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Something we are possibly overlooking is how Earth was pre-Golden Age.

The Leagues of Votann contains hints and teasers that, perhaps, they were sent out by Corporations, rather than Countries.

But depending on your preferred flavour of future horror, perhaps Corporations became Countries, or vice versa.

I think it’s quite possible those leaving Earth for the stars were leaving a United Earth. One World Government, rather than what we have now.

Of course there are many different takes on that. A global society ala USA would be different from a global society ala EU, to use two hopefully non-provocative examples. Both highly cooperative, but with different levels of internal autonomy and sovereignty.

Was that brought about through conquest, or similar to Star Trek, and a bounteous cornucopia for all? Or something different.

Because that would inform how language evolves. One doesn’t need to look terribly far back at all in history to see evidence of some languages being actively suppressed (Welsh and Scots Gaelic) in favour of another (English).

The temptation is to see the Golden Age as flawless, and freed from the trials and tribulations of the modern age. And it may have been. But it might also have been an awful autocracy, where the wealth was held by very few, and everyone and everything else was just a cog in the machine to generate ever more obscene wealth for those at the top of the pile.

All that would feed into such things.

We are talking about a time period that spanned millennia. The government(s) on Terra probably changed hundreds of times.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Something we are possibly overlooking is how Earth was pre-Golden Age.

The Leagues of Votann contains hints and teasers that, perhaps, they were sent out by Corporations, rather than Countries.

But depending on your preferred flavour of future horror, perhaps Corporations became Countries, or vice versa.

I think it’s quite possible those leaving Earth for the stars were leaving a United Earth. One World Government, rather than what we have now.

Of course there are many different takes on that. A global society ala USA would be different from a global society ala EU, to use two hopefully non-provocative examples. Both highly cooperative, but with different levels of internal autonomy and sovereignty.

Was that brought about through conquest, or similar to Star Trek, and a bounteous cornucopia for all? Or something different.

Because that would inform how language evolves. One doesn’t need to look terribly far back at all in history to see evidence of some languages being actively suppressed (Welsh and Scots Gaelic) in favour of another (English).

The temptation is to see the Golden Age as flawless, and freed from the trials and tribulations of the modern age. And it may have been. But it might also have been an awful autocracy, where the wealth was held by very few, and everyone and everything else was just a cog in the machine to generate ever more obscene wealth for those at the top of the pile.

All that would feed into such things.

You could be right with the corporation stuff, we know that Taco Bell won the brand wars.

Also the tectonic plates will have moved and oceans will have risen and disappeared changing the landscape of the planet forevermore

In 39000 years most of the mountain ranges and landmasses will be pretty similar, that is not much on a geological timeframe. There will be new volcanoes though. The main difference is the loss of seas and ice caps, and the massive construction projects of humanity. Effects of humanity's violence- some of the enormously-powerful weapons deployed by humanity, reactor detonations, crashed void craft/space stations etc. have probably left some big scars on the surface too.

R/40kLore did a map using what data they could gather from media (be warned it is a large image):

This is pre-Unification Terra, however, which isn't necessarily the same thing as Golden Age Terra or even the majority period of Age of Strife Terra.

 Gert wrote:
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.

Hy Brasil is a good one, because it does not only sound similar to Brazil, but is also a mythical island in the vein of Atlantis et al: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brasil_(mythical_island)

R/40kLore did a map using what data they could gather from media (be warned it is a large image):

There are also some fan projects that mod the Paradox game Hearts of Iron for a Unification Wars setting, including a lot of the nations as playable entities, but if you go looking for it, be well advised that that community is... weird. In a non-good way.

Interesting, they decided to separate Old Albia and Albyon. I think these probably represent the same place (former British Isles) and is either a canon clash or alternate names for the same place. Old Albia is supposed to border the Atlan Wastes, but I suppose Ur-Atlan would be sited within the wastes.

Are the seas based on actual residual oceans if sea levels were lowered today?

 Haighus wrote:
Interesting, they decided to separate Old Abia and Albyon. I think these probably represent the same place (former British Isles) and is either a canon clash or alternate names for the same place. Old Albia is supposed to border the Atlan Wastes, but I suppose Ur-Atlan would be sited within the wastes.

Are the seas based on actual residual oceans if sea levels were lowered today?

Never underestimate the Scottish capacity to be difficult

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
Interesting, they decided to separate Old Abia and Albyon. I think these probably represent the same place (former British Isles) and is either a canon clash or alternate names for the same place. Old Albia is supposed to border the Atlan Wastes, but I suppose Ur-Atlan would be sited within the wastes.

Are the seas based on actual residual oceans if sea levels were lowered today?

Never underestimate the Scottish capacity to be difficult

Scottish? Albion refers to Great Britain in whole. Comes from the Greek name for Britain IIRC.

I can see my antecedents wanting the Old Alba type stuff.

