Reset Password
Existing players used to logging in with their character name and moo password must signup for a website account.
- JMo 17s Sheriff's posse's on my tail 'cause I'm in demand
- zxq 10s
- BitLittle 32m
- Rillem 16s
- Aye 20m
- QueenZombean 2m
- BigLammo 55s youtu.be/NZR4EeTkRqk
- BluuOwl 11s
- Napoleon 14m
- Ralph 8h
a Mench 3s Doing a bit of everything.
And 37 more hiding and/or disguised
Connect to Sindome @ moo.sindome.org:5555 or just Play Now

Changing "Euro"
Replacing the "Euro" language with something more fitting.

Can we talk about the „Euro“ language?

That is a point that honestly breaks my suspension of disbelief. The emergence of such a language is implausible to say the least. It would be a nice touch if Sindome was set 850 years into the future, but with a mere 85 years forward I‘d say it is impossible for "Euro" to form. People seem to underestimate just how deeply rooted the different languages are in Europe. Those are often focal points of national identity, with much strife surrounding it. There are institutions like the Académie française whose sole purpose since its inception 400 years ago is to preserve the French language. There is the Vatican who uses the same language since millenia, a language that is otherwise dead. Just to illustrate my point.

According to the timeline of Sindome, Europe stayed at its core very similiar as it is today, just having seen localized wars, political upheaval and economic crises. All things that have occurred many times over the centuries already. Yes, I understand that Sindome takes place in a technologically very advanced time, but that is a sociological question and not a technological one.

Let‘s take a look at the two possible origins of „Euro“ (since I couldn‘t find that in the records here – maybe I just overlooked it).

First scenario: It is an artificial, planned language that was introduced by all the governments to simplify communication. First of all, there is no body of governance that could do something like that – the EU crumbled pretty early and the local governments have no reason to topple their own languages. Because that would mean a massive overhaul of the administration which doubtlessly would lead to chaos, with immense costs that would never reasonably be recoverable by what you save on translators and interpreters. That would mean completely rebuilding the education sector, with the same chaos and costs. It would mean incurring the wrath of most of the populace. In short, it would be an immensly unpopular, immensely costly, and immensely inhibitive measure that would never take off.

Second scenario: It is a ghetto language that evolved on its own and spread among the people. The problem with that is that there is no body to regulate the language, to codify grammar, spelling, pronounciation, vocabulary. There would probably be over 30 separate slangs in the mega-sprawl around Paris alone, with half of them not mutually intelligible. Not to mention all the other countries which would have entirely different slangs based on their official language. Those things that have the power to shape language – newspapers, movies, books, etc. - would still be drafted in the established languages, with maybe some words or phrases of the slang entering the mainstream. Much like English is depicted in Cyberpunk.

The most likely scenario would not be a new language emerging, it would be already established, big languages pushing out the smaller ones over time (either naturally, or with the help of force) – like it has already happened in the past (e.g. in Ireland).

My suggestion: I guess from a mechanical point of view the goal was to summarize all the many different European languages, because implementing all of them would break the - according to older forum posts already underused - language system.

That is understandable, but – it is entirely themely to leave the smaller languages out of it, because those languages would likely have absolutely no bearing on Withmore. Yes, that new immigrant can be the master of Hungarian, a poet of his time, but he would have a hard time finding anyone else speaking it there. So there is no reason for the language to be codedly represented.

I suggest taking one European language other than English and Russian and let it replace Euro. The language that is likely having the most bearing on Withmore. Seeing how Saedor-Krupp is one of the oldest mega-corporations and seeing how New Prussia appears to be the major political power in the Europe of that time, I guess German would be the best candidate for that.

I suggest implementing French as well – yes, France is a shadow of its former self, but the past glory of the language is likely continuing to have an effect a mere 85 years into the future, even if it is just that corporate citizens learn it in an effort to impress each other. And one extra language is not going to make or break the system.

Agreed. German or French would make the most sense, both through theme and popularity of the general playerbase. It's not terribly uncommon to see French or German origin characters.
Just to clarify: I think the best solution would be to implement both languages instead of "Euro", not either-or.
I'm not splitting the language users, no. Suspend disbelief for the sake of game play.
@Loreley you have no idea how long Euro has bothered me. I'm Swedish myself and it is almost too obvious the game's been designed by Americans, though I doubt even they assume Europe is like four language groups at best. The languages here are so many, varied and diverse it would be impossible to form a single language by merging one from every group, even. Euro is one of the things in Sindome that is the most immersion-breaking for me. I sort of accepted it as streetspeak and as having different accents just to cope, lol.
my neighborhood is larger than europe and we get along fine with one language
I would sooner believe that most of Europe replaced most speech with English or a native mix of English and whatever else than believe Euro somehow works.
@Johnny: Alright, no ninth language then. But what about my other suggestion? Replacing "Euro" with either German or French?

@Veleth: Good to see that I am not the only one being bothered by it. Yes, as unbelievable as it is, all of Europe only speaking English would be more believable than "Euro". And yes, that was exactly my thought as well when I saw it: "Yep, that game was developed by Americans."

No offence meant, of course. ;)

Euro is not just French and not just German, it is the 'MixMash' of Europe, mashups formed via the hyper-connected nature of life after the year 2000. While we are all connected thanks to the Internet, we're still geographically separated enough that culture keeps America and Europe from completely centralizing into a single language.
Sorry, seems like I should have paid closer attention to the helpfile:

"The languages spoken in Withmore City vary greatly, but for the sake of sanity, we only support a few such tongues."

That makes my points moot, I thought that only the coded languages were supposed to exist in the world.

Just one question though: You said earlier that no new languages will be added for now, but is there a chance that the list of coded languages is going to be expanded some time in the future, if there are more foreign language users overall?

We would need a vastly larger player base (which the game platform can not support) in order for it to make the number of speakers worth investing in any of too many languages.

We need enough speakers of each language for them to be worth investing your time learning. We want both the people you want to understand you and those who might be spying on you to have a chance of understanding. Having too many languages makes that much harder to have happen.

I honestly think we could change this perception really easily by not calling it Euro, but rather referring to it as something like "PaxMash" or "RoMash," "GerMash" or even like "EuMash" rather than calling it Euro. It'd allow people to rationalize it as rather than the formal language, more in the category of MixMash like seems to be intended.