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kevyn668
I've seen the language translated (*cough* AH *cough*) but I've never seen a pronunciation guide.

Also, what would the accent sound like?

I've been toying around with the idea of a Sperethiel speaking character and I was curious how one would represent the accent in RL and on, say, a PbP medium.

Thoughts?
Connor
The common consensus is to use Gaelic as a guide for pronounciation, probably leaning towards the Irish dialect.
kevyn668
OK. I can do the Boroque (sp?) thing but I've only heard Gaelic once and that was about 7 years ago.
Arethusa
Brogue. Not to be confused with the Baroque period of European art and music history.
kevyn668
So which one would it sound like?
Arethusa
Sperethiel would, supposedly, sound a lot like Gaelic or Welsh. Its accent in English would probably sound a fair bit like an Irish brogue.
Ancient History
Probably Gaelic, with the accent of whatever the speaker's primary language(s). I'm sure the brogue slips in too. When in doubt, just claim the daisy-eater's speaking Gaelic-Sperethiel and tell him his momma played with elves. talker.gif
kevyn668
QUOTE (Ancient History)
Probably Gaelic, with the accent of whatever the speaker's primary language(s). I'm sure the brogue slips in too. When in doubt, just claim the daisy-eater's speaking Gaelic-Sperethiel and tell him his momma played with elves. talker.gif

Thanks, man. I was waiting for you to show up. smile.gif
Ancient History
My Private Messages are always open...and, if I may say, answered fairly promptly. grinbig.gif
kevyn668
I'll keep that in mind. I didn't want to breach etiquette or snub anyone else around here. smile.gif

.
Misfit Toy
Give this Irish Sayings site a try. It includes clips of a person speaking various Irish Gaelic phrases, even if done a bit formally in tone. (If you're going to speak with an exotic accent, at least have the decency to ham it up a bit. Honestly.)
kevyn668
QUOTE (Misfit Toy)
Give this Irish Sayings site a try. It includes clips of a person speaking various Irish Gaelic phrases, even if done a bit formally in tone. (If you're going to speak with an exotic accent, at least have the decency to ham it up a bit. Honestly.)

That's the plan. smile.gif mu-hahaha...
Prospero
Another thing to keep in mind is that unless you're talking about an IE, no character speaks Sperethiel as their native language. Well, a few maybe - and then you'd have to be young. But even if it was your native langague, the accent will be passed down to you from your parents who weren't (I assume) native speakers. So you'd mimic whatever accent they had - if they were Irish, you'd speak Sperethiel with an Irish influenced-accent. If they were from TT, you'd probably speak it with an American influenced-accent. IEs would, of course, be the exception to this. They'd have an accent like, well, nothing else, realistically, though I bet even they would be influenced by thousands of years that they were forced to speak other languages besides Sperethiel.
Ancient History
Hence Dunkie's comment to Harley in the Tir Tairngire sourcebook. Segue city, babu! rotfl.gif
CircuitBoyBlue
QUOTE (Prospero)
Another thing to keep in mind is that unless you're talking about an IE, no character speaks Sperethiel as their native language.

QUOTE


Oh man, you SHOULD play an immortal elf. It can be a 1,000 point edge offset by a 500 point arrogance flaw and a 500 point Ridiculousness flaw.

Hehehe. Stupid elves...
Demosthenes
I'm sure no one wants to hear this....but as a near-native speaker of Irish Gaelic (I've spoken Irish since I was 2, and did most of my primary and secondary school education through Irish), I can tell you that Sperethiel as written would not come out well with Irish Gaelic pronunciation.

Try pronouncing all the "th" sounds as partially-voiced "h" sounds for a start...

You could possibly look to Welsh for a guide (Scots Galllic is very close to Irish Gaelic in pronunciation...enough that it sounds quite similar to the northern Irish dialect of Gaeilge...).

It looks to me though as if most of the Sperethiel lexicon was pulled from the writers' a$$es, with a healthy influence from Tolkien's Elvish (lots of double-"l"s, probably not aspirated though, tons of "th"s, words ending in "el" or "iel") or even possibly D&D. talker.gif talker.gif
Cray74
QUOTE (Connor)
The common consensus is to use Gaelic as a guide for pronounciation, probably leaning towards the Irish dialect.

Gee...and I've just been defaulting to pig Latin with an upper-crust British accent. Boy, is my face red.
kevyn668
QUOTE (Prospero)
Another thing to keep in mind is that unless you're talking about an IE, no character speaks Sperethiel as their native language. Well, a few maybe - and then you'd have to be young. But even if it was your native langague, the accent will be passed down to you from your parents who weren't (I assume) native speakers. So you'd mimic whatever accent they had - if they were Irish, you'd speak Sperethiel with an Irish influenced-accent. If they were from TT, you'd probably speak it with an American influenced-accent. IEs would, of course, be the exception to this. They'd have an accent like, well, nothing else, realistically, though I bet even they would be influenced by thousands of years that they were forced to speak other languages besides Sperethiel.

