Languages always evolve, that’s nothing to be afraid of. During the middle ages everbody in France thought they spoke latin until they discovered, after some research under Charlemange, that they spoke French instead.
(As a Swedish speaker I want “smorgasbord” and “ombudsman” back…)
It isn’t so much that languages change, as that it seems every language is being flooded specifically by ugly English loanwords. I said it was unrealistic, I’m just a sucker for the unique character and charm of a foreign language , and my heart sighs a little when I look up, say “information “ and find the translation is “informasjon” instead of something like “batam-kek”…
“information” & “informasjon” come from latin, it’s not a loanword.
At what point should all languages be freezed?
Emytologi of “information” (from Wiktionary):
From Middle English informacion , enformacion , borrowed from Anglo-Norman informacioun , enformation , Old French information , from Latin īnfōrmātiō (“formation, conception; education”), from the participle stem of īnformāre (“to inform”).
A Latin loan word, if you will…
Taking this opportunity to recommend the book Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by RF Kuang-- it’s about languages and the difference between them and how they overlap and change, all in a fantasy alternate history of Oxford in the 19th century. I highly recommend it.
I knew “information” was a bad example, so I shouldn’t have said anything, and I’m aware that Latin is the root of perhaps the majority of the English words I’m referring to. It was more of a whimsical rant, it wasn’t meant to be a crusade against inevitable factors of language change!
No backsies!
I want “backsies” for Flemish! Gimme!
The need for “localization” (note my use of “z” rather than an “s”!) in IF is an interesting topic. I would never expect Americanized captions in film or TV, or an Americanized version of a novel. Parser IF’s need for text input makes it unique, which I have never really thought about.
Also, don’t do what Jigsaw did and have a room with clearly-marked exits…that’s got a vital clue hidden in its customized “you can’t go that way” message!
Thankfully I don’t think anyone does that any more.
Not to necro an old thread, but I’m going to necro an old thread.
I wondered what people’s feelings were about Inform’s “You feel nothing unexpected.” Of course you want to get rid of it when the thing in question can’t be touched (the moon, for instance), but how much effort do you expect to go into eradicating this pretty unsatisfactory message? I mean other than just specifying a single replacement phrase (“It feels as you’d expect”, for instance). I don’t know about other people, but I never use the verb TOUCH.
If you don’t want to implement a particular verb at all, you can cut it out entirely!
Understand nothing as touching.
I recommend doing this liberally for things you don’t intend to use anywhere. More recently I’ve started mapping push/pull/turn to a single “moving” action, which does the most contextually-relevant kind of moving for the item in question.
I concur. First thing I did when implementing my One King game was to eliminate all standard verbs (except for the meta verbs like save, reload, restart etc.). This reduced the number of possible error messages needing customization considerably, and I could focus more on giving the game its Barbarian vibe.
Parser Parer: Generate Inform 7 code to limit the player's actions. is very useful for creating a list of commands to eliminate standard verbs.
I suppose you’re right. But it’s sad to lose my private extension Can’t Touch This.i7x
[
Whirls into the room in shiny oversized pants (made from cape material?) and a cloud of glitter]
Did somebody say Can’t Touch This?
[Is just as abruptly removed from the Location by a giant hook before the chorus starts.]
spanner/wrench