Kouri-vini - Using non-native languages in rp
By
Big_Lunk_EU,
Posted on: 2008-04-26 06:59 in Roleplaying
Zorielle Rolando speaks several languages, including her second tongue of Spanish, but very rarely and when she is speaking in other languages, I use <Language> as a prefix. So for example:
Zortel bows her head politely. "<Mandarin Chinese> Welcome to Unity Tower, Long."
Several of my characters are bi- or multi-lingual, and I'd go insane if I had to memorize words for each of them, I have enough trouble with English at times!
Fusebox speaks English, Spanish and l33t w/ m4d 5k1llz, j0, conversational Japanese (Seeing as she's a games journalist, it always comes in handy.)
Zortel speaks fluent English, Spanish, French, Italian, Conversational Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German and basic Dutch.
Ryan sometimes speaks English, fluent Teen :P and American Sign Language. (Which to sign in game, I use the prefix <ASL> and when writing the 'dialogue' I drop contractions to try and make the 'speech' sound a little more formal.)
Uh, to list them all would be pretty long, but anyway!
I for one enjoy Jean-Luc's way of speech, it sounds nice in mental sounds, y'know? And that sucks to hear about the others trying to correct you :<
The French Maid, is actually french and speaks a variaty of languages from French, English, Russian, German, various Arrabic languages (no idea what they're called, though... or if it's just one language) as well as conversational japaneese, thai, vietnameese, Korean, cantonees and mandarin.
Generally, she speaks English with a french accent, so I mix in french words, drop contractions and try to add a lighter sound to some vowels.
Grav Mistress is Dutch, and a scholar. She's fluent in Dutch, English, Greek, Spanish, Latin, German, French, Frisian and Egyptian. As for reading and writing it goes on and on also into demonic and runic languages.
Though because she's lived in the US for a while and English is easy for the Dutch, she has no accent, no odd words... just the occassional sentence construction error (which is not my intention 
)
I also follow Zortel's way of using other languages, except for the odd Dutch, German and French word.
@ShadowGhost & @Ghostie
The Grav Mistress, Mistress of Gravity
If you have nothing useful to say, you have two choices: Say something useless or stay quiet.
I tend to use ways similar to Z's, although i have also resorted to typing completely in that language, with a translation in Tells, when i have seen people near the conversation who metagame their way into "understanding" something marked as a foreign language.
I've also done it without the translation tells to [censored] someone off
Ellie speaks English, some French and Spanish, Cat and Kheldian.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
having had the pleasure of a number of IC chats with Jean-luc ..i am always impressed by your abliity to be so consistant and yet inventive with language ... i must admit to being total ungifted linguistically , and can only speak english , bad english and total gibberish .. and so make sure thats all my characters attempt .typos permotting ..
i find for those that do have the talent , using even only a handfull of other language words does really help to flavour rp IC chats .. it help remind one of the cultural origin of that character .
so if you can please do .. .. it is appreciated
Aw, cheers, everyone, I'm glad to know Jean-Luc's Kreyol doesn't have everyone scratching their heads, though after thinking about it I have thought up something else; merely because someone uses certain inflections or words to give their character flavour doesn't necessarily mean the PLAYER is fluent in the culture they're steeping their character in. I'm reminded one of my characters was once talking to Red and made mention of a samovar - the player obviously had no idea what I was talking about. I'm played through even so, and made a note not to be a [censored] and aim a bunch of Russian at him and expect him to understand it (unless I gave a 'tell' translation.
Because I'm such a perfectionist, I chose a culture I'm familiar with ('write what you know' being the whole of the Law), and I did a fair bit of homework as well to make sure Jean-Luc makes the certain cultural inflections a person of Creole heritage would do (everyone is bel, everyone is mon-ami until they prove otherwise, and of course he's always trying to feed people or take them in). That's straight up Creole-Southern. Yet I'm rather vague when it comes to where Jean-Luc is from exactly as I don't know the bayou well enough to make anything other than a hazarded guess.
A lot of people believe I'm fluent in French, which of course I'm not, but I can pick up the inflection and can construct a reply on Kreyol accordingly. However, I am very aware there are people who have no idea what I'm saying, and as a result I don't use as many words as I could be - they're just flavour, not really to confuse people.
I like out how though your accents thicker he is a less irritating character than Gambit :P
And it could be worse you could write with a phonetic Glaswegian accent.
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
I know about three lines of Japanese. However I can still converse in it adequately if needs be as I got Google! 
My weak IC excuse to speak English at all oppurtunity is that speaking a foriegn languge alienates my fan base a little and means I have to dib over the film if I need it, which is a pain!
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And it could be worse you could write with a phonetic Glaswegian accent.
