Kilrathi language

F

Fenris

Spaceman
It seems to me that there is a difference in the Kilrathi language between the games and the books. Somehow it always seemed a little more Japanese-derived in the books, while in the games it seemed somewhat Middle-Eastern.

Of course, what do I know, I'm no linguist.

[Edited by Fenris on 02-23-2001 at 00:14]
 
Obviously it depends on how you'd pronounce the words that are in the book. I imagine them quite like how they are heard in the WC games.

TC
 
My guess is that the Kilrathi language is not in fact a single language. I mean, considering how fiercely independent the clans are, they'd probably try to maintain some vestiges of their own languages, while what we now know as Kilrathi was originally just the language of the Kiranka clan.
That is a guess, of course, but it does make sense. Much like the threads here, language drifts incredibly quickly. Thus, it would be very difficult to believe that an entire race would speak just one language - especially a race like the Kilrathi, which doesn't seem to put that much stock in education.
 
They do at least have different clan dialects, and also a dialect used for speach in the royal court. Whether they are actually different languages or just variations is up to debate.

TC
 
Whenever we hear complete sentances spoken in Kilrathi (in WC2 and Freedom Flight), it's fairly similar -- it's just individual words which sound a bit different.
 
That does raise an interesting point, however. Do the military and the royal court speak two different languages? The military would for reasons of efficiency need to speak one language. Clan rivalries might mean that there are different clan ships, each speaking their clan's dialect, but having that kind of a fragmented chain of command would make it very difficult for the Cats to all but clean our clocks the way they did.
 
in China, different regions have completely different dialects, so much so that they often dont understand each other, so its completly beleivable different clans would have different languages.
 
The question, though, is not regional dialects, that stands to reason. Whenever the speakers of a particular language are spread out at all, differences crop up in the language, often resulting in completely disparate dialects. My question, to which there really is no canon answer to the best of my knowledge, is whether there are royal and military dialects of the Kilrathi dominant language.
 
Well i think it comes down to that if your royalty AND in the military, you'll have a different dialect than someone whos not royalty in the military just as it would be in any other situation.
 
The military has to have a single language. Without it, your chain of command breaks down, and you have chaos. The Cats obviously didn't, at least not during the war.
 
There is one basic language that ALL the Kilrathi know, but there is a language the Royalty uses in addition to it.
 
I believe the books use the term dialect -- meaning that it's just a variation of the normal language, and not a new language in and of itself.
 
It is really interesting to see of which real languages such an 'unspoken' language consists/ of which it includes words,grammar and such things. But the arabic one?? Okay it is possible.. but it sounds very strange at the first moment. I would first have thought Chinese. (But I never said of myself that I know much about the history of languages ).You could call me an amateur in this part of knowledge and I will not contradict if you do it.
 
Have you seen Chinese written in english? No apostrphes in the middle of words. French does the same, but is alot smoother. Bandit, people just don't go around making up a whole new language for the sake of a game, it certainly isn't a derivative of French.
 
No, I also believe it is a little too complicated to design a new language for a game, but maybe some people had fun to do it and propably some people did it in their freetime...
 
If you remember we never actually here kilrathi, we only here a few choice words. The written stuff is just some random symbals througn together so that it looks like words
 
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