Alien and Faction Linguistics

[Turbo]

Just for fun, let's talk about something besides graphic art and ship design.

In this thread
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... c&start=60
in reference to the Art Style Guides
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... uide:Aeran
I made the following suggestion:

I suggest you include a description of their writing, and how often they use it. Humans, for example, put labels all over their modern-day craft: "Danger," "Rescue," "Remove before flight," "Lift Point," "Grade X fuel only," and so on. Would the Aera or Rlaan do something similar? Depending on the faction, a good concourse design would include signs in multiple languages as well as pictoral (such as modern-day international road signs vs. traditional US road signs). The artists can't make signs without knowing what Aera script might look like. For the human factions, maybe there is a font that they prefer. For all we know, someone in here knows how to make custom fonts for the major alien races.

Unfortunately, I'm not a linguistics expert -- I have forgotten my Spanish and German from disuse and am largely failing to learn Hangul. But we all have imaginations, and content that has thought behind it will provide the immersion and believeability a good game needs. So, I invite discussion of what the major races and/or factions' linguistics might look or sound like. I'll start, so you have something to poke holes into.

Proposal:
Aera are reptiles. They have no noses and breathe through their mouths, so they probably gasp and hiss when they talk. When we get to the point of recording the radio chatter (did I mention that I'm a voice actor?), the Aera should probably sound like someone hissing in an alien language (say, Latin in a raspy voice) overlaid with a "Microsoft Sam" mechanical-sounding voice which is your onboard translator. Of course, the Mechanists might sound like the translator by themselves. But since the translator will try to translate alien broadcasts literally, the translation should sound a bit strange. A good example is the "I just killed an enemy" broadcast that the Rlaan use: "Hulls pop like vibrant seeds. Photons splash in a formless void. I am sticky." I love that!

Aera hands might not be as dextrous as humans' due to their claws* (not an evolutionary vestige like human fingernails) and they are somewhat paranoid. Therefore I theorize that their writing might be something you could write quickly, with no implements other than your claws, so you could get back to surviving.

But, we have a real-world alphabet that developed out of people carving symbols with a knife into wood or bone, or chiseled into stone. It is the runic alphabet, of which here is one example:
http://simplythebest.net/fonts/fonts/futhark.html
I am NOT suggesting we adopt runic as the Aera script -- JRR Tolkien made it too famous for that. What I am suggesting is that Aera script would be linear in nature, based on what we know about them, and might have a similar look and feel as runic.

As a special bonus, I suggest a new Rlaan haiku-like broadcast. They might say this when they are "neutral" to you:

Such beady eyes! How can you fly straight? Keep your distance.

Please discuss and offer your ideas about the factions and their linguistics, speaking, or writing. Write some new broadcast lines. Try to relate your ideas to what we already know about the races.

Turbo

* Technically, the art style guide is not clear on whether Aera have claws, but given their history I imagine they would need them.

[loki1950]

Oblivion posted some Rlaan script quite a while back as part of his drawings of the Rlaan physiology.

Enjoy the Choice

[Deus Siddis]

Proposal:
Aera are reptiles. They have no noses and breathe through their mouths, so they probably gasp and hiss when they talk. When we get to the point of recording the radio chatter (did I mention that I'm a voice actor?), the Aera should probably sound like someone hissing

You mean like this:

"*hiss*Captain*hissssss*Kirk*hissssssss*Captain Kirk!*hisssssss*"

Or this:

"It ssso happensss that the Elowan ussse plutonium to build theirrr ssshipssss. If you ssshould happen to rrrun across any wrrrecked Elowan ssshipsss you could sssalvage thissss."


Of course since the Aera have "Vocal Rumblers", their speech might sound like rumbling instead.

A good example is the "I just killed an enemy" broadcast that the Rlaan use: "Hulls pop like vibrant seeds. Photons splash in a formless void. I am sticky." I love that!

Yeah, I do too! 0.5 feels alot more alive and immersive just because of the textual messages you get from different species. It adds alot of flavor.

But, we have a real-world alphabet that developed out of people carving symbols with a knife into wood or bone, or chiseled into stone. It is the runic alphabet, of which here is one example:
http://simplythebest.net/fonts/fonts/futhark.html
I am NOT suggesting we adopt runic as the Aera script -- JRR Tolkien made it too famous for that. What I am suggesting is that Aera script would be linear in nature, based on what we know about them, and might have a similar look and feel as runic.

*Cough*Ogham*Cough*

As a special bonus, I suggest a new Rlaan haiku-like broadcast. They might say this when they are "neutral" to you:
Such beady eyes! How can you fly straight? Keep your distance.

I think the latin and oriental type names for aera and rlaan stuff respectively, are just a place holders.

They really need to be alien, not based on particular human cultures and languages that are long extinct by the time of VS.

[Turbo]

"*hiss*Captain*hissssss*Kirk*hissssssss*Captain Kirk!*hisssssss*"

No, that's a Gorn speaking the English language with a hiss.

