed to be alien. The different writing glyphs are used - like in Star Wars - to denote Otherness. The actual information contained in those "words" is irrelevant. However the setting is from the Imperium's point of view - we're supposed to understand them.

But they do write lots of fluff for us to understand the Xenos too.

Then, what about Fenrisians and Colchisians? While runes and cuneiform are based on historical scripts, those that appear in 40k are not meant to intelligible like the in-universe English.



 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Assuming all the artwork we see is "in-universe photographs" or even in-universe paintings, for that matter), why should we not assume they haven't been edited for clarity, when clearly all the written words have been?

They could, but it'd be really odd, don't you think?


 AndrewGPaul wrote:
It's simply the same thing as is done whenever someone writes a fantasy or sf novel in a language the readers will understand. Films are almost always made in the language of the country they're made for, regardless of what language the characters would "really" speak (the only exception I can think of from Hoolywood is The Passion of the Christ, filmed in Aramaic and Latin).

And they did say that they do that when writing the fluff.

Can you give me some specific examples of these movies though. Can't think of one at the moment.



 AndrewGPaul wrote:
If you really want an answer why, you're going to have to go and ask the artists, but I bet the answer will be roughly what I've said.


Alright, I will.

My best guess is that it's just something that has flown under GW's radar for many, many years.


Either they will end up declaring that there is no Gothic script, and no need for one, or they will retcon some gak. Both are highly agreeable to me.



I wish they would do something like Futurama, release a script and let fans figure it out.
   
Made in sg
Gavin Thorpe





I've contacted GW and I'm eagerly awaiting their response.

Hopefully they'll give me one.
   
Made in nl
Pragmatic Primus Commanding Cult Forces






The language on the in-universe objects is not actually English or even in the Latin alphabet. The artists just render it as English text so that we can actually read it. It is no use making up a fancy alphabet and language if you want people to be able to understand what it says...
The pictures are not actual photographs of something in-universe (that would be quite impossible). They are out of universe drawings that give us an idea how something might look like in-universe. In order to do this in an effective manner, the drawing is abstracted to some degree (as all drawings are) so that the artist may finish it within a reasonable timeframe and so that the audience will fully understand the picture and not be distracted by needless details. For example, on a picture of a Space Marine not every single rivet, scratch or speck of dirt that would be on his armour is going to be drawn. Rendering all text as English to represent Low Gothic, pseudo-Latin to represent High Gothic or runes and cuneiform to represent yet another language is part of this process of abstraction.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/04/15 22:32:46


Error 404: Interesting signature not found

 
   
Made in sg
Gavin Thorpe





 Iron_Captain wrote:
The language on the in-universe objects is not actually English or even in the Latin alphabet. The artists just render it as English text so that we can actually read it. It is no use making up a fancy alphabet and language if you want people to be able to understand what it says...
The pictures are not actual photographs of something in-universe (that would be quite impossible). They are out of universe drawings that give us an idea how something might look like in-universe. In order to do this in an effective manner, the drawing is abstracted to some degree (as all drawings are) so that the artist may finish it within a reasonable timeframe and so that the audience will fully understand the picture and not be distracted by needless details. For example, on a picture of a Space Marine not every single rivet, scratch or speck of dirt that would be on his armour is going to be drawn. Rendering all text as English to represent Low Gothic, pseudo-Latin to represent High Gothic or runes and cuneiform to represent yet another language is part of this process of abstraction.


But this is sci-fi, people love a fancy alphabet. Wouldn't be too hard for them to "translate" it for us. Besides the words that do appear aren't terribly important.
   
Made in nl
Pragmatic Primus Commanding Cult Forces






Maximus Bitch wrote:
 Iron_Captain wrote:
The language on the in-universe objects is not actually English or even in the Latin alphabet. The artists just render it as English text so that we can actually read it. It is no use making up a fancy alphabet and language if you want people to be able to understand what it says...
The pictures are not actual photographs of something in-universe (that would be quite impossible). They are out of universe drawings that give us an idea how something might look like in-universe. In order to do this in an effective manner, the drawing is abstracted to some degree (as all drawings are) so that the artist may finish it within a reasonable timeframe and so that the audience will fully understand the picture and not be distracted by needless details. For example, on a picture of a Space Marine not every single rivet, scratch or speck of dirt that would be on his armour is going to be drawn. Rendering all text as English to represent Low Gothic, pseudo-Latin to represent High Gothic or runes and cuneiform to represent yet another language is part of this process of abstraction.


