Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Saede Riordan on 30 Aug 2012, 18:24
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Warning: This is a topic about swearing, thus, it contains swearing. You have been warned, thank you.
So, I've been in the summit lately, and, pardon my language, but the only cursewords people seem to use in there are the standard english western ones. Hell, fuck, shit, ass, damn, etc. Now, those don't really make sense at all to use, if you look at the cultures of eve. So then...what does? How do people swear in the Amarr Empire? How do you insult someone in the culture of the Minmatar? What do people exclaim when irritated in the Caldari state? Now sure, we could pick some other scifi's space swears, and use those, but that seems like a bit of a cheat, so lets make our own.
A good swear should be short, preferably monosyllabic, it should be the sort of thing your character shouts when irritated, it can be two or three syllables, but those longer ones should build off the short ones, motherfucker is an extended form of fuck at the end of the day, which is monosyllabic. It should also reflect the culture that creates it. The sort of thing that would be considered both profane and acceptable to use. In english, fuck is pretty well rooted into our language as a word, its used very very broadly, and its accepted as profanity, its profane, but its okay at the same time. Saying nigger has a lot more negative culture stimulus, and has mostly fallen out of conversational use other then in black communities where the word has been reclaimed.
So lets sit down and brainstorm, here are some places I thought to get started.
Amarr Empire
A lot of what we think of as 'mild' swearing in western culture might be grave insults in the Empire, things like 'god damn' would have a large amount of cultural meaning. But what other things would be used? They don't seem the sort to use 'pottymouth' words, maybe some other religious sort of terms?
Minmatar Republic
Here, I think good places to start looking would be in the outcast marks, in offending ones clan or family, name slandering, etc. I'm not sure what words specifically would emerge from this, but it would be a good place to start.
Gallente Federation
Here I could actually see the 'pottymouth' stuff fitting right in and being culturally accepted as such. If any race was to use it, it would be the Gallenteans, but they wouldn't use words like 'damn' because, damn them to where?
Caldari State
I'm really not at all sure about the Caldari, I'm not as familiar with their culture as I'd like to be.
As a final note: The purpose here is not to come up with words in the languages spoken (There's probably already naapaani swearing out there though) but to think of what english words, due to cultural context, would be used as swearing in the given cultures. If we do make up words, it should be in the form of taking longer english concepts, and boiling them down to slang.
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Caldari State
I'm really not at all sure about the Caldari, I'm not as familiar with their culture as I'd like to be.
Ancestors choke!
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Pitoojee.
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Pitoojee.
I am summoned.
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PitoojeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
fyp.
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According to PF, Zaragram is a curse word in the Empire after the Mad Emperor. (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Zaragram_II)
I imagine knave would be used as an insult.
Wretch, cretin, damn (as in "to curse or condemn").
The State has "Ancestors choke!" Insults would include anything demeaning to a person's aptitudes, merits and honor.
I've used words like "scrap," "shaft," and "biowaste" as curse words regardless of the character's nationality.
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Kador's Balls! :eek:
Look at that!
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Ahem.
PitoooOOooooOOOjeeeeeeEEEEEE!!!
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I could see insults in the Federation involving people's social and financial status, given its focus on individualist determination. I wouldn't be surprised if a few insults weren't named after some infamous political figures in history.
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Ahem.
PitoooOOooooOOOjeeeeeeEEEEEE!!!
See also Esnalicious
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I'm gonna go with "anything" for the Fed.
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Amarr: I'd imagine that in the Amarr Empire, swearing would have just as many religious overtones as everything else in Amarrian daily life. Calling someone a "lip-servicer" in lieu of "kiss-ass", for example, would be quite Amarrian in my opinion and would drive the same point home with just as much insult in that culture. Sinc e there is also emphasis on one's family lineage in determining social rank, some swear words like "bastard" would actually carry more insult and be slightly more taboo.
Minmatar: I really have much less clue here. I can see much of Minmatar cursing being borrowed or derived from Amarrian and Gallentean swearing, as those are the two cultures that have had the largest influence on the Minmatar people in the last thousand years or so.
Gallente: Pretty much in agreement with the OP. We'd see many of the space-equivalencies as what you hear in modern English, barring perhaps the more religiously-derived curse words such as "damn".
Caldari: As pointed out earlier, anything attacking one's merit and honor would fit in well here. It might be neat to look at Japanese swear words for analogies in this case. Caldari society does seem to respect all ranks in the corporate structure, or at least respect their practicalities. So while it wouldn't make sense to call someone a "peon" (as Caldari society would appreciate the janitor, because someone has to do the cleaning), it would make sense for "swindler" to be a curseword because it insults the person's professional honor and ethic..