Of course since the Aera have "Vocal Rumblers",

That's not in the art style guide, what's your source? And if your source is authoritative, that information should be in the art style guide.

Ogham

I'm not familiar with Ogham, but I just looked it up and it provides another good example of a linear script.

I think the latin and oriental type names for aera and rlaan stuff respectively, are just a place holders. They really need to be alien, not based on particular human cultures and languages that are long extinct by the time of VS.

I had not brought up names, but that is a good point.

Turbo

[Deus Siddis]

That's not in the art style guide, what's your source? And if your source is authoritative, that information should be in the art style guide.

Bah, now I can't find it anywhere, I thought for sure I remembered jackS mentioned on this forum that the Aera had something like "Vocal Rumblers" that they used to communicate with each other.

I'm not familiar with Ogham, but I just looked it up and it provides another good example of a linear script.

But I brought it up because you said Runic was already done to death. Ogham is a language from about the same general region, but that doesn't look like really anything else. That should be the minimum for how alien scripts should look.

Going further outside the box might be even better, like compound characters or in other words nonlinear, branching scripts for words and sentences:

-T--A----P
-OB___L
--l
--J

The above could be an alien sentence, where each of the latin letters represents an alien character or an alien word composed of branching letters. It is basically that ridiculous sentence diagramming they made you do in grade school, only in the form of its only language structure rather than a time waster. So when one symbol was attached or adjacent to another specific symbol, you would now that it would modify or help describe whatever the symbol represented.

Might be good for the Aera.

[loki1950]

Ogham, was and is the alphabet of Irish Gaelic was also used as a sign language in Irish monasteries the letters can be made using fingers positions.

Enjoy the Choice

[rivalin]

1.Do we have a philologist on the team?

2. Are we ever likely to have a philologist on the team?

3. Would it be foolhardy to try to authentically construct alien languages in a realistic manner according to a multitude of different variables?

4. Has anyone considered how much time it would take to be so thorough for several different languages

Seriously, I'd recommend just using a one for one cipher with the regular alphabet, coming up with some pretty symbols for each language and leaving it at that. If there's an attempt made to be too clever about it the whole thing will most likely end up a foul mess that takes years to clean up.

I could be wrong, but I thought I'd get my two cents in before anyone gets too carried away

[Turbo]

If the Aera do have vocal rumblers, maybe they would sound like whale song, but at 2x or 3x tempo with no change in pitch. Aside from the joke about the Gorn, no one has commented on my concept of intership comms from alien races being an alien language overlaid with a translator.

The "positional symbology" idea has potential. Many real languages have grouped sound-symbols to represent syllables or words, and/or are written in some arrangement other than left to right.

We won't know if we have a philologist until we ask. But any content with some thought behind it will be more believable and generate better game immersion.

I agree that the minimum we need are alphabets for the two major alien races. Modern airports have most of their signs in 2-4 languages. In VS terms, the client races should be able to read the script of at least one of the major 3 races and therefore all planet and station concourse signs should be in 3 languages, except possibly government / military facilities which might only be in the owning faction's script.

We're just throwing around ideas, which cost very little effort to discuss. If Jack likes any of them, then he will make those ideas Official Canon. Leaving these questions unanswered means that artists and voice actors have a small chance to produce Canon-friendly content. And I get plenty of "I don't know what I want, but that isn't it, do it again" in my workplace without seeking it in my hobbies.

Turbo

[loki1950]

@Turbo thought that this thread might interest you an other discussion on the various races in-game but with pictures by Oblivion most of which have been adopted by jaskS as good enough for mow they are in the Universe Development doc(the spoiler book) http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... php?t=6574 It's an other long thread and some of the pictures have had there links expire i think i have them all so if you want one that is missing just PM me

Enjoy the Choice

[jackS]

re: Aeran vocal rumblers (from http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/Species:Aera ) "On the underside of the Aera head is a pair of organs, each capable of producing variable amplitude, low frequency vibrations, which the Aera use to communicate." (one really wishes the search feature on the wiki wasn't completely broken :-/ )

One quick note - the Rlaan don't have an alphabet, they have a syllabary

I quite like the idea of translated intership communications as translated overlays (for the Ooo-Aliens!-factor, if nothing else) -- I think the key tricks involved will be A) appropriately muting the "alien" portion of the original message such that the "translated" portion remains fully intelligible without making all of the base "alien" portions indistinguishable from each other and B) representing 1200 years of progress in speech synthesis by using actual people to record the lines, but with a slightly unnatural flavor to still somehow indicate translation (perhaps in a per-word accurate, but slightly cold, stilted fashion? - not a voice actor, so this is just me thinking aloud, not a request)

re: ship naming schemes (Spartan kings for the Aera, Chinese emperors for the Rlaan) -- those were never intended to be their own names for said vessels. Rather, those were intended to be a Confederation derived naming scheme with no particular correspondence to the actual alien names (those thinking of an analogy may wish to consider Americans calling Germany "Germany" and the Spanish calling it Alemania, etc. vs. the Germans calling it Deutschland - although it's a rather flawed analogy).