Well, if you want to nit-pick, I'll go you one better.

In fact, IEs would not speak Sperethiel as their native language. Its a variant of what ever they spoke in Ed. wink.gif

As for native speakers, I seem to remember a few Canon references to elves only speaking "The Voice"--I think they were examples in earlier BBBs and from the original Sprawl Sites. So there is a precedent for Sperethiel speaking elves.

Besides all that, maybe the character I have in mind simply speaks Sperethiel as his primary language but speaks one or more others as well--like in Europe. Since he speaks Sperethiel the most, it would affect his speech patterns. Kinda like if you hang out down south (in the US) long enough, you pick up a bit of a drawl. Amongst other things... biggrin.gif
Misfit Toy
QUOTE (Cray74)
Gee...and I've just been defaulting to pig Latin with an upper-crust British accent. Boy, is my face red.

Odd. I use Pig Latin in a really bad Norweigan accent for the Ork (Trog) tongue. Go figure.
Arz
QUOTE (Demosthenes)
I'm sure no one wants to hear this....but as a near-native speaker of Irish Gaelic (I've spoken Irish since I was 2, and did most of my primary and secondary school education through Irish), I can tell you that Sperethiel as written would not come out well with Irish Gaelic pronunciation.

Try pronouncing all the "th" sounds as partially-voiced "h" sounds for a start...

You could possibly look to Welsh for a guide (Scots Galllic is very close to Irish Gaelic in pronunciation...enough that it sounds quite similar to the northern Irish dialect of Gaeilge...).

It looks to me though as if most of the Sperethiel lexicon was pulled from the writers' a$$es, with a healthy influence from Tolkien's Elvish (lots of double-"l"s, probably not aspirated though, tons of "th"s, words ending in "el" or "iel") or even possibly D&D. talker.gif talker.gif

Demosthenes, I'm going to assume you come from the standardized connaucht accent.
I agree that sperethiel matches up much better with tolkiens' elvish than any of the gaelic dialects I've seen.
Some of the dialects are so close to dead though that I can't say with any certainty. Then you have the old timers from Cork who speak in a totally different manner(my grans, deceased).
Demosthenes
[bump]
QUOTE
Arz said:
Demosthenes, I'm going to assume you come from the standardized connaucht accent.
I agree that sperethiel matches up much better with tolkiens' elvish than any of the gaelic dialects I've seen.
Some of the dialects are so close to dead though that I can't say with any certainty. Then you have the old timers from Cork who speak in a totally different manner(my grans, deceased).


Well, my "native" dialect is Conamara Irish, but I'm very familiar with Donegal/Northern Irish, and you can't deal with Gaelic language media without running into the Munster dialect all the time.

The differences in pronunciation and language are enough that it can be hard to understand someone with a really broad dialect, but the fundamental rules for pronouncing the kinds of sounds that turn up in Sperethiel words all the time are essentially the same.
Hence, my comment on Sperethiel not having much to do with Irish/Gaelic pronunciation.
You could try Cornish, but if you're going that far afield, you might as well have the Elves speak Basque (what a cool idea...)

[end of thread derailment and bumping]
My apologies to whoever had to wade through my (none too-thorough) linguistic ranting.
Prospero
QUOTE (kevyn668)
QUOTE (Prospero @ Jun 27 2004, 11:04 PM)
Another thing to keep in mind is that unless you're talking about an IE, no character speaks Sperethiel as their native language. Well, a few maybe - and then you'd have to be young. But even if it was your native langague, the accent will be passed down to you from your parents who weren't (I assume) native speakers. So you'd mimic whatever accent they had - if they were Irish, you'd speak Sperethiel with an Irish influenced-accent. If they were from TT, you'd probably speak it with an American influenced-accent. IEs would, of course, be the exception to this. They'd have an accent like, well, nothing else, realistically, though I bet even they would be influenced by thousands of years that they were forced to speak other languages besides Sperethiel.

Well, if you want to nit-pick, I'll go you one better.

In fact, IEs would not speak Sperethiel as their native language. Its a variant of what ever they spoke in Ed. wink.gif

As for native speakers, I seem to remember a few Canon references to elves only speaking "The Voice"--I think they were examples in earlier BBBs and from the original Sprawl Sites. So there is a precedent for Sperethiel speaking elves.

