City Speak, Does anyone speak it anymore? Options

[Fortune]

LOL! :D

Now would you mind explaining just why you are cleaning those condoms?

[RedmondLarry]

I think 3rd edition simply handles City Speak wrong. It should not be a specialization of English, in my opinion. I believe it should be closer to Spanish and a mix of the asian languages than to English.

More comments can be found in SR Language List.

[John Campbell]

There should actually probably be significant regional variation. The exact composition of any given city's Cityspeak should be dependent on the demographics of that particular city's population. Most (former) US cities should have a largely English-based Cityspeak, with Spanish more dominant in the southern regions (probably even the majority partner in some places... the Southwest, South Florida), Asian languages more dominant on the West Coast, European and Middle Eastern languages more dominant on the East Coast, and so on.

Someone who's fluent in Seattle Cityspeak, which is probably fairly low Spanish content and fairly high Asian influence would be fairly confused by LA Cityspeak, which would have similar levels of Asian influence but a much higher Spanish content, and utterly lost in Miami Cityspeak, which would probably be closer to Spanish than to English, with almost no Asian influence at all.

And, of course, when figuring out where to classify Cityspeak, there's always the question of whether it's actually possible to stuff enough foreign terminology into English to make it stop being English. We've already got, by far, the largest vocabulary of any language in the world, and most of it didn't originate with that minor Germanic language called Ænglisc. Assimilating words from any language we can get to hold still long enough for us to rifle through its dictionary and make off with anything that looks useful is what we do best. :D

[Kagetenshi]

Strine was of moderate difficulty if that. Chicky was about as difficult to get as someone referring to themself as a "guy".

~J

[Fortune]

[Sunday_Gamer]

I laughed when I saw the "new" languages.

City speak is a specialization of English? Sooooo if you speak english, you also speak Cityspeak and Magespeak and every other speak.

How lame is THAT?

We chose to ignore them.

Cityspeak is it's own language, someone needs to watch Blade Runner/read Phillip K. Dick again.

Kong

[Glav]

if you knew Seattle Cityspeak, you'd know a good portion of english, I'd agree. You'd be able to understand most portions of regular english discussion. John had a good point. If you knew San Francisco Cityspeak, I'd suspect it would be a spanish derivitive, and Tokyo Cityspeak would be a japanese derivitive...

If you look at it that way, then it's really just a specialization of the local language.

Or, you could look at "cityspeak" being general 'popular' terms. Take for example MTV today. TV in general, anyway. Whenever something 'new' and 'exciting' happens on TV, it spreads around, becoming part of the 'cityspeak' offshot language. "WHUZZuuuPPpp", for example, I'd classify as part of cityspeak. Trid would probably contribute quite a bit to that kind of language. Since simmilar trid shows are probably broadcast all around the world, things like that will most likely infiltrate worldwide cityspeaks, and should be taken into account.

But yes, I agree: not much of a mention to "Cityspeak" (or racism, really, I've noticed) has been mentioned in the source materials. Last time I had a character with cityspeak (both my own, or a runner I GM'ed for) was a long time ago.

[Aidley]

LOL!

Now would you mind explaining just why you are cleaning those condoms?


actually, it's part of an old conversation with a friend of mine. I think i was saying something about how certain elitist types on a MB he was frequenting at the time had thought they'd got the better of him, with quips along the lines of 'n00b l0$3r $uX0r!!11!!LOL!!11!'

I like to think i have a way with words. ;)

[kevyn668]

[Kagetenshi]

A chic? A chic what? ;)

~J

[Fortune]

[Siege]