Far Cry Primal language failure and PIE. *long, mb boring* (Gaming)

by Funkmon , Friday, March 11, 2016, 19:22 (3182 days ago) @ Schedonnardus
edited by Funkmon, Friday, March 11, 2016, 20:12

I read about Far Cry Primal using reconstructed Proto-Indo-European as a basis for its language a few months ago and thought that seemed all right...and then I thought about it.

Proto-Indo-European is a reconstructed language from modern languages. Using a simple system, we can see that the languages of Europe, much of the middle east, and India are related. We do not have this language, but it can be easily constructed. They do this by creating a list of words that have very similar meanings in languages. For example, numbers. Next, they find relations and rules among them. Sticking with numbers, we see decem, deka, dasan (Latin, Greek, Sanskrit), and ten, tiu, tien (English, Icelandic, and Dutch). We can see that it's possible that Germanic languages had their voiceless stops (like the t sound) changed from Proto-Indo-European voiced stops (like the d sound). Doing this a bunch of times, we establish patterns, called linguistic laws.

Following these rules in a similar way to finding a least common denominator in mathematics, we find a least common language. Through this, we can find what are called Proto-Indo-European (I’m just going to call them PIE) roots. These are the core historical elements of languages like English, Latin, German, Sanskrit, Russian, Welsh, Gaelic, Bengali, Hindu, Armenian, Kurdish, Persian, and a bunch of other junk. These are called Indo-European languages. Note: not all European languages come from this family, like Finnish and Uralic, but the vast vast majority do.

You can find PIE roots in your trusty copy of The American Heritage Dictionary. This is the superior one volume dictionary, in my opinion, and valuable to linguists not only in America, but anywhere in the anglosphere, as it contains the roots, and therefore performs the ultimate etymology. Other dictionaries, even ones like the 20 something volume OED, go to the ultimate attested language root, but rarely beyond. For your dictionary dollar, I’d suggest buying AH. If you want more, buy a copy of the Compact OED, a magnifying glass, and then also AH. AH is $40, OED is closer to $400.

http://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Complete-Reproduced-Micrographically-slipcase/dp/0198612583/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&q...

http://www.amazon.com/American-Heritage-Dictionary-English-Language/dp/0547041012/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=14577290...

But that’s neither here nor there. If someone wants to know more about dictionaries, though, I’m your guy.

Back to Far Cry Primal. Considering this is set in central Europe, doesn’t it make sense to use PIE? No.

It was set in 10,000 BC.

Some extremely fringe scholars think that PIE evolved out of Old Europe cultures. Old Europe refers to a time of apparently similar culture all throughout Europe pre-bronze age, but still during the neolithic period, which is after the 10,000 BC time. 10,000 BC is comfortably during what they call the mesolithic, that is, before agriculture.

The Proto-Europeans definitely had agriculture. They had cows, horses, dogs, wheels, and stuff. They had a shared religion. They came from a snowy place. We can see this all linguistically, as they wouldn’t have words for crap they didn’t have, like wheels. For example, in religion, they worshipped a guy called *dyeus-phater, literally sky father. In Sanskrit Dyaus Pita. In Greek Zeus Pater (Zeus). In Latin Iou pater (Iuppiter/Jupiter). The Germans may have even worshipped this guy. In Germanicus, Tacitus explains they have a chief god, father of all people, Tuisto, whose name sounds very familiar, particularly if you remember the example linguistic rule I mentioned earlier.

The most widely accepted idea (and it’s extremely widely accepted, to the point of consensus almost) is that the Indo-Europeans came from an area in the Eurasian steppes at about 4000 BC, and continued until about 1000 BC. Not only does this make sense linguistically, but it fits with archeology of the period. We can see the spread of the chariot go at the same time. We see introduction of some technology at the same time PIE arrives. Recently, we have even seen it genetically. This is almost certainly what happened. Other ideas are easily trashed.

So, they’re about 6000 years too early for the language. I have also been told that there are three dialects, one basic, spoken by an older race of people dying out (for which there is no archaeological evidence, btw), one simple, and one complex. The advanced one being used by a more advanced culture. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work, linguistically. Complex languages are no more likely to be in high technology or high society than basic ones. Look at English versus Hungarian, Navajo, etc.

Some other problems exist, like some of the animals being wrong for the time and place, and some tech being a little wonky, but I’ll allow it for the purpose of role playing a cave man.

BUT when they force people to read subtitles for languages that don’t exist, and couldn’t have existed in the time and place, I find that annoying. Just have them speak the local language, for pete’s sake. They had to pay some linguists to construct PIE, put on declensions, ablaut, et cetera, three times for the three languages. It’s like if we wanted to play Doom so we bought a Windows XP machine from 2003. It makes no sense.

Funkmon's FCP language verdict: *kakka.