Besides all that, maybe the character I have in mind simply speaks Sperethiel as his primary language but speaks one or more others as well--like in Europe. Since he speaks Sperethiel the most, it would affect his speech patterns. Kinda like if you hang out down south (in the US) long enough, you pick up a bit of a drawl. Amongst other things... biggrin.gif

Definately. That's why there's talk in the TT book about the inner council speaking a language that sounds kinda like Sperethiel, but which Sperethiel speakers can't understand. Old Sperethiel or whatever you want to call it. Modern Sperethiel is probably some descendant of that...? Presumeably. Or one could be Theran (which, if I remember my ED, was related to Elvish) and the other could be actual Elvish. Who knows?

As for cannon refrences to Sperethiel-only speakers, I don't remember and my Sprawl Sites (and 1st and 2nd eds) is buried under a ton of rpg books and I'm too lazy to go dig any of them out and look. Again, it's possible, just not all that likely to be common. You'd have to have been born after Sperethiel was made available to learn as a language (who actually "re-introduced" Sperethiel? I don't remember anything about that in TT or TnO or anything else. And when? Anybody know?) and you'd have to have been in a place where it was used around you constantly as a child (if you want to learn it as a native speaker). So, probably some nationalist noble's kid in TT or TnO? And I'm sure you'd probably speak some other langauge. I mean, what percentage of the world speaks Sperethiel? You'd definately learn something else, I have no doubt.

As for the pronounciation of Sperethiel influencing your pronounciation of other languages: I suppose it's possible. It just really depends on where Sperethiel came from and what kind of accent was introduced with it. Did the IEs reintroduce it and, therefore, reintroduce its "native" accent, or...?

Anyway, you should do whatever you want with your character. I'm getting a degree that involves a hefty dose of linguistics so I just like to think about these kinds of things, just because. spin.gif

@ Demosthenes and Arz: Definately not anything like any of the Celtic languages, as far as I know any of them, either. But the Basque connection would be kinda cool... I mean, no one knows what Basque is related to and all that...

Also, since Tolkien took a lot of his Elvish grammar from Finnish, then would it make more sense to make Elvish be pronounced like some mutant Finnish dialect? Any Finns out there - would Elvish work at all with Finnish pronounciation?

BTW - Demosthenes: My Irish is a bit rusty, but does your .sig say what I think it says? (Not any sick ar$e like your own sick ar$e?)
CircuitBoyBlue
I think it's great that one of the people with the most useful knowledge on pronunciations in this thread goes by the handle "Demosthenes." Unless the fact that it's been years since I studied ancient Macedonia is screwing me up, in which case that first sentence is entirely stupid.
Kagetenshi
Now we just need Locke to come in and disagree.

~J
Slamm-O
i heard that they recently decided (or maybe someone just proposed it) that Euskara and tibetan languages are related, in a very distant way (read before the basque foray into europe, which predates the indo-european migration, so like garden of eden stuff smile.gif)

but im pretty sure this has not been proven, or at least accepted. Just something interesting
Demosthenes
@Prosper:
Re: my .sig, that would indeed be a possible translation. A more apt one would be "There's no sore arse like your own sore arse".
I'm just being a smart-aleck and perverting the well known Irish saying, "Nil aon tintean mar do thintean fein" (There's no hearth like your own hearth), because they sound similar enough in Conamara Irish that one is clearly a play on words of the other...

It beats trying to be profound. biggrin.gif

To make an attempt at being on-topic:
Regardless of who introduced Sperethiel, or what influences other languages and geography had upon it, a native speaker of Sperethiel would likely have a distinctive accent - at least, one recognisable to other speakers of Sperethiel.
All languages have a limited set of sound building-blocks (phonemes), and different languages tend to employ similar sounds in different ways (eg the "gn" sound when it appears in English and Italian {not a very fair comparison I know}).

As a result, your native language(s) greatly influence how you pronounce other languages, especially if you're trying to speak a language which has sounds which your native language does not employ, examples:

Italians have difficulties with the English "H" when it is aspirated ("hair")
Speakers of Japanese are infamous for their confusion of "r" and "l" sounds
Many English-language speakers have difficulty with alternative pronunciations of "CH" (how many of you can pronounce "Loch" without giving yourself a sore throat?).
[end of even more thread derailing]

Apologies for the long post. wink.gif
Ancient History
s'alright. And for the record, Sperethiel is "officially" descended from "Precursor Sperethiel" (catchy, ain't it?), mainly because we don't know what the more complicated precursor language calls itself.
LaughingTiger
QUOTE (Prospero)
Also, since Tolkien took a lot of his Elvish grammar from Finnish, then would it make more sense to make Elvish be pronounced like some mutant Finnish dialect? Any Finns out there - would Elvish work at all with Finnish pronounciation?

