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So far we've seen eldar runes, ork writing (which looks like cuneiform), and necron glyphs.

I can guess what the Tau writing would like. What about the Imperium? Do they use the Roman alphabet?


According to GW, English represents Low Gothic and Latinish represents High Gothic.
This is fine if we imagine that Gothic texts have been translated into English for us 21st century humans to read.

However, consider Gothic inscriptions on walls and objects. In images of such walls and objects, the Gothic script will be there for everyone to see.

Even if these inscriptions are written in Roman script, they have to be different from both English and Latinish.
For instance, "Adeptus Terra" might be written as "Aadyptuis Tehrreah".


An inscription can be seen on the cover of "The Primarchs". But since High Gothic =/= Latinish, it should actually be depicted like this:



Latinish boxes are used to represent High Gothic. In the image below, an English box is used to represent Arabic:




Of course, this is incredibly ugly.

Judging by the writing and script we see on the models and in the artwork, it's safe to assume that it's a healthy blend of the classical Latin and archaic Latin alphabets, with a little bit of Greek thrown in.

Any examples? Thanks

They should invent something new for the imperium

Judging by the transfers they give us I would say that Gothic writing is identical (Or near identical) to modern day English.

I actually thought I might be wrong.

High Goth was proper English
Low Goth was non school English

Something to that effect

High Goth was proper English
Low Goth was non school English

High Gothic is the language that the technical manuals were written in when Humanity began to spread throughout the stars. It is, primarily, Chinese in basis, though also features several elements of various European languages and American English. By the time the M41 has rolled around, however, it has become entirely incomprehensible to anyone who spoke any of its founding languages.

Low Gothic is... exactly that... Low Gothic. It's High Gothic spoken with slang, regional/planetary dialects, newly-invented words, borrowed languages from Xenos humanity had encountered in, say, M23, and other mish-mash languages.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/High_Gothic#.U5ucjXamVqM

The reason it comes off as Latinish is an in-joke from GW/BL, who claim that the Latin-esque translations are the closest things the words in Gothic mean when reporting them back to us here in 21c.

 Psienesis wrote:

High Goth was proper English
Low Goth was non school English

High Gothic is the language that the technical manuals were written in when Humanity began to spread throughout the stars. It is, primarily, Chinese in basis, though also features several elements of various European languages and American English. By the time the M41 has rolled around, however, it has become entirely incomprehensible to anyone who spoke any of its founding languages.

Low Gothic is... exactly that... Low Gothic. It's High Gothic spoken with slang, regional/planetary dialects, newly-invented words, borrowed languages from Xenos humanity had encountered in, say, M23, and other mish-mash languages.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/High_Gothic#.U5ucjXamVqM

The reason it comes off as Latinish is an in-joke from GW/BL, who claim that the Latin-esque translations are the closest things the words in Gothic mean when reporting them back to us here in 21c.

It was primarly Chinese in basis?

Of course. By the time even the 22nd century had rolled around, China was the world's major super-power. Also, being the most-populated nation on Earth, when Mankind began to spread out into the cosmos, well, the majority of the colonial inhabitants probably spoke Chinese, if not as a primary language than definitely a secondary language.

The Afrikanner languages were caused by the labor pool that sent Man to the stars. The best launch-sites are along the equatorial belt... and the clearest land for building launch-sites is in north Africa.

The actual colonies, though, are (IMO) the most-interesting aspect of Man's spread amongst the stars. Apparently, they were centered around all kinds of crazy things. Like, one colony would be a specific religious group (like, say, Catholics or Lutherans or Sub-Genii), others would be ethnic groups (like Jews or Croats or Louisiana Bayou Folk) and still others would be centered around other areas of interest (like Elven-speaking J.R.R. Tolkein fans, or WoW players...)

And this would later lead to the Imperium having such a *vast* range of human cultures in its world, rather than some massive mono-culture.

In the early days (great crusade/horus heresy) the fledgling Imperium had it's own unique bastardization of High Gothic that they called Imperial Gothic. As far as the HH books go they liked to teach this specific language to everyone. Strangely they don't count it as a Low Gothic language for some reason. Maybe the writers didn't think that bit out too much?

Or maybe Imperial Gothic evolved into Low Gothic.

What I don't get (Well, I do get it but I dislike) is why they don't have Imperial Transfer sheets in High/Low Gothic. After all, all the alien factions have their languages in their alien languages. Gothic is as alien to us as their languages and it would be cool to see on Imperial models.

 Psienesis wrote:
Of course. By the time even the 22nd century had rolled around, China was the world's major super-power. Also, being the most-populated nation on Earth, when Mankind began to spread out into the cosmos, well, the majority of the colonial inhabitants probably spoke Chinese, if not as a primary language than definitely a secondary language.

The Afrikanner languages were caused by the labor pool that sent Man to the stars. The best launch-sites are along the equatorial belt... and the clearest land for building launch-sites is in north Africa.

