Zion Tribal Language Help

[jdcisney]

Hey guys, I desperately need a good source for translating Res, the Zion Tribal language. I have no clue where to look in the GECK for such things, or of any online sources that could help me. Does anyone have a source that I could use, or can someone tell me exactly where to look in the GECK if there is a complete transcript of the language? I need this information for a fanfic I'm writing.

[JoKelly]

I've never seen anything like that in the GECK. But I think at one point the notes from the old man in the cave mentioned what language(s) they spoke so that could help you whip up something close to it.

[madmongo]

The Zion tribal languages are a mix of the languages of the residents of Utah combined with the languages of tourists who were in Utah when the bombs fell. According to the Fallout Wiki, the Dead Horses speak a combination of English, Dutch, and German, the Sorrows speak a combination of English and Spanish, and the White Legs speak a combination of English, Spanish, Dutch, and German. As you'd expect, ll of these tribal languages have evolved a bit since the Great War.

 

If there's an official dictionary of the various tribal languages, I've never seen it.

[Ladez]

There are English translations hidden away in comments in some of the Honest Hearts quests, primarily NVDLC02DeadHorseGenericDialogue, NVDLC02WhiteLegsGenericDialogue and NVDLC02SorrowsGenericDialogue,

 

An example for the Dead Horses: {Why?! Stop!}Varoom? Stahp! (NVDLC02DeadHorseGenericDialogue)

Clearly some German influence in the above ("warum" is German for "why").

 

Another, for the Sorrows: {Fall down and die!}{oo-WAY-kah moo-WEAR-nah!}Uweka muerna! (NVDLC02SorrowsGenericDialogue)

This seems to have some Spanish influence (pretty sure "muerna" means "die" with a slightly different spelling).

 

If you browse through the quests with dialogue you should be able to fill a small (read: tiny) dictionary of words and phrases. And there's nothing preventing you from getting creative and creating new words you need that fit into the established conventions. That's probably the best you can do without an official dictionary.

[Vaper1987]

Hoi Hellow thats all i have

[WeissYohji]

Creolization will do that. When you have two groups of people who speak different languages living closely together, they'll have to work out a system to communicate together. That's a pidgin language. When you have people raised as native speakers of that pidgin, it becomes a creole language. We have this in our own timeline; just look at Haitian Creole, which grew out of French, Igbo, Wolof, Yoruba, and other West African languages. And while French and those Niger-Congo languages had 400 years to do their little Fusion Dance, the languages of the campers and staff at Zion had just over 200 years to become what we have in the Fallout timeline.

Edited July 24, 2018 by WeissYohji

[dookie32]

Pretty sure varieties like Haitian Creole and Jamaican Patwa (patois) didn't take the full 400 years to develop. Languages are ever evolving, of course, but the basis of creoles can form rather quickly... like within just a few generations, or even less for pidgins, of speaking to form and solidify. Take Singlish (Singaporean Colloquial English) for example; while English has been spoken there ever since the days of the British Malaya colony, the pidgin/creole didn't really spread and develop until after Singapore became fully independent in 1965. English has been creeping into northern European languages recently as well, but that's less of a case of clear-cut creolization and more like massive amounts of loanwords in recent decades, as is the case to a much lesser extent globally for nearly all languages.

 

So, it doesn't really make sense for people to be speaking American English from like the mid-20th century in Fallout. But, we can't be too critical of such things in video game lore, since there are larger aspects where we have to suspend disbelief than contrived linguistic convenience. That said, the Zion tribal languages are interesting because, while the words/vocabularies are based on European languages, the pronunciation/phonology is reminiscent of Native American languages, or at least that's what it sounds like to me. I may be mistaken, and it could be a Southwestern or Spanish accent.

[WeissYohji]

Pretty sure varieties like Haitian Creole and Jamaican Patwa (patois) didn't take the full 400 years to develop. Languages are ever evolving, of course, but the basis of creoles can form rather quickly... like within just a few generations, or even less for pidgins, of speaking to form and solidify. Take Singlish (Singaporean Colloquial English) for example; while English has been spoken there ever since the days of the British Malaya colony, the pidgin/creole didn't really spread and develop until after Singapore became fully independent in 1965. English has been creeping into northern European languages recently as well, but that's less of a case of clear-cut creolization and more like massive amounts of loanwords in recent decades, as is the case to a much lesser extent globally for nearly all languages.

 

So, it doesn't really make sense for people to be speaking American English from like the mid-20th century in Fallout. But, we can't be too critical of such things in video game lore, since there are larger aspects where we have to suspend disbelief than contrived linguistic convenience. That said, the Zion tribal languages are interesting because, while the words/vocabularies are based on European languages, the pronunciation/phonology is reminiscent of Native American languages, or at least that's what it sounds like to me. I may be mistaken, and it could be a Southwestern or Spanish accent.

 

Haitian Creole and Jamaican Patois have still existed longer in our timeline than the Zion tribes' languages probably have in the Fallout timeline. And if these Caribbean nations still exist in the Fallout timeline 200+ years after the Great War, then these languages would have another 200 years or so on the Zion tongues.

 

And which Amerindian languages are we referring to here? If we're talking about Utah, then that would suggest Uto-Aztecan languages, perhaps one or more of the Southern Athabaskan ones. Unrelated language groups, but with thousands of years of close contact. Much like Hungarian and German in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. One language is Uralic, the other Indo-European, but both have had centuries of close contact.

Edited July 26, 2018 by WeissYohji

[dookie32]

Haitian Creole and Jamaican Patois have still existed longer in our timeline than the Zion tribes' languages probably have in the Fallout timeline. And if these Caribbean nations still exist in the Fallout timeline 200+ years after the Great War, then these languages would have another 200 years or so on the Zion tongues.

 

And which Amerindian languages are we referring to here? If we're talking about Utah, then that would suggest Uto-Aztecan languages.

 

 

Yeah, the phonology kinda sounds like Uto-Aztecan or Southern Athabaskan, which are unrelated language groups, but they share similar phonetics and phonology due to areal features from long periods of contact. Again, I could be completely mistaken because I don't speak any of those languages. It just sounds a bit like those accents heard from a non-native listener.

 

As for the English in Fallout, it's like mid-20th century American English with various regional dialects frozen in time for hundreds of years... pretty unrealistic, but again, there are other more significant things to discuss that don't make complete sense when nitpicking video game lore.

[WeissYohji]

As for the English in Fallout, it's like mid-20th century American English with various regional dialects frozen in time for hundreds of years... pretty unrealistic, but again, there are other more significant things to discuss that don't make complete sense when nitpicking video game lore.

 

 

We can just take that as translation convention. The characters are really speaking 22nd-23rd century American English and it's translated into OT's modern American English for the players' benefit.

 

And nitpicking? We could nitpick the Deathclaws and how they defy taxonomic classification, but that's a different thread.