But this is sci-fi, people love a fancy alphabet. Wouldn't be too hard for them to "translate" it for us. Besides the words that do appear aren't terribly important.

Yeah, I'd love for GW to make fancy alphabets for the Imperium and the xenos (the Eldar in fact have some beginnings of it), but doing that is a lot of work and costs a lot of money. That is why GW isn't likely to be going to do it.

Error 404: Interesting signature not found

 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





North Carolina

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The language on the in-universe objects is not actually English or even in the Latin alphabet. The artists just render it as English text so that we can actually read it. It is no use making up a fancy alphabet and language if you want people to be able to understand what it says...
The pictures are not actual photographs of something in-universe (that would be quite impossible). They are out of universe drawings that give us an idea how something might look like in-universe. In order to do this in an effective manner, the drawing is abstracted to some degree (as all drawings are) so that the artist may finish it within a reasonable timeframe and so that the audience will fully understand the picture and not be distracted by needless details. For example, on a picture of a Space Marine not every single rivet, scratch or speck of dirt that would be on his armour is going to be drawn. Rendering all text as English to represent Low Gothic, pseudo-Latin to represent High Gothic or runes and cuneiform to represent yet another language is part of this process of abstraction.




High Gothic does use the Latin/Roman alphabet. It can be seen in the High Gothic inscriptions on holy or official items in the Imperium, such as the Grey Knights Aegis armor and in some Mechanicus iconography.






Automatically Appended Next Post:
Maximus Bitch wrote:
I often see English inscriptions on Imperial objects. GW is, after all, an English company.


But the Imperium is said to use Gothic. Gothic is said to be
...represented for our purposes as twenty-first century English in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, though in fact it would be utterly unintelligible to English-speakers after tens of thousands of Terran years of linguistic drift and hybridisation with other languages.




Wouldn't it then be highly incongruous and out of place to see English text?



I think it's almost as bad as accidentally seeing movie mistakes like this:




What do you guys think?






There are two variations of Gothic. Low Gothic is the one presented as plain English for the benefit of the player/reader. Low Gothic, which is just a catch-all term for the native languages spoken across the Imperium's many worlds (incorrectly called "dialects" by GW), many of which are just bastardized variations on High Gothic.


What the Imperium calls High Gothic or Tech, is the one usually presented as pseudo-Latin rather than English. Which is fitting, since Latin was one of the component languages of High Gothic.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/04/16 01:39:51


Proud Purveyor Of The Unconventional In 40k 
   
Made in sg
Gavin Thorpe





 oldravenman3025 wrote:
 Iron_Captain wrote:
The language on the in-universe objects is not actually English or even in the Latin alphabet. The artists just render it as English text so that we can actually read it. It is no use making up a fancy alphabet and language if you want people to be able to understand what it says...
The pictures are not actual photographs of something in-universe (that would be quite impossible). They are out of universe drawings that give us an idea how something might look like in-universe. In order to do this in an effective manner, the drawing is abstracted to some degree (as all drawings are) so that the artist may finish it within a reasonable timeframe and so that the audience will fully understand the picture and not be distracted by needless details. For example, on a picture of a Space Marine not every single rivet, scratch or speck of dirt that would be on his armour is going to be drawn. Rendering all text as English to represent Low Gothic, pseudo-Latin to represent High Gothic or runes and cuneiform to represent yet another language is part of this process of abstraction.




High Gothic does use the Latin/Roman alphabet. It can be seen in the High Gothic inscriptions on holy or official items in the Imperium, such as the Grey Knights Aegis armor and in some Mechanicus iconography.






Automatically Appended Next Post:
Maximus Bitch wrote:
I often see English inscriptions on Imperial objects. GW is, after all, an English company.