The actual colonies, though, are (IMO) the most-interesting aspect of Man's spread amongst the stars. Apparently, they were centered around all kinds of crazy things. Like, one colony would be a specific religious group (like, say, Catholics or Lutherans or Sub-Genii), others would be ethnic groups (like Jews or Croats or Louisiana Bayou Folk) and still others would be centered around other areas of interest (like Elven-speaking J.R.R. Tolkein fans, or WoW players...)

And this would later lead to the Imperium having such a *vast* range of human cultures in its world, rather than some massive mono-culture.

Chinese? Please cite...
I thought I've read a lot of fluff.. never heard that one though..

Yeah, can we have a source for the Chinese? It makes sense from a historical standpoint, but when you look at all the Imperium's writing, symbols, and naming conventions, it seems like High Gothic has to be at least partially Latin based. Saying that that's just an approximation for us kind of annoys me, because that's basically saying that the way things look on the table isn't what they actually look like. Kind of defeats the point of the models.

According to GW, English represents Low Gothic and Latinish represents High Gothic.
This is fine if we imagine that Gothic texts have been translated into English for us 21st century humans to read.

However, consider Gothic inscriptions on walls and objects. In images of such walls and objects, the Gothic script will be there for everyone to see.

Even if these inscriptions are written in Roman script, they have to be different from both English and Latinish.
For instance, "Adeptus Terra" might be written as "Aadyptuis Tehrreah".


An inscription can be seen on the cover of "The Primarchs". But since High Gothic =/= Latinish, it should actually be depicted like this:



Latinish boxes are used to represent High Gothic. In the image below, an English box is used to represent Arabic:




Of course, this is incredibly ugly.

China only narrowly has the largest population. India is right on there heels and taking a historical view means nothing when looking at things that havent happened yet. i cant say im taking a historical view when i say next week there will be a nuclear war.

IMO English is the 1st language of any countries and the second of even more. wherever you go in the world you will be able to find someone who speak english whether broken or fluent. Currently it is declared the international language and i cant see that changing anytime soon. it doesnt matter how many chinese people go into space when there will be an equal number/more english speaking folk going up there as well.

The only way low gothic would be chinese is if sometime in the not so distant future china pulverised anyone who wasnt chinese

 Inquisitor Bob wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Of course. By the time even the 22nd century had rolled around, China was the world's major super-power. Also, being the most-populated nation on Earth, when Mankind began to spread out into the cosmos, well, the majority of the colonial inhabitants probably spoke Chinese, if not as a primary language than definitely a secondary language.

The Afrikanner languages were caused by the labor pool that sent Man to the stars. The best launch-sites are along the equatorial belt... and the clearest land for building launch-sites is in north Africa.

The actual colonies, though, are (IMO) the most-interesting aspect of Man's spread amongst the stars. Apparently, they were centered around all kinds of crazy things. Like, one colony would be a specific religious group (like, say, Catholics or Lutherans or Sub-Genii), others would be ethnic groups (like Jews or Croats or Louisiana Bayou Folk) and still others would be centered around other areas of interest (like Elven-speaking J.R.R. Tolkein fans, or WoW players...)

And this would later lead to the Imperium having such a *vast* range of human cultures in its world, rather than some massive mono-culture.

Chinese? Please cite...
I thought I've read a lot of fluff.. never heard that one though..

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/High_Gothic#.U6B0zXamVqM

Specifically this bit:

This developed during the Dark Age of Technology. It derives from the common tongue of the time, an assimilation of English, European and Pacific languages which developed over many centuries in the American/Pacific region.

While there's a lot of cultures in the Pacific region, the biggest swinger is China. Tagalog doesn't have the population to become a majority influence, for example.

I suppose this will be one of those points where I step in and re write my own personal fluff interpretations.

Yeah, but that's not how people do it. They leave the original script and then put the translation below it like a subtitle, often without a white box. Done correctly, it looks a lot less bad:



Anyways, as for what gothic font looks like, everything is hand-written, due to human labor being the only thing in such vast abundance. Therefore, it will look like the handwriting of someone who has to spend all day writing legibly.

Which means...

 Ailaros wrote:

Spoiler:

Yeah, but that's not how people do it. They leave the original script and then put the translation below it like a subtitle, often without a white box. Done correctly, it looks a lot less bad:



Anyways, as for what gothic font looks like, everything is hand-written, due to human labor being the only thing in such vast abundance. Therefore, it will look like the handwriting of someone who has to spend all day writing legibly.

Which means...

Actually for means of writing in 40K, I've almost never encountered mention of something being hand written with pen and paper. It's all datastales, or as what we know them in the modern day, iPad/tablets.

Wyzilla wrote: in 40K, I've almost never encountered mention of something being hand written with pen and paper.

?







Plus several pieces of artwork from guard and SM that show tech-scribes and auto-quills. And the stuff from the rulebooks.

There are tons of references to hapless bureaucratic slaves scratching out roll upon roll of data scrolls that no one reads.

