CK3 Dev Diary #78: Taking Language to Court

[Koyraboro]

Slavic languages shouldn't be splitted in CK3 timeline. The first bookmark is set in Common Slavic period and the second bookmark is still in the time when slavs could easily communicate with each other and read Old Church Slavonic without long process of learning a language.
Separate branches is a bad choice from both historical (not only separate east and south in 9th century but separate czech-slovak and lechitic?) and gameplay perspectives (slavs have to fill most of their slots with other Slavic languages rather with greek/latin/turkic, why a polish duke cant talk with his czech wife if he already learned german?)
Please merge them

Yeah seems like the one time where a blob would have been okay...they split.

 

[Atrithau]

The actions of a culture are defined by it's Pillars, not the other way around. A culture's reactions & actions to things are drawn from it's pillars. A culture that has a more warlike pillar is far more likely to go to war, as their cultural pillars mean that the people are far more accepting toward the idea. The act of going to war does not retroactively re-write a culture's pillars to make them warlike. There are many cultures that have been forced into war time and time again and yet are inherently not a warlike culture, because those warlike pillars are not there. All people act and react to the world through the lens filters of their cultural pillars, not the other way around. (And no one is immune to this.)

Edit: This is basically sociology 101 stuff.

The difference in the real world is that what you say about yourself and your culture by extension doesn't have to mirror your actions. In the game, it does. So far this has been achieved pretty well with the stress system punishing you (though sometimes insufficiently) for actions that go against your character's traits. Whether or not the cultural stuff will work the same way remains to be seen. But your condescension is toxic and totally unnecessary in a friendly discussion, consider changing your tone before imparting your "sociology 101 stuff".

 

[Viridianus]

EDIT: And Northern Italian courts speaking High German!?!?!?!?

This shows all the territory of a court - so the painting in Northern Italy only means this is part of HRE (without a separate court - it probably only has duchies and counties, no king).

The issue is that defining languages by where the originate is a really bad way of categorizing them for practical use, which is what Royal Court is trying to do

While it depends on how many time passes, you clearly overestimate effect of the processes that can be abstracted as inflection loss on mutual intelligibility.

Please, for the love of God, reconsider the split of west-slavic languages into czech-slovak and lechitic! It makes no sense, These languages would all have been slightly different dialects from one another, especially in the early start date. It‘s nowhere near as far apart as for example shaz and oghur turkic!

While Slavic languages split at all makes little sense, refitting the system to have a common "West Slavic" node would be even worse, implying that Lechitic are closer to Czech-Slovak continuum than South Slavic, which is not a very founded claim.

So, Russian state that has Slavic state faith would use say Glagolic alphabet that looks like Slavic runes

This sentence is very... very... very troubling. Slavic runes are unconfirmed.

Having Hybrid Cultures speak a new Creole language changes peoples decision making process from a Min-Maxing one to a Roleplay one, as well as being more historically accurate.

Is there a possibility of hybrid languages emerging, to go with our hybrid cultures?

That's just a big historical falsehood. Creole languages only appeared on large-scale plantations in colonial times (trade situations without those make do with Pidgins and/or bilingualism).

but I think the broad West Iberian is a mistake given that those 3 all actively competed for cultural dominance in the core of the game's timeframe

You don't seem to understand the game's Languages' goal. To take a modern yet not too politicized example, Swedish, Bokmal, Nynorsk, and Danish would still be one Language in 2021, even though they are not one small-l-language. It represents practical small groupings of mutual intelligibility, no matter what people called those.

with currency in central and southern Italy as well as nearby Dalmatia.

Look up Dalmatian language, it is not that close to Italian.

In addition; if culture groups and languages are essentially representing the same thing, I don't really see the point in trying to separate them.

Vlach belongs to South Slavic group but certainly doesn't have their language. Same for Basque and Iberian. Byzantine group showcases about five different languages. While there are no courts in start dates that reflect this, they may appear during the game.

 

[boorkie]

Does sharing a court language add a positive modifier for vassalisation?