[jackS]

People should feel free to work on an Aeran writing system. Aside from the text on their number system (visual number representation may be a fun and interesting area, given the redundant base and intrinsic negative digits) there's not much pre-existing work, so there's little cannon to be trampled on .

To be honest, the Aeran writing system isn't something I've spent time thinking about, so I'll probably be pretty happy with any proposal for it that is A) reasonable to automate the generation of "Aeran script" for, B) doesn't look immediately human, and C) would be physically reasonable for an Aera to produce and peruse. A should be pretty objective, and B should be easy enough for any group of people to come to a consensus on (i.e. no higher-ups required or particular canonicity concerns ), but I guess C does need some oversight.

We have samples of Rlaan script, so there's more of an investment with trying to keep things consistent. Rlaan speech could be fun, given that A) they have a markedly different atmospheric composition/density and B) they use all 4 sets of mouthparts at the same time.

The Uln are in about the same position as the Aera re: writing, and even less described as to what speech actually sounds like. The mouthparts have been described though, so we can begin to ponder what potential sounds they can make.

The Klk'k written forms may also eventually warrant some attention. The Klk'k will be interesting because of their heavy integration with the Andolians, and hence one may expect to frequently see human-derived symbols inserted into the middle of Klk'k signage, etc. There's a very brief note on Klk'k speech in the wiki: http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/Species:Klk%27k
When doing the "alien" backgrounds for Klk'k comms, it may be worth considering that many of the Klk'k messages may be "pre-translated" into a vocal-unit assisted rendition of human speech on the sender side. Thus, the Klk'k, attempting (artificially assisted) human speech, may end up being the only aliens to be heard "directly" (perhaps made clearer due to a lack of "translator lag" ?).

The client species aren't going to be particularly interesting writing-wise (they'll just use their masters' writing). Even the Shmrn are still going to rely heavily on human-derived symbols, as they didn't have any of their own to begin with. The Lmpl and Nuhln will be mostly uninteresting in the auditory range, because they'll be pre-translated into Rlaan speech, so we should use Rlaan speech for them (perhaps with extra lag?). The Saahasayaay ( http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... aahasayaay ) should warrant their own vocalizations, and perhaps, artwise, the occasional personalized "aftermarket" kill-markings on their Rlaan-issued gear/craft. I'm ambivalent as to the Bzbr getting anything of their own, vs. aping Aeran everything. The Purth speech itself should sound like the Mechanists (in that they'll have non-physical voice generation), but with a very different sentence structure, etc. The Dgn and Shmrn should sound roughly the same, as they morphologically almost identical, although the messages will be very divergent.

[jackS]

<begin pedantry>
also, just because someone said it earlier in the thread- Aera aren't reptiles
the Bzbr are likewise not reptiles, but do however, have a number of reptilian features, and are thus described as "psuedo-reptilian"

(also, fwiw for those who ponder such things, aliens don't tend to have DNA, although we do assume them to have functionally, and often chemically, similar or equivalent structures)
</end pedantry>

[Turbo]

I quite like the idea of translated intership communications as translated overlays (for the Ooo-Aliens!-factor, if nothing else) -- I think the key tricks involved will be A) appropriately muting the "alien" portion of the original message such that the "translated" portion remains fully intelligible without making all of the base "alien" portions indistinguishable from each other and B) representing 1200 years of progress in speech synthesis by using actual people to record the lines, but with a slightly unnatural flavor to still somehow indicate translation (perhaps in a per-word accurate, but slightly cold, stilted fashion? - not a voice actor, so this is just me thinking aloud, not a request)

Wow, I totally missed this reply until now. But it is similar to what I, and others, have been thinking.

Playing with the volume is as easy as putting the alien talking on one track and the translator on another, and trying different things. To create the voice of the translator, I still like Microsoft Narrator (or if you've never heard what that sounds like, think of scientist Steven Hawking's vocalizing machine, or the security robot in Privateer's Righteous Fire expansion). It sounds cold and soulless, but is still intelligible.

Now that the voice for Pyramid's "Oswald" tutorial is done I can get to work on the intership communication. Note that I said "I" because we need voice actors. It's fun, it's creative, and it's easy to start but challenging to perfect. I wrote a tutorial here: http://www.willadsenfamily.org/us/don/t ... torial.htm

If you decide to join the fun, please put your work in the Music and Sound Collab forum http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... m.php?f=29

[theguyfromsaturn]

To create the voice of the translator, I still like Microsoft Narrator (or if you've never heard what that sounds like, think of scientist Steven Hawking's vocalizing machine, or the security robot in Privateer's Righteous Fire expansion). It sounds cold and soulless, but is still intelligible.

Actually, there is the festival open source package that is used in Linux. I don't know how portable it is... but it might eventually offer some sort of means to dynamically add content. It could even be possible to add custom made "talkers" given availability of time/expertise.