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Or phonetic Geordie >_< (obvious dig at ginge there)
I always kinda liked random spatterings of native tongue in Loup's vocab. If you think about it, you probably would, especially when you were annoyed or saying things you didn't want people to hear. I've only got two characters who speak different, Shy and Gale. Shy speaks Karralian (Which I have actually written a few words of...) and Gale speaks... I dunno. Arabic probably. XV probably speaks H4xx0r, but that's not really applicable. I myself speak gibberish, so that'd have been a lot of learning to do, so I advocate <karralian> "text" typing, too.
Also:
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And it could be worse you could write with a phonetic Glaswegian accent.
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OI! I heard that!
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And it could be worse you could write with a phonetic Glaswegian accent.
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OI! I heard that!
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That's a ruddy good trick on a text forum! 
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Despite the fact that almost of all of the characters I've made speak at least two, I've never yet actually had to speak anything other than English in RP. If I did, I imagine I'd mainly use the "Wolfram: <German>" approach.
However, the difference between that case and Loup Garou's is that Wolfram habitually speaks only in English when addressing other people who don't understand any of the other pile of languages he's familiar with. He doesn't lapse back into German because that's not a natural way of speaking, whereas someone from Jean-Luc's background might well habitually use a mixture of English and Creole.
In short, what I'm trying to say is that in my view, sentences completely in a foreign language are best represented by English with a <Foreign language> tag (so that people with insanely polylingual characters don't have to go off and learn, say, Quechua to be able to back up their claim), but for characters who speak in broken or dialectical English that's not really an option, so you just have to throw in foreign words as and when it seems appropriate.
Which turned out not being all that short after all.
Knights Exemplar: Wolfram, Autumnfox, Starlit Spirit.
Militia: The Portent, Wavekite, Mr. Sandman.
The Cadre: WarpLocke, Zajin.
Numerous others.
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And it could be worse you could write with a phonetic Glaswegian accent.
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OI! I heard that!
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That's a ruddy good trick on a text forum!
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It's one of my many positive qualities, also including incredible natural charisma, genius, good looks and modesty
I'm one of those who speaks French and I did feel the itch to send a tell to Loup a couple of times (especially when I see the word Kreyol, which I've only seen spelled as Creoule).
Reason I never did is that I felt Loup's player knew what he was about. I've been exposed to a number of languages, one of which is the Portuguese Crioulo, basicly the same thing but the base language is portuguese which some black people use. Despite myself being portuguese I understood a word in ten, I couldn't make sense of what they spoke
Now what I find myself interested is from where did the whole cult thing of using words in different languages than the one being spoken from came.
Japanese is undoubtly the worst offender. Thanks to manga and anime we get japanese characters in no matter the RP medium. A normal English conversation can have a dozen words in japanese can be placed which leaves non-japanese speaking people having to ask for a translation. Which, when asked for, is provided, meaning the words weren't used by not knowing what they meant in English.
I'm not saying it doesn't add flavour, but I think people have been a leeetle bit influenced by comics and movies. I've yet to find a real person who uses bits of their home idiom in whatever language they happen to be speaking.
I myself am French, living in Portugal, and thanks to the interwebs I'm a fluent English speaker. Yet when I go to Frence to visit I never speak a word of Portuguese even if a word eludes (what's the point, no one would understand it no matter how slow or loud I'd repeat it). Same as when I go to England I never use Portuguese or French in my speech.
Am I just really weird, or..?
P.S. Maybe I should make a portuguese guy and go around, 'Yo pessoal, tudo bem?' as a greet.
Actually everyone has their own cultural quirks in real life, even if they're using the same language as everyone else - more often than not they're not even aware of it. You may speak Portugeuse, but you probably do so in a French accent. When you speak English, it's probably the same. There are certain foods you probably like, or maybe even detest, due to cultural idioms.
A lot of the time, it's expected we're supposed to erase these cultural differences as they're somehow considered rude, but in many cases, they're so much a part of ourselves we never even think about them. My love of Tobasco sauce, for example, is very American South. When I get angry or excited, my voice almost goes immediately into a Southern drawl. I have a habit of putting cardamom pods into my coffee before brewing due to quite a bit of time spent with Persian families. So I'm sure everyone has those little inflections which one never quite is aware of, and I wouldn't see anything strange with those coming out now and again.
I actually get rather annoyed when people feel they need to erase their own cultural customs in order to "fit in" more with the common herd. I have always lived in culturally diverse areas or portside towns and I love hearing the new languages, seeing the new clothes, trade recipes or pick up the odd phrase here and there from sailors (usually swear words, I admit) when they come in from Ghana, Finland, Portugal, or Spain.
It's actually rather fascinating to note there is a Portugeuse "creole" - I was aware there are many different inflections in the Carrib but that particular type was unknown to me.
