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urautismdiagnosis · 3 days ago

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LANGUAGE HEADCANONS

including the vegimals, also some pirate culture lore for kwazii ig

@calamaroo

BARNACLES

Barnacles learned basic English as an extracurricular when he was younger, but he only really learned it (and gained the accent) when he went to university in Manitoba (polar bear capital of the world and the university works by, with, and for indigenous people with a lot of foreign people coming to study). he's got a similar thing with the speaking Russian and I'm gonna steal the specific language of inuktuk from you.

Also because the Arctic has so many different countries in it (although everyone in the Arctic considers themselves as just "the Arctic because wtf are u gonna do about borders? come through the snow storm and take me to another snowy white spot that looks exactly the same (to you) as the other snowy white spot I was in? FCK borders in the Arctic no one there gives a sht)

Anyways they do have a common sign language because I LOVE SIGN LANGUAGE AND WILL INSERT IT EVERYWHERE I CAN

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KWAZII:

Kwazii did grow up with a very mixed pirate crew, although A LOT of members were either English speaking or Japanese speaking predominantly , he also watched a lot of old kids anime as a kid in Japanese as well lol. not to mention the native island cultures they often interacted with including my very fictional "meowri" (they're sphinx cats with ttattoes and very loosely inspired by Polynesian cultures)...

Because of the general culture of the pirate crew being diverse (esp cuz of interactions on ports/other crews) there was also a lot slang and terms that was known shared and sort of used as a basic communication system for everyone.

so there'd be random Spanish and Arabic terms from the most niche origin points just being used commonly, and that includes a lot of outdated ones, cultural sayings, or words that just don't exist in a lot of other languages, and etc

not to mention that because of how old the pirate clan he was a part of was (founded in 1920s) and because of the different crews there's genuinely like hundreds and hundreds of them being in these isolated communities and even being born and raised in them. so there's a lot of words that cant even be found anywhere else, so kwazii does get frustrated when he cant express what he wants to say but he just... cant even translate the word

OR the words everyone else uses for it doesn't make any sense! it... it kinda makes him feel stupid sometimes

also because his clan did work with a lot of wild animals as non tech sources of information (you feed them and then they get u good info!! for strategy, spying, whatever! and no one even blinks an eye cuz its just a crow (an extremely intelligent bird)!) but uh... the problem with that is that well alot of animals uhhhh misunderstand stuff

so that means that all the names of locations, descriptions of wild animals, ways of naming ships, and all the information would've have to have been animal comprehension friendly. not to mention be more coded cuz of non-friend pirate clans and G O V E R N M E N T S- so I'd get some wacky name replacements for all sorts of things.... its really a mess XD, a beautiful mess but still

also explained why so many of the pirate tales about *insert scientific name of the episode's animal* was often over exaggerated with strange details... including ones pirates shouldn't even known. Like how could they know about sword fish making the water around them warm?

its because a lot of that info CAME from the animals... animals who... don't understand numbers and say things like "and it was 20 feet tall!" even if it was only 5.... because it FEELS that tall to the small animal yk? also not understanding science on a deeper level so its all explained in a strange way. Ofc the pirates DONT help the issue because they be exaggerating the hell out of their own stories-

yeah sure the snake was "long as the river itself" Cj and SURE it was 20 sharks or whatever and not THREE that chased you kwazii

lying in story telling is just a form of pirate love actually, so is pranks and pickpocketing but kwazii refrains lol... this turned into me yapping about the blorbo

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BASIC COMMUNICATION SKILLS:

Speaking of the basic communication thing, the octonauts crew was trained on the main words for rescue related communication in more common languages like Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, etc and will take time to learn (or just refresh) before heading to a new location.