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The translator fish in my ear translates all subtle curse words from the difficult to understand regional ones used in the various languages and regional dialects, to the standard english western ones, so I know when someone is swearing at me?
There is nothing worse than thinking someone is giving you a friendly greeting by comparing you to the lecherous empress, when in fact they are telling you to fuck off.
On a related note, I am always confused when people use made up greetings and other words in channels. Just because I RP doesnt mean I read your blog and all your story postings and know what you are meaning. For all I know, IC and OOC, they could be appearing in the channel and yelling, "suck me bitches".
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\o/ Posting in (yet another) 'urdoinitrong'-thread. \o/
I'll have to agree with Graanvlokkie here.
Neocomm translates even the swearwords.
Most cultures see swearing in public as something that only the most uncultured individuals do.
Capsuleers are the 'elite'.
Swearing in public would probably make you seem even more like a dolt in capsuleer circles than elsewhere.
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We're not talking about making up words here. We're talking about the different ways different cultures swear, along the lines of the RL differences between Catholic religious profanity vs Protestant scatological vulgarity.
While we know that the translators are good with a bunch of things including idiom, we're not going to translate each statement in The Summit into the full range of languages: we're (in general) going to put it in its original "language format" and leave the readers to make their conversions for idiom.
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I can see the appeal of this -- not creating new and slightly annoying space words that people have to ask about or look up to follow, but creating English equivalents (c.f. "Kador's balls").
The issue I'm encountering in thinking of the RL languages I'm familiar enough with is that anything that would be translated directly, i.e. isn't just shifted to "fuck", "shit", etc., sounds kind of archaic or quaint. Whether that's a good thing depends on the character using it, I suspect.
The majority of stuff I can think of doesn't really translate well, though; might it be possible that a lot of the swearing in EVE would get the same treatment?
-"¡Joder! ¡¿Es menester que siempre digas tantas gilipolleces?!" (Castillian Spanish; roughly "Fuck! Do you have to constantly talk such bullshit?!". South American Spanish does different things with its profanity that are largely lost on me.)
-"Mon câlice de char m'a coûté 700 maudits livres à réparer: tabarnak d'ostie de ciboire de technicien!" (Québécois that mightn't be 100% accurate; they're big on stringing together religious phrases that don't have an excellent translation. Lit. "My chalice of a car cost me 700 dollars to fix; tabarnacle of a host of ciborium of an engineer!"; idiomatically maybe "My bastard car cost me 700 dollars to fix; motherfucking wanker of an engineer!"?)
-"Czyś napierdoł się znowu, jebaku? Do kurwy nędzy! Bez tych pieniądze nie możemy płacić za matki cholerny dar!" (Polish; grammar mightn't be spot on, but the swearing's fine. Lit. "You got drunk again, fucker? Until the whore's poverty! Without that money we can't pay for mother's cholera-ridden gift!"; more idiomatically "You got fucking wankered again? For fuck's sake! Without that money we can't pay for mum's motherfucking present!".)
Point being, I guess, sometimes sticking to the established English ones might be preferable, both in terms of "realism" in translation and for the sake of easy comprehension.
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Yep. Better not to create words. Or do it, but don't be surprised if people start to wonder what the hell it means once you start to use them on RP channels. The only card you have left to play is the usual "it's how we say in our little clan/house/district/whatever", and then people might answer "can you talk in something that my universal translator can actually translate when you are adressing me please ?".
That is almost another subject but I have always tried to tag along with people speaking napanii and amarrian latin in RP channels, but very reluctantly. I don't see why I should consider these languages as the common ones either in the Caldari State or in the Amarr Empire, just because the majority of the factionnal blocs decided it so. Make CCP include it in their PF and I will reconsider it. :reactionnaryhat:
Kador's Balls! :eek:
Look at that!
I like that, for the average not so clever commoner or the ignorant peasant.
There is also a term used quite broadly especially by minmatar RPers, which is "x-lapdog" where"x" can be any faction. "Ammatar lapdog", "Amarrian lapdog", etc.
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For Caldari, any combination of 'Ancestors' and/ or 'spirits' or the name of one of the Spirits (such as 'Cold Wind') with the sort of expostulation we use today. Examples:
- 'Cold fucking wind'
- 'Spirits fuck your/my/her ancestors'
Since Cia and Cami come from a culture that treats 'Fortune' as a sort of anthropomorphised deity, they tend to use 'Fortune' where I would probably use 'God' or 'jesus' in cursing:
- 'For Fortune's sake'
- 'Fortune fuck'
Anyone who has a history or family history that involves spacefaring on conventional ship might have picked up expressions particularly related to space and vaccuum:
- 'Void take me/him/you'
- 'Go suck space'
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Perhaps instead of concerning ourselves with how individual factions insult each other we can focus on how capsuleers insult each other. I can see how people from each faction might integrate some of their curses into capsule culture, but considering the pains that space stations (and rest of society) take to separate capsuleers from the rest of civilization, I could see how unique lingo might flourish.
