my biggest problem is language because I want the universal language to be English (or at least the Not! version of it) but that contradicts the fact that cities in this world clearly have very not!Japanese names, in fact, I got fucked by giving every city and region a not!Japanese name to go with it (Mostly due to a need to have thing consistent in the early days of the campaign) now if I want to have more than one language, I have to explain first why every place follows the same nomenclature norms of just one language
my only option right now is "Everyone calls it something different depending on the region” but that feels like It’s gonna fuck me over when I forget what the snowy areas call the Desert land
Common is the Merchant's Tongue. People who want to wheel and deal with PCs know it. Some words slip into the regular languages of places they visit.
Jaxson Russell
I'll give an example of something similar to what you're dealing with
In Avatar: the Last Airbender everyone speaks "English" but all the people and places have very Asian-sounding names. There's even several moments where someone translates the Asianese into whatever the characters are speaking.
Whenever someone reads something, the written language is conspicuously Asian in style.
There is zero variation in the language. Everyone speaks the same tongue whether they live in a metropolitan capital city or an igloo at the bottom of the fucking world.
No one has any problem with this and no one should because it's a complete non-issue.
Landon Rivera
It's just a convention to speed things up, like aliens speaking English.
Carson Martinez
Ever been to Hong Kong?
Caleb Parker
Tits
Austin Parker
Metagame that shit: its a translation convention that grabs from various languages but keeps consistency across subjects, even when translating from different languages and cultures, presenting a monotone flavor of the world that the players have to give detail to.
Jaxon Parker
See my problem is that they're already in the middle of the campaign now I could make it so that it was coincidence that English was just the native language of the current land they're in, and that would be fine and dandy
but that still doesn't solve the problem of all cities having only one naming style (Something that I didn't realize I would need different languages until later in the campaign), since it would be weird seeing all the names reigning in the same landscape
I would do something like that, but the party has already experienced written form of languages (Signs, letters, etc) that they can't identify, meaning that they already know that there are other languages in the world
Maybe the written form changes from place to place but the spoken language stays the same? but that sounds dumb
Justin Cook
A few ideas off the top of my head: >Claim Japanese-sounding names are normal for your not!English language. >Characters have been speaking in not!Japanese the whole time and players have been hearing the dubbed version- leaving only proper nouns untranslated. >go to your autism therapist and don't bring it up in game
Colton Rodriguez
I don't seem to quite follow you, you're saying something like common or low gothic? or are you saying that whenever they're talking with someone, the characters can just understand the person their talking to and it just sounds like english for us?
Carter Martinez
I do it like this, even in Forgotten Realms. Speed up play for more fun stuff and ignore boring shit that nobody in my group of clowns want to dwell on.
Dylan Clark
see, you're missing my point
I could say that and be on my way, but let's say the players encounter a nation whose main language is some form of Russian, that creates the big elephant in the room of Why the hell does the Russian speaking place has the same sounding name as the other English speaking places
At the very least I think it takes away from the immersion of the game
Luke Miller
Not hard to write it up that the not-Japanese place names existed before not-English came in and supplanted it, but they kept the old names. Plenty of countries have that kind of thing going on.
Easton Martinez
...
Justin Robinson
That's what you get for being a weeb.
Xavier Bennett
The names your players have seen have been fitted to the whatever language.
Endonym is what your country is called. Exonym is what the barbarians call you.
Christian Robinson
You realize that places change name when you change language, don't you?
Nolan Martin
Have you given the names of every region and city in the world to your players already? Do they have a full map of the world? If no, change it before they ask the question. If yes, claim the map was made by a not!english speaker who used their own naming conventions.
How much history have you written? Could a huge empire have conquered most of the known world but collapsed, leaving only city names, a few monuments, and derivative languages.
>a big elephant in the room Unless one of your players is a language expert, I give low odds that anyone will even notice.
Oliver Brooks
yes, you've earned this.
Adam Rivera
The people of your setting commonly use one language for everyday speech, and another language for naming things (and perhaps other special purposes).
This would actually be rather convenient and practical. Even if both of them could theoretically be used to communicate, it's still nice to know when you're talking about snow and when you're talking about Yuki.
Kevin Cruz
One of them is a history buff and gave me lip once for some inaccuracies on the time period we where playing (Modern fantasy world with post war technology, got angry there were portable small walkie-talkies around)
so I'm a tad bit apprehensive to say the least
Parker Rodriguez
So, the problem is that you want to send characters to places with many different languages, but all the places have names from one specific language, and you want to think of a reason for that.
Perhaps that specific language has some special significance in the universe, which is why people use it to name cities even when they use another language to speak. It could be the language of some ancient civilization, or perhaps the native tongue of nature spirits, which would explain why it's associated with areas of land and why it's apparently more universal than other languages.
Ian King
Here's a solution for you: some hundreds of years ago, the regions were unified under one not!Japanese empire. After going the way of Rome, most of the place names remained the same even as other ethnic groups and cultures moved in, bringing in what is now the common tongue. Or here's another one, the not!Japanese were conquered and the occupiers mandated that their language, not!English was the only one to be spoken, though the place names stuck even afterwards. Or you could even say that there was no mandate, but that the not!English simply settled in the new land, bred with(or exterminated) the locals, and kept their native language.
Nicholas Gomez
These two could actually work
Caleb Stewart
Pic related is the proper response to players like that. This is a fantasy world, there is no guarantee that the laws of physics are the same, let alone the details of history.
Brayden Green
You have been told and linked to sources that say that there is no need for this.
Not OP, but thanks. Always appreciate expanding the vocabulary.
Levi Martinez
>or at least the Not! version of it >NotNot version So exactly english then
Josiah Foster
Is that a package? I hope it's a package...
Robert Roberts
I finished an anime recently that actually asked the question, "Why does everyone speak the same language?" You can come up with a reason for it. Did the gods of the universe dictate it as such? Did there used to be a world-spanning nation?
Leo Sanders
What if hypothetically, a culture of Not!English speakers conquered this continent/world but left the traditional names of locations and even used the old local language to continue naming streets and cities in these regions. Real world example: Australia. Look it up in google maps and zoom in on different parts, a lot of towns, suburbs, streets and creeks are named using the language of the local tribe.
Dominic Green
Why does it have to be not!English? If your places have not!Japanese names the pcs speak not!Japanese. When they encounter some not!Arab people these people will call places with not!Arab words. Why is this hard again?
Angel Gomez
Just admit to your players that you're a weeb and want japanese names for things. Inside the fantasy-world the language is consistent, but it's translated into english+weeb for the game.
Henry Gray
Yeah, something like this would be fine: "there was once a big ol' empire. They conquered everywhere, named everywhere, then fucked off/died/got rebelled against and now it's a shitload of countries but the names remained"
Also
Adam Allen
The universal language is engrish, problem solved.
Gabriel Long
If the characters are speaking to someone, and they understand them, it comes across as English to the players. No matter what language culture the characters deal with, the players experience it as English language and american slang, with various other subjects in other languages (like the cities having japanese names) unless they "notice" the details (aka, come up with minor setting fluff for you, since you committed a world building sin and didn't allow yourself enough detail room). Also, seeAnd kick the player who gets pissy over fantasy worlds not matching European ands American tech development timelines.