 

[prismaticmarcus]

Does sharing a court language add a positive modifier for vassalisation?

i guess it would just be part of 'opinion,' like culture is now

 

[boorkie]

i guess it would just be part of 'opinion,' like culture is now

I would hope so

 

[Karlington]

The actions of a culture are defined by it's Pillars, not the other way around. A culture's reactions & actions to things are drawn from it's pillars. A culture that has a more warlike pillar is far more likely to go to war, as their cultural pillars mean that the people are far more accepting toward the idea. The act of going to war does not retroactively re-write a culture's pillars to make them warlike. There are many cultures that have been forced into war time and time again and yet are inherently not a warlike culture, because those warlike pillars are not there. All people act and react to the world through the lens filters of their cultural pillars, not the other way around. (And no one is immune to this.)

Edit: This is basically sociology 101 stuff.

Cultures are not that simple IRL.

The "pillars" influence a culture's actions and reactions as you say, but the culture's actions and reactions also affect its "pillars" over time. Outside circumstances can also influence both, and of course in even the most collectivistic cultures there will be individuals who act contrary to their culture, sometimes affecting the culture, and/or causing outside events and reactions that end up influencing the culture.

Basic sociology 101 indeed...

 

[AchedTeacher]

So... What about Latin?

Yeah, if we can convert to Greco-Roman paganism, we should be able to revive old languages too.

 

[Viridianus]

Yeah, if we can convert to Greco-Roman paganism, we should be able to revive old languages too.

That's... not how languages work. It kinda almost happened to Latin in Renaissance but couldn't really work. Now, attempts with Manx were arguably more successful but they required extensive grammatical descriptions AND a lot of help from more-alive Celtic languages. And Hebrew... well, let's say it changed and leave it at that. You see, unlike religion, language is not (merely) a social institution, it is a cognitive capacity with non-conscious (and faulty) acquisition.

 

[Midnighter]

it means 2022.

Who is laughing now? lol

 

[SMiki Lorebringer]

Languages in the game generally represent a spectrum of dialects rather than one specific language, and generally with pretty high mutual intelligibility. For simplicities sake languages won't swap over time, if you speak High German in 1075 or in 890 you are expected to speak the language understood to the people alive at that time to be High German, even if today linguistically we use separate names to differentiate them
Dividing the world into languages has naturally meant making some generalizations and design calls, very similar to when the world was divided into cultures in the first place. Most likely the setup will be revised a few times both before release and after.

…

Research has gone into the court languages of the world, but I am sure there may be some that know more than we have been able to find out. If you think we've assigned the wrong court language to any particular realm I'd love to know more about that, as these assignments are not yet set in stone. What I would ask however is that you provide some reference to what you base your claim on.

Could you consider merging Czechoslovak and Lechitic into West Slavic? I understand that depicting the realistic situation where all Slavic languages were just a dialect continuum of a single language might make Slavs too overpowered (one language covering a huge region of map), but splitting it into three main groups (West, East, South) should be sufficient -- rural Polish and Slovak dialects tend to be mutually intelligible even today, and a millenium ago it was just as different as today's Australian English and AAVE if not less. Splitting West Slavic into Czechoslovak and Lechitic is really an overkill.

While Slavic languages split at all makes little sense, refitting the system to have a common "West Slavic" node would be even worse, implying that Lechitic are closer to Czech-Slovak continuum than South Slavic, which is not a very founded claim.

It's definitely not ideal, but way better than pretending Czech and Silesian are as different as Telugu and Norse. Having a single Western Slav language fits the idea behind language groupings; if they are split, they may as well split Norse into Danish, Swedish, and Bokmål.

 

[Guifré Borrell]

How is that no court speaks in latin?

 

[InsidiousMage]

How is that no court speaks in latin?

Because Latin was only used in the Church and even then was mostly only used when writing and rarely spoken outside of Church services. Quoting wiki....

