230
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Accepted
You can control a Demon by knowing its True Name, but why?
Use of their name forces them to be aware of the one truth they can never know.
TL;DR: If demons seek permanent power but trust no one, they put themselves in a strange position where mathematical ...
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173
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Why would "dead languages" be the only languages that spells could be written in?
Immutability
A language is dead if it is no longer in current use. One of the effects of nobody using the language anymore is that it doesn't change.
Consider latin, for example. A tersorium is a ...
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141
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Does a hive mind race need a written language?
What you describe for a hive mind is also true for a single mind. And yet we all write down things not only for other people, but also for ourselves.
The hive mind would not need the first reason, ...
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121
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How would an order of Monks that renounce their names communicate effectively?
They don't actually need names.
Names aren't used that often in everyday communication. Body language is very effective for indicating which person in a group you're talking to. And to get somebody's ...
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120
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You can control a Demon by knowing its True Name, but why?
The lecture hall was still and silent as the old man limped towards the waiting chalk boards. One hand was a withered claw, one eye missing and covered by a patch. Conflicting rumours said his limp ...
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115
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Is it plausible to have two written forms of one spoken language that are so different as to be indecipherable?
As a real life example, consider the Chinese writings Pinyin and Hanzi. Pinyin is a romanization of the sounds of the words, while hanzi is the characters like 漢字 *.
Now in the real world, people ...
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112
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Why would a language be undubbable by universal (machine) translator?
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.
Though the universal translator (in Star Trek: TNG) can translate their words, the Tamarians communicate only through allegory, which baffles the Enterprise crew because ...
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97
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How would an order of Monks that renounce their names communicate effectively?
If your group renounces their personal identity in favor of their work, the obvious thing to call them by is profession. If a particular brother is responsible for the monastery gardens, he's Brother ...
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96
votes
Would a "ring language" be possible?
It’s not only possible, it exists as you describe. Italian, French (Provençal, really), Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese (and many local dialects thereof) merge continuously into each other, and ...
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95
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How could a language that uses a single word extremely often sustain itself?
Simple, make the language Oligosynthetic. Oligosynthetic languages are languages that have 50-200 words and simply combine words to create new concepts. For example; Let's say I want to say hell, in ...
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92
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How to avoid the language barrier when there is no time to learn the other language?
Let's consider a real historical example
Let's fix the historical period to the 14th century, and let's say that "language 1" is French and "language 2" is Romanian. Both French and Romanian are ...
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92
votes
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Can the number of letters in alphabet suggest how advanced civilization is?
There's practically no correlation between the complexity of a given language and the complexity of the writing system used to represent it. Japanese and Korean are both very complex languages, able ...
- 1,851
91
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What event would cause a huge, dominant nation to adopt the language of a smaller, inferior one?
When the Roman conquered Greece, they were so fascinated from their civilization that they put a straw in that land and started avidly sucking their culture.
It was common practice for students to ...
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89
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In an atheist alien society where bodily functions (reproduction and waste elimination) are not taboo what would be used to curse?
"I hope you get (fatal health problem) and crawl back into the (lower lifeform) nest you spawned from and die, you (deformed) (disease)-ridden piece of (low status) (socially unacceptable habit) filth!...
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88
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Why would "dead languages" be the only languages that spells could be written in?
Your Dead Language is a Programming Language
The speech of modern folk is merely meant to communicate with one another, but the ancient tongue is a programming language that directly shapes reality. ...
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77
votes
Accepted
How can I develop names for my fantasy land?
I would recommend google translate for this little effort.
Pick a language that fits the style of your world/or a particular nation depending on your scale. This mainly means find a language where ...
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76
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Is there a more effective way to build a language than a word frequency list?
I don't have a reference but some philologists and linguists have speculated that you could survive (explain who you are, ask for employment and food, etc.) in a foreign land with as few as 500 words. ...
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71
votes
Is it plausible to have two written forms of one spoken language that are so different as to be indecipherable?
Urdu and Hindi are another example of this. The grammar and a large part of the vocabulary is essentially identical between the languages, but the writing in Urdu is based on Arabic and some ...
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69
votes
How to avoid the language barrier when there is no time to learn the other language?
The simplest solution is that in both population you have some rare few scholars who speak language 0 and can communicate in this language, even though they do not actually speak each others' modern ...
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66
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You can control a Demon by knowing its True Name, but why?
Fear. Speaking the True Name of a Demon, tells the Demon two very important things, one you know its name and two you speak the Adamic language. These two things allow you to do something else - speak ...
- 3,433
66
votes
Accepted
How can you tell an AI apart from a human over the phone but not in person?
Compression.
Phone line companies want to save money by having each call use up as little bandwidth as possible. This is true both for communication over wire and by cellphones - the more calls you ...
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65
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Why would "dead languages" be the only languages that spells could be written in?
Because they're the original spells and no translation could ever get it right.
As an example of a holy book, the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible) is written in Hebrew and will always be ...
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64
votes
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Is it practical to make English the global language?
The Russians did it: the Russian Empire, and its successors the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation established Russian as the language for official and inter-ethnic communication. It worked. ...
- 85.9k
64
votes
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Could a well versed archaeologist understand and speak languages that are 3000+ years old?
First the bad news
Archaeologists are not historical linguists, and historical linguists are not archaeologists. It is not at all likely for an archaeologist to have more than an amateur level ...
- 85.9k
63
votes
Accepted
How can I explain English existing in a fantasy world?
There are a few ways to go about this...
She's not the first
Simply put she isn't the first English speaking person to be there, maybe of the few that came before her who spoke English one came into ...
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58
votes
Accepted
What happens when two languages merge?
Languages do not usually "merge"; linguistic communities often do
There is a reason why your diligent research bore no fruit: historical linguistics does not ever speak of languages "...
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57
votes
Is it plausible to have two written forms of one spoken language that are so different as to be indecipherable?
Yes, it is possible. In general there will be a trend towards a single script, as it has huge practical advantages. But there were and are examples of different scripts for the same language.
In ...
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57
votes
Accepted
How do governments keep people accountable for contracts and oaths in a civilisation without a writing system?
Important oaths could be sworn in front of witnesses.
Less important oaths would rely on reputation. Reputation would be important to one survival, and if you somehow manage to trick a large number ...
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57
votes
How can you tell an AI apart from a human over the phone but not in person?
The breath of life and plosives.
In real life, unless the person's mouth is right by your ear, you'll not be able to tell the difference between high-quality reproduction and the real thing.
On a ...
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55
votes
What royal title can an absolutistic ruler have?
Here are some root words and evolutions from various European languages that have been used for king equivalents:
Latin Imperator (meaning one who commands) → Emperor
Latin Caesar (from the name) → ...
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