ZOMBIE FORUMS

You can move walls by telling them they're not solid.

You just need to be speaking the right language. The language... of HEAT!

I think that the elves' immortallity might be working against them here. They stay in a stasis physically forever; who's to say that they don't stay in a stasis mentally? It would explain why Sarine's not over her hubbie who died thousands of years ago; the pain is just as fresh as is was the day he died.

Jon, as Thug-with-a-heart-of-gold, gets to the end of the movie with stud-good-guy and tougher-than-she-looks-leading-lady. If he were thug-villain or scientist-villain, he'd die right before the final scene, after killing stud-good-guy's-friend/sidekick.

Sarine's too charismatic and too hot a momma to not make the final scene, so it's curtains for Meji at about the 90 minute mark.

You wrong.
Guns are a "relative" new discovery for human society, few generation or something like that. And the reason of why they make them that "good" it because they didn't have to discovert everything about it: remembert, they had discovert dwarve city and technology (who had more like canon than gun, according to kawai), and they did reverse-ingeneering, it made the devellopment of the gun technology and buisness much faster than in our world.

What that's mean? That mean than elf, except the rangers and the ambassador have never seen guns of their life, they heard about from some elf weird enought to go outside of the city in duty, but even with thoise repport, guns are just boomstick that any elf with a bit of magic power can stop or out-class easly.

Remember, civilisation as we know it is just 2500/3500 years old, imagine a race than have seen more that 100 generation of men from birth to death by so many sickness, climacs change, natural catastrophy... So weak that every new thing in the world can wipe-out several thousand of them, when you are not even affected.

Imagine this race leaving the world of men like 300 years after B.C.
and Imagine now that group of them have to be sent to our worldto find and exterminate a couple of guys.
Most parents have the hardest time to fairly act fairly with they're child(to considere them as fully independant adult).
Even if some of them had demonstrate that humanity have strongly evolve and increasetheir deadness potential, most of the race, specially those in power, will still see them as an underdevelopped race, with some few new trick, but not much different that what they were when this race had left. (Like adult seeing their child as 12 instaed of 10, when the child is, in fact 17.)


Remember specialy this point: when elves had discovered humanity, they were sauvage tribe (form elfs point of vew), and that's THEM, THE ELVES, who had teach human how to read, count, be civilise, work their environment, teach magic, teach to fight, teach of work metals, etc...

From the elf point of vew, humanity have nothing from themseves, everything that make them better come from the elves!

After the elves had left, since they were no-one to guide them, to teach them how to devellop and evolve, human societies are just those weaked parody/copy of the elves sociaty at the better, or had regress/return to a basic, barbaric and uncivilised state for the worst (In the common elves mind, from a common elves point of view.)

If the elves taught the humans everything, wouldn't they be speaking some form of elfish?

This has been bugging me a bit, but Meji is from a city that, untill just a bit ago, was hidden for several thousand years, right? And yet it seems that everyone speaks the same as the normal humans, who have untill just a bit ago, have had no contact with Elves or the magical city, right?

So why the hell do elves speak a different thing from everyone else, who they taught to speak in the first place?

You can prolly say Elfish languge hasn't changed because once you learn how to speak, theres not much reason to change, they weren't interacting with other cultures and so on, as well as not chaging as people, while out in the real world, humans were.

But wouldn't this mean Meji speaks a different languge too? What are the odds english would be invented from two seperate (and different) cultures?

Yes, humans would be speaking a form of elvish. The thing is that our language, like everything else about us, would flow like hot wax in the space of a few thousand years. Look how much of a difference there is between modern english and old english... and that was in only a few hundred years.

Elven language is stagnant because many of the original speakers are still around speaking an uncorrupted version of it. They act as lingual anchors.

As for geographic distribution of languages, the portion of the ES world which we have so far explored is very small and well connected. Meji's homeland (which I can never spell right) is the sole exception. Meji might well speak the mainland tongue as a second language or she may have a universal translater thingamajig jammed up her pooper or something. She is, after all, a professional student at the moment. How many American students took spanish as a course?

Linguistic. The word is linguistic.

You are lucky I'm not trying to type with my genitals. Yet.

Translation spells.

No really, I had at some point, meant to use some scene where the group finds themselves in sort of place that cancels out magical effects and where suddenly Meji and Jon can't understand each other anymore.

On that topic, the humans (the Farrel and Veracia ones anyway) do speak something that is a kinda, almost unreconisable, far removed bastardized, direvitive of the sanguen elven lanague (that's the one that sounds like bastardized, butchered latin). The Tsuiraku humans speak a somewhat close direvitive of the Rinkai lanague. (that's the bastardized, butchered japanese stuff)

The elves, meanwhile, pretty much all speak sanguen now, regardless of race, with a few rinkai words thrown in for some magic/science/mathmatical terms here and there.

Graybeard, a tip of the hat.

Neko7, a <i>wag of the finger</i>.

Ahh, silly me. Magic. Sure. I bet next you'll say Fairys brought the magic to the elves, right?

And that does clear things up, that Meji is using some translation thing. Other then that, I'd assume Sarine knows common for the area, being a ranger, and yadda yadda.

Does this mean Ian had to bumble around like a tourist when he got those locations in the book thats such a big deal? Like, speaking slowly and louder, trying to get normal people to understand him? Or is their some sort of item that does the magic thingys they give out at warpgates, like that wierd GPS thingy he got?

I imagine translation spells are extremely common and that any mage who could level an <i>entire fucking city</i> would be able to figure it out.

You sir, have made my day.

Language changes very fast in areas where people are secluded from the main population. Thus Meji should have quite a different word knowledge bank thatn the others. Her dialect would theoretically be a creole of the original language that evolved on its own while the city was hidden from the rest of the world.

The fact that she has some sort of translator ala Babel fish (hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) makes it easier to letter the comic for sure.

Imagine what would happen if she didnt have a translator, hell, the whole thing would have fallen apart as soon as she stepped off the warpgate and asked where the restroom was. (which might have been extremely funny for a moment).

Hell, what dialect does Ellis speak?

yins guys get replyin to this here thang see!

Wouldn't a society which has translation spells have almost no common language between its own citizens?
Think about it, no-one "hears" the words another person is saying so they could be saying anything at random and building their own alphabet/word system and just letting the spell do the work.
A disruption spell would probably ruin such a society in a few days.

Actor.

There might be a rule in place that everyone <i>inside</i> the city has to learn the language before they're taught a translation spell. I'm sure high level mages have thought of the possibility, but we just don't know if they did anything about it.

See, you've answered your own question.

Think of it as a case of micro-nuisance level. It is slightly easier to just talk, most of the time. So you would always evolve towards a common speech.

Teen-agers in high-end high schools are reputed to send each other hundreds of messages per day, but they still talk when they meet in person, even in circumstances where they have to whisper or shout.

Likewise, email is winning out over voice communications in business only in areas where it is at least marginally more efficient. If a phone call works better for a meeting, that technology is used.

No, 'cause Ian's an extremely powerful mage. Note the bit where he blew up a city.