Tolkien based his two Elven dialects, Quenyan and Sindarin, on Old Icelandic. If I remember correctly, it hasn't been spoken in quite some time.
Prospero
Fair enough. For some reason I thought there was some Finnish grammatical influence in there. I know he plundered a few languages for things he liked and kind of mashed it all together like only a linguistic genius could. spin.gif BTW, as far as I'm aware Icelandic hasn't changed all that significantly in the past few hundred years. Apparently school kids in Iceland don't have much trouble reading the old sagas in the original, so it can't be all that different.

@Demosthenes: Right... I knew that sounded familiar for some reason... smile.gif

Also, while I agree that your native language influences how you pronounce other languages, that's only because of the accent you develop when you learn it. If Sperethiel were "rediscovered" in a book and everybody but a few priveledged people learned it from a book, with little or no input on how it should be pronounced, there would be no Sperethiel accent. The general populace would know how to pronounce the phonemes correctly, so they'd fall back on their own native langauges for that knowledge. And they'd pass that down to whomever they taught, presumeably, until actual "correct" pronounciation was taught en masse at some point (if ever).

Which is how we get, for example, an Irish accent or an Indian (as in India)accent. Yeah, everybody's saying the same words with the same letters, but different sounds are coming out of their mouths. It would be like that, but worse, with Sperethiel.
Demosthenes
WARNING! Long rambling post ahead!!!

QUOTE
Also, while I agree that your native language influences how you pronounce other languages, that's only because of the accent you develop when you learn it. If Sperethiel were "rediscovered" in a book and everybody but a few priveledged people learned it from a book, with little or no input on how it should be pronounced, there would be no Sperethiel accent. The general populace would know how to pronounce the phonemes correctly, so they'd fall back on their own native langauges for that knowledge. And they'd pass that down to whomever they taught, presumeably, until actual "correct" pronounciation was taught en masse at some point (if ever).

Which is how we get, for example, an Irish accent or an Indian (as in India)accent. Yeah, everybody's saying the same words with the same letters, but different sounds are coming out of their mouths. It would be like that, but worse, with Sperethiel.


Well, that's more or less so. But there's also the fact that some languages simply don't employ certain sounds at all, so their speakers don't learn to manipulate their lips/tongue etc to form those sounds. My wife is Italian and speaks perfect English (doing post-doctoral research on 19thC Irish periodicals it's kind of necessary), and has been taught proper pronunciation. She still can't quite manage certain uses of "th" or "h".

My understanding of Japanese problems with "R" and "L" sounds is that, since their language doesn't distinguish between those sounds, unless they are exposed to other languages which do, many Japanese actually cannot distinguish between the two sounds at all because they lack the mental equipment to do so. Unfortunately, I can't recall where I read that particular gem, and I suspect it's a gross oversimplification. It's been a long time since I dug out my linguistics textbooks.

To get back on track:
QUOTE
AH Said:s'alright. And for the record, Sperethiel is "officially" descended from "Precursor Sperethiel" (catchy, ain't it?), mainly because we don't know what the more complicated precursor language calls itself.


Which is where we descend into all kinds of fun, because the Sperethiel precursor (that is to say, the language from which modern Sperethiel originates) is...Sperethiel, in Earthdawn...though no doubt there are differences between the two languages.
Given how widespread, geographically and culturally, Sperethiel was in the Earthdawn era (and I'd ask AH to check me on this as my ED knowledge is sketchy at best), should it not have left some trace upon other languages?

Of course it's possible that it did...it just depends on fun things like when the Indo-European migrations began.
If the IE (Indo-European, or aryan if you prefer a more loaded word...) migration and linguistic take over of Europe/the Mediterranean took place after the ED era, then it's possible that Sperethiel was one of those pre-Indo-European languages which just died out, leaving tiny little clues (such as the word "thalassa" in Greek, which is not of IE origin AFAIK).

Or the Sperethiel precursor could always be Etruscan... cool.gif
I like this idea, because no one has the least idea what Etruscan was like, so a GM can pull ideas out of his a$$ all day and not have to worry about where they fit in with the real world...
Which is handy, given how much of a spanner the existence of Sperethiel must throw in the works of SR-era academics.

I can just see the great linguists of the 2060s embroiled in huge arguments and debates about synthetic languages, loan-words, traces of sperethiel-precursors in non IE (and how's that for irony) languages, and pet theories revolving around any given dead language that just happens to match a given academic's prejudices.
Matrix runs to screw people over before they publish...

I'll stop now before I descend even further into ridiculousness.
Ancient History
Actually, Precursor Sperethiel is not Earthdawn-era Sperethiel. Precursor Sperethiel is a more complex language of which Sperethiel is something like a degraded form.

This is a poor comparison, but compare Latin during the height of Rome to the doggerel Latin used in the Courts of Europe during the Middle Ages.

It would be more appropriate to consider Sperethiel as a (mostly) dead language undergoing a modern revival, considering it hasn't had more than a few dozen speakers for five millenia or so.

