Why do Invidians Speak Balok?

[ewancummins]

Mister Naylor makes several good points.

And man how the heck did the Mulani get to be blond? They're descended from Thayvians who're descended from the very Egyptian Mulhorandi.

They may have acquired it by mixing with other peoples. The Mulan also dwell in Unther, which is more like Mesopotamia. Some live in Chessenta, too, although I suspect those are more likely mixed in with other racial stock.

Note that the Mulan gods are divided into two pantheons, one Egyptian and one Mespotamian (both Sumerian gods and Baylonian gods). The Mulan would seem to be a hybrd people from early days.

I've seen reference to priests and priestesses of Gilgeam dyeing their hair blond, for whatever that is worth.

[Mangrum]

And of course we immediately jump right back into the topic of IT'S NOT EUROPE.

Heck, 3E Nova Vaasa isn't even necessarily connected to the Forgotten Realms.

[Matthew L. Martin]

And of course we immediately jump right back into the topic of IT'S NOT EUROPE.

Heck, 3E Nova Vaasa isn't even necessarily connected to the Forgotten Realms.

I picked up a cheap copy of the Shadows over Filmland supplement for Trail of Cthulhu recently, and I think that its section on "Backlot Gothic" should be required reading for Ravenloft.

[ewancummins]

And of course we immediately jump right back into the topic of IT'S NOT EUROPE.

Heck, 3E Nova Vaasa isn't even necessarily connected to the Forgotten Realms.

Right you are, and Toril is not Earth.

I posted in another thread to the effect that the Core is quite unlike Europe in many ways, despite the obvious European influences in languages, folklore, etc. Most countries of the Core have only been in existence a few centuries, there is no overarching religious ideology or international hierarchy equivalent to the Church, there was never a great empire like Rome, etc, etc.

Ravenloft's Core also has some flora and fauna that are native to North America in our real world. I use, as it would several other posters use, a Dixie-inspired Arkandale.The Gaz used Haida Indians as a source of inspiration for the natives in Valachan, methinks.



All hail the glorious melange that is Ravenloft!

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

there is no overarching religious ideology or international hierarchy equivalent to the Church

Though I agree with the rest of your post, it seems like most people use Ezra to fill this void. While there are holdouts in the "pagan" backwaters of Tepest, Forlorn, and Valachan, and also the (Ottoman or Not-Ottoman, whatever you like) opposing Lawgiver block in the southeast, and the odd Lamordian athiests, Ezra seems to have taken root, or at least a toehold just about everywhere else.

And the stylistic similarities between Ezra and Christianity seem to be deliberately set up to allow the Church of Ezra to stand in for The Church in all the parts of the Gothic and Horror tradition where it would otherwise be missed.

[ewancummins]

there is no overarching religious ideology or international hierarchy equivalent to the Church

Though I agree with the rest of your post, it seems like most people use Ezra to fill this void. While there are holdouts in the "pagan" backwaters of Tepest, Forlorn, and Valachan, and also the (Ottoman or Not-Ottoman, whatever you like) opposing Lawgiver block in the southeast, and the odd Lamordian athiests, Ezra seems to have taken root, or at least a toehold just about everywhere else.

And the stylistic similarities between Ezra and Christianity seem to be deliberately set up to allow the Church of Ezra to stand in for The Church in all the parts of the Gothic and Horror tradition where it would otherwise be missed.

I agree with that last bit, but my own take is perhaps a bit different. Allow me to explain.

Ezranism reminds me more of the early Church than the medieval church. It's a young faith, only a few centuries old. It has spread by missionary activity, but doesn't have an empire backing it up. There was a bargain with the rulers of Borca, but we have no Constantine ( that would require an equivalent to the Roman Empire) to make it the official religion of most of the 'civilized world'.

What I meant was that no one religion has yet attained the political dominance and depth of cultural influence over the Core as a whole that Christianity had achieved over most of Europe by, say, AD 1000.

I'm uncomfortable talking about 'Europe' in cultural terms before about 1492 or so. I don't think it's a useful term for most of the Medieval Period or for Late Antiquity. Christendom is much better- but we must always keep in mind that its boundaries are not coterminous with Europe as a continent.

