Event: Attack on the system

[utopiamods]

Hello everyone!

As you can see from this post here, Lelouch just can't leave things alone.

At about 2pm on Saturday (Rest Day), an hour after the train has departed, anyone at a computer or holding a PDA will receive a message from a random dropped character's account, which explains that the system is undergoing maintenance. A moment later they will be hit with the warning penalty. This is a medium penalty lasting five minutes, after which every computer, PDA and screen in the city will go black.

But that's not the event. Nope! Characters will find the first time they try to talk to someone, something has gone wrong with the translation system. They can only speak and understand languages they know in canon or ones they have learned in Rakuen (e.g ASL for those that go to the club)

Every sign around campus or in the city seems to be written in a different language, some even with multiple languages on one sign, making the grammar and sentence structure not fit together. Some characters will recognise pieces, others will not. Some languages are totally indecipherable.

The NPC's, in the meantime, are all speaking random languages. They are all looking confused and frightened, wives not understanding husbands, parents their children.

After a couple of hours the computer systems will turn back on, but all text on computers and PDAs is still messed up. No one language seems more prevalent than others. The message about maintenance is still there, and for anyone who can recognise it, it is in a dialect of English.

This will last until the end of rest day. Feel free to use this post for plotting, it might also be useful if everyone mentioned what languages their character could speak.

Have fun!

Comments

[veepofchess]

YOU'RE ALL SO VERY WELCOME

I'M NOT SORRY

[forthward]

... Brother... :|

[veepofchess]

Lelouch: Britannian-English (close enough to our English to be functional, I'd say), Japanese, and some Chinese for the culprit here.

Bubblecup: ....Neighlish?

Jadesprite: English

Sam: English, but he can read Latin, and he can swear and ask for blood in about five different European languages.

[fracturedsoul]

English for this here conspirator, along with a smattering of Japanese and American Sign Language.

Golbez is hiatus-coma'd, which is lucky because he speaks FF4 Language. Which MIGHT be mutually intelligible with other Final Fantasy languages if Dissidia is any indication, but it's not like we even have any of those so.

[mean_one]

Alex is all insulted you didn't invite him to the party~ DDoSes are his favourite!

[yaycapitalism]

LANGUAGES:

Recette Lemongrass: the language of Pensee. Its roots are vaguely anglo-germanic, for about one comprehensive word in ten for anyone with those languages.

Yasuri Nanami: Sengoku-era Japanese.

Sora Himoto: modern Japanese.

Flynn Scifo: The language of Terca Lumireis, Ilyccian dialect AKA hahahaha good luck.

[afraid_of_my_shadow]

Recette and Asagi can hang out with their dated Japanese.

[knightime]

Just Dave here who only knows English and ASL.

languages ;;

[swordofzero]

Languages:

Dunleavy Mallorough: Erm headcanon says it is a horrific amalgamation of modern world languages smushed together and evolving over time into it's own language since they have lived on another planet for hundreds of years. So yeah good luck understanding her...

Day: Styrian. Ha Ha Ha....

Suzaku Kururugi: Britannian-English (will be understandable to an English speaker as just another dialect). His first language is Japanese but it is a lost memory so yeah he will have headaches whenever he meets a Japanese person :(

Shion: Again... headcanon says that it is a mix of languages though not completely evolved like Dunleavy's, I think it probably has a very strong Asianic root with random other languages thrown in for good measure. He also knows very very basic ASL since he had to learn it all from scratch again argh

Merlin: Errrrrrrrrrm. Damn it canon why so vague. I'm assuming it is set pre Roman Britain... maybe... and I'm also assuming the druids speak Celtic... So some form of ancient Welsh most likely... JUST ASSUME UNLESS YOU ALSO COME FROM ARTHURIAN BRITAIN OR ARE A SCHOLAR YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND HIM ;;

Re: languages ;;

[moorecowbell]

HELLO. I was a Medieval Literature major in college, so if you just give me a few minutes I can figure out what Merlin and Arthur would have spoken.

The main thing to remember is that Arthurian canon is crazybugnuts and actually spans a few hundred years, and there are points in time when it's a French myth. So to start out: they probably would have spoken a nasty weird hybrid of Middle English (eg, Chaucerian english) and Classical French.

Uhhh I'mma look up some samples and you can pick (I assume you don't want classical french V: )

[moorecowbell]

OKAY

My research indicates that while the main canon was 12th century, Arthur and Merlin are SUPPOSED to be from the 6th century, so they would have actually spoken Old English, which is confusingly enough a Germanic language, and the language Beowulf is written in.