Other languages in ED were known to be descended from or incorporate Sperethiel words. I can't say about Sperethiel itself, but the loaning would likely have happened pre-Scourge. Elves are very picky about the "purity" of the language or some such drek.
Prospero
QUOTE
Well, that's more or less so. But there's also the fact that some languages simply don't employ certain sounds at all, so their speakers don't learn to manipulate their lips/tongue etc to form those sounds. My wife is Italian and speaks perfect English (doing post-doctoral research on 19thC Irish periodicals it's kind of necessary), and has been taught proper pronunciation. She still can't quite manage certain uses of "th" or "h".

My understanding of Japanese problems with "R" and "L" sounds is that, since their language doesn't distinguish between those sounds, unless they are exposed to other languages which do, many Japanese actually cannot distinguish between the two sounds at all because they lack the mental equipment to do so. Unfortunately, I can't recall where I read that particular gem, and I suspect it's a gross oversimplification. It's been a long time since I dug out my linguistics textbooks.


@ Demosthenes: This is true. But all of this happens at a young age. While the debate is still going on, its pretty well accepted that unless you learn pronounciation of a language at a young age (say, before you're done with puberty in your late teens or so) the chances of you sounding like a native speaker are pretty small. Some people can do it, but they're sort of the Olympic champions of pronounciation. Its possible, but rare. You can still speak the language perfectly fluently, like your wife speaks English, but little differences in pronounciation will give you away as a non-native speaker.

And yes, if your native language(s) don't have a particular sound, its very, very difficult for you to hear it. Before your 1st b-day (or so), after you've been hearing your native language(s) spoken around you for a while, your brain is apparently wired up to distinguish between certain sounds and regard other distinctions as noise. There was an experiment where it was shown that American babies younger than 9 months (I think) could distinguish differences in pronounciation that were found in Czech, but not in English. After about 9 months, they couldn't do it anymore. I forget the reference, but I did some research on this last year.

So anyway, after that you could learn to distinguish these sounds (a Japanese person can be taught to distinguish R and L, for example) but it's a lot harder. It takes a good bit of practice, as lots of ESL/EFL students will tell you.

So how all this relates to Sperethiel is (to get back on topic) that unless you learned Sperethiel as a young child, most of these niceties of pronounciation are going to be lost on most learners. And this bastardized version would get passed down, unless corrected. Now, I could see (at least in the Tirs) a wide-spread effort to fight this - especially since the actual percentage of Sperethiel- speakers is pretty low, if I remember correctly.

As for Sperethiel "purity" - what do you think? Is there an Academie Francaise (sp) of Sperethiel? And who controls which Tir's version of Sperethiel is the "standard" one? There may not be much difference yet, but some of those Elves are long-lived enough to be planning for when there will be... Linguistic terrorism - the new category of Shadowrun wobble.gif
Ancient History
In the Earthdawn Era, the Elven Court was the standard by which Sperethiel was set. Theran was Sperethiel that absorbed a lot of foreign words and evolved away from Sperethiel proper for over a millenia. Still, someone familiar with Sperethiel could grasp the gist of someone speaking Theran.

In the Sixth World, it is not recorded which Tir began speaking Sperethiel first, or indeed when Sperethiel exactly came on the scene and how.

Tir Tairngire is probably the closest home to "true" Sperethiel, as they apparently don't have the regional-based dialects of Gaelic-Sperethiel and Eireann-Sperethiel in Tir na nOg.

[/edit]

Oh, Hell, I'm changing this anyways:
QUOTE
History
The current language of Sperethiel spoken in the Fourth and Sixth worlds, was developed from an
older and more complex language, possibly developed in the early Fourth or even Third world.  The
current usage in the Sixth world was brought by the Great Elves; possibly to form a sense of cultural
identity.  It should be noted that I do not include mere accents or oddities of speech (like the Southern
Drawl in United States English).  Regional accents have existed in Sperethiel, however: the elven lands
north of the Elven Court in the Fourth Age were known for their awkward, halting cadences, and there
is apparently a regional dialect in Sixth World Australia.