There's also a Hawai'i Creole that I keep meaning to read more about, since Wavekite should probably have some sort of working understanding of it.
I agree that representing your character's cultural background realistically is an important part of making that character believable.* It can sometimes be easier said than done, though. German people who are fluent in English do have a recognisable accent, but they don't, in my experience, usually confuse V and W sounds. That mistake is the "standard" way of representing a German accent in text, but I don't use it for Wolfram because I don't consider it believable. Lapsing back into occasional words of one's native language is fine for characters who are still learning, but again, not for someone who's fluent.
So as you say, it's a matter of coming up with quirks. I try to establish those when and where I can, and it's always interesting doing the research behind them.
*Edit: Not that I'm ever really sure if I'm representing my characters believably, but that's a whole other thing.
Knights Exemplar: Wolfram, Autumnfox, Starlit Spirit.
Militia: The Portent, Wavekite, Mr. Sandman.
The Cadre: WarpLocke, Zajin.
Numerous others.
But those are mannerisms, quirks. When I spoke about interjecting our own idiom in whatever foreign language we're speaking at the time, it was indeed about interjecting natural idiom into whatever foreign language we're speaking at the time.
I do understand it adds flavour in RP, but I keep that I never heard anyone do it. An example are German people, the idea I have of them (and which seems backed by other people's experience), is that they are a really accomodating folk. They go to a foreign country and they make an effort to speak the language, different say, from French, which more than once I've found repeating words slowly and loudly as if they would become more understandable (I'm French, I can get away with dissing them ;p).
It can lead to what is a stereotype of German accent. Which I really thought was a joke, a sterotype, until I happened to meet German people and spoke with them, the portuguese and germany pronouns are all switched around. English doesn't have that.
Example, pretty for a male would be 'bonito' and for a female would be 'bonita'. I'm trying to come up with a simile in English but the language just doesn't lend itself to it. Take it from me, it's just funny.
Anyway, I went off in a tangent. I do believe we're all heavily influenced by the Gambit, Nightcrawler, Colossus' out there. Not to mention the mangas and stuff which even when translated still keep the -chans and -kuns and konichiwas.
I'm not trying to be a hardcase, and it really is *not* something that bothers me deeply, I just happened to be reminded about it with all the posts in this thread and I'm voicing my thoughts about it.
Doesn't make sense to go:
'Nihao!'
'What?'
'It means hello.'
'Oh, why didn't you say hello then?'
When I speak in English, I speak English. I don't use Dutch or Frisian words. Granted, I might be fishing for words at times and use the Dutch/Frisian/French word for it to see if it's the same or similar (and it usually is) before describing what I mean.
While cultural influences are all good and well, but it's about communication and that doesn't go too well when you need to ask a translation for every other word they say.
While I can understand it if you use titles for people, like mom and dad and such. Because you think of them in that way.
That said, I use 'mom' when speaking in English instead of 'mama', 'mam' (Dutch) or 'mem' (Frisian).
Maybe because I think and speak in 3 languages while I can type in 2.
@ShadowGhost & @Ghostie
The Grav Mistress, Mistress of Gravity
If you have nothing useful to say, you have two choices: Say something useless or stay quiet.
Aye, there's the difference; giving your character an accent because it's "cool", and trying to have at least a working understanding of your character's culture. Just saying "kwai" and "nyan" all the time and yet being completely incapable of understanding sake is served warm or what an obi actually is tends to make me wonder why someone chose to make their character Japanese (usually just taking the name of their favourite anime-toon).
I suppose it's the difference between having at least a believable familiarity with a culture and just using a stereotype rather inexpertly. There's nothing more embarassing than being caught out for me (hence wincing when fluent French speakers have started trying to communicate with me in tells), so again I stick with the "go with what you know" rule and don't try and overstep my own knowledge, or expand it when I can.
Of course, there's the EU/Americas idea as well - in the EU, people all try to be rather accomodating and speak in the language of the country they're currently visiting as that's considered polite. But in the Americas, it's quite opposite. People there are fanatically proud of their culture, and they won't shift it for anyone. It is therefore not even remotely odd to be speaking to a Cajun or Creole who is using half English and half their own patois. It's not considered rude there - it's just the way it is, it's part of their own cultural paradigm.
With that said, however, I do keep to certain phrases - there's zero point in me using entire sentences of Kreyol as no one would have a clue what I was saying, and in that I do agree. But this influence isn't because I've read comics (because *gasp* I don't). It's because I have Creole heritage and for me it makes my character stand out a bit in the sea of English speaking Caucasians. After all, m'friend, you've got a cat-chick who extends her "r's" a lot. Why bother? It's obvious they're a cat, why bang on about it? Because it adds flavour, and gives a bit of inflection which is unique. So by all means, roll on with 'em.
