(09-02-2017, 09:21 PM)L Wrote: The bit about Hingan being indiscernible from Eorzean is only in reference to the Japanese script and whether or not players typing in Japanese are speaking Hingan. Koji confirmed here, alongside Hancock's dialogue, that Hingan is a separate language from Hyuran Common.

(09-02-2017, 09:31 PM)Teadrinker Wrote:

(09-02-2017, 09:21 PM)L Wrote: The bit about Hingan being indiscernible from Eorzean is only in reference to the Japanese script and whether or not players typing in Japanese are speaking Hingan. Koji confirmed here, alongside Hancock's dialogue, that Hingan is a separate language from Hyuran Common.

So it's a different language that is almost indiscernible from the Eorzean tongue in the Japanese version? I didn't see where it specified written text only but then again does it matter? If it's written one way then it's spoken that way too, right?

This is why I'm just washing my hands of it at this point. I just plan to RP this out in the way that my partners and I are comfortable.

PAX West Lore Panel Wrote:Ruby Tide vs Ruby Sea

This is done on purpose. When the first Eorzean navigators and explorers went over to the East they found the island nation of Hingashi, but then it was all closed off. Kugane wasn't even open. So they didn't have any way to get any knowledge about this island because if they got too close the patrols would all attack them. They had to stay back. The only people from Hingashi that they could contact were the fishers who were fishing out in the sea. So they would come up alongside the boats and they would talk to these people to get any information they could on this new island nation that they discovered.

Those people didn't speak any of the Eorzean, the Eorzeans didn't speak any Hingan so there was that language barrier there. Through that conversation of what is this place called - the Hingan fishers are all about fishing, that's their livelihood - they talked about the "Ruby Tide" which was actually the warm current that carries all the life and fish and that's where they fished. For them that was the most important thing. "This is the Ruby Tide, this is where we fish and get all of our stuff."

It wasn't until years later when Kugane opened its doors they went in and found out oh no it's actually called the Ruby Sea - the Ruby Tide is just what the currents were called - but by then the map had already been made and so they decided to keep it. We use both of them in game. We use the Ruby Tide when talking about the actual currents and the Ruby Sea is the actual sea and the area.

PAX West Lore Panel Wrote:

With the introduction of all these new areas we got to have some fun with the language in each of the areas used, each area being fairly unique. For example, we'd already started it with Doma and Hingashi that we were gonna go with Japanese names - Romaji for Hingashi, and with some of the traditional Doman we were gonna go with maybe the Pinyin Chinese for some of those names, which is why Yanxia feels like it's from that area. And then of course we went with a sort of quasi-Mongolian for the Azim Steppe.

Just talking about the language, when you look at some of the areas the art teams and the graphics teams drew inspiration from a lot of things in east Asia and southern Asia, southeast Asia. But for the language we decided to go with something that felt Mongolian, but we didn't always use exact Mongolian terms. Sometimes we did, sometimes we didn't. For example, in all of the Azim Steppe storyline we used words like Khan, Udgan, and Nadaam whereas in the Japanese they just used the Japanese word for leader or shaman or battle, but we decided it might be a little bit interesting to use these actual terms. We also decided to make up some language as well. So you'll see conceived terms like Khaa, Khaal, Khaat which are all meant to have that feel but were unique to the Steppe.

This was because the Steppe is made up of lots of different tribes, not just a single tribe, and because of that you can expect a lot of the tribes to have different languages and they're all contributing to this one common language that most of the tribes use during trading, but when they're separate they use their own languages. That's why we wanted to have some of these similar words, but little bit dissimilar.

PAX West Lore Panel Wrote:When looking at the six maps of the Othardian areas, we have kinda English translations on some of those maps as well. Why? If you're in Hingashi shouldn't everything be in the Romaji Hingan. You have things like the Bokaisen Hot Springs. Well why is hot springs on there? This goes back to what I explained with the Ruby Tide when those first explorers came in, they didn't know much of the language. So they're going to hear the name of the place from the people and transcribe that down so when the guy says what is this called you get "Bokaisen." He's going to write that down, but if they write that down someone who doesn't understand Hingan is not going to understand what Bokaisen is, so they also wrote that this is a hot spring. For a person who does speak Hingan, they'll think Bokaisen - the "sen" is the hot spring part, so by saying Bokaisen Hot Springs you're saying Bokai hot springs hot springs. Or Shisui of the Violet Tides, Violet Tides of the Violet Tides.

That's put on the map so people who don't understand the language will know what it is, but they'll also have the base word there. If they're speaking with someone from Hingashi who doesn't understand [Eorzean], at least they can get that name across as well. So that's why both of them are on there. I mean, I see this a lot on signs when I lived in Japan. There's the Otokawa River, "kawa" is already river so Ota river river... (Bayohne: ATM machine, basically.) ATM machine, yes. CG graphics, things like that.

