Where did High and Low Realm come from?

[Flagg]

Re: High/Low Realm

Low Realm is a superset of High Realm.

The problem with this theory is that there are canonical characters printed that list both High and Low Realm amongst their linguistics dots. If everyone who knew Low Realm automatically knew High, that would be somewhat redundant.


-S

 

[Sevatuan]

Re: High/Low Realm

If everyone who knew Low Realm automatically knew High, that would be somewhat redundant.
-S

I don't know what your background is Stillborn, so if you've done this already - shame on me .


Try reading a legal brief, or the actual text of any law in the state of your residence.


Assuming you're in the U.S. - it's written in English. But if you can truly understand and comprehend what it's saying, then you have a better mastery of the language than I.


Knowing the words in a language, and knowing how to use them properly are two different things.


Low Realm: He Stole my Balloons!


High Realm: The party of the second part, being described as an adult male descended from the house of Tepet Vergus and hereinafter referred to as 'he', did with malice and forethought unlawfully remove from the residence of the party of the First part, being described as an adolescent female of the house of Nellens and hereinafter referred to as 'my', a collection of air-filled latex constructs hereinafter identified as 'balloons.'

 

[Flagg]

Re: High/Low Realm


If High Realm and Low Realm are simply formal and vulgar forms of the same language, there is no need whatsoever for them to be two separate languages mechanically.


The difference is easily represented in game terms as either a specialty in "legalese" or a few dots of Bureaucracy in addition to Linguistics.


Or would you like to argue that a Low Realm speaker with 5 dots in Bureaucracy couldn't comprehend a legal document without having purchased High Realm as well?


-S

 

[Sevatuan]

The argument could be made, depending on how one wants to interpret the skill.


I see Bureaucracy as the art of knowing who to talk to, and where to talk to them and how to navigate/eleminate the endless forms required to get an appointment with the Most Illuminated Minister of Nocturnal Excretions to ensure he at least gets to read your petition to change the location of the  new night-soil dump without it being tied up in committee for 6 months before some minor functionary underling of the Minister decides it is not worth the Ministers time and stamps it 'Denied in Review'.


It also include knowledge of how to get help with all those forms in the event you don't understand all the little boxes that need to be filled out without being completely laughed out of the building by heartless government workers on a 4 hour lunch break.


Again, using U.S. law as an example - Laws and Briefs are intentionally written in obscure, hard to read format. It ensures the continued need for Lawyers. Laws and briefs are, for example, the only place I'm aware of where Passive Voice is not only acceptable, but required.


Just because you can navigate through the Library of Congress's antiquated process for requesting access to the original copies of all signed laws, and minimize your time on the wait list from 6 days to 2 days does not actually mean you automatically are going to understand the text of said document.


Now, the odds are incredibly good that anyone who is that versed in navigating the bureaucracy  will understand that. And in that context perhaps High Realm should be better expressed as a specialty of Realm-speak rather than a completely separate skill.


I wasn't actually supplying a response on the merit of High and Low Realm as separate skills, but rather on the distinctions between the two languages. If that's whatyou were looking for, then I misunderstood the question (as has been known to happen to me a lot).

 

[Flagg]

to ensure he at least gets to read your petition to change the location of the  new night-soil dump

It's also the art of knowing how to write such a petition.

Now, the odds are incredibly good that anyone who is that versed in navigating the bureaucracy  will understand that. And in that context perhaps High Realm should be better expressed as a specialty of Realm-speak rather than a completely separate skill.

Perhaps, if one follows your line of thought. However, I don't think you're correct. High Realm is obviously set up in the game as an entirely different language.

Each language family comprises several dialects, but for simplicity’s sake, its assumed that a character knowledgeable in a language family can comprehend dialects within the family. Linguistics rolls are needed only to
understand complex writing or speech, although a high


Linguistics rating should reduce this necessity.

Under your reasoning, writing a legal document for the Realm would only be a Lingustics roll to create a "complex writing" in Low Realm. High Realm becomes completely meaningless.


However, the creators of the game clearly define it as it's own language group, which means that it's clearly not simply a byzantine usage of Low. It's not just a subset of Low either, it is its own separate language group.


-S

 

[Sevatuan]

Without violating copyright and quoting nearly an entire page of text:

"the vocabulary involved is different depending on the school involved, but all the words are drawn from the half-million or so terms that form the official vocabulary of the court of the Scarlet Emperess. Individuals who know this alphabet and vocabulary speak High Realm..."

