#greek and latin and german specifically to justify fact that my characters are speaking english

[pagesofkenna]

how the writing's going: I've managed to completely restructure this world's cosmology for a third time over, still don't have a name for the type of alien the main character is, ergo haven't started on the second draft

[talysalankil]

i find that approach to be exhausting and incurious tbh, and it's a mentality that (in my anecdotal observation) seems to only really thrive in english-speaking spheres for reasons that I hope will be obvious in a moment.

because like. when thinking about language and specifically the use of English (not just for star wars but any alternate world fiction), you really just have one of two options:

Option A: the English is diegetic. The characters, in-universe, speak English.

Option B: the English is non-diegetic. This is the Tolkien approach, in case it's less widely-known than I expect: his whole gimmick is that he's translating the LOTR books from the in-universe language (Westron? Is it Westron? I'm only a dilettante in tolkien stuff) into English.

Now, with option A, I don't know how versed in linguistics you are, but hopefully you know enough to understand how buckwild that is. English is the product of its history. It is so much the product of its history that people with somewhat questionable motives coined Anglish, a version of English that keeps only its Germanic roots (i.e. according to said people its only "pure" roots) and it turns into a very different beast. William the Conqueror kinda ruined everything for this language forever—and that was a few centuries before modern english, which started roughly in Shakespeare's time. Those are some deep-seated roots.

If you want to use option A, you have to explain why Modern English came to exist in your world. And in that case, why is milestone (a concept dating back to the roman empire) any more of a problem than, I don't know, droid (shortened from android, a term apparently coined in the 18th century)? Why are Greek roots (which now require explaining why Greek exists for English to borrow roots from, and why the two languages would have the sociohistoric ties they do that would lead to using Greek roots for a scientific word) any more or less justified than mile, which yes is a unit of length, but is also just the latin root for thousand (i.e. one thousand of whatever unit of length was used by the Romans, what am I, a historian?)?

If you're gonna argue that any word from the English language shouldn't exist in your setting, be careful, because I will come over and ask why literally any non-neologism unique to your setting exists.

This is, of course, not a problem with option B. Translation (when done well, which is a whole other can of worms because pedantic fandom is also really bad at understanding this fact) is never about mapping words one-to-one but about conveying the meaning in a way the culture that speaks target language will understand, which means that it's totally fair game to use colloquialisms or words unique to that language if they convey the spirit of what is said in the source language. Ergo, milestone is fine, especially if used in the metaphorical sense (which I assume is what the tweet refers to anyway).

And the thing is…that is (again, in my limited and anecdotal observation) something that most people on Earth understand. See, when I first watched Star Wars, I watched it in my native French, because I was maybe five years old and didn't speak anything else. And it may shock you to hear this but it doesn't make a lick of difference (assuming the translation is done well) because it's not a real world. But I do think it changes the way you approach language in fiction. Once you made it past one layer of translation, it's much more intuitive to look at the author's native language (whether English or anything else) as just…another layer of translation.

And it extends beyond American media. When I read/watched Asterix (about a bunch of Gauls fighting Julius Caesar's invasion, for those who don't know it) I didn't think of the characters as speaking French literally. But I also wouldn't bat an eye at the puns the authors made.

I don't know. Maybe I'm misplacing the blame, but I think English speakers never having to go a day in their life considering another language or point of view might have something to do with it. Or maybe it's just the Internet and social media incentivizing making really dumb, contrarian pedantry because it will get clicks. Or a combination. Or something else! But y'all really need to stop either way.

Pablo Hidalgo was having a semi-breakdown on his twt yesterday because of people using words based on things that only exist in our world (milestone, dumpster, etc) and tbh this was so real of him he might be one of my favorite Star Wars creators

[cerastes]

Siracusa getting a proper Italian dub gives me hope we might get more dubs in other languages and my one gripe about the en voices would fade into nothingness cause I can just change their voices into the intended experience™️

Now the big question tho. What would the Sarkaz use? They're not one clean analogue like other countries, and as much as I like to personally insist HRE Germany is the closest, I can't deny the clear Latin focus they always give the Sarkaz.

What's your thoughts on this?

I'd really love to see a Tekken approach as well, if we could have The Intended Language for every given Operator as an option, it'd be incredibly refreshing.

Sarkaz are a really difficult question and I personally don't think they are one people specifically -- I don't want them to be one people specifically -- as much as a bunch of different peoples united less by real world circumstances reflected into the game and more by in-universe circumstances. Some say that Kazdel finds its etymology in každé, proto-slavic for "everyone", but then Sarkaz apparently finds its own etymology in sarkasmós (σαρκασμός) (Greek), "to tear apart", but I've heard of other possible etymology I think it was in German that I can't recall right this second. Then you have the fact that "Sarkaz" is as much a race as an umbrella term for a wide, wide variety of very different people: You have Vampires (Eastern Europe) like Warfarin, Gargoyles (French) like Mudrock, Goliaths (Hebrew) like most Sarkaz enemies, Wendigo (North American) like Patriot, Banshees (Irish, Celtic, Scottish) like Logos (*Though keep in mind that in Chinese, they are explicitly called Ni Yao, which is more often associated with succubi (Hebrew)), among others, and as you can see, pinning all of them into One country or people is, in my opinion, to ignore the nuance.

I've seen people make good points as to why they would be a German allegory and a Jewish allegory, but I personally prefer Sarkaz as not being Any One People, and for the sake of languages, I'd go for their etymologic origin and justify that in-universe one way or another, or, the idea I like the most, just the language that the specific character would be expected to speak based on their lore and circumstances. Vigna, for example, would be English given she's a Sarkaz from Columbia.