a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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Hi everyone, so I just wanted to chime in with my two cents on what I think a good language update would look like.
Ideally, I think that you should still be able to communicate with people outside of your family but it should be less convenient. You should prefer speaking with your family over speaking with foreigners.
Idea one, family chat filters:
I originally thought about speech filters based on your family that would change what it looks like when you're speaking. For example, I lift up a pie while talking to a stranger and say "pie". This then goes through my family's language filter and becomes "pui" to everyone who isn't in my family.
This seemed alright to me at first, but then I realized this would make communication almost impossible if each family has their own filter.
Going further on the same example, I lift up the pie, say "PIE" which becomes "PUI". Now, you respond "PUI" to try to communicate in my 'language' but if you also have a language filter for your family "PUI" will (most likely) not become "PIE". Instead "pui" goes through your own family filter and becomes something like "BOU" for example.
I thought about it for a long time but in the end it does not seem like there is a way to apply these filters in way that would allow you to learn another language.
So I thought about it and what came to mind was making it so that when you type and it applies your family filter, you see it yourself.
Problem with that would be, if I typed "PIE" and saw it come up as "PUI" I would just keep trying to write 'pie', trying all of my keys until I figure out how the filter works; ex: "PUI"..."PAO".."PIE" okay, there we go.. now I figured out my filter and no longer have to type in my family's 'language'.
So the problem with seeing your own filter, would be as soon as you figure out your family's filter you would just type things with the filter in mind so that it displays as plain English. Which led me to my third idea which makes the language filter unavoidable.
Idea two sound mergers & sound insertion:
Combine two letters into one(sound merger). For this I suggest combining voiced/unvoiced consonant pairs. e.g(B&P,D&T,F&V,G&K,S&Z), nasals(M&N),also semi vowels/approximates(L&R,W&Y) . Players would be forced to speak in their language/accent/dialect because the character set available to them would become more limited.
Here is an example of applying a filter to a sentence:
Input/originial sentence: "DONT FEED BABY PIE"
Filtered version(B&P merge, D&T merge): "DOND FEED BABY BIE"
As you can see, we would still have a good idea of what the person saying the filtered version is talking about. A player from another family might be slightly confused, but if you grew up around people with these mergers, you would completely understand them.
In this case, the speaker is unable to produce the 'p' and 't' sounds. Those two sounds are the same. This person could spam the chat with "PTPTPT" trying to say the sounds, but all that would come out is "BDBDBD"
Another good filter I thought of that players would be unable to avoid is insertion. For this I recommend sticking to vowels, as it would feel more natural. There are many languages that do not allow consonant clusters. For example, when Japan borrows words from english with consonant clusters they usually insert a vowel to pronounce it.
Some common consonant clusters the filter could be applied to: ST,SK,BR,TH,LK,SH,PH,CH,NG,(to be fair, most of these are two letters used to represent one sound, but for the filter this does not matter much)
sample sentence: "SHEEP GOT OUT OF THE PEN"
filtered sample sentence: "SIHEEP GOT OUT OF TAHE PEN"
or, if you don't like like insertion, many languages do not allow consonant endings to words(nasals sounds N,M,NG, usually an exception)
sample sentence: "SHEEP GOT OUT OF THE PEN"
filtered sample sentence: "SHEEPI GOTU OUTU OF THE PEN"
in this case, when 'P' has no letter/a space after it 'I' is added to the end. When 'T' has no letter after, a 'U' is added. In this case, this dialect/language filter allows F final consonants so no letter is added to the end of 'OF"
Deletion of final consonants is also a viable filter: "SHEE GO OU OF THE PEN"
While players would speak their dialect/language because they're forced to in this case, the downside of this would be that it could become very annoying. I guess a solution to that would be maybe only other families would see the merger/insertion/deletion?
Ex: when person from family A says "BOY" and "BOW" they both look like "BOW" to family B, but members of their own family can tell if they are saying "BOY" or "BOW" because the filter isn't applied for them. Maybe even POY,POW,BOY,BOW are indistinguishable outside the family.
For insertion, members of my family see me say "THINGS" but members of another family see "TOHINEGUS" as an extreme example.