*snip a paragraph of text*

"The informal discourse of the populace is another matter, as are loan words and novel sounds. The Immaculate Order seeks to instill a basic knowledge of Realm, but without the pressure of standardized examinations or with limited ambitions. Monks teach writing and spelling over pronunciation, with the goal of allowing students to read the Immaculate Texts and sign their names, rather than teaching them proper diction. As a result, the language of the lower orders, Low Realm, can become totally incomprehensible in linguistic backwaters such as slums or isolated rural communities.
"Loan Words and novel sounds are likewise totally unregulated. Individuals representing foreign words and sounds in the alphabet of the Realm sound it out and fit it into the phonetically rather limited standard alphabet as best they can. Two writers will write the same word two different ways, and as a result, even with a core vocabulary establised by statute, High Realm is also often difficult reading. This is especially true when dealing with topis outside of its range of respect, orders and accountancy, and particularly when providing accounts of Threshold culture or customs, where there are a great many new words used."

I read all that as "High Realm is a regulated language focused on Military Orders and Standardized Accounting Practices and ain't much good for 'Hi, how ya doing. Did you watch the Game? How's the wife and kids?'"


The same words are used as in Low Realm, but apparently in different context and structure and conceptualization of abstract concepts.


Which says to me that someone at White Wolf forgot about the phraseology of the Linguistics Skill when they later wrote down notes on the language of the Realm, or whoever conceptually designed the language didn't communicate well with the author of the Core Book Text.


Which makes the question, should Storytellers House-Rule that High Realm and Low Realm are actually dialects, and the language itself is 'Realm'. The actual text of the Player's Guide specifically mentions 'seeks to instill a basic knowledge of Realm' without a 'High' or 'Low' qualifier.

 

[Flagg]

Which says to me that someone at White Wolf forgot about the phraseology of the Linguistics Skill when they later wrote down notes on the language of the Realm, or whoever conceptually designed the language didn't communicate well with the author of the Core Book Text.

Either option is 100% unsurprising.


To be fair, there is a TON of canon to contend with when making up new stuff for Exalted. I'm sure the task of inventing new ideas that don't conflict with or contradict old ones is daunting.


However, WW seems to consistently fail on this front, which tends to create a lot of ambiguity. It also causes a lot of arguments on forums like this, because it seems that the Exalted writers/editors don't know their own game as well as the players do.

Which makes the question, should Storytellers House-Rule that High Realm and Low Realm are actually dialects, and the language itself is 'Realm'. The actual text of the Player's Guide specifically mentions 'seeks to instill a basic knowledge of Realm' without a 'High' or 'Low' qualifier.

It would certainly simplify things.


I do like the idea of them being wholly separate languages, though. It reinforces the theme of the Dynasts almost complete detachment from the common folk.


-S

 

[Sevatuan]

I do like the idea of them being wholly separate languages, though. It reinforces the theme of the Dynasts almost complete detachment from the common folk.

We can do that. Let us take the following approach as one possible solution:


High Realm and Low Realm started as I've outlined, but over 750 years of loan-words and focus on spelling over pronunciation have resulted in a Manadarin/Cantonese like dichotomy, where the written language is mostly the same, but the spoken language of Low-Realm is totally separate.


Or maybe a better comparison would be Latin to Spanish. The languages are similar, and some very basic concepts may be mutually intelligible, and they use more-or-less the same alphabet. They are recognizably related, but not so much so that free and unhindered communication is possible.


And now I have to actually get some work done.

 

[Flagg]

All right then, if we posit that Low Realm is simply a bastardization of High, then we still need to figure out where High Realm came from.


Is it the missing "Earthspeak"?


-S

 

[Sevatuan]

So let's work from what we know: High Realm is the official language of the Realm, and has been for centuries. This means it came from the Empress. So where did she get it?


I see two distinct possibilities: She made it up whole cloth; or it is the language she herself spoke when she established the Realm.


The first option seems unlikely. As someone who's hobby is creating languages, it is not an easy task to undertake. She's busy fortifying and maintaining her hold on the Realm and setting up the Thousand Scales to ensure she stays in power. She's powerful, but I don't think she has the time to create a language from nothing.


Of course, maybe she didn't. Maybe it was handed to her by the Sidereal's.


Either option leaves us asking 'Why.'


It seems more likely that it either the language the Empress spoke, or derived from the language she spoke. This is the language I speak, it is now the official language of the Realm. So let it be written, so let it be done.