[Agamemnon]

Finally, what defines a language is its grammar, not its vocabulary. That's why Jabberwocky is understandable, despite having most of the words made up: because the sentence construction is English. Even if the *words* of Invidian Balok are based on Italian rather than Romanian or Slavic, if it has the same sentence construction of Barovian Balok, they'd be mutually intelligible once you'd worked out what the differences were.

Where'd you get that? That's not right. The smallest information-carrying unit of language is a phoneme, not grammar. Language is made up of recognizable phonemes, regardless of the grammatical matrix behind it.

Many languages have similar grammatical structures, but vastly different phonetic sounds for the same concepts, and these are not mutually comprehensible, just because they share the same grammatical structure. How on Earth would you deduce what the words mean only based on sentence structure, morphology, placement of verbs in relation to nouns, etc.?

If Italian, e.g., had the same grammatical structure as German, the two different languages still wouldn't magically be comprehensible to the different speakers.

Compare the word malocchio, meaning "evil eye" in Italian. Let's say for argument's sake that there was a fictional language in Ravenloft that used German words, but Italian grammar. You claim that because of the same grammar, the German would be comprehensible as Italian? Evil eye is "böse Auge" in German. Using the same structure as Italian, we'll contract it to "bösauge." Are you claiming that an Italian would recognize "bösauge" as "malocchio" just because their structure is similar? To understand the word, the reader would need more context than just structure.

Generally, people do not understand languages in terms of grammar, but rather in recognizable phonemes. An Italian would probably recognize a word like malefique in French, meaning evil, not because French has a similar grammar to Italian, but because the Italian would recognize the root "mal-" which means bad or evil in both French and Italian.

It has nothing to do with grammar or syntax, but rather with recognition of similar phonemes.

[Ryan Naylor]

I will accept that I was needlessly careless in saying that a grammar "defines" a language. However, I think you are equally wrong to give so much importance to phonemes, since meaning is created by morphology, syntax, paralinguistic cues etc, as well as the actual sounds of the words. I am talking about meaning overall, not the smallest units of meaning, and I was also (a) making a point quickly and (b) to a non-specialist audience, who probably don't care anyway.

I was saying that the dialects of Balok spoken in Barovia and Invidia are just that: dialects of the one language. Dialects are characterised by variations in vocabulary, pronunciation and, yes, grammar. The point I was making was that the variations between Invidian and Barovian Balok seem to be in vocabulary: Invidian Balok used real-world Italian roots, and Barovian Balok uses real-world Romanian and Slavic roots. I am not saying that the speakers magically understand each other just based on sentence structure, but I am saying that, if they are speaking dialects of the same language, they do have the extra context needed to work out that "malocchio" is just the Invidian dialect word for "bösauge".

Swiss Standard German is a dialect of German (and is not the same as Swiss German). The SSG word for "pub" is "Beiz" vs. the Standard German word, "Kneipe"; the SSG word for "bicycle" is "Velo" vs. the German "Fahrrad". On a first encounter, the German might be a bit confused as to what a Velo or a Beiz was, but once she'd learnt that it was just the local word for a familiar object, it wouldn't be an issue.

You have the same thing with the word "fanny", which has very different meanings in American English vs. other Englishes, or "pants" in British English vs. other Englishes.

I would also argue that there's a lot more going on in your "malefique" example than you suggest, not least the historical relationship between French and Italian. An Italian might be able to recognise "malefique" in French, particularly if it's written down, because "evil" is "male" in Italian. However, it's more likely that she'd recognise it as "something to do with evil," and the same guess would be completely wrong with the French "pas mal" ("not bad") or "avoir mal" ("to be in pain"), or the English "male". The key to understanding those is grammar and syntax, not just blind recognition of the phonemes.