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"Frak this"
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I don't have much to say on the swearing bit. Truth be told something else here caught my attention and I feel compelled to respond to it even though it is technically off topic.
I often see people bemoaning the use of player made languages and sometimes bemoaning is a very polite understatement. By far the most common reasoning for people to dislike a player language is along the lines of "I don't want to need a dictionary to roleplay with you" or other similar statements. That is all well and good in the end I suppose, but here is what sort of bothers me about that logic. Why is it any different from someone using any other language around you that you don't know? Why is a "made up language" different from someone speaking Spanish (substitute any real world language you aren't fluent with) around you? In the real world is it some horrible thing to confess you don't know what the heck someone just said?
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I think the Caldari and Amarr conlangs are neat. It's cool that someone spent the time and energy to make them and that others have run with them.
Yep. Better not to create words. Or do it, but don't be surprised if people start to wonder what the hell it means once you start to use them on RP channels. The only card you have left to play is the usual "it's how we say in our little clan/house/district/whatever", and then people might answer "can you talk in something that my universal translator can actually translate when you are adressing me please ?".
If you’re calling someone dicksnot, you’re probably going to call them dicksnot in whatever language you feel like using. Who cares if they’d rather you swear at them in a standard tongue?
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My ears!!!
/o\
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I think I need an adult
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I'm gonna go with "anything" for the Fed.
I'm going to start using 'Seriphyn' as a dirty sex word.
"Yeah that girl was NASTY, bro. she wanted me to give her a 'Dirty Seriphyn' last night. I don't even know what that is, but I walked out and took my pizza too."
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\o/ Posting in (yet another) 'urdoinitrong'-thread. \o/
No it's not. I think you may not quite understand what that means around here, because this is not a "your RP is bad and you should feel bad" thread. This is a "hmm, maybe we can find interesting ways to add onto our RP" thread, and if (like Graan and you and me) we think "well I'm not sure that's for me", then we don't have to come into it and cause problems, either.
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I don't have much to say on the swearing bit. Truth be told something else here caught my attention and I feel compelled to respond to it even though it is technically off topic.
I often see people bemoaning the use of player made languages and sometimes bemoaning is a very polite understatement. By far the most common reasoning for people to dislike a player language is along the lines of "I don't want to need a dictionary to roleplay with you" or other similar statements. That is all well and good in the end I suppose, but here is what sort of bothers me about that logic. Why is it any different from someone using any other language around you that you don't know? Why is a "made up language" different from someone speaking Spanish (substitute any real world language you aren't fluent with) around you? In the real world is it some horrible thing to confess you don't know what the heck someone just said?
Clarification :
- Using a made up language of one's own is perfectly fine. The universal translator can not (can it ?) know every minor and local language and it is perfectly fine.
- Using a made up language that is supposed to be THE official language of any faction (im looking at you napanii) is annoying. And using made up words being part of such languages that universal translators are universally known, is even more annoying especially when you don't know OOCly the meaning.
The main issue are mostly about universal translators, that we do not have RL.
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God becomes Spirits.
Pator becomes an exclamation.
Called that sucka an Ammatar. Suckas hate being called Ammatar.
Else, wing what sounds good.
And of course you can always run with untranslatable garbage when your character is just genuinely that damn mad.
Super simple stuff.
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Perhaps instead of concerning ourselves with how individual factions insult each other we can focus on how capsuleers insult each other.
"You carebear!"....
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"Your mother's so fat she needs a cyno to get out the door."
"If podders look like their ships, I'm betting you fly a proteus."
"You're so stupid, I wouldn't be surprised to hear you ask for advice on how to fit a freighter."
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And of course you can always run with untranslatable garbage when your character is just genuinely that damn mad.
afoibrgraeoub'LKNVwoibufqeIHBVAw;uibpibudfklbjaweifubawargleblargle
Like this?
(also known as facerolling the keyboard >.> )
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And of course you can always run with untranslatable garbage when your character is just genuinely that damn mad.
afoibrgraeoub'LKNVwoibufqeIHBVAw;uibpibudfklbjaweifubawargleblargle
Like this?
(also known as facerolling the keyboard >.> )
If I have to, I will literally just emote for instance;
/me begins to mutter in an obscure dialect characterized by (insert here) which evidently isn't registered with universal translators.