 Haighus wrote:
Interesting, they decided to separate Old Albia and Albyon. I think these probably represent the same place (former British Isles) and is either a canon clash or alternate names for the same place. Old Albia is supposed to border the Atlan Wastes, but I suppose Ur-Atlan would be sited within the wastes.

So they are seemingly different places.
Albyon was ruled by Uilleam the Red, who was defeated and imprisoned in the Imperial Dungeon before being executed.
Old Albia was ruled by the Unspeakable King who was only recently overthrown before the Unification Wars. They fought the Emperor but later joined him after he proposed peace in person to the Albian Clan Lords.
Do remember that this is a piece of fan work and not a detailed map made by GW. The borders are rough to give an idea of the territories held by the factions on Terra rather than explicit national borders.

Are the seas based on actual residual oceans if sea levels were lowered today?

Doubtful considering the Marianna Trench is now a chasm. You'd have to ask the map creator for any more info. I'll like the Reddit thread below:
https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/cdhpwj/im_working_on_an_ever_updating_map_of_preunity/

Fair point re. different leaders. Presumably rival nations in the same vicinity.

 Haighus wrote:
Fair point re. different leaders. Presumably rival nations in the same vicinity.

Uilleam the Red is just a throwaway joke about (Prince) William and you can't convince me otherwise

Why? He's not ginger, that's the other one.

Edit: I got in the wrong topic somehow...


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*lordy something is up with the cache or my browser... I missed half this topic.


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 Gert wrote:
R/40kLore did a map using what data they could gather from media (be warned it is a large image):

Spoiler:

This is pre-Unification Terra, however, which isn't necessarily the same thing as Golden Age Terra or even the majority period of Age of Strife Terra.

Merica? For real?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
To get an idea of that, I’d want to know…

Proportion of Chinese professionals that read/write/speak English.

Proportion of English speaking professionals that read/write/speak Chinese]

Mandarin is just one of China's many languages.

The strength of the Chinese character system is that it is symbolic rather than phonetic, which means that people who don't use the same spoken language can still read it. A high percentage of Western scientific knowledge entered China by way of Japanese translations.

The way Chinese characters are used has changed in the last century though, as have the meanings. When a foreign film is release in China, there are often a dozen translations because not only have the characters changed, the language has moved from a referential (highly metaphoric) style to a direct, literal one.

The English rendering of the characters also has gone through two (arguably three) cycles, which makes it difficult to trace Chinese history because it's not obvious that Canton is the same place as Guangzhou.

Latin, on the other hand, is pretty stable.

I realise the fan map is a bit of fun, but oceans-wise, an interesting assessment here by XKCD

https://what-if-origin.sciesnet.net/53/

The main way to drain the marianas trench entirely would be to suck all the water out of the bottom

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
To get an idea of that, I’d want to know…

Proportion of Chinese professionals that read/write/speak English.

Proportion of English speaking professionals that read/write/speak Chinese]

Mandarin is just one of China's many languages.

The strength of the Chinese character system is that it is symbolic rather than phonetic, which means that people who don't use the same spoken language can still read it. A high percentage of Western scientific knowledge entered China by way of Japanese translations.

The way Chinese characters are used has changed in the last century though, as have the meanings. When a foreign film is release in China, there are often a dozen translations because not only have the characters changed, the language has moved from a referential (highly metaphoric) style to a direct, literal one.

The English rendering of the characters also has gone through two (arguably three) cycles, which makes it difficult to trace Chinese history because it's not obvious that Canton is the same place as Guangzhou.

Latin, on the other hand, is pretty stable.

You have an error there, and in fact classical Chinese is the more stable language historically precisely because meaning is separated from pronunciation, which can be illutsrated by the error.

Canton is not Guangzhou. The former is a province, the latter a city and capital of that province. Canton (sometimes also written as Kwangtung) under the older Wade-Giles is now transliterated as Guangdong. However the Chinese characters have never changed and have remained (廣東/广东). The former is the traditional, and the second is the simplified character system, with the latter derived from the former. That is why the pronunciation of a word can change over time yet the meaning remain static, enabling people of mutually unintelligible dialects to communicate in written form. That is precisely how the various regions of China can communicate with each other if they don't speak the standard Mandarin (which is literally that, the language spoken at the Imperial court by the mandarins), and that is why classical Chinese was the diplomatic language used in communications historically in Asia such as with Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.

Modern written Chinese has taken on more Western style details such as more precise literalness and some grammatical aspects that were absent in classical Chinese, which was fabulously compact but extremely terse and ideally one would need the same educated upbringing to fully understand.

The language(s) used by the Eldar are probably closer to an unholy mix of Chinese/Japanese/ancient Egyptian in terms of making things as complicated and confusing as possible. Past Eldar codices have made mention of formality levels, agglutinative names, and mythic/historical reference phrases. Written forms seen in GW sources and Jes Goodwin concept art suggest at least a formal chiselled Egyptian like hieroglypic writing system, a more cursive brush-like system of runes, a tugra like seal system for Titan and Wraithlord seals and identities.