PAX West Lore Panel Wrote:Q: Does "Doman" or "Hingan" exist as completely separate languages? Would speaking Japanese in-game count as speaking "Hingan"?

A: First question, no, they are not exactly separate languages. You can think of them kinda as American English and British English. The first one being that origin language, the second one being of that land going to another land, using that language, but being separated long enough that words and pronunciations started changing a little bit. People from both lands will pretty much understand what both are saying.

As for whether speaking Japanese in the game equates to Hingan, I mean, that one's kinda tough. I mean, Japanese users kinda already speak Japanese in the game, but that kinda equates to Eorzean, which is Japanese to the Japanese version, but then Hingan is almost indiscernible from Eorzean. And the Japanese version both being Japanese, so if a Japanese user in the English uses the Japanese, is he speaking Eorzean or is he speaking Hingan...? Whatever! Let's just say using Romajified Japanese on the English client is Hingan... or not, you decide. Hai.

(09-02-2017, 08:55 PM)Zhu Wrote: I personally stick to the JP version when it comes to canon discrepancies between localizations because it's how the original writers intended it to be. Can't get more lore accurate than that.

PAX West Lore Panel Wrote:It's not in the Japanese. With the balloon text that we have here... I've explained this before, but the dev team has pretty much allowed all language teams to have fun with this. As long as there's no game hints in the text and they're not more than four lines, any language can do whatever they want to flesh out the game.

(09-02-2017, 09:31 PM)Teadrinker Wrote:

(09-02-2017, 09:21 PM)L Wrote: The bit about Hingan being indiscernible from Eorzean is only in reference to the Japanese script and whether or not players typing in Japanese are speaking Hingan. Koji confirmed here, alongside Hancock's dialogue, that Hingan is a separate language from Hyuran Common.

So it's a different language that is almost indiscernible from the Eorzean tongue in the Japanese version? I didn't see where it specified written text only but then again does it matter? If it's written one way then it's spoken that way too, right? 

This is why I'm just washing my hands of it at this point. I just plan to RP this out in the way that my partners and I are comfortable.

• The game script is loaded with moments like this verifying that Hingan is both romanized Japanese AND a different language from Eorzean
  
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• Hingan is not a dead language either, as Oboro would not make this statement if it were
  
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• All localizations are valid, the Japanese version of the game isn’t any more “true” than any other version. This is word of God (devs)
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• Eorzea is a setting based on western fantasy tropes, a Europe style continent, complete with European culture analogs and appropriately appropriated naming conventions. None of this works if Eorzean === Japanese.
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• Developers have confirmed that there were many languages in Eorzea that fell out of use, this perfectly explains why Elezen have French names but don’t speak French. Note this doesn’t confirm that Hingan is dead, that would be bad deductive reasoning.
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• In media the language of the actors and characters is almost always the same as the target audience. This doesn’t mean that in an American made World War II French occupation drama the native language of all the speakers is English, in much the same way that the Japanese version of Final Fantasy XIV doesn’t mean that Eorzean === Japanese.
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• Eorzean script is “olde English” - with just a few minutes of exposure English competent readers can read it, easily. How could this be if Eorzean === Japanese because of the Japanese localization speaking to its audience in Japanese? Spoilers: The Japanese localization is in Japanese so that Japanese people can understand it. At this point would we argue from a position of good faith that Eorzeans are reading this writing, mentally translating it to Hingan/Japanese, then translating back to “olde English” when they need to write something?
  This is a ridiculous idea but necessary if we thought that Eorzean === Japanese or that Eorzean === Hingan
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• Notably, all of the writing in Doma/Kugane uses the Japanese style characters we see in game, none of it is the Eorzean script. If Eorzean === Hingan then one culture here is really going out of its way to make it easy for the other at their own expense. For no reason at all.
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• The Au Ra Raen naming conventions lore shows us a complex name meaning system that uses Japanese characters. This simply could not be if Hingan was not a distinct language from Eorzean, because it would mean that Eorzean was also Japanese. Refer to earlier list points for why that doesn’t fly
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• The lore book did a really bad job of explaining itself. What it means to say is that Doman and Hingan are different dialects of the same language, not that Eorzean === Hingan
  

1. Eorzean and Hingan are distinct languages, both living (strongest model, only one that works in the setting completely)
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2. Eorzean and Hingan are distinct languages, but one of them is dead (this results in a broken setting)
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3. Eorzean and Hingan are the same language, and that language is “common” or English or some other magically undefinable language that somehow makes all of this work (this results in a broken setting)
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4. Eorzean and Hingan are the same language, and that language is Japanese (this results in a broken setting)