#estin//ien only speaks informal standard ishgardian despite his status and this nuance is lost when he speaks eorzean

[tovaicas]

current h/c lines rn are leaning towards the idea that ishgard (bc geographical and cultural isolationism) doesn’t share an alphabet with the rest of eorzea, and neither does the ishgardian language.

specifically ishgardian bases its alphabet off permutations of how the initial settlers to coerthas wrote, so it’s actually been subtly influenced by dravanian owing to pre-ratatoskr developments (predictably this fact’s been scrubbed from the history books). it’s still within the elezen-family language group, but ishgardian and like.....gridianian elezen languages are very obviously two entirely different lineages and aren’t mutually intelligible.

(ishgardian and other gridianian-family elezen languages are related in the same way you’d call norwegian and dutch germanic languages. there are lexical and grammatical similarities and they are part of a family branch but they are very obviously very distinct from each other and have descended from different things.

ishgardian’s been influenced by dravanian more than they’d like to admit, with a lot of words, phrases, and even location names originally being calques, loanwords, root words, or other borrowings from dravanian, both before ratatoskr and after. ‘proper’ ishgardian often doesn’t want to consider these legitimate, but post-ratatoskr this is really apparent with a lot of words referring to war and it’s instruments among people who are not the clergy.)

the ishgardian alphabet has gone through a lot of permutations over the years but is in all its forms descended from proto-elezen, old ishgardian, and subtle dravanian influences bc it’s what the enchiridion is written in (specifically it’s written in old ishgardian, which is descended from proto-elezen and influenced by dravanian, ironically). old ishgardian itself is still a prestige thing (though pretty much everyone can understand it) among the clergy similar to how latin was.

even just within the city there are some pretty crazy dialectal differences; old ishgardian, an understandable but archaic form of the language, is highly associated with the church (the archbishop and members of the holy see all speak old ishgardian, the enchiridion is written in it, and services are performed in it near-exclusively, so that’s the association).

what is called ‘standard’ ishgardian mostly refers to what’s spoken by highborne, which is formal but modernized and is typical among nobility, merchants, that sort of thing.

the form(s) of ishgardian spoken in the brume are almost their own form of rebellion, with sometimes wildly revised lexicons and sound systems. you might find them difficult to understand if you only know standard, and being able to understand brume!ishgardian is almost like a shibboleth in and of itself.

h/c time for the next point bc I have to awkwardly mention this somewhere: like actual french ishgardian has a pronoun split (tu/vous, etc) to indicate formality but adds one more for halone and a few other figures that’s specifically hyper-respectful.

in standard ishgardian it’s used for halone, some important saints and figures like haldrath, the archbishop, and clergy members.

aymeric uses it for midgardsormr, hraesvelgr, shiva, etc and it’s a Big Deal when he does (and even bigger when he stops using it for thordan/clergy members/etc).

importantly, there’s a cultural standard among lowborn brume residents that the most respectful pronoun is only used to refer to halone, not the archbishop or the clergy or it’s saints, and yes it causes massive cultural stinks. post-dragonsong war this is becoming more and more the standard, helped by people like aymeric and edmont who start doing it.

a lot of the ishgardian spoken among soldiers is in-between brume and standard; it’s more casual than highborne ishgardian (peppered with a lot of local and specific jargon) but not as specific and local as brume. you probably wouldn’t want to speak like that at a fancy party or anything but it’s perfectly normal to hear and is considered standard ishgardian as well.

the ishgardian ysayle and her faction speaks is probably just informal standard but with a lot more dravanian loaning just to stick it to the man, and probably at least some of the brume’s idiosyncrasies mixed in.

eorzean (read: the trade language spoken around the alliance cities, which is highly influenced by uld’ahn forms of speaking) is a prestige language for nobility, but most highborne ishgardians have actually never spoken it seriously (they don’t have a lot of practice with actually speaking it) and their proficiency is very academic. actual proficiency is mostly associated with merchants, and knowing to speak eorzean is both as much a prestige thing as it is a thing that can make highborne ishgardians (pre-dragonsong war ending) think less of you for knowing bc it’s. gasp. foreign.

(yes, haurchefant, who is fluent in it, has it used against him and his character bc he’s a bastard. he just shrugs and goes with it.

hilda doesn’t speak eorzean (if she does it’s very basic phrases like ‘hello’, ‘yes’, and ‘no’ only) so that whole bit with her and her dudes is fun if you’re not rouvastre. and it still is if you are bc even they’re like huh at brume ishgardian.)