Iracundus wrote:


You have an error there, and in fact classical Chinese is the more stable language historically precisely because meaning is separated from pronunciation, which can be illutsrated by the error.

Which is why one should never trust the internet.

Canton is not Guangzhou. The former is a province, the latter a city and capital of that province. Canton (sometimes also written as Kwangtung) under the older Wade-Giles is now transliterated as Guangdong. However the Chinese characters have never changed and have remained (廣東/广东). The former is the traditional, and the second is the simplified character system, with the latter derived from the former. That is why the pronunciation of a word can change over time yet the meaning remain static, enabling people of mutually unintelligible dialects to communicate in written form. That is precisely how the various regions of China can communicate with each other if they don't speak the standard Mandarin (which is literally that, the language spoken at the Imperial court by the mandarins), and that is why classical Chinese was the diplomatic language used in communications historically in Asia such as with Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.

Modern written Chinese has taken on more Western style details such as more precise literalness and some grammatical aspects that were absent in classical Chinese, which was fabulously compact but extremely terse and ideally one would need the same educated upbringing to fully understand.

But who in the PRC bothers to learn classical Chinese? I get that it's preserved in amber, but it's been officially replaced. I'm sure there are scholars who know it, and overseas Chinese may still use it, but I don't think anyone under 70 would know it in the PRC. I could be wrong, but the Cultural Revolution was pretty insistent that old things be wiped out. Obviously, there's a nationalist revival going on, but does it include the old characters and style?

The language(s) used by the Eldar are probably closer to an unholy mix of Chinese/Japanese/ancient Egyptian in terms of making things as complicated and confusing as possible. Past Eldar codices have made mention of formality levels, agglutinative names, and mythic/historical reference phrases. Written forms seen in GW sources and Jes Goodwin concept art suggest at least a formal chiselled Egyptian like hieroglypic writing system, a more cursive brush-like system of runes, a tugra like seal system for Titan and Wraithlord seals and identities.

Since the Eldar are different from humans, it is likely beyond our comprehension. I suspect any translations are a result of understanding on the psychic level rather than linguistic translation.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:


But who in the PRC bothers to learn classical Chinese? I get that it's preserved in amber, but it's been officially replaced. I'm sure there are scholars who know it, and overseas Chinese may still use it, but I don't think anyone under 70 would know it in the PRC. I could be wrong, but the Cultural Revolution was pretty insistent that old things be wiped out. Obviously, there's a nationalist revival going on, but does it include the old characters and style?

Actually yes. Classical Chinese is part of the Chinese middle school and high school curricula and is part of the college entrance examination. Most Chinese people with at least a middle school education are able to read basic Classical Chinese.

It's the equivalent of being able to read Shakespeare. You might need a vernacular gloss to explain the meaning and aren't going to be easily composing poems in it but it's not completely incomprehensible, and you would be able to get the general gist of a text from over 2000 years ago.

Iracundus wrote:
Actually yes. Classical Chinese is part of the Chinese middle school and high school curricula and is part of the college entrance examination. Most Chinese people with at least a middle school education are able to read basic Classical Chinese.

It's the equivalent of being able to read Shakespeare. You might need a vernacular gloss to explain the meaning and aren't going to be easily composing poems in it but it's not completely incomprehensible, and you would be able to get the general gist of a text from over 2000 years ago.

Good to know. Thanks!

If memory serves, Eldar languages also involve body posture and gestures? I freely admit I may be including bits from other SciFi things in that memory.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If memory serves, Eldar languages also involve body posture and gestures? I freely admit I may be including bits from other SciFi things in that memory.

No, you remember correctly, it's mentioned in e.g. that inquisitorial record about the Eldar legends concerning the Ygnir/C'tan that was released when the original codex Necrons came out.

Basically the Eldar language(s) (because there may be more than 1 or other dialects) seems to take everything complicated that we know or think a language might have and throw them together. Part of the reason seems to be, at least according to Gav Thorpe's Eldar trilogy, due to the Eldar having a longer lifespan and far better memory so keeping track of all this may be easier and doable for them. It's not impossible for other races to learn, as we have examples of humans saying stuff to Eldar and being understood, but I imagine it would come off as either grammatically incorrect or blunt and inelegant, as a toddler or other young child might to an adult.

It’s not just lifespan and intelligence. Both of those are highly relative.

But Eldar are also universally psychic, and their sense are simply sharper.

On the sharper senses thing, and to use a characteristically crap analogy? Think of human sense as a low end Digital Camera circa 2001, and Eldar senses as a high end 4k+ digital camera right now

Both capture the same light, and so have the same input. But the end results just do not compare. Because the latter is so much more detailed and intense.