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Made in jp
Crushing Black Templar Crusader Pilot






Hi everybody - hope you're all blessed with pretty groovy Fridays.

So, I'm not sure if this is even the right place, because I'm chronically in the wrong place and also stupid, but...

...Language? Sylvania? What's a good way of doing this?
If anyone here is Romanian/au fait with Romanian history/language/culture, I would SUPER appreciate your input here, as I am pretty ignorant when it comes to this particular patch of the world, especially at the rough historical period in which WHFB is meant to be approximate to.

So, pretty obviously, Sylvania is based on a pop-culture, pulp-fiction imagining of a kind of Bram Stoker-esque Transylvania, which is historically, of course, 1. situated in modern Romania, and 2. full of vampires, just like Sylvania in Warhammer.

For my human Empire army/Morheim warband, I've decided to get a little bit fancy with some of my detailing, at least for the moment.
On some of the flags, and larger Kite shields, I wanna do some scrollwork with text.
My 40k humans are totally dominated by English and Latin, so stylistically I feel like I'd like a challenge and a change of pace with this project.

So, because this project is loosely based in Eastern Europe, and it's a thing I've always sort of been curious about, and a way of further making my army just that little bit different feeling from other Empire/Bret armies, I was planning on using Cyrillic script.
So, as far as I can tell
Spoiler:
Disclaimer: PoserMcBogus's opinions are his own, and they are thus, those of an idiot

this was actually used at the time in Romania. Unfortunately, my go-to for language I'm too stupid to know for modelling, google translate, hasn't got my back here, as they use modern, Romanized Romanian script instead. As far as I can tell, the only way to get Cyrillic reliably is Russian, which I probably shouldn't use...?

That is, of course, unless it's fair, that as Sylvania is just a fictional setting which is a sort of allusion to an already fictitious notion of a semi-fictional representation of a real-world place, am I being too neurotic about this?

For historical reasons, I want to be sensitive about these ideas. I certainly don't wanna be a TFG, and rock up with one of those gross armies that just-so-happen-to-be referencing some distasteful chapter of human history or other.

So first of all - were I to run a Sylvanian army, would using Cyrillic text just be a bit too much?
Next - WHFB's setting, and indeed, my army, is focused on the Empire, is there a way of being not-dumb with it? Romania being part of the USSR in living memory surely makes certain things - slogans, motifs, ways of regarding the nation etc. that are absolutely not cool, that I might be liable to try to use? Should I just skirt around my dudes belonging too closely to the Empire as much as possible?
Lastly, and a more positive, fun one - are there any cool tidbits of historical details or slogans, or uniform details that would add some flavor to my project?

Anyway, thanks for reading through all of this Neurotic Word Salad, hope you have a great day, I'm gonna go and get fething drunk as gak because today sucked and this week has been miserable feth every board of education to hell (except the good ones I guess).
   
Made in se
Fresh-Faced New User




Hi Poser!

I'm not much familiar with Romania itself but as for Sylvania, if we take the roleplay books into account as well, there is mention of the sylvanians having a native language from before the Empire which is still used, especially when they want privacy. However, there's nothing that binds this mysterious language to that of Romanian, or the Cyrillic alphabet. Making that connection would be your own creation.

For your army, assuming you've not already read up on all there is, Sylvania was always described as being centuries behind the rest of the Empire in fashion and technology. Superstition about black magic and indeed black magic itself is closer to their lives than it is for anyone else, and that could be represented either as an extreme fear or a more collected attitude to sorcery depending on where on the spectrum you want your dudes to be. Similarly, silver weapons and trinkets would either be used if they're against the vampire threat of Sylvania or not used if they're working for the vampires.

If you haven't seen it already the old book on uniforms and heraldry in the Empire have some examples of Sylvanian looks. Try to dig it up if you can, and let me know in a PM if you can't...

'Afraid I'm not a history or language buff enough to help you with the rest!

   
Made in jp
Crushing Black Templar Crusader Pilot






Thanks Cebalrai!

Yeah, I've managed to track down a real treasure trove of pdfs and scans of older Sylvanian lore, so I'm mostly pretty good on that front!

The silver weapons and trinkets is a really cool idea, though, I like that one a lot, but it hadn't crossed my mind! Great advice, thanks!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh! Also, as a general addition - if anyone knows any good resources for Cyrillic caligraphy, lemme know! I can do Blackletter, and 書道 in Japanese and Korean, but for the life of me can't figure out Cyrillic, at least by looking anyway haha

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/16 07:52:30


 
   
Made in se
Fresh-Faced New User




Oh right, your mention of Mordheim slipped me past before...

