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2023/04/14 11:58:01
Subject: British Predominance in the Age of Technology
I have been listening to a Star Trek podcast lately with a couple of the guys from Enterprise interviewing other stars and guest stars etc.
One of the things they spoke about was how Shakespearean, classical, theatrical style acting lends itself well to Star Trek, and Sci-fi in general. It’s not some humdrum drama about a hospital or a detective, it’s larger than life and the setting and a feel for that setting is important.
Take some regular Trek guest stars as an example, the likes of John De Lancie as Q, or Marc Alaimo as Dukat. Both larger than life characters in different ways, very grandiose and classical in tone and speech. There’s no way those voices would feel out of place as an Inquisitor or Chapter Master.
So it’s not so much the British accent that would be important it’s the style of actor.
2023/04/14 14:32:48
Subject: British Predominance in the Age of Technology
General Kroll wrote: I have been listening to a Star Trek podcast lately with a couple of the guys from Enterprise interviewing other stars and guest stars etc.
One of the things they spoke about was how Shakespearean, classical, theatrical style acting lends itself well to Star Trek, and Sci-fi in general. It’s not some humdrum drama about a hospital or a detective, it’s larger than life and the setting and a feel for that setting is important.
Shatner's getting up there, but he would totally fit in with 40k. (I know, Canadian, but still.)
High Gothic seems to be Latin, or at least Latin inspired.
Low Gothic may be English. And there may be good reason for that.
Consider the modern world. Whilst not the most widely spoken language, English is still widespread, and more or less the language of international commerce. Even programming is in English.
With no seismic shift in such areas, I can see English continuing to survive and evolve, even if its country of origin at some points ceases to exist.
I was told once, but can to prove, English is favoured for contract writing, because it’s a very direct language. No changing meaning based on intonation. No mutating such as in Gaelic. And so it can be used for very precise, indisputable wording, should you so wish.
And let’s face it, English is an amalgam language. Elements of Latin, Germanic, Norse and Gaelic. And to quote Eddie Izzard (I think?) it’s been following other languages down dark alleys for centuries, mugging them for loose grammar. The colonial era only added to it.
Here’s a silly but factual video from Horrible Histories demonstrating words pinched.
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High Gothic seems to be Latin, or at least Latin inspired.
Low Gothic may be English. And there may be good reason for that.
Consider the modern world. Whilst not the most widely spoken language, English is still widespread, and more or less the language of international commerce. Even programming is in English.
With no seismic shift in such areas, I can see English continuing to survive and evolve, even if its country of origin at some points ceases to exist.
I was told once, but can to prove, English is favoured for contract writing, because it’s a very direct language. No changing meaning based on intonation. No mutating such as in Gaelic. And so it can be used for very precise, indisputable wording, should you so wish.
And let’s face it, English is an amalgam language. Elements of Latin, Germanic, Norse and Gaelic. And to quote Eddie Izzard (I think?) it’s been following other languages down dark alleys for centuries, mugging them for loose grammar. The colonial era only added to it.
Here’s a silly but factual video from Horrible Histories demonstrating words pinched.
The 3rd Ed BBB explicitly said that was translation convention did it not? It’s not actually Latin/English but that the relationship between the two mirrors that of High/Low Gothic.
Low Gothic is also explicitly a collection of related languages rather than a single one.
Building on your train of thought though it’s perhaps more likely that *High* Gothic (being the older, more formal, administrative language) is essentially English (for the reasons you state) while Low Gothic is a variety of galactic regional dialects that have evolved from it like English from Latin (or perhaps more exactly like the Romance languages from Latin).
2023/04/24 01:57:48
Subject: British Predominance in the Age of Technology
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Here’s a silly but factual video from Horrible Histories demonstrating words pinched.
They ran out of Norman and English jigs for the background music so they gave us an Irish one.
Gert wrote:He's inferred to have been St George, Jesus, Alexander the Great, and others who lived in and around the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa.
The only trouble with this is that none were said to be twelve feet tall. But if he were God in the flesh I imagine he could shape shift.
That's post power boost Emperor as well remember. He was still a powerful Psyker back in his ancient Earth days but he wasn't the shining gold halo man he was during the Unification Wars and Great Crusade.
2023/04/24 09:29:54
Subject: British Predominance in the Age of Technology
Gert wrote: That's post power boost Emperor as well remember. He was still a powerful Psyker back in his ancient Earth days but he wasn't the shining gold halo man he was during the Unification Wars and Great Crusade.
