Rifts Languages

[wulf06]

I know Races have there own Language but what about say Rifts north America? Is English still a thing?

[taalismn]

I know Races have there own Language but what about say Rifts north America? Is English still a thing?

Yes, in addition to Spanish, though Dragonese is the favored language of elves and magic users. RUE refers to English as 'American', but doesn't mention what is spoken in England(presumably English still, probably heavily influenced by Faerie and regional tongues), with Euro, a synthetic new language being the trade tongue of Europe.

[Blue_Lion]

I know Races have there own Language but what about say Rifts north America? Is English still a thing?

They speak American if I recall not English. (englsih based but you know not in england.) See page 303 RUE for a list of common languages.

[MadGreenSon]

With 200 years of Dark Age plus a hundred PA, there's probably been a fair bit of linguistic drift.

I imagine in some parts of the continent you could reasonably assume the dialects would get fairly incomprehensible. Like the barbarians in the Dinosaur Swamp or the mutants of Madhaven, for instance.

[ITWastrel]

With 200 years of Dark Age plus a hundred PA, there's probably been a fair bit of linguistic drift.

I imagine in some parts of the continent you could reasonably assume the dialects would get fairly incomprehensible. Like the barbarians in the Dinosaur Swamp or the mutants of Madhaven, for instance.

Hence, American. It's not modern English, or even American English. American is a melting pot language of English and other languages, some human, some not. American may have words or phrase that are complete gibberish to modern Americans. Phrases taken from alien languages or post-modern technologies.

"ah, loke, It's gibbered. Ja, Ja, I's figurin' da right makii done blew de stack, Sor-rey. Hand me da kolo spanner daybyyah. Get-ja figgstup. Tracta'll oli right in da ground befah wintah, eh? Youbetcha." (best read with a thick Minnesota accent. Youbetcha.)

I seem to recall language rules and skill differences from modern characters in CB1, but it's after midnight and I can't be tossed talook. Getcha back lata, Youbetcha.

[MadGreenSon]

With 200 years of Dark Age plus a hundred PA, there's probably been a fair bit of linguistic drift.

I imagine in some parts of the continent you could reasonably assume the dialects would get fairly incomprehensible. Like the barbarians in the Dinosaur Swamp or the mutants of Madhaven, for instance.

Hence, American. It's not modern English, or even American English. American is a melting pot language of English and other languages, some human, some not. American may have words or phrase that are complete gibberish to modern Americans. Phrases taken from alien languages or post-modern technologies.

"ah, loke, It's gibbered. Ja, Ja, I's figurin' da right makii done blew de stack, Sor-rey. Hand me da kolo spanner daybyyah. Get-ja figgstup. Tracta'll oli right in da ground befah wintah, eh? Youbetcha." (best read with a thick Minnesota accent. Youbetcha.)

I seem to recall language rules and skill differences from modern characters in CB1, but it's after midnight and I can't be tossed talook. Getcha back lata, Youbetcha.

Just checked the old and revised Conversion Books, it just says if you speak English or Spanish you can get by in North America, but in Europe, Euro is pretty much a whole new language entirely.

Honestly, I wouldn't expect the rules to reflect linguistic drift for the most part, but I have had some fun with making people from more isolated areas hard to understand, with the characters catching on and losing the difficulties after awhile. I mostly represent this by how I talk when speaking as an NPC.

Now, I've never had people from tornado alley end up in Dinosaur Swamp, but if I did, I'd really lay the dialect on thick for a good while, at minimum.

[wulf06]

Thank you for your help

[Blue_Lion]

That would be cases that you might need to roll your skill with appropriate penalty to see if your character can understand what the heck the much mouth in the swamp just said.

[Warshield73]

That would be cases that you might need to roll your skill with appropriate penalty to see if your character can understand what the heck the much mouth in the swamp just said.

Have you seen some of those swamp people shows or even just drive through West Texas? You kind of have to do that in the real world and I will admit I have failed a lot of skill rolls.

[MadGreenSon]

That would be cases that you might need to roll your skill with appropriate penalty to see if your character can understand what the heck the much mouth in the swamp just said.

That's pretty much the way I do it if they can't get what I'm saying. The players I play with seem to enjoy trying to figure out what weirdos are talking about though, so they seldom resort to skill rolls.

That would be cases that you might need to roll your skill with appropriate penalty to see if your character can understand what the heck the much mouth in the swamp just said.

Have you seen some of those swamp people shows or even just drive through West Texas? You kind of have to do that in the real world and I will admit I have failed a lot of skill rolls.