These changes don't have to be the same for every family member either. If for example you want 5th cousins to sound kind of weird, you could create individual filters inherited from your mother, with a single change to give you your own unique way of speaking.
For example, lets say Eve has no chat filter applied to her, your filter is a copy of hers(no filter) but your change is that F&V are both pronounced as V.
Eve: HI BABY, SAY F FOR FOOD
You: H
You: I
You: V
You: ?
You: V
.....(years later)
You: HI BABY, SAY V FOR VOOD
your baby: ?
lets say you had a couple of female siblings who also had kids. After a couple generations, there will be noticeable differences in the way you talk. Your descendants have the F&V->V merge, but their cousins do not.
Maybe in this example, you and your descendants do not see the F&V merge because you both have it, your mom thinks you talk a bit weird but your speech looks normal to you. Your kid has W&Y->Y merge so they seem to talk a bit strange to you.
What she & her kids see her say: "WOLF"
What you see them say:"YOLF"
What your mother/cousins see her say: "YOLV"
My final idea is probably a lot simpler to implement, but less fun imo:
Add a second chat. You are born into the game with only one chat that represents your family chat. When you see someone from another family talking in their family chat it will appear as something completely incomprehensible like "XXXX" or "......."
This is where the second language comes in. At age 16(more or less, just for example) you gain access to a secondary chat that allows you to communicate with other families. This second chat represents a sort of 'lingua franca' or 'universal/trade language'.
Anyone under the age of 16 will not be able to understand the trade language, (getting the same XXXX or ....) so most people will prefer to speak in their own native language.
Also, to further limit communication you could more harshly limit the number of characters you're able to use in trade language. For example, as a 16 year old I am able to speak a good number of characters in my native language but I am only able to speak 1 letter at a time in trade chat. This symbolizes fluency with your own language but being relatively unfamiliar with the second language.
Maybe even limit understanding of another language even after 16? So at 16 I can only understand the first few letters of someone speaking trade (similar to when you try to read a note as a child), but can understand people speaking my language perfectly.
Adults have to choose if they want to be understood by the adults from another village or the children of there village when they speak.
The number of letter you're able to use in trade coul also be dependent on # of people outside your family your exposed to, so if you grow up in a metropolis with 4 other families you would become very fluent in the 2nd chat early on.
~~~
Also, when changing vowels in the first example I used a simplified vowel plane I<->U<->O<->A<->E<->I
Vowel changes are the most common form of change, which is why when we hear accents the thing that sounds strange is usually the way they pronounce vowels(consonants take much more time to change). In the example of pie -> pui I did one shift, this shifting can go as much as you want. pie->pui->pou->pao->pei->pie or can go in the opposite direction.
What do you guys think? Thoughts? Should your family's speech look normal to you, or is it okay to merge a few similar sounds/insert vowels? It would make you have to learn to speak just like a real baby. Should the second trader language be a thing?
Should the filters be universal for your whole family, or should it be easier to understand relatives more closely related to you?
Should you be aware of your accent/dialect/individual way of speaking(idiolect) or should you have to figure it out?
Also, for anyone concerned about naming/cursing, names should not be effected by any of these changes(children named as if filter didn't happen, curse happens as if no filter was added) so if you say "CURSE MIKE SMITH" and it becomes "CURZE MIGE SMIDH" it would still work. Also, if I say "YOU ARE ELIZABETH" and it comes out as "YAO ERI ILUZEBITH" the baby's name should still display for everyone as Elizabeth.
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Hot diggity dog this is some fun linguistic thinking. I love the emphasis on gradual change over time and natural phonemic changes based on pretty standard rules. However, I think treating language like genetics isn't super great: if I'm a contemporary with anyone in the same area, and we're not meaningfully separated by geography or culture, we probably speak the same language in the same dialect. However, no one alive today would be able to understand their distant relatives who lived many hundreds of years ago, they're just not around to talk to us.
Just curious: are you a linguist, or just a wonderful, beautiful nerd?
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Been working on this for two days, and it's done, and it works. Pretty much explored down the same path as the OP here, and came up with a bi-directional language filter based on greedy swapping of consonant and vowel clusters. Some details here:
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