Talk:Languages of Tyria

The charr and norn might also have had their own languages, as Hrangmer can be translated, and a single norn NPC complains about New Krytan having only one word for "hunt"? Mediggo 13:37, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Indications from The Ecology of the Charr show that "common" is actually the Human language. And that, yes, charr have their own spoken language, with norn having their own written language (we see a portion of it on the signposts in the Far Shiverpeaks in GW1). Konig/talk 13:46, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Images?

Can someone put up some images, if there are any found in-game? Are there even any?? Thanks! - Isjee (talk) 01:54, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Images of what exactly? New Krytan is all over Divinity's Reach and Lion's Arch, especially during festivities. Asuran script can be found in their labs, mostly, and there may be an old ascalonian rune here or there in Ascalon, though I haven't seen them myself. Mediggo (talk) 11:19, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Lore Q&A and Rewriting. - Origin of the common tongue

Norn:

Old Section:The Norn also have their own language, both spoken and written. Though their written language is no longer found, it once could be seen written on sign posts of the Far Shiverpeaks. Not much is known of their language, except that it has more than one word for 'hunt.' Similar to charr, they have had knowledge of the common language at least as early as 1078 AE.

Matthew Medina's comment: Norn do (or maybe it’s more appropriate to say did) have their own language, but we don’t name it and really all that survives of it tend to be names of places and people, like Hoelbrak. I think it’s unlikely that we would get into any more detail about it than we already have. Even in Eye of the North the runes we saw were few and far between, and so it was a language that was already being edged out in favor of the common tongue.

I have combined these two and rewritten this bit but was wondering if we should maintain the bit of: Similar to charr, they have had knowledge of the common language at least as early as 1078 AE.

Reason being the following comment by Matthew:

Now, as to where the common language came from and why it’s become so ubiquitous in Tyria – that really goes back to ancient history, at the very least to the last cycle of the Elder Dragons awakening. In the cycle just before the one that Tyria is currently experiencing, we know that five races were shepherded by the dragon champion Glint and survived. Those races too, had their own languages, but as they fought and struggled to survive the predations of the Elder Dragons, they also realized that they would need to communicate, not only amongst themselves in the short term, but to convey to future generations whatever information they learned about the Elder Dragons. It’s not clear whether they adopted one of the race’s languages as the common tongue (in the same way that English or Chinese or Spanish have spread to become more widely spoken), whether the common tongue already existed and pre-dates those races or whether they devised a new “common” tongue that all the races learned and passed on to future generations. But whichever explanation is correct has been lost to history and what we are left with is simply the knowledge that it was that first cooperation among the races who survived the last Elder Dragon cycle which gave birth to the widespread use of a common language that all Tyrians are raised to learn. Over the millennia since the Elder Dragons returned to slumber, it became clear that being able to understand one another was vital for survival, trade, and even war and a common language facilitated this nicely. It probably is appropriate for RP’ers to call this language Tyrian, since its usage (if not the language itself) was initially born of that cooperation between all the races that lived in Tyria at that time, but internally we tend to refer to it most often as “Common” – in homage to Jeff Grubb and the original D&D design team who solved this exact problem years before us. :-D

I can’t remember how much of this information (if any) was included in my blog post about the alphabets from years ago that is unfortunately no longer available. I’d always intended to follow up on Villem Caragan’s journal on the languages with this information but time just got away from all of us. :-) -Finite (talk) 19:12, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

P.S. Do we still link references to dev. comments? - Finite (talk) 19:13, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

No need to maintain that line for 1078, since that's basically just saying "they spoke the common language in GW1". Yes, we link all sources of lore that's not in-game. This includes dev forum posts. We link directly to the post, unless it's been taken down (which isn't likely to happen, hopefully). Konig 19:16, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

To secure for it being taken down I thought of linking a cached-link, it isn't pretty though. Thanks for the confirmation btw. - Finite (talk) 21:38, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Pooh-bah

Why is the term listed as asuran? I'm pretty sure it exists irl —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 190.235.11.17 (talk).

The source of the term originates from Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado (1885) in the form of a character named Pooh-Bah. Later derived in The Flintstones as a title via Grand Poobah. Grand Poobah has also been used in Happy Days. Typically, the character it refers to is haughty or self-important, or thought to be such. (talk) 16:15, 26 January 2019

In the gwverse, however, it is an asuran-originating word (only asura use it, at least) that seems to be used as a term of endearment for a superior. Even if it originates / has similarities to something older in our culture. Konig (talk) 16:19, 26 January 2019 (UTC)