Brainstorming brainstorming brainstorming!

[brat_inslayage]

Yep, it's that time again. No, not the one where we go "holy crap, how is the month half over already?"

Okay, it might be that one too. But it's also brainstorming-post time. Don't forget, all previous ideas are available for you to look over too.

Watch me not even try to one-up willbedone on coming up with a cohesive witty theme for this post.

[[ocd achieved, so go to it!]]

Comments

Re: General Ideas

[brat_inslayage]

No lie, the linguistics geek in me is thoroughly gleeful at this prospect.

By and large, even people from different worlds have been able to communicate fairly well with most of the island's population for various reasons (mostly, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, through the handwavey power of languages just happening to be analogous to English).

If that went wonky somehow? Could totally happen.

Re: General Ideas

[notmyownage]

Plus, there's options. Like, you could go with putting things in brackets ala when people in Marvel comics speak other languages, or you could go with horrible Babelfish translations if you want to have something OOCly less than decipherable. And the potential for the languages! You could end up with all sorts of odd constructed languages like Esparanto or Verudian or Unamunda -- or end up speaking in l33+ or, like, Visual Basic. You could go with everyone having their own language, or divide the island up into language groups who can understand each other but not anyone else -- potential for mixing up characters who don't often interact with each other.

Oh hey, the caffeine kicked in. Good to know.

Re: General Ideas

[onapalebicycle.livejournal.com]

Could characters who speak rare (rare in Fandom terms, at least) languages default to those? Rikku's native language is Al Bhed, which Reno can understand bits of, and nobody else knows jack about, and it'd be interesting to have her back in that for a few days.

I'm sure she's not the only one on her second (or third) language here -- I seem to remember Dolf mentioning that his English is shaky, for one.

Which leads me to wonder if the characters who are multilingual might not be helpful somehow in saving the day, but I have no idea how or why or anything beyond "Oooh, shiny."

Re: General Ideas

[notmyownage]

From my perspective, sure, as the spirit of the idea is simply to have people generally be stuck speaking different languages with no translator between individuals/groups. I kind of imagine that those who are multi-lingual would have a bit of an advantage even if the effect sticks them with a single rare (for Fandom) language -- they're more likely to be familiar with general language structures and language barriers, I should think.

Re: General Ideas

[brat_inslayage]

I'm going to defer to anything longislandiceme, who after all has a degree in this stuff to my minor in it, says on the matter but that's what I was thinking, yeah.

Re: General Ideas

[notmyownage]

I'll be deferring to the both of you on that front -- I . . . taught ESL for three months. Though I do know that my experience with German and Russian, and another girl's bilingual experience with English and French, gave us an advantage in following and picking up Czech.

Re: General Ideas

[onapalebicycle.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and I have, like, two or three linguistics classes from college, and a bare smattering of a couple of romance languages that I could maybe figure out how to ask where the bathroom is, in. I think I was mostly thinking that anyone who isn't a native speaker would at least ... be less panicked by the situation, because they would have probably been in a similar one before, where everyone is speaking a different language and you have to try to keep up, so they'd know a few more coping skills for being in that situation, at least? It makes sense in my brain zomg, and probably not in this bizarre word-vomit.

Re: General Ideas

[notmyownage]

Experience with language barriers, yes! I'd been thinking of that, too.

Re: General Ideas

[brat_inslayage]

I do know that one of the reasons foreign language classes are taught (at least in US schools) is to give kids a better sense of how language works; it's an entirely different thing to speak a language natively than it is to learn a new one, and in learning a new language you have to actually think about the various components of language. Which in turn makes it easier to pick up new ones.

So... yeah. They'd know how to listen for key words and have a better idea of how to guess at what means what.

Re: General Ideas

[momslilassassin]

Having lived in many foreign countries (and been on a NY subway, which can sound kind of the same way), yeah, it can be overwhelming at first.

And unrelated by I just wanted to say that *someone* will be appreciating Threepio and his six million forms of communication a lot more.

Re: General Ideas

[the_merriest]

Oh, I totally forgot to account for that -- people for whom English/its equivalent is their native speech, but who've been in that situation (surrounded by another language, needing to figure how to get on), then the same sort of logic applies, with "yeah, done this before" and therefore less panic and more coping skills handy.

I expect the appreciation of Threepio will last until Threepio thanks Ben and waxes unctuous about how useful he is and how underappreciated .......

Re: General Ideas

[longislandiceme]

As resident Cunning Linguist (... I never get tired of that joke), yeah, that makes total sense. Depending, of course, on the languages in question- an English speaker, for example, will likely be able to pick out key words/structures in a German or French sentence - but will probably have trouble with Spanish if they've never been exposed to it before. They'd also definitely have better coping strategies for dealing with mutual unintelligibility than someone who's existed in a monolingual environment.