Since Mordheim plays out at and just after the year 2000 I.C., Vlad has not yet fully revealed himself to the world as a vampire. Sylvania wouldn't become bat county until the vampire wars, so running around with a bunch of silver in Mordheim could be a little inaccurate. Though I suppose someone could have always have some insider information, of course.

If you've not seen it yet I suggest taking a look in WD 291, the one with Gimli on the cover. There's an article on the traditional army of the Von Drak's that Vlad turned undead at the start of the war.

This is the one.

   
Made in jp
Crushing Black Templar Crusader Pilot






I've even managed to track that one down, with my masterful internet sleuthing.

I might be wrong, but I think Vampires and the Undead had been a presence in Sylvania for a while before the Von Carsteins came to promenance, so whilst perhaps not vampire hunters par excellence, I figure they probably know to destroy heads, steak hearts, salt graves and whatever else you need to make sure things that go bump in the night stop bumping quite as often.
   
Made in tw
Fresh-Faced New User




real life transylvania was (very loosely) 1/3 romanian, 1/3 hungarian, 1/3 german, and in real life i dont think cyrillic was ever used there for romanian in transylvania, that would of been for romanian in the russian sphere of influence, which transylvania was not until after WWII. edit: oh i just realized romanians probably did use cyrillic in transylvania because of the church services. anyway theres nothing too extraordinary in russian cyrllic so don't feel bad to use it.

for readers unaware, romanian language itself, as the name implies, is derived from vulgar latin just like its cousins italian, french, spanish etc which are known as romance languages (romance=roman, in the very old days roman language meant the vernacular language in france/italy as opposed to the formal scholarly latin. so middle ages textbooks were written in latin while love and adventure stories in the vernacular, hence romance novels.)

so back to warhammer you can think of the aristrocarts and city dwellers being of empire culture, hence the von in the von carsteins - indeed even the real life "vampire" serial killer elisabeth bathory spoke german. and the peasants native sylvians of ancient Tilean extraction.

back to cyrllic, dont feel bad using 'modern' but you have two options to make it look archaicly old school, google old church slavonic script and for SUPER old school
Glagolitic script

also would be fun to do something really out of the ordinary like use google translate with a unique romance language such as haitian creole then cyrillify it:
лави ак ланмò поу Вон Kарстеин!=lavi ak lanmò pou Von Carstein!


This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2021/08/01 13:16:44


 
   
Made in jp
Crushing Black Templar Crusader Pilot






sandor1988 wrote:
real life transylvania was (very loosely) 1/3 romanian, 1/3 hungarian, 1/3 german, and in real life i dont think cyrillic was ever used there for romanian in transylvania, that would of been for romanian in the russian sphere of influence, which transylvania was not until after WWII. edit: oh i just realized romanians probably did use cyrillic in transylvania because of the church services. anyway theres nothing too extraordinary in russian cyrllic so don't feel bad to use it.

for readers unaware, romanian language itself, as the name implies, is derived from vulgar latin just like its cousins italian, french, spanish etc which are known as romance languages (romance=roman, in the very old days roman language meant the vernacular language in france/italy as opposed to the formal scholarly latin. so middle ages textbooks were written in latin while love and adventure stories in the vernacular, hence romance novels.)

so back to warhammer you can think of the aristrocarts and city dwellers being of empire culture, hence the von in the von carsteins - indeed even the real life "vampire" serial killer elisabeth bathory spoke german. and the peasants native sylvians of ancient Tilean extraction.

back to cyrllic, dont feel bad using 'modern' but you have two options to make it look archaicly old school, google old church slavonic script and for SUPER old school
Glagolitic script

also would be fun to do something really out of the ordinary like use google translate with a unique romance language such as haitian creole then cyrillify it:
лави ак ланмò поу Вон Kарстеин!=lavi ak lanmò pou Von Carstein!




Hoo boy, this is a really excellent post, thanks very much! I really appreciate the insight here!
Man, where to even start hahaha
The bit about linguistic diversity there is really cool - I like the idea of the nobles being more Gothic and hoity-toity, and then common folk using a different language altogether. The bit about taking a totally different romance language altogether really tickles my linguist bones, I kinda have some ideas about that that might be fun (Hatian Creole! Excellent shout for an unusual language to cyrillify! Fantastic stuff, as a languages teacher I love this idea more than my little pidgeon brain can articulate right now!)
You don't know any good tools for cyrillifying languages, do ya? Thought it might be worth asking haha.
Because I'm painting pretty small, I'm going for a style I found online that is like reasonably traditional looking, but also just simple enough that I won't lose my mind trying to paint it onto stuff, but there's space for a bit of flare here and there.
Again, cheers so much for the post, very fun and interesting reading!
   
 
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