Spoken Latin became a practice used mostly by the educated high class population. Even then it was not frequently used in casual conversation. An example of these men includes the churchmen who could read Latin, but could not effectively speak it.

 

[Axis89]

Because Latin was only used in the Church and even then was mostly only used when writing and rarely spoken outside of Church services. Quoting wiki....

this is incorrect.

 

[Axis89]

Because Latin was only used in the Church and even then was mostly only used when writing and rarely spoken outside of Church services. Quoting wiki....

also your source says: Spoken Latin became a practice used mostly by the educated high class population

Which wasnt everyday, to eachother but a language of letters, diplomacy and statecraft like official documents etc. This is a very short asnwer, but my opinion is that your position is incorrect.
Also, dont forget to use intellecutal history to understand history.

 

[Viridianus]

This is a very short asnwer, but my opinion is that your position is incorrect.

Court language is clearly shown by the events to be the language in which "casual conversations" in court were held - not language of official documents which is not reflected in any way. And casual conversation is specifically called out by the source as not happening in Latin. Yet it does not always happen in the native language, the history is full of examples where French or Greek or something was used for exactly that purpose by a court with a substantial number of non-native speakers (because, for instance, "I'm just a warrior, I'm no linguist, but the King of England should probably speak English!").

 

[boorkie]

Court language is clearly shown by the events to be the language in which "casual conversations" in court were held - not language of official documents which is not reflected in any way. And casual conversation is specifically called out by the source as not happening in Latin. Yet it does not always happen in the native language, the history is full of examples where French or Greek or something was used for exactly that purpose by a court with a substantial number of non-native speakers (because, for instance, "I'm just a warrior, I'm no linguist, but the King of England should probably speak English!").

Ironically first Norman kings of England refused to learn English - language of the peasants in their eyes - and only spoke French. And this lasted until 14th century so it covers pretty much most of CK3 timeframe

 

[Viridianus]

Ironically first Norman kings of England refused to learn English - language of the peasants in their eyes - and only spoke French. And this lasted until 14th century so it covers pretty much most of CK3 timeframe

Yup. And this meant that their underlings, who were not all Norman, had to speak French (or, in currently-known-to-us game terms, a dialect of "D'oil Vulgar") in court. Not Latin.

 

[Axis89]

Court language is clearly shown by the events to be the language in which "casual conversations" in court were held - not language of official documents which is not reflected in any way. And casual conversation is specifically called out by the source as not happening in Latin. Yet it does not always happen in the native language, the history is full of examples where French or Greek or something was used for exactly that purpose by a court with a substantial number of non-native speakers (because, for instance, "I'm just a warrior, I'm no linguist, but the King of England should probably speak English!").

But it isn't casual conversation, court language is what we would call business language today. In many countries English is used as the business language, though they speak a different language casually because it is their own.
Why would paradox have the mechanism of court language spread beyond its natural borders like French? Because it isn't casual, it is about prestige and to show you aren't a savage but actually are cultured.
Before French came into that position as the known lingua franca, lingua Latina was used by the higher nobles. But not casually among themselves no.
There is a difference here, and also how language was used in the 800s compared to 1400s is also very different.

The easy answer here is to say that no one should be too certain about how we think things was, I am open to changing my perspective, but as of now evidence show it was not only clergy who used latin, as clergy and the church was the main source of education/higher learning among nobles for a very long time, which then included latin.

 

[Viridianus]

The easy answer here is to say that no one should be too certain about how we think things was, I am open to changing my perspective, but as of now evidence show it was not only clergy who used latin, as clergy and the church was the main source of education/higher learning among nobles for a very long time, which then included latin.

Latin was, indeed, the language of education, but I still fail to see how it makes it related in any way to languages of court.

But it isn't casual conversation, court language is what we would call business language today. In many countries English is used as the business language, though they speak a different language casually because it is their own.

Not quite, but even if - it's oral business language, not, again, the language of documents. Oral Latin seems to have been an exclusively-clergy thing until Renaissance (and even not all clergy).