Oblivion's Cyrodiilic Language

Post » Wed Dec 04, 2013 3:02 pm

Aside from Clan Berne, most Imperials in Morrowind had Latin looking names. There's more of this in Skyrim along with Italian names. Whereas in Oblivion, there are Latin names and there are others. The city names look different too. What languages are they based on? http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Imperial_Names#Oblivion

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Gracie Dugdale
 
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Post » Wed Dec 04, 2013 10:45 am

The Cyrodiilic language as it appears in names has always been heavily Latin-influenced, with some English and somewhat-European words used freely. There is no official Cyrodiilic language, but we can assume from its history that it is a combination of Ayleid and Nordic, with some surviving influence of the speech of the early mannish and beastfolk tribes of Cyrodiil, and in Nibenay will have a splash of Akaviri influence from the Second Era.

The reason why Oblivion's Cyrodiilic names appear different is likely because, with the Imperials being at the fore of the game, a greater quantity and diversity of language is required, and so besides the Latin and Romance languages they take influence from there is an element of "generic fantasy" or "from scratch" naming, and some English names used directly or permuted.

It could also be a genuine change in the language and naming conventions of the province, at least in the gap between TES IV and V.

For coming up with in-universe names for the Cyrodiils, I would tend to stick with the faux-Latin of Morrowind, perhaps with Slavic or Germanic influence on Colovian (and some genuinely Nordic names) and a touch of south Asian influence in lower Nibenay.

As for a true reconstruction of the Cyrodiilic language, based on in-game examples and its history, http://www.imperial-library.info/content/hrafnirs-languages-nordic#Old%20Cyrodiilic may interest you, along with Hrafnir's other brilliant contributions in that thread.

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Scott
 
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Post » Wed Dec 04, 2013 8:01 am

The use of Italian in Skyrim is indicative of a language shift, in my opinion. As far as I can tell, it was chosen purposely to indicate a "Dark Age" of sorts, or at least a regression of civilization, that parallels the real-life Dark Age that followed the collapse of Roman civilization--the later periods of which saw the people in Italy forgetting how to speak Latin in favor of a simplified language that eventually became Italian. The devs are trying to put forward this same idea of change (possibly regression, depending on your definition of what society and culture "should be"), and using both blunt and subtle metaphors to do it; I think this is one of the more subtle ones, but to me it was one of the most effective ones.

All of the above was to suggest that, instead of following Umpteen's advice about inventing Cyrodiilic names through pseudo-Latin, Fourth Era Cyrodiilic names will probably be more likely to come from Italian instead. It depends on what period of time you're looking at, of course; if you're inventing names for characters in Oblivion, of course, I would stick with the Latin, although as Umpteen says, Cyrodiil is the cosmopolitan hub of Tamriel and therefore has a lot of different influences coming into it and passing through it on a daily basis. It depends, I guess, on how traditional you really want to be.

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Nick Jase Mason
 
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Post » Wed Dec 04, 2013 9:19 am

I imagine that Cyrodiilic is a hearland variety of Nedic with quite a lot of Akaviri, Ayleid, and Nordic influences thrown in.

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Jason Rice
 
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Post » Wed Dec 04, 2013 8:48 am

Dang, that's clever. I can totally get behind that. Now, so if this is Tamriel's Dark Ages, where's our Islamic Golden Age? I don't think the Thalmor are more interested in the ink of scholars than the blood of martyrs. And surely our Mede-Empire Byzantium's already falling. And the only "prophet" the future has in store gets squashed under Brass. Maybe the Thalmor are the Mongol Empire, then?

Back on-topic, if Heartland Cyrodiilic's diversified as much as Latin to Romance languages, then I've love to think what happened to the Tamrielic dialects in the more distant parts of the Provinces.

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*Chloe*
 
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Post » Wed Dec 04, 2013 6:58 pm

I'm asking about which real life languages Cyrodillic is inspired by other than Latin, Italian and English (e.g. Goldwine). Chorrol, Natch, Irlav, Vlanhonder, Lenka, Hassildor, Fralmoton, Jirich etc. A lot of them look random to me, but there are recurring elements; Kvatch and Kvinchal; Fralav, Ilav and Sintav; Velwyn and Kaslowyn, Vlanarus, Vlanaril and Vlinorman. I think there's something Slavic about some of them, but I'm not at all familiar with those languages, so I could be wrong and I can't be much more specific. -wyn exists in Welsh names like Carwyn, but maybe it's found elsewhere too.

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Minako
 
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Post » Wed Dec 04, 2013 11:52 am

I agree. I'd say there are minor Polish- or Czech-flavoured elements.

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Fiori Pra
 
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Post » Wed Dec 04, 2013 2:41 pm

Some of them do sound Slavic, not Czech though, perhaps closer to Polish or Old Czech...? Of those that Quirkyusername named only Lenka is existing Czech name.

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мistrєss
 
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Post » Wed Dec 04, 2013 12:42 pm

DarkRalen, the Czech language is in the Slavic language group.

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Tom Flanagan
 
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Post » Wed Dec 04, 2013 4:12 am

I am quite sure I haven't implied anywhere in my post anything that could contradict that (English isn't my first language it's Czech btw).

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jesse villaneda
 
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Post » Wed Dec 04, 2013 10:34 am

Those names are supposed to be Colovian, as opposed to the more Latin-sounding names of Nibenay and Cyrod. Without actually being a Slav, I'd say they don't look very Slavic; I always assumed they were almost pure fantasy. Wouldn't know for sure though.

Colovia and Nibenay were supposed to be very different from eachother before Oblivion was released. Sadly, not much made it through, except the differences in naming. I really like how the Colovian names sound; Irlav Jarol, Bendu Olo, Jagar Tharn etc. I think there is something about Colovian on Hrafnir's page, the one Umpteen linked.

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Hearts
 
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Post » Wed Dec 04, 2013 9:23 am

They're not Polish either. I agree some of them sound vaguely Slavic, but I don't see any common affixes. We have vlad- (or rather w?ad-), but not vlan-. Jirich could be Slavic (patronymic of Ji?í?) but it's a surname of a female character, so that doesn't really work.

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neil slattery
 
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Post » Wed Dec 04, 2013 5:29 am

Yeah, I said Polish because I saw a lot of "w" :smile:. "Jirich" seems closer to "Jind?ich", but as you said it's not a male character. I went through the list on UESP and there are few names used in Czech, but most of them originally from latin, so only Lenka appears to be unique.

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joannARRGH
 
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Post » Wed Dec 04, 2013 6:50 pm

There are no 'w', only 'v'. This automatically makes them more Czech than Polish. :wink:
The ending -?aw (not -s?aw) is extremely rare, I can think of only one name at the moment: Wac?aw, and it's actually borrowed from Czech. In old Polish it would be Wi?ces?aw.
But I looked at the list on UESP and the names starting with V and J seem to be the most promising. Vesnia is a variant of Vesna, but it's used as a surname in Oblivion. Vlarimil, Jaras or even Jastia look like they could be real names (though they aren't).

As it stands, none of them are actual names. Not in any language I know anyway.

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Sandeep Khatkar
 
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