Related Langauges
Theran
          Spoken by members of the Theran Empire, as well as those who wish to trade with them, Theran is a descendent of Sperethiel, bearing a relation to that language.  Theran developed when Elianar Messias and his followers travelled to the island of  Thera; and the continued growth and trading of the island and then the Empire.  Those who understand Sperethiel can get the gist of what is being said in Theran, but will miss the particulars, as Theran has incorporated many words from other languages around the Selestrean Sea.  In a similar manner, Throalic has incorporated many Theran words due to the former occupation of the Empire before the Scourge, and Or'zat, or Traveler's Orkish, has incorporated many Throalic words.
            Therefore, it's not inconceivable that a Sperethiel word may pop up in any of these langauges, albeit likely bastardized..
Eireann-Sperethiel
          Quite literally, Irish Sperethiel.  This is the formal, courtly language of  the elves of Tir na nÓg, a specialized tongue rarely used outside of ceremonial and  political circles.  The less fun parts of my days often involve sorting out what's gaelic  and what's Elvish and what's a bastard of the two, which is a joke.  Laugh.  Louder!
Gaelic Sperethiel
          A form of Sperethiel using many Gaelic languages words and intonations or grammar, used almost exclusively by residents of Tir na nÓg; and possibly nearby elven communities in Wales and Scotland as well.
Precursor Sperethiel
        An older, more complex language of which Sperethiel is derived from.  It is also possible that Sperethiel is a degenerate version of this tongue.  Speculation  places it's origin from the early Fourth World or earlier.  Heres a few samples of what  may be the Sperethiel precursor; insofar as they resemble given forms of Sperethiel  without being at all identifieable (a note: these may also be Theran or some other derivative of Sperethiel or it's Precursor.):
                Sae'retar!
                ¿N'e'quea che tsemena mettakas q'en demell?
                Te meravilhas, Har'lea'quinn?
                Que't destrui e't coton?
                M'aela j-taam querm talar!
                Alamestra (This is most likely a type of alcohol)
                Invae (This refers to insect spirits)

kevyn668
@ Prospero:
So what you're saying is I can roleplay an elf with magical abilities but he can't have an elvish accent?

Way to rain on my parade, chummer. nyahnyah.gif
Demosthenes
@Kevyn:

No, what he's saying is that he could have an Elven accent, just that it's not very likely.

Of course, neither is a perfectly rational person with excellent interpersonal skills deciding to commit horrid crimes for nuyen (unless you count being a lawyer...)

Natives of the Tirs (and by god, I hate the people who came up with that wonderful bastardisation...but what you gonna do...) would certainly have their own peculiar accents, which most people would interpret as "Elven"...and your character could always have had parents who were fanatics of racial purity/Sperethiel Nazis and absolutely insisted he spoke Sperethiel all the time at home, at school, everywhere else.
There's plenty of people like that in Ireland (if not quite as bad on the Nazi side of things...)

@Prosper:
That was more or less what I meant, yes. As I said, it's been some time since I looked up my linguistics stuff (several years, actually).

As far as pronunciation goes...I've never found it that hard to fake being a native German speaker. I can quite easily convince a lot of people that I'm from Salzburg. The only thing that gives me away is that I speak too correctly...

On the other hand, I studied German for more than ten years, had native German speakers as teachers, spent a year in Salzburg, and spent more than a month of that year doing nothing but mimicking the sound-changes in the local dialect. It was great fun.

I still can't pull it off in Italian though, even though I'm fairly fluent. Not enough practise, and not enough effort put in. frown.gif

@AH:
Thanks. smile.gif

@All:
I'd just like to thank the lot of ye...this little thread gave me the germ of an idea which I'm going to spring on my players the next time I need a little IE (take your pick of meaning) paranoia... nyahnyah.gif

The government of Tir Tairngire (I wonder if anyone really wants to try and pronounce that according to the gaelic pronunciation...most Irish people would have a fit just looking at it...) hires the runners for a little job.
They need to stop a certain well-known academic from publishing his latest screed on the origins of Sperethiel... [Insert reasons according to the flavour of paranoia that suits you best] spin.gif
Prospero
@ kevyn668: Ain't I a stinker? Demothenes hit it more on the head - you could have a real elven Sperethiel-speaker accent, but it just isn't all that likely.

But Demosthenes' post gave me a kind of interesting idea: you could easily have a "fake" elven accent. I mean, what is an "elven accent" anyway? Really, accent is (partially) a social construct. It identifies you with a particular group (often whether you want to be or not, hence diction and pronounciation classes). So Tir subjects, at least the ones who are proud of it, might try and purposefully distinguish their language from outsiders' - slipping in occasional Sperethiel words, maybe changing pronounciation here and there on a few words, changing the grammar a bit... And their friends and spouses (and, especially their kids) might pick up on it. The change couldn't be huge, but enough, after a few decades, to distinguish their speech from non-Tiran speech, like Canadian vs. American accent: it's not much, but it is there and it can be noticeable. Wouldn't that, then, be seen as an "Elvish accent"?

Of course, you can just throw all this out the window, screw linguistic realism and just make a character that has an elven accent. Whatever's fun. For me, debating linguistics and trying to figure out the impact and limitations of a reintroduced, long-almost-dead langauge is really fun.

@ Demosthenes:
QUOTE
As far as pronunciation goes...I've never found it that hard to fake being a native German speaker. I can quite easily convince a lot of people that I'm from Salzburg. The only thing that gives me away is that I speak too correctly...