But the Imperium is said to use Gothic. Gothic is said to be
...represented for our purposes as twenty-first century English in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, though in fact it would be utterly unintelligible to English-speakers after tens of thousands of Terran years of linguistic drift and hybridisation with other languages.




Wouldn't it then be highly incongruous and out of place to see English text?



I think it's almost as bad as accidentally seeing movie mistakes like this:




What do you guys think?






There are two variations of Gothic. Low Gothic is the one presented as plain English for the benefit of the player/reader. Low Gothic, which is just a catch-all term for the native languages spoken across the Imperium's many worlds (incorrectly called "dialects" by GW), many of which are just bastardized variations on High Gothic.


What the Imperium calls High Gothic or Tech, is the one usually presented as pseudo-Latin rather than English. Which is fitting, since Latin was one of the component languages of High Gothic.


But shouldn't we assume that pseudo-Latin is to High Gothic what English is to Low Gothic?

according to Andrew, we should just assume that all in-universe images have been edited with Google Translate, and that is most probably GW's intention, also signalling their intention to never invent a Gothic script.


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 Iron_Captain wrote:
Maximus Bitch wrote:
 Iron_Captain wrote:
The language on the in-universe objects is not actually English or even in the Latin alphabet. The artists just render it as English text so that we can actually read it. It is no use making up a fancy alphabet and language if you want people to be able to understand what it says...
The pictures are not actual photographs of something in-universe (that would be quite impossible). They are out of universe drawings that give us an idea how something might look like in-universe. In order to do this in an effective manner, the drawing is abstracted to some degree (as all drawings are) so that the artist may finish it within a reasonable timeframe and so that the audience will fully understand the picture and not be distracted by needless details. For example, on a picture of a Space Marine not every single rivet, scratch or speck of dirt that would be on his armour is going to be drawn. Rendering all text as English to represent Low Gothic, pseudo-Latin to represent High Gothic or runes and cuneiform to represent yet another language is part of this process of abstraction.


But this is sci-fi, people love a fancy alphabet. Wouldn't be too hard for them to "translate" it for us. Besides the words that do appear aren't terribly important.

Yeah, I'd love for GW to make fancy alphabets for the Imperium and the xenos (the Eldar in fact have some beginnings of it), but doing that is a lot of work and costs a lot of money. That is why GW isn't likely to be going to do it.

Making an alphabet is expensive?


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Ceann wrote:
I'm not really sure what you want from people. We have written on them what is written on them. I think they should stick to using Latin or similar terms in the text but I think being able to read them is a plus also.

Should they not be in English? Probably.
Are they? Yes.
Do most people have a problem with it? Doesn't seem like it.

Where you want to go from there is up to you, I don't really see this as a background conversation rather than a "what's on the models" conversation.


Well it wouldn't be a background problem had GW made their intentions clear. Which is why I contacted them.

Anyway, don't you find it incongruous for them to Google Camera Translate their own universe?


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 Deadshot wrote:
Maximus Bitch wrote:
Mudrat wrote:
Maybe 38,000 years in the future English is just called gothic. High gothic is the proper british speak, and low gothic is american/aussie/football ooligan speak.

read the OP again


Mudrat wrote:
Or maybe they put in it english so we can actually read it.


They do. But to inscribe it on an in-universe object?



Because inscribing a model or image with a made-up futuristic language that's hybridised from all other modern and ancient languages plus a few millennia of development from now would be impossible. They just write in English because everyone can understand English.

but its not impossible if its made up. why is it impossible? its just imagination


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 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
That being said there are many art pieces out there where it will be plain English and faux-Latin in a typically English structure... in those cases it's definitely for both the ease of the audience and the ease of the creator.


Not for the Orks, Eldar or Necrons though. I find it incongruous to use "Google Translate Camera" on all the Gothic text. Could be done. but just incongruous.

This message was edited 7 times. Last update was at 2017/04/16 03:26:41


 
   
Made in au
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At the same time though the Eldar Orks and Necrons scripts aren't languages either. Eldar is probably the closest and it's still far from properly resembling an actual language.
   
 
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