Low gothic most likely has no standard alpabet, as it isn't a language but rather the collective name for a group of related and sometimes still mutually intelligible languages. Low Gothic alphabets would likely be based on the High Gothic alphabet though, as Low Gothic languages are derived from High Gothic.
High Gothic would probably use the Latin alphabet, considering it is based on Latin.
And of course, there is also the myriads of native languages on all those worlds of the Imperium with all kinds of crazy alphabets and writing systems.
There is also the possibility that High Gothic does not use an alphabet at all, but rather a different form of writing system.

Personally, I think the Glagolithic alphabet looks very High Gothic-like.

 Ailaros wrote:

Wyzilla wrote: in 40K, I've almost never encountered mention of something being hand written with pen and paper.

?







Plus several pieces of artwork from guard and SM that show tech-scribes and auto-quills. And the stuff from the rulebooks.

There are tons of references to hapless bureaucratic slaves scratching out roll upon roll of data scrolls that no one reads.

I'd actually bet more on that being a luxury, not a standard. There's probably a reason why it's the Ecclesiarchy and Astartes that are often found with paper- it's a statement of power, not a common commodity. Especially if you're on a Hive World, technology would be vaslty more abundant than paper which would only be sourced from trade routes. Every civilian I've read about in 40K, even the low ones, was writing away on a data-slate, not a pen and paper book. That one story with the DKOK fighting the Necrons also immediately jumps to mind.

Of course, this being the Imperium, their "paper" might also just be the tanned hide of flash clones given the lack of trees on civilized worlds.

 Psienesis wrote:


http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/High_Gothic#.U6B0zXamVqM

Specifically this bit:

This developed during the Dark Age of Technology. It derives from the common tongue of the time, an assimilation of English, European and Pacific languages which developed over many centuries in the American/Pacific region.

While there's a lot of cultures in the Pacific region, the biggest swinger is China. Tagalog doesn't have the population to become a majority influence, for example.

Ok, but English and European languages are mentioned as well. Before Pacific languages in fact. It's a bit of a jump from that to: "High Gothic is mostly a variation of Chinese." In fact, given that most European languages are either Latin or Germanic based, and English (a Germanic language with a Latin alphabet) is the only specific language singled out, it seems fair to say that High Gothic is a primarily a Latin/Germanic based language, with some Indian and Asian influence. This makes the faux latin names of every single Imperium organization make much more sense.

visigoth script:



Takers?

 Scipio Africanus wrote:
visigoth script:



Takers?

It seems like the Roman alphabet, currently the No. 1 alphabet in the world, will still be the No.1 alphabet 39,000 years into the future...

... that's a picture of one of the (scores of) Gothic Fonts available for various word processor applications here in M3. In other words, it's a joke.

This makes the faux latin names of every single Imperium organization make much more sense.

Many, many years ago, in WD (or maybe CJ) something-or-other, probably one with only double-digits as its edition number, GW made the "claim" that the reason Gothic was latin-esque was because those were the closest translations to a modern language they could interpret the tales of the far-future back to us, the modern reader.

Obviously, this was very tongue-in-cheek, from an era when the game was more like an RPG than a wargame, but that theme stuck. That is why everything is pseudo-Latiny. It's just a trope of the setting, based on some nerd-fluff from the late 80s.

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 Scipio Africanus wrote:
visigoth script:



Takers?

It seems like the Roman alphabet, currently the No. 1 alphabet in the world, will still be the No.1 alphabet 39,000 years into the future...

It's an RTF. I was just suggesting an option. Also, sure, why would we fix something that isn't broken?

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 Scipio Africanus wrote:
visigoth script:



Takers?

It seems like the Roman alphabet, currently the No. 1 alphabet in the world, will still be the No.1 alphabet 39,000 years into the future...

It's an RTF. I was just suggesting an option. Also, sure, why would we fix something that isn't broken?

Rich text format?


What if gothic writing looked like this:


Love it or hate it?



Automatically Appended Next Post:
As mentioned before, if the IoM uses the Roman alphabet, "Adeptus Terra" might be written as "Aadyptuis Tehrreah".

According to the wiki:

Low Gothic is the common man's everyday spoken and written language and it is 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 years of linguistic drift and hybridization with other languages.

If the language is utterly unintelligible, why not the writing? Best to have some alien and cool looking script .

 Ailaros wrote:

Wyzilla wrote: in 40K, I've almost never encountered mention of something being hand written with pen and paper.

?







Plus several pieces of artwork from guard and SM that show tech-scribes and auto-quills. And the stuff from the rulebooks.

There are tons of references to hapless bureaucratic slaves scratching out roll upon roll of data scrolls that no one reads.

So we have tons of lasguns but not laser jets. What a joke.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
What I don't get (Well, I do get it but I dislike) is why they don't have Imperial Transfer sheets in High/Low Gothic. After all, all the alien factions have their languages in their alien languages. Gothic is as alien to us as their languages and it would be cool to see on Imperial models.

That's what I'm thinking too. Nowadays Space Marine Banners are all written in English/ Latinish