On the other hand, I studied German for more than ten years, had native German speakers as teachers, spent a year in Salzburg, and spent more than a month of that year doing nothing but mimicking the sound-changes in the local dialect. It was great fun.

I still can't pull it off in Italian though, even though I'm fairly fluent. Not enough practise, and not enough effort put in.

Exactly my point - English speakers who don't put in ten years into the study of a language, learn pronounciation from native-speakers, and spend time in a specific dialect region can't do that. In the sports world, that's what Olympians do: practice like crazy for a lot of years. You may now officially consider youself an Olympic-class German speaker, though your Italian is apparently only an Olympic alternate... biggrin.gif
BTW, cool run idea!

@ AH: Thanks for the info. My ED is pretty rusty. You know, I always wondered if the different IEs had different accents. We don't really know if they were all (or even mostly) from the same area, do we? Hell, some could even be from the Second world, for all we know.

@ everybody: One of the things I've always thought would be kind of cool, is if at least one of the other racial languages got started again. I mean, in Dunkie's will some Robert Page guy got left an "ancient document" about Orcish. The seeds are there... I guess when FASA decided to minimize the ED-SR crossover stuff, they axed Orcish. Pretty realistically, too - its damn hard to ressurect a langauge. Though not impossible - Israel did it. Why not the orcs?
Nikoli
Coulda swore Sperethiel srang up as a result of I. Elves teaching their foundling cousins, how else could it arise so quickly? so perhaps the proper accent, verbage, etc became ingrained in, perhaps not the first generation, but rather, the proceeding generations. As the same elf might have taught at the schools, posing as a humble linguist.
shadd4d
If I remember what a friend of mine related to me correctly, the Sperithial in Shadowrun got invented in something like 1990 or so and by some linguist, like that other invented language by the Polish guy. I want to say the details are in Tir Taingre about the invention of the elven language before elves actually came into being.

Don
CircuitBoyBlue
My Tir Tairngire sourcebook has a few pages missing, but I belive what they were talking about was intended more as a hint at Sperethiel being created by Immortal Elves, because it sprang up too quickly to have been done entirely after the awakening. Of course, I like your way better, because I'm not sure that Immortal Elves exist in my game.
Demosthenes
QUOTE (Prospero)

But Demosthenes' post gave me a kind of interesting idea: you could easily have a "fake" elven accent. I mean, what is an "elven accent" anyway? Really, accent is (partially) a social construct. It identifies you with a particular group (often whether you want to be or not, hence diction and pronounciation classes). So Tir subjects, at least the ones who are proud of it, might try and purposefully distinguish their language from outsiders' - slipping in occasional Sperethiel words, maybe changing pronounciation here and there on a few words, changing the grammar a bit... And their friends and spouses (and, especially their kids) might pick up on it.


That was more or less what I had in mind. The other aspect to bear in mind as regards Tir Tairngire (more so than Tir na nOg, which seems likely to retain an Irish-to-midatlantic type accent) is that many of its inhabitants are Elves of many different origins and backgrounds...which in turn would have an influence upon the development of the local accent, especially if people started learning Sperethiel in school, or simply hearing a lot of it.
It'd still take ages to become distinctive...unless, as Prospero says, someone is deliberately speeding things up...

QUOTE
[snippage]

Of course, you can just throw all this out the window, screw linguistic realism and just make a character that has an elven accent. Whatever's fun. For me, debating linguistics and trying to figure out the impact and limitations of a reintroduced, long-almost-dead langauge is really fun.


Me too. It's Etruscan dammit. nyahnyah.gif

QUOTE
@ Demosthenes:
QUOTE

[Snippage of shameless bragging]


Exactly my point - English speakers who don't put in ten years into the study of a language, learn pronounciation from native-speakers, and spend time in a specific dialect region can't do that. In the sports world, that's what Olympians do: practice like crazy for a lot of years. You may now officially consider yourself an Olympic-class German speaker, though your Italian is apparently only an Olympic alternate... biggrin.gif
BTW, cool run idea!


Thank you! notworthy.gif
Glad you like the idea. Since it'll be at least a month before my L5R game is wrapped, any feedback from anyone who wants to steal it and use it is more than welcome...

As to resurrecting the Orkish language (I guess FASA just didn't like Orc with a "c"), I think that in itself could lead to all kinds of interesting runs...
Tenebris
Miscellaneous Tolkein source debate for elvish script:
Tengwar
Some odd debate

Not that unrealistic to consider children growing up fluent in two or more widely different languages, even ones acquired by the parents relatively late in their lives. I did. I even have "th" problems and speak two of the fluent languages with a distinct German accent even though I am only marginally able with German, because the primary parent did. I can usually say it if I concentrate, but if I am tired or distracted, "d" creeps right back in. Absolutely fluent from as early as anyone learns a spoken language, yet I have phoneme issues that would suggest second language acquisition much later in life.