As an aside: There's all sorts of quirks from Hawaii, for example - the wearing of flip-flops is sort of mandatory there. And SPAM...they eat SPAM all the TIME, man...they make sushi rolls out of the stuff. I'm not kidding. Little things like that give so much believability to a character, even if people aren't quite certain where it's coming from - it's cultural and thus unique.
I'm quite certain this post could have been much more coherent...but I'm not firing on all cylinders at the moment. So I apologise if I flew wide of the mark.
And the Ms, don't forget rolling the Ms too :> I figured, why keep on insisting that she speaks with a thick accent when I can just do it. The rolling of the Ms are supposed to be because she drawls a lot and extends the words further than what is the 'normal' way, but she's an alien of my invention, I get to say how my aliens talk ^^
agrees with wolfram ... i work with two people for whom english is a second language , and they do not drop in words from their native tounge .. EXCEPT when talking about their homeland or their mother tounge ..both are fluent in english and and they use english words , ..yes i cant tell their homelands from their accents , but the same can be said for another work mate fron Newcastle UK , who has a very thick accent and uses certain words and phrases from the Newcastle area vocabulary ..
use of regional words and phrases is a very good way to flavour ones speach ...but it is like speaking another language , you must know how it works and be able to think in that way to carry it off ...
Sera's a French Canadian, but I very rarely see the need to use French in conversation when playing her. Mainly because I know that my own grasp of French isn't stunning, and I'd rather not bug any actual francophones who happen to be listening in. About the only times she speaks any french is when talking to Jean-Luc, as it happens. Anything more technical, and I'd end up using the <French> technique. That or attack babelfish and blame any mistakes on Sera's iffy grasp of French grammar. (As she hasn't spoken it much in the last few years)
As for other people, I've never really had a huge problem with the odd word here and there, so long as the meaning's clear. Were someone to start an entire conversation in, say, mandarin, I'd likely glaze over and grab a cuppa.
In your dreams, I'll still be there with all the days that never came.
And I'll be just a story.
That's ok, we're all stories in the end...
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I'd likely glaze over and grab a cuppa.
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Much like your character would?
@ShadowGhost & @Ghostie
The Grav Mistress, Mistress of Gravity
If you have nothing useful to say, you have two choices: Say something useless or stay quiet.
Does it really matter if an RPer is adding the occasional foreign word? If it helps their immersion and you can understand it, why is it an issue?
Minako can add all the Japanese words she likes... Loup can add all the Creole he wants... Red can swear in Russian all he likes, and <bleep!> Ellie off, and she'll yowl at you in cat and make you go deaf all she likes!
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Quick Dirty Guide to Kreyol
I posted this a while ago in the NHU forums, but I decided to post it here as I'm sure I'm confusing people, and I have had some people ask why my character's French is so terrible, or they attempt to correct the spelling.
Louisiana is dear to my heart, while I've only a few ancestors there and only been there once myself. I remember hearing Kreyol used now and again, and I picked up a bit myself. Creole isn't Cajun, by the way, neither is it French - the actual language (optionally spelled Kreyol, Kreol, and Creyole) is a form of phoentic French and a fair bit of Afro-Carribean inflection. As a result, "Bonsoir" becomes "Bonswa", "Bonjour" is "Bonjou" and so on. However there are some huge differences - the term for girlfriend is "negresse" - which isn't so surprising considering the Afro-Carrib influence. To most people, the term just means "black", so it tends to make people blink a bit when Jean-Luc uses it - I switched to "bel" instead or even m'chere (though in reality he would be saying "monchoux" or even "choux-choux").
Now while I doubt this will stop the ragingly pedantic from continuously correcting my "French" (with a bunch of smartaleck smiley-faces at the end of each correction), or for those dear folks who do speak French and then try to communicate with me in French (at which point i have to admit I've no idea what they're saying), I figured I'd post this up for the even mildly curious who might want to have an idea what Jean-Luc is saying, especially when he starts getting angry or doesn't want to say what he's saying in English. I will say with a fair bit of pride and amusement people in the NHU were using Kreyol better than I was after a few months, which made me smile.
I will readily admit I am not hugely fluent in Kreyol, to my shame, and for ease of understanding in a European community, I mix it with classical French just to help people understand what he's saying, as straight Kreyol would be incomprehensible to most people.
I know there's a few other players who use languages here and there to add a bit of flavour to their own characters (Lady Cobra is Thai, for example, which is rather interesting). It's a break from the nearly-constant Japanese stuff, at the least.
Anyway, if there are people using other languages, I'd like to know out of my own linguistic curiosity, which ones, and if you've a link, that'd be great.
P.S. - I didn't post the swear words, for obvious reasons, but trust me, they're there!