Tinto Talks #36 - 6th of November

[Ipponen]

Based on dev diary you seem to be quite wrong. Language can have more than 1 dialect. There are plenty of examples in dd. While 1 culture can have only 1 language. But can have several dialects.

What examples specifically? To me it looks like each culture has one dialect.

Edit: I think I misinterpreted what you meant. I read the last two sentences like one culture can be divided between multiple dialects.

Keep in mind that it seems that currently, only one dialect is possible per culture; so you can have a different dialect for all the cultures present, but cannot represent the dialects that have no associated culture.

Finland has enough cultures for some of them to even share a dialect (Finns, Tavastians and Kvens would all speak Western Finnish). Dividing Sámi culture has been discussed on the Scandinavia thread, so multiple Sámi dialects also wouldn't be a problem. And the rest of the dialects that don't have a culture should just have their corresponding cultures added, specifically Southern Estonian and Votic.

 

[migdeu19]

Welcome to this week's Tinto Talks. Please stop trying to guess the name of the game, it's going to land us in trouble when you figure it out.

I'm @SaintDaveUK, and this week I'm going to delve into Cultures and some related mechanics like Language.

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Culture​

Culture is a tricky topic because it is so abstract as a concept, but also it’s an area of our games that people have quite strong opinions about, especially when they have real-world connections to that culture.

As such we would appreciate it if the discussion on this thread is limited to the mechanics of the culture system as presented here, and direct your specific feedback for the culture setup to the relevant regional Tinto Maps where it will be much more helpful.

So, what is Culture? Culture is the culmination of vernacular, music, food, identity, ethnicity, art and various other hard-to-define ideas. It is something possessed by countries, pops, and characters. It contains two main dimensions: Culture Group and Language.


View attachment 1212047
A fairly typical example of a Culture, consisting of a Language and a Culture Group.

Culture Opinion​

For the most part, cultures all consider each other to be neutral, but they can also have natural preference or aversion to specific cultures.

This is represented with cultural opinions, which in ascending order are: enemy, negative, neutral, positive, kindred. This mainly gives modifiers in various places, for example, country opinions of each other, or how expensive they are while Accepted.

Most of these will exist from 1337, but there is a Diplomatic Action to change an opinion over time.


View attachment 1212048
A list of cultures present inside Aragon, with two-way opinions relative to the primary culture Catalan. Please note that these opinions are WIP, and might not be final.

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Culture Capacity​

Cultural Capacity represents the maximum number of cultures a country can tolerate or accept. For most countries it starts quite low, but there is an Advance every age to increase the maximum, as well as various other sources like Government Reforms and Policies.

View attachment 1212049

Each culture costs a different Cultural Capacity, depending on relative size, opinions, culture groups, and languages.

View attachment 1212051​

View attachment 1212050​

Non-Accepted Cultures​

By default, every culture in the world is Non-Accepted to you. It is the default state, and at best means you ignore them. Non-Accepted pops are pretty miserable in your country but also don’t provide you with any benefits.

Tolerated Cultures​

If you have the cultural capacity, you can elevate a culture to a Tolerated Culture. This will make the pops a little more content. Tolerated pops will grow as normal, and they will also be a bit happier.

Accepted Cultures​

You can elevate a culture further into being Accepted, at which point they gain special rights.

Even though an Accepted Culture costs 3x more capacity than Tolerated, it’s usually much more desirable as they will give you more levies and sailors. Accepted Cultures also count towards whether you can core a province, and whether a colonial charter will flip to your ownership. Countries whose primary culture is one of your accepted cultures will see you more favourably.

However, Accepted pops cannot be slaves, and you cannot Accept a culture with "Enemy" culture opinion.

Primary Culture​

At the very top of the pyramid is Primary Culture, of which every country has exactly one. This is the principal culture of the apparatus of state, and it is favoured in many calculations. It is not necessarily the largest culture, you can find several countries where a small elite of nobles or clergy rule over the peasant masses belonging to different cultures.

Primary Culture is an important gate to a lot of gameplay content, such as Advances, Unit Types, Government Reforms and so on. It’s impossible to list it all here, but just know that the primary culture you have can affect many parts of the game.

You can swap your primary culture with an accepted culture if it fulfils the requirements, such as if it becomes the dominant culture in your country or if it is the culture of your ruler. There is also a game rule for it to be of the same Culture Group.

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Language​

Attached to cultures is the Language system, which is spread across 3 tiers: Dialect, Language, Language Family. Of the three, Language is the most important and where most of the gameplay takes place.

Language Families​

The largest subdivision, many Languages belong to a Language Family, for example Arabic belonging to Semitic. The Indo-European family is split into its sub-groups like Germanic and Romance, because otherwise it is simply too large. Languages like Basque are isolated, and so do not exist in a Language Family. This mostly offers a small opinion bonus and also slightly minimises cost for things like culture acceptance and market attraction.