Regardless of parental fluency or accent, when placed into a common environment where the bastardised language is the only one available for discourse, the children will create a real language of it, with real grammar: créolisation. It won't be what the parents spoke, though.

Babies in their babbling phase have been demonstrated to voice every existing phoneme, not only those available within their native tongue. As they learn the relevant language, they unlearn the phonemes not applicable to it. Usually they can pick up the unfamiliar phonemes again before the linguistic barrier around puberty. Before puberty they can learn to speak as is common in the environment, "without accent". After puberty, this is rare indeed, and my congratulations to those who succeed (Demosthenes).

Finally, all accents float. No matter what your birth accent, different linguistic environments and interactions will shift it. At this point, saying what is a true elvish accent is less than pointless.

Probably won't stop the IEs from trying, though. Like you said, Prospero, l'Académie spérethielaise wink.gif

Romani ite domum!
Prospero
@ Tenebris: Bi- or mulit-lingualism is certainly common. Hell, in much of the world it's the default. People in many parts of Africa, for example, or India grow up speaking a few langauges, commonly. It's really only in Europe and America (and maybe, in Asia, though I'm less familiar with it) that bi- or multi-lingualisim is considered strange or exceptional - in America, sadly, probably moreso than in Europe, even. Though I bet in SR, that's changing as more Native American langauges are slowly resurrecting themselves and other languages, like Sperethiel, are creeping in. I don't have a problem with Tiran kids having more than one native langauge, per se, but I just think only a small minority of them would be exposed to significant amounts of Sperethiel. And I don't think any kid would make a creole out of English/Sperethiel - they might be fluent in both, but they definitely wouldn't have to creolize anything.

@ Demosthenes: So, if Sperethiel is Etruscan, shouldn't their be an elven kingdom somewhere on the Italian peninsula? spin.gif
CircuitBoyBlue
Not necessarily. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure nobody's exactly sure where the Etruscans came from (partly because their language is so different than anything else). I've heard a lot of theories about how they probably left wherever they came from under duress, but nobody I've heard really seems confident in any theories about exactly where that was. If you're willing to go with goofball theories (which SR has the luxury of doing; it's one of its strengths), their point of origin can be just about anywhere.
Tzeentch
-- I would be lying if I said that the Sperenthiel terminology and usage from the books wasn't effectively pulled out of thin air, but there was a method to the madness when choosing terms and spelling and even sentence structure.
-- I wouldn't take it too seriously, it wasn't designed by linguists or anything. IMO anyone expecting to be able to translate Hamlet into Sperenthiel (or even construct a reasonably complex conversion) based on the information presented is not being realistic.
HeySparky
On the sound of Gaelic vs. the sounds of English

In a crowded public place I find I can quite easily distinguish between American English speakers and British English speakers when the tone, timbre and cadence are all that can be heard. Note - not any actual words.

By contrast, I find it VERY difficult to distinguish the tone, timbre and cadence of American English speakers and Gaelic speakers.
Fortune
(Nothing to back up the following)

The way I see it, Ehran and his merry band of Keebs'R'Us re-introduced Sperethiel as a way of making elves even more elite. The would probably have been done more or lees right from the onset in each of the Tirs' formation. This really is right up Ehran's alley.

It is only natural that the version of Sperethiel that resulted differed not only from the original old tongue, but also from that which would arise in the other Tir. This would be due to the influence of the prevailing language and culture of the population learning the new language.

I'm not an expert, but this seems to me only logical, given the lack of other evidence to the contrary.
Kagetenshi
Names have power. The words of Sperethiel still have some part of their old authority over the world.

~J
Fortune
I have no doubt that would also factor into Ehran's (or whoever's) decision to re-introduce the language. A good case could be made both for and against making these 'power names' more accessible to the rable...even if it is Elven rable.
Ed Simons
QUOTE (Prospero)
@ everybody: One of the things I've always thought would be kind of cool, is if at least one of the other racial languages got started again. I mean, in Dunkie's will some Robert Page guy got left an "ancient document" about Orcish. The seeds are there... I guess when FASA decided to minimize the ED-SR crossover stuff, they axed Orcish. Pretty realistically, too - its damn hard to ressurect a langauge. Though not impossible - Israel did it. Why not the orcs?

The Orks don't have to resurrect a language, they merely have to coopt one. My 'Ork' rigger, Fiver, firmly believes that the ancient Orkish language was channeled in the 1980's by Marc Okrand. Because of this, Fiver has learned and made sure his numerous children are all taught the Klingon language.
Kagetenshi
I award you a point of karma.

~J
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