So before she became the Empress, she was hunting down armies of Fair Folk. Had she been on the Blessed Isle the whole time, or had she been travelling across creation bringing the war to them?


Let us assume for the purpose of this exercise that she's been on the Isle the whole time. During the time of the Solars, the official Language was Old Realm - which is the language of Heaven itself. I'll bet the commoner's did not speak the language of Heaven. But they had to speak something, right?


I'm going to posit that what we know today as 'High Realm' is nothing more than the 'Low Realm' of the First Age.


I don't remember reading anything about the other Elemental tongues - I only own the Hardback books, so I don't know if they're languages spoken by the Aspected Dragon Blooded, or if they're regional Dialects of the Elemental Poles. But the Blessed Isle is the home of the Elemental Pole of Earth, which lends itself to being a please where something called Earthspeak is spoken.


Edit: I know that Dragon Blooded are not really 'the Common folk' - but try explaining that to a Solar Exalted at the height of the First Age. The DBs were the common foot-soldier of the Exalted Army. I can't imagine that the Solars held the DB in incredibly high regard.

 

[Andrew02]

What you call the 'Elemental tongues' are the regional dialects. Skytongue is the language of some of the North peoples, not the language of the Air Aspect Dragon-Blooded. The core book says as much. Doesn't that just strike you as silly, though, that each Aspect of the Dragon-Blooded would have their own language?

 

[Sevatuan]

Doesn't that just strike you as silly, though, that each Aspect of the Dragon-Blooded would have their own language?

It struck me as very silly, actually. Which is why I was hoping it was the regional dialects. It's been a while since I've looked at the full language list in the Core book - I remembered the regional languages, but I didn't remember them being elementally named. Ahh well.


So that seems to add a bit more credence to 'High Realm' being 'Earthspeak'. It doesn't guarantee it, but lends weight to it.


So is Earthspeak, in fact, bastardized Old Realm, or is it the language of mortals before the Gods started mucking about with things?

 

[Andrew02]

For my money, I'd think Low Realm would be 'Earthspeak,' and High Realm would be more like the Latin or the language of Romans or something. I'd imagine that when the Primordials made all of the peoples of Creation they gave the humans different languages for their own inscrutable reasons. Then when the Gods got the Exalted, they taught them Old Realm so they could do their job as intermediaries between god and man, and the Dragon-Blooded eventually integrated and changed enough of Old Realm over time for it to become High Realm.


It's not the most logical reasoning, and ignores some evidence, but language in Exalted didn't appeal much to me. I just don't appreciate what attention to languages can do for a game.

 

[Flagg]

So let's work from what we know: High Realm is the official language of the Realm, and has been for centuries. This means it came from the Empress.

That's a bit of a deductive leap, but I won't quibble about it at the moment.

It seems more likely that it either the language the Empress spoke, or derived from the language she spoke. This is the language I speak, it is now the official language of the Realm. So let it be written, so let it be done.

A possibility that I've considered. My problem is this: If High Realm was a pre-existing language of Creation (perhaps under a different name), then where did they used to speak it before it became the official language of the Realm? Why has that place stopped using it? Perhaps it was from a region now lost to the Wyld?

So before she became the Empress, she was hunting down armies of Fair Folk. Had she been on the Blessed Isle the whole time, or had she been travelling across creation bringing the war to them?

I seem to remember something about her fighting in the Threshold and then travelling back to the Imperial City to do her Manse-diving.

During the time of the Solars, the official Language was Old Realm - which is the language of Heaven itself. I'll bet the commoner's did not speak the language of Heaven. But they had to speak something, right?

One could assume. Then again, it's also possible that it was spoken by everyone.


Do we know what langauge the Shogunate used? If it's not Old Realm, then perhaps it was High Realm, and the language was not introduced by the Empress at all. Do the books have anything to say on this?

But the Blessed Isle is the home of the Elemental Pole of Earth, which lends itself to being a please where something called Earthspeak is spoken.

Maybe there is no "Earthspeak" because the Blessed Isle wasn't originally inhabited by humans? Only after the Gods left to play the Games did mortals set up camp there. If the other elemental tongues were created prior to the First Age, this could explain the missing "earth" language.

 

[Asahi]

Language development is largely based on society. That's where the splits would have come from. English and French have common roots but we use words differently because of social differences. For example the  litteral translation of the French for necklace means river of diamonds. So there would be differences between the languages on Creation and in Heaven.


Noam Chomsky explains it better than i ever could.