Its worth noting the extent of any actual power boost is not confirmed. I've always interpreted the "stolen" power from Moloch as the ability/knowledge to infuse warp energy directly into flesh. That is to put "super souls" into the Primarchs rather than relating to the Emperor's own intrinsic abilities.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/04/24 10:05:10
2023/04/24 11:29:34
Subject: British Predominance in the Age of Technology
The Emperor canonically can psychically change how they appear to all but the most powerful psychic entities. Magnus, for example, sees the Emperor's true form, and shares his ability to psychically shapeshift. However, I am not sure if even Malcador, an immensely formidable human psyker, can see the Emperor's true form through his psychic disguise.
High and Low Gothic are indeed canonically "translated" into pig Latin and English for the reader's benefit, the faux Latin being used as a localising factor to suggest a formal language of the elite (as in medieval Church Latin).
It is not unreasonable to suggest that High and Low Gothic are linguistic descendants of English, but we simply do not know this. If they were, it is highly likely they are heavily disorted after 39000 years, particularly during the Age of Strife. Low Gothic is likely to be further evolved than High Gothic, as the latter is a centralised, formalised court language that is unlikely to have changed much during the Age of the Imperium.
I think Low Gothic refers to one language with innumerable dialects, but some worlds will have a sufficiently divergent dialect to be a distinct language with high mutual intelligibility (think Scots vs English, or Polish vs Czech, or Swedish vs Norwegian vs Danish for examples). Other languages exist within the Imperium too, but the Gothic languages are the official ones.
ChargerIIC wrote: If algae farm paste with a little bit of your grandfather in it isn't Grimdark I don't know what is.
2023/04/24 11:58:36
Subject: British Predominance in the Age of Technology
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: If they are derived from English, one only need look to Middle English to see just how far they could’ve changed in 39,000 years!
Exactly, although formalised grammar and spelling will have slowed it down compared to medieval English (we are seeing this nowadays). This is likely to have fragmented during the Age of Strife and I expect that would be the time period of fastest linguistic change in most surviving human cultures.
Still, if the Gothic languages are descended from English, they are likely to be as different from English as English is from Proto-Indo-European.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/04/24 12:04:35
ChargerIIC wrote: If algae farm paste with a little bit of your grandfather in it isn't Grimdark I don't know what is.
2023/04/24 12:08:35
Subject: British Predominance in the Age of Technology
I wonder how the STCs might’ve helped or hindered the evolution of language.
The unknown part here of course is we don’t really know how long STCs were in continuous use.
But as they would’ve been programmed, likely using whatever the global language was? To be able to make good use of them may have caused a stagnation of language. Or least “speaking proper” language. See the mildly amusing videos of folk with broad Scots accents struggling with Alexa, Cortana or Siri.
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If the Votann are any indication, I suspect STC devices to be advanced enough to accommodate linguistic changes. Some terms and grammar key to their operation would probably be conserved.
On the other hand, that could lead to the formation of a stagnant technical language used by the artificers operating the STC (the original language of the colonists) and an evolving local derivative used by the general populace. This could have been the origin of the formal languages like High Gothic or Binharic.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/04/24 12:25:19
ChargerIIC wrote: If algae farm paste with a little bit of your grandfather in it isn't Grimdark I don't know what is.
2023/04/24 12:20:46
Subject: British Predominance in the Age of Technology
Proportion of Chinese professionals that read/write/speak English.
Proportion of English speaking professionals that read/write/speak Chinese]
At least to start with.
Just going on straight forward observation, whilst few people globally speak English, a significant part of the world does speak English as the dominant first language. U.K., USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand being the largest. So I would expect (in my uninformed, idiot opinion) English would be the greater influence on Mandarin?
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There's as much chance that High Gothic sounds like Sumerian or Babylonian as English or Mandarin.
There's still about 28 thousand years between now and just the Great Crusade. How language evolved and changed is anyones guess.
2023/04/24 16:59:58
Subject: British Predominance in the Age of Technology
There are some fan made maps of Terra just before the Unification Wars.
That being said Adeptekon, not a single nation of Old Earth survived the 28k years between now and the emergence of the Emperor. Some areas have names that are reminiscent of areas that exists on Old Earth, such as Nord Afrik or Hy Brasil, but they aren't the same nations as we know today or even remotely close.
2023/04/25 08:57:45
Subject: British Predominance in the Age of Technology
Yeah, even ones that appear to occupy a well-defined region, like Old Albia for the British Isles, show only the barest hints of any cultural link at most and are almost certainly different polities with no direct lineage.
ChargerIIC wrote: If algae farm paste with a little bit of your grandfather in it isn't Grimdark I don't know what is.
2023/04/25 08:58:14
Subject: British Predominance in the Age of Technology
At least half of the countries that exist today didn’t exist 100-400 years ago because of European colonialism and brutality. In 10s of thousands of years I’d be surprised if there’s a single country that exists now still on the map
I meant Tom Baker and my head mistranslated before my fingers could get it down 
Cadre Coronal Afterglow w1;d0;l0 