View attachment 1212069
Note that this is WIP and examples like Iranic and Indic language groups haven’t been set up.

Languages​

Every culture has a single Language which represents the most common vernacular amongst its people. Languages are often larger groups that are comparable to an EU4 culture group in size, if anyone here has played that game. For example, Iceland to Sweden all use variants of the Scandinavian language, while everyone from Vienna to Hamburg will use variants of the German language.

Languages have Language Power, which is impacted by many sources such as which countries use it as a court language, common language, and liturgical language. It is expressed as a percentage of the most powerful language in the world, and impacts the intensity of bonuses you get from it.

View attachment 1212055
Un ejemplo.


View attachment 1212057
The dominant language in each location is shown.

Dialects​

To add diversity within a Language, we have a system of Dialects (though we aren’t especially set on that nomenclature). They represent vernaculars that in Project Caesar’s time period broadly formed a dialectical continuum, and are an effective way to differentiate them without weakening them by splitting them into full Languages.

Dialects are purely for flavour and have no gameplay effect; two dialects are considered identical for most purposes such as opinion bonuses, and they share stats like Language Power. For example, both Leonese and Castilian are considered the same Spanish language and so share the same Language Power, but may have different character names, location names and potentially other light flavour too.
View attachment 1212058
A map showing the dominant dialects in each location. The current setup is WIP, for example we haven't split up South Slavic or Italian.


View attachment 1212420
Here is a sketch showing the structure of the Germanic language group and its languages and dialects.



Countries have several different ways of interacting with Languages.

Common Language​

The Common Language of a country is simply the language that is used by the primary culture. It can’t be chosen or changed without affecting the Primary Culture.

Liturgical Language​

Every country has a Liturgical Language, which represents the language that the Clergy use in their rituals and scriptures, and by extension what scholars use in their academic works. Some religions allow a country to choose whichever liturgical language they like, (for example, Eastern Orthodox countries variously use languages like Greek or Church Slavonic) whereas Catholic and Islamic countries are forced to use Latin and Arabic respectively.

In general, you will want to adopt a liturgical language with high language power, as it affects your research speed.


View attachment 1212060

Market Language​

Markets also have a Market Language representing the Lingua Franca used between the merchants, which is based on the dominant language of the burghers in the Market Capital. The higher the market power, the higher its contribution to the Language Power.

Locations will have a higher attraction towards markets that share their dominant language, and a slightly smaller bonus if they only share a language family.

View attachment 1212061

Court Language​

Every country also has a Court Language, which represents the primary vernacular used in formal proceedings in the government, for example it might be the language spoken in parliament or written in legal documents.

Unlike the others, Court Languages can be changed almost at will. The possible languages are drawn from your Primary and Accepted Cultures, your ruler, or your Overlord country. The exact court language you have affects the satisfaction of the various estates: Nobles want you to have a more powerful language, meanwhile peasants just want it to be the Common Language. Burghers are happy if you use the same as the capital’s Market Language. The Clergy of course want everything to be in the Liturgical Language.

Most countries start with the same Court Language as their Common Language, but significant examples of where it is different in 1337 would include Norman French in England and Church Latin in Catholic theocracies.

View attachment 1212062

Culture Group​

A Culture Group is a set of Cultures that have some sort of shared identity towards each other. Culture Groups are usually independent of language and current diplomacy, but rather represent a more geographic or genealogical connection that is difficult to represent without abstraction.

A good example would be the British culture group. The diverse cultures of Great Britain have 3 different languages, across several different countries, and yet they are still united by their shared history and cultural influence that transcends the borders.

View attachment 1212063
An important culture group.


In gameplay terms, Culture Groups give small opinion bonuses and make culture acceptance a lot cheaper, but also various pieces of content are gated behind Culture Group instead of Culture. For example, your primary culture needs to be in the British culture group to form the Great Britain tag. The game rules can be set to also prevent you from changing your Primary Culture to one in a different Group.

One change we have made from EU4 is that cultures can belong to multiple different Culture Groups, or if they are isolated enough, none at all.

View attachment 1212064
Norse-Gael is the most extreme example of multiple Culture Groups, but the median will be closer to 1 or 2.

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That’s all for now, but our talks on culture don’t stop here. Next week the artist currently known as Johan will make a song and dance about some deeper aspects of Culture that are brand new for Project Caesar, such as Works of Art and Culture War.

Honestly, regarding the dialects in the Iberian Peninsula. Two main problems.