HOWEVER as you point out, the earliest extant examples of the Arthurian myth were ancient Welsh; though those earliest sources are still something like 10th or 11th century (as far as I can tell). Arthur as we know him was written by Geoffery of Monmoth, whose Historia Regum Brittanae is both dull as cardboard and written in Latin. However, that language would have been Middle English (eg, the same language Chaucer would have spoken). It's in Geoffery's work that Merlin first shows up in the tradition.

The Arthur we know best was created by Malory in his book Morte d'Arthur, which I think was written in both Middle French and a very early form of Modern English.

*deep breath*

SO. Ultimately it's up to you; the most "historically" accurate thing would be Old English or Welsh; the most accurate to the canon would be either Middle English or Middle French.

...

adfjkljdf sorry to get all up in your post with british literature and linguistics I'll just go hide now >>;

[straightupzorra]

Santana: English and Spanish

Dolorosa: ....Alternian? /squint

Arthur: WELL TO COPY FROM KATY, JUST ASSUME UNLESS YOU ALSO COME FROM ARTHURIAN BRITAIN OR ARE A SCHOLAR YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND HIM

[veepofchess]

Dolorosa just has to turn her PDA upside down and look in a mirror to read it

NANAMI

[moorecowbell]

NOBODY KNOWS. It's never really stated where the series takes place or what country it's in. Though it's a Japanese series and everyone has Japanese names and Saionji uses a katana, all the mythology is classical British/French and nobody LOOKS Japanese

derp

So I'm going to default that she's bilingual in Japanese and English :V

*e* On the advice of Xen, probably going with Japanese and French, and more like a weird JapanFrench, given that Utena uses a lot of gratuitous French.

[justaflowergirl]

Based on another piece of headcanon acquired via Kimiko Muffin, Yuka speaks (essentially modern) Japanese and English.

(And she'll expect any canonmates to know both of those too, just in case you feel like confusing the flower girl...)

[ferriedmemories]

Why both, exactly?

Languages

[frozenmemories]

Cirno just has Japanese. Although with how she likes to talk...Good luck understanding her unless you really know her well.

She'll understand Japanese just fine!

[ferriedmemories]

Komachi has Japanese (will be able to understand any era).

Ein... boy, is this going to be a pain. It's clear that he is at least bilingual, with one languange being that of Asgard (which he is currently illiterate in due to Rakuen memory loss), but there is a problem.

Riviera is part of a multiverse canon, and as far as has been observed, any character originally from Asgard (such as Ein) has been able to communicate with any native of any other world (Riviera, Yggdra/Blaze Union, Gloria Union, Gungnir, Knights in the Nightmare) without difficulty. I'm still ironing out the details here.

(For that matter, there is also a character from none of those worlds that does the same thing.)

I am assuming this language is equivalent to English.

[heroiccia]

America canonly only speaks English, or at least is supposed to. As such, he will be speaking American-English, for obvious reasons.

[countryofassholes]

Oh look, a valid excuse for her to ignore Ameri- waaaaait a second...

[afraid_of_my_shadow]

Alex: English and German
Cheshire: Nonsense and English
Asagi: Japanese definitely, considering his age and how much he seems to know about these areas headcanon has always been Greek and Latin and a little English.
Hikaru: Japanese, Highschool English.

[gottakilldaves]

Jack just speaks English and Furiae speaks... wacky bizarro-Spain language I guess. WHO KNOWS let's just say old English because they all sound kinda Englishy.

[jurist]

Like Nanami, Juri speaks Japanese and French. (The only things I can say in French are "je ne parle pas de français" and "je suis un ananas", so I can't actually post in French. Japanese I can do, though.)

[justaflowergirl]

Hey, is the penalty supposed to have only hit people who were using the network at the time, or does it affect everyone?

Because if the former... there goes me having it hit Yuka while she's swimming and her PDA's back at her room. (Or it can just be a glitch that she gets hit too, it's not that unreasonable. Plus I don't wanna have to retcon that.)

[trageteas]

Lateish, but Jules' first/default language is French and he's also fluent in Latin (though he can't read it due to lost memories) and Greek. Useful!

...not being able to understand anybody is probably going to be more reassuring than seemingly magical translations, honestly.

[afraid_of_my_shadow]

He can talk to Asagi. :D