Expand Lore Regarding Languages
Make the imporbable easier to swallow by expanding lore?

I'm throwing this out there in response to comments made about Euro in another thread. While I fully agree that the formation of Euro, and other things about language in the world of Sindome. are hard pills to swallow and very unlikely, I feel it would be easier if there was more framing around it.

In fact, I think all players could benefit from adjusting help files, timeline and maybe lore pages to provide clarity regarding languages/regions. So here's some ideas.

I am not saying any of this is canon. That's no my place. I'm just proposing ideas based on what I've been told. The closest I've ever gotten a clear answer regarding languages is from Johnny in this board post (seen the last post): https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/open-discussion/anything-really/languages-and-countries-876/ So all these random ideas are shaped around that at their core.

HELP LANGUAGES ADDITION SUGGESTION (JUST BASED ON MY PERSONAL VIEW OF HOW THIS COULD WORK)

All the languages of the world have moved, evolved and merged until all but the eight coded languages have become dead languages or barely spoken relics in select pockets. As a guideline as to what language dominates various regions, the following can be said to be generally true:

Withmore: English is the official language though the lower class has developed a distinct creole called MixMash.

North America: English outside of Mexico, which is a Spanish speaking country.

Central and South America: Spanish

Europe: English officially with dialects of Eruo used by the lower class, with the exception of Spain which has English and Spanish as official languages as well as Euro.

Russia: Russian and English with English being very common in and surrounding corporations and corporate interests.

Japan: Japanese

Asia: Tagalog

India: English with a smattering of Tagalog

Middle East: Farsi

Africa: English

EXAMPLE TIMELINE SUGGESTIONS

(NOT COMPREHENSIVE AND JUST QUICKLY THROWN TOGETHER IDEAS. DISCREPANCIES LIKELY)

2004.4 The Philippines, becomes a corporate haven in Asia, resulting it's swift ascent as the dominant economy of Asia, rivaled only by Japan and China.

2007.9 Tagalog begins spreading rapidly throughout mainland Asia and the south eastern islands. Even China begins adopting Tagalog at a startling rate for business use with only Japan and it's concerns holing out.

2003.4 Shortly after it's founding, the AERU declares Farsi the official language of the region. Believing this will allow the AERU to better compete, the masses happily adopt the change.

2003.6 The European Economic Union declares English to be the official language of Europe despite popular opinion being against to the move. The upper class embraces the move while lower classes try to cling to their native languages.

2003.8 Spain declares that they will make English and Spanish both official languages in defiance of the EEU. The EEU chooses to not press after getting Spain to agree to do all business in English and to have English, in addition to Spanish, used in all public spaces for signage and documents.

2008.5 Years of back street dealing among the lower class across Europe have resulted in the start of a merging of langues into a new pidgin being called 'Euro'.

2010.2 India, seeking to enhance their ability to compete with the likes of the CNA, China and EEU, declares English their official language. As most of the country was already fluent with English as a second language, this slight policy change is easily adopted with native Indian languages being removed from the schools, television, radio and public spaces.

2017.7 Spanish starts to spread all over the LTC, slowly replacing other languages like Portuguese until the entirety of the LTC becomes Spanish speaking around 2033.

2011.8 A year after it's founding, the CNA declares English the official language of Africa. The move meets little resistance and native languages are rapidly

supplanted.

2018.12 Corporations in the Philippines use the nuclear disaster to expand into Chna and India, further spreading Tagalog into Chian. India, having already adopted English, has little native language left to supplant.

2022.03 Euro has been declared a new language. Though still possessing strong local dialects like German, French and Italian, the pidgin language has melded to a point where any two speakers can efficiently communicate and do business. While English is still the official language of the EEU and used but the well educated and well placed, Euro has become a language embraced by many 'commoners'.

2025.01 China declares Tagalog to be the national language. Massive efforts are made to translate all native Chinese works into Tagalog. With this move, Tagalog is now the de facto if not official language used all through Asia outside of Japan and it's concerns.

Johnny probably could have been more exact about agreeing with the statement in that linked thread, he's said before the coded languages in the game don't by any means represent the only languages in the world, just the ones the game supports and that adding more coded support isn't of interest to him because there isn't enough players to populate the languages there are already.

Trying to world build around there being 8 coded languages is just not practical in my view, there are thousands and thousands of spoken languages, 2500+ in Africa alone.

A little off topic but it would have been awesome if, when spending UE on a language it would have been something like:

Select language to put UE into:

[1] Engllsh

[2] MixMash

[3] Japanese

…

[n] New language not listed here.

Then you could just add the one for your character and it gets added to the list for you and others. It seems the system is mostly just a matching system so letting characters define what works for them would be cool. Using same language? Apply understanding. No? Don't. A bit more complicated but still just matching.

Maybe have the new option require staff to check for stupidity and anything that's not reasonable. Then have the game delete any language with 0 speakers ever XX time. It can always be added back if desired.

This way players can take the reins. Staff doesn't have to figure out how many languages are idea or which are the best options. It will happen organically. A cool character might cause a language to spread among the player and NPC population of the game. Ones that aren't used just go away until someone wants to make it new again.

I think the real issue with current languages not being populated is moreso the languages themselves not being a popular choice due to their weak thematic standing.

If Tagalog was replaced with Cantonese, it would be significantly more common to be spoken among players because it's a common real-life language (in comparison to the relatively obscure Tagalog). Despite having a related cultural quarter, the mental disconnect between Tagalog and Chinese reduces the association players feel between the very considerable Chinese cultural quarter and the Tagalog language.

Euro is a confusing and fictional language that combines all the European languages into one without keeping the unique identity of any one of them, making it a boring choice.

Japanese has it's own cultural quarter in Red, is a staple of Cyberpunk culture, is a popular real world language, and has bonus points for being attractive to anime fans. It is likely one of the most popular languages in the game if the statistics would be considered.

MixMash is fictional like Euro, but instead of just combining dozens of real world languages while keeping none of the identity, it has a new identity with the Mix because it is so thematically common, and many Mixer slang words are assumed to be part of it. It's one of the most mechanically common languages as well, making it a strong language that many people likely have learned.

Russian is inherently popular due to it being a common real life language again, and due to underlying culture having a cultural quarter in Red once more.

Spanish is inherently popular for the same reason, though due to the lack of significant locations within the Spanish cultural quarter, it is likely slightly less popular than Russian or Japanese.

Farsi is somewhat obscure to western players, and has no cultural quarter or much mechanical representation at all, putting it into a similarly underused boat as Tagalog or Euro.