You know it. Some of the more isolated New England accents and dialects are pretty impenetrable too.

[Warshield73]

That would be cases that you might need to roll your skill with appropriate penalty to see if your character can understand what the heck the much mouth in the swamp just said.

That's pretty much the way I do it if they can't get what I'm saying. The players I play with seem to enjoy trying to figure out what weirdos are talking about though, so they seldom resort to skill rolls.

That would be cases that you might need to roll your skill with appropriate penalty to see if your character can understand what the heck the much mouth in the swamp just said.

Have you seen some of those swamp people shows or even just drive through West Texas? You kind of have to do that in the real world and I will admit I have failed a lot of skill rolls.

You know it. Some of the more isolated New England accents and dialects are pretty impenetrable too.

I almost went back and edited the post to include Maine because I was in a few towns there where I only understood every 10 words.

[Library Ogre]

I know Races have there own Language but what about say Rifts north America? Is English still a thing?

For Rifts: Houstown, I include Texican, a mix of American and Spanish, with some loanwords from Vietnamese and Chinese.

[Blue_Lion]

That would be cases that you might need to roll your skill with appropriate penalty to see if your character can understand what the heck the much mouth in the swamp just said.

Have you seen some of those swamp people shows or even just drive through West Texas? You kind of have to do that in the real world and I will admit I have failed a lot of skill rolls.

I was working in a inbound call center and got a mush mouth(that is how they are refereed to in the call center I know it might be offensive - but we needed a way to tell our supervisor what the problem was quickly.) on the phone. I think I understood 5 words he said during the whole call. Every thing was all mushed together, and covered in a thick accent. -Basically you just asked if I seen a show that shows what I just talked about. Heck we had stores that would call for Spanish speakers because they did not understand the people on the Spanish line.

The point is their is a reason their are skill % for language and you can have penalties.

[guardiandashi]

That would be cases that you might need to roll your skill with appropriate penalty to see if your character can understand what the heck the much mouth in the swamp just said.

Have you seen some of those swamp people shows or even just drive through West Texas? You kind of have to do that in the real world and I will admit I have failed a lot of skill rolls.

I was working in a inbound call center and got a mush mouth(that is how they are refereed to in the call center I know it might be offensive - but we needed a way to tell our supervisor what the problem was quickly.) on the phone. I think I understood 5 words he said during the whole call. Every thing was all mushed together, and covered in a thick accent. -Basically you just asked if I seen a show that shows what I just talked about. Heck we had stores that would call for Spanish speakers because they did not understand the people on the Spanish line.

The point is their is a reason their are skill % for language and you can have penalties.

I was doing phone support and the best I could decipher from what he was saying I figured out he had a middle eastern/new york accent
IE he had grown up in the middle east somewhere and moved to new york so the accents were odd and hard for me to interpet, and he talked way too fast

[Library Ogre]

From a (n amateur) linguistic perspective, PA language should be varied, but possibly converging.

Consider, for example, Texican. Language in Houstown and San Antonio would have heavy influences of Spanish in the post-apocalypse, because there's a large number of Spanish speakers, and a large number of English speakers. These two areas are close enough together, geographically, that their languages would diverge from standard American English in similar ways, and their differences would converge with each other.

Dallas/Fort Worth, on the other hand, are a lot farther from Houston or San Antonio, and have a lower Hispanic percentage (DFW MSA is about 25%, Houston is 38%, and San Antonio is 64%). Dallas is also closer to places like Oklahoma City, which has an even lower Hispanic percentage, so the language that developed in DFW/OKC is less likely to contain significant Spanish influences. Going the other direction, into the Valley, you have a huge population of native Spanish speakers. This would exert influence on San Antonio's language, but also mean that the primary language down there might well be Spanish with American elements, instead of the opposite in Houston/San Antonio.

BUT that's the immediate post-apocalypse. By 100+ PA, you've got things that are a lot less insular; Houstown to Dallas is more secure, and there's more likely to be cultural exchanges between the two (for example, transfer of movies made in one location to the other, or travelling entertainments), plus the influence of the Coalition's entertainment industry, which would spread the Coalition's version of American, much as the BBC and the US entertainment industry spread their respective accents. The CS American would have relatively few Spanish elements, simply because of the lower native Spanish-speaking population of those areas.

[kaid]

Also with the return of vast amounts of various native American tribes who came back after the rifts started There are a LOT of languages in north America. Languages will do what they do they will grab interesting words from other languages and grow and change.

[ITWastrel]

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
--James D. Nicoll