My point is that the language primers given for the different languages and dialects, and the other linguistic clues we've been given in names and so forth, are very brief and incomplete. We are told though that they are mutually intelligible regional dialects (of Balok etc). The only way that that makes sense (to me, at least) is if there is regional variations in vocabulary (which are the only things we're given) but fundamental similarities in the grammar systems which allow things to be deciphered. I would think it is most likely that 90% or more of the vocabulary between the two dialects is the same or similar, and probably 99% of the grammar. The differences might come in phonology (for example, the Barovians contract syllables, forming the consonant clusters they are noted for), which broaden out into differences in the words used for common things, and broaden further into phrasal differences (using the different greetings, "Hello," "Good morning," and "God be with you") and some grammatical differences. The point is, though, that we know they *are* mutually intelligible, we just have to work out how given the tiny pieces we know.

[cure]

Just be thankful that it uses the roman alphabet.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

So, three pages in, and we have only halfway answered the opening question. The idea seems to be that Invidians speak Balok because it was Bakholis' language. But where did Bakholis come from? Barovia? Borca? The original world that spawned them?

It seems to me that Bakholis isn't as developed as we thought at first. I mean, what was his curse? He doesn't seem to have been bothered by his lycanthropy much. Anyone interested in writing him up?

Edit: Okay, checking the wiki time-map, it appears that Invidia predates Borca, so that leaves Barovia and the original homeworld.

[Garudos Celestar]

Edit: Okay, checking the wiki time-map, it appears that Invidia predates Borca, so that leaves Barovia and the original homeworld.

...or if it's a second language that he learned after arriving in Ravenloft, anywhere else in the multiverse.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Edit: Okay, checking the wiki time-map, it appears that Invidia predates Borca, so that leaves Barovia and the original homeworld.

...or if it's a second language that he learned after arriving in Ravenloft, anywhere else in the multiverse.

Then that would be a first. Every other DL's domain uses the DL's native tongue. This including Kartakass and Valachan, both of which have DL's who wandered around before settling. Heck, Von Kharkov was a Kargat agent well before becoming a DL--don't tell me he didn't learn Darkonese!

Let's see: Azalin learned Barovian before creating Darkon, but Darkonese has been related to his homeworld. Don't know how Soth spoke to Strahd, but they spoke--did he learn a language?

At any rate, such a move would be unprecedented, and would therefore beg more questions: why give the land a language that was not the DL's first? Was this a snub? Was he supposed to feel like an outsider in his own domain?

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Let's see: Azalin learned Barovian before creating Darkon, but Darkonese has been related to his homeworld. Don't know how Soth spoke to Strahd, but they spoke--did he learn a language?

Strahd's been dealing with outlanders since forever, he probably knew to cast Comprehend Languages before they met. The real poser is, how did Soth communicate with Magda or Azrael?

[Rotipher of the FoS]

At any rate, such a move would be unprecedented, and would therefore beg more questions: why give the land a language that was not the DL's first? Was this a snub? Was he supposed to feel like an outsider in his own domain?

Probably some element of Bakholis's personal backstory made it painfully appropriate. Maybe he had a bad stutter as a child or something, and finding himself unable to communicate with the natives stirred up those feelings of isolated frustration. Or maybe he'd conquered a neighboring country on his homeworld, and had used tyrannical methods to force the populace to give up their own native language; when he gets a domain, it's one where no one -- not even his own closest flunkies -- can even pronounce his preferred tongue.

[Garudos Celestar]

At any rate, such a move would be unprecedented, and would therefore beg more questions: why give the land a language that was not the DL's first? Was this a snub? Was he supposed to feel like an outsider in his own domain?

Probably some element of Bakholis's personal backstory made it painfully appropriate. Maybe he had a bad stutter as a child or something, and finding himself unable to communicate with the natives stirred up those feelings of isolated frustration. Or maybe he'd conquered a neighboring country on his homeworld, and had used tyrannical methods to force the populace to give up their own native language; when he gets a domain, it's one where no one -- not even his own closest flunkies -- can even pronounce his preferred tongue.

I personally like the idea. It also plays into Invidia's role as a land of passion: actions are important, not words. Even in its current incarnation w/ master manipulator Gabby Aderre as darklord, her main modus operandi is a powerful glance that says more than words ever could followed by a night to remember (or not, as in the case of the Gentleman Caller...) Did she and Bakholis even exchange words when they first met? The description in The Evil Eye almost makes it seem like Bakholis' flunkies dragged her in for their "audience" and shut the door to give them some "privacy," at which point Gabby blasted him into submission.