Language in the New World

Language ended up in a weird place after the rending. With so many people with different primary languages mixed together, overlapping secondary languages started to fill the gap.

This lead to a large regions that shared a core language, even if individual locations might have their on dialect or speak among themselves in an entirely different tongue.

Table of Contents

The Common and Minor Languages

The most common languages are English, Mandarin, and Hindi, which represent a "common tongue" in their regions.

  • English is the dominate language of Aistoria and Simeria
  • Hindi is the dominate language of Akanis
  • Mandarin is the dominate language of Ryaith and Feng

The next two most common languages after that, sometimes the major language in small regions, is Spanish and French. A more developed from of Portuñol shows up in some places, though pure Portuguese is relatively rare. Most speakers of these languages would likely know their region's main language. After this point, the commonness of languages reaches diminishing returns. Isolated towns and islands the most likely place to speak a mostly dead old world language.

It's important to note that language is not static. While English might be spoken across Aistoria and Simeria, it has morphed in different regions, based on the languages around it. Loan words, grammar features, accents and even speaking cadence can vary drastically. A Shivic speaker may struggle speaking with someone from Aistoria, and even within Aistoria, Eastern, Western, and Northern Aistoria likely have their own dialects and subdialects.

They can (usually) still communicate, but it can be a challenge. Other versions of these languages might be so evolved they would qualify as something completely new.

Places that have the technological ability to access media and worldly communication tend to be able to communicate better. Like in the Old World, exposure causes people's accents to mellow a bit. There is likely the concept of Simple English(a narrower subset of common words and grammar) that travelers use that can mostly be understood by anyone.

Language as Prestige

Some languages survive as dead languages (even if they're alive in other places) spoken by the upperclass. Use of language in this way is almost always intentionally exclusionary and different from small populations that try to maintain ancient languages and customs.

Language Notes by Region

Aistoria

  • As the remnants of Europe, some bits of the surviving local languages survive in some places. French and Spanish probably the most common secondary languages.
  • North Eastern Aistoria (Eastern Birschmark) English has elements from many middle eastern languages. Farsi is spoken in some northern towns.
  • Vaniway and Esperada both have Hindi influences.
  • Esperada, Connatia, and western Bherigan all have Spanish influence
    • The Esperadan accent, particularly the Leone one, can probably be quite a pain for non-speakers.
  • Western Bherigan and Golgia have Slavic influences.
    • Golgia has some German but less than you'd think.
  • Danere speaks Swahili as their primary language. Arabic is common in the mountains. While many in Danare still speak english, it is probably the biggest population center in Aistoria and Simeria for people who do not speak English at all.

The prestige languages are what you'd expect. Common ones are Hindi for Vaniway, Spanish for Esperada and Connatia, and German for Golgia (Shiv loves them). Bherigan and Birschmark are too mixed up to worry about that and Danare is too populist for that nonsense. Also the church still loves it's Latin.

Simeria

  • Having a large heritage from the former US and EU, it's probably some of the most conventional English, but our current standards.
    • French is weirdly common in the Free Cities. You can see it in the city names.
    • The Free Cities do what they want so there are probably some one off city that speaks otherwise long dead languages.
  • Jecha has a lot of Arabic. Probably true for the whole Eisig Sea region.
  • South Eastern Simeria is where you find Malay influences and some other former old world SEA region languages popping up.
  • There is probably a lot of Russian speaking in what was once Russia.

Shiv has it's political caste split speaking German and Japanese. They're the type of thing upper middle class families make their kids learn to get ahead in business and stuff like that. The Northern areas above Shiv skew Japanese, and the south skews a little bit more German.

Around the 400s, sentiment starts to kinda turn on the use of these languages in Shiv by the lower and middle class who see the devotion to pure renditions of long dead cultures to be weird.

Akanis

Akanis is still being reworked but...

  • The Northern Green Coast(pending a real name) is the most populous part of the North and is where most of the Hindi speakers come from.
    • Some language overlap probably helped trade a lot between Southern Aistoria and the Green Coast.
    • Probably a lot of Hinglish spoken among sailors.
  • The bit that connects Akanis and Simeria might be a place where Mandarin is also somewhat common
  • The lower forks are probably pretty diverse due to isolation, having several South East Asian languages.

Feng and Ryaith

Feng and Ryaith lack as much development (lore wise) as the other continents but...

  • Western Feng is the most Mandarin heavy. Eastern Feng and Ryaith may have have more more Arabic.
  • Western Ryaith speaks Manderin primarily.
  • The middle area that would be central America is a mess and is probably pretty diverse.
Categories: World Building