Because in my own au the communication abilities of the wildlife is a lot more limited based on their level of intelligence. so an orca would technically be bi lingual in their own orca language and be able to speak nearly identical to a humanoid person

also like I said before about sign language, BASIC PIRATE SIGNS THAT ONLY OTHER PIRATES KNOW AYYYYYYYYY

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DASHI:

Australian Dashie my beloved<3 honestly she WOULD have learned several languages and learned more for/from her friends shes so capable and incredible fr. also FCK it MORE sign language! I headcanon shes CODA, which means you're the child of one or two parents who are both either hard of hearing or Deaf! so she actually was learning sign very VERY young from her mom <3 and well the rest of her family cuz they all knew it lol

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PESO:

peso is obviously bilingual and he's the BEST at the basic communications skills thing and most well versed cuz he deals with the most animals one on one, so he actually can communicate with pretty much all the animal creatures, even taking the time to learn some slang terms the animals might have learned so that they'll feel safer and more comfortable around him!

he also picks up on a lot of dialects especially since his cousins are so diverse

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TWEAK:

as for tweak she knows a lot of Spanish actually because hey! Miami has A LOT Spanish speakers, so much that's its actually made an entirely new developing dialect unique to the area!

tweak actually understands a decent amount of Japanese and Russian but.... not for normal conversations, more like because of all the engineering studying she did! research papers, studies, articles, lectures, books etc etc... so she could probably have a full conversation about the physics and math of submarines in those languages but if you wanted to talk about like... how you're feeling today or what you want for dinner she can not answer that LMSO

INKLING:

inkling would absolutely know like SO many languages, I have the headcanon that the reason he actually met barnacles in that university was actually because he studied LAND SPECIES for years (and continues to enjoy observing his crew and doing behavioural experiments on them without anyone noticing, esp since they're so diverse and they're in such a unique social environment on the octopod! but shhhh don't tell the others it would ruin the natural response they have! he does this with love btw)

hes also literally mega brained so I'd be surprised if he didn't at least understand the basics of any language the octonauts knew purely based on his own curiosity....

SHELLINGTON:

hehe Gaelic go brrrrrr

also because I headcanon Shellie as being a a mix of Eurasian otters and small clawed Asian otters, I think he does have some Philippine heritage and knows some Tagalog but not that much and he's a bit sad about that in all honesty. his *ss would also know latin

VEGIMALS:

IVE BEEN PLANNING TO MAKE A VEGIMALESE LANGUAGE POST:

ok so basically their language is entirely unique and not just because of them being the only known vegimals:

the thing is that their vocal cords (or vegetable/fish equivalent) isn't really made for the languages they hear on the octopod... or English.

the thing is they are their own little pod, and during their earliest developmental years they spent the MAJORITY of their time only with eachother or with shellington, what this means is that while some of the verbal and auditorial cues they have is just innate to vegimal understanding- (and also had difficult time replicating sounds shellington made, while it being easier to replicate a word one of the other vegimals made)

they quite literally made their own words for a lot of things while talking with eachother, before shellington had even realized! a lot of their language development did formulate very similarly to english (and Gaelic) because that's what they were hearing from shellington!

as they continue to grow and get older (they're really only about like 11 to me) their English has actually improved a lot, because they've learned how to mimic the others better, that's how they learned that the vegimals still used a lot of the literal baby talk words that shellington used with them while they were growing up, but just in their own original language

not to mention a lot of their language does have a lot of the meaning derived from the enunciation, tone, rhythm, and etc... so that means its a bit harder for those who just.. don't have the built in brain biology to distinguish those sounds to understand them

ofc shellington did literally raise them so its much much easier for him to understand because (whether he realizes it or not) he was actually learning the language AS they developed it! ofc over the years the other octonauts have actually started to subconsciously pick up on the meanings of those more subtle language features of vegimalese, and combined with knowing the vegimals slang/phrases, and the vegimals learning how to replicate more and more English ones, their understanding of the vegimals only keeps increasing

but to anyone else who isn't an octonaut its.... kinda like hearing a lil guy yip yip a bunch of gibberish and then everyone else in the room going "oh yes of course! that's a great idea Tototofrit! and don't worry, well make sure our fish friends aren't scared as we perform your very clever and crafty plan!"

also my friend said I can pull off a decent vegimal accent so if anyone wants any tips lmk (I would stim in vegimalese in middle school btw LMSO but I did learn a decent amount on how they pronounce things and their speech patterns... still working on perfecting it but I got some starter tips LOL)

also the reasons halibeet and pikato don't show up as much as the other vegimals is because they're just genuinely more introverted, halibeet and pikato do enjoy each other's quiet company tho (as well as the other vegimals, but they're really more homebodies who just aren't as into the whole adventure stuff)

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