1) They clearly match modern one sided political pseudoconcepts of languages.
If you break Galician-Portuguese between Galician and Portuguese as "dialects", it would look more reasonable, being more organic and natural (less 21st century politiced) to do it in a more real and less political way, like for example, Galician (which would reach up to Braga), Portense, Coímbran (Coímbra-Lisboa dialect), Alentejano.
That happens as well with Occitan, at that point you could break both Catalonian and Occitan varieties in more than two dialect.
And SPECIALLY with Castillian/Spanish. It would be much more organic if you use actual Castillian dialects (not different languages as Leonese and Aragonese), even "trivialised" in the name and extension as Andalusian (which linguistically could be broken up into 2 or 3 dialects), Manchego, Riojano, etc, etc.
Btw, looking how Castillian/Spanish language/culture -and population numbers- has been depicted, it seem that Castille/Spain will be massively overpowered and unbalanced gameplay-wise, breaking it in smaller units as you did with other cultures -Galician-Portuguese-, may help to solve this unbalance problem).

2) In the Iberian Peninsula WRONGLY assigned dialects. Astur-Leones IS a language, no a dialect. Dialects of this language range from Leonese, Asturian, Cantabrian, Extremeño, etc, etc. You have the same linguistical reasons to claim Leonese as a dialect of Castillian as u will have to claim it as a dialect of the Galician-Portuguese language as it is linguistically sharing features from both linguistic complexes. So you take such decission over the 21st century political "status quo"/"opinion" (I'll explain it later), while the game developes between 14th to 18th centuries, having nothing to do with this 21st century pseudo-concepts I refeered before.
BTW, the same problem goes to Navarro-Aragonese, with its main dialects depicted in the artificial name of the LANGUAGE (no Castillian/Spanish dialect).

It will be nice to see those issues fixed, specially as it is sensible to the speakers of those still-barely-alive languages, which are politically misconsidered as dialects (Spanish Constitution and old Francoist and modern school textbooks) but which are, linguistically speaking, languages of their own.


I'll seat here a map as reference (20-21st century linguitic map) to help improving those two issues:

 

[Milusky]

In general we have aimed for more natural names of languages instead of academic jargon.

Historically both languages have been called galician and portuguese depending of the country. However, until they were separate languages it would be more accurate to call it galician as it´s how it was known during medieval times (and that Galicia is where the language was originated).

The merge of two languages will be represented through the cultural assimilation mechanic, but during the time the whole game happens, many languages diverged in dialects and many dialects became separated languages, which was the case for dutch and german, catalan and occitan or the example given before. Is it going to be a mechanic in the game or are all languages going to stay the same? I think it could also be a great mechanic for dialects separated in different countries with bad relationships aside form the historical ones.

 

[dangame]

Why is slovenian a south slavic dialect? I can understand it being under the south slavic culture group in eu4 for the sake of game balance but it most certainly is it's own distinct language, heavilly distanced from serbo-croatian. In fact, bulgarian is closer to them, yet isn't included in the group?

 

[migdeu19]

Will languages change over time? For instance as shown, Galician/Portuguese and Occitan/Catalan being the same language in the 14th century is accurate, but by the end of the game's timeframe they had diverged.

No quite, the divergence of the Galician-Portuguese could be dated to 21st century or late 20 century due to standarization of one single dialect over others (Portuguese with Coímbra-Lisboa dialects becoming the "padrão" and with Galician autorities producing a new standarization bassed on Castillian writting norms "Decreto Filgueira") and the appearance of mass media promoting only state languages.
In the Galician and Portuguese case this will go further as Galician number of speakers is drastically being going down due Spanish and Galician Xunta linguicidal policies resulting in less native-dialectal speakers with a majority not knowing any Native Galician or having "Decreto Filgueira" standarization (which was build over Castillian/Spanish) as L2.
I can not say what led to the Protuguese speakers quickly addapting to Coímbra-Lisboa dialect while lossing their regional dialects but it is as well a phenomenom from the last 50 years, no older (you can still finding people younger than 50 speaking highly divergent dialects in Portugal as in São Miguel -Açores- and Braga).

So it's not related at all to the game timeframe.
PS.: I cannot talk about Occitan and Catalonian, it must be a totally different situation, but I guess nationalistic French policies from 19th and 20th centuries played an important role so its split could be not as old neither dramatic as it could see at first glance

Addition: Brazilian speakers can writte a book over the issues with linguistic standars over Coímbra-Lisboa variety and "brazilian portuguese" (when in fact there are several brazilian portugueses), as well Portuguese speaker from other ex-Portuguese controlled areas (Angolese Portuguese should be considered African Galician, and that is a fact) .

 

[IlianCeroni]

Ok, this is really cool, now that languages are a thing in the “mysterious project caesar”, I have a suggestion for an event/series of events for the Italian languages/cultures.

As a caveat before anything, I’m going to use “language” and “dialect” in the sense intended in the game and not in the linguistic sense, so we’re all on the same page and it’s directly translatable to the game. Furthermore, talking about languages and dialects in Italy, while I’m not super familiar with the situation in the 14th century, I think that arguably at the time every province/culture should have its own language (in this case it’s the linguistic sense of the term). I do understand, however, why the major simplification, as it’s still generally correct and granular enough, moreover a correct portrayal would make the game really difficult as every neighbour would speak a different language, with all the problems that arises in such context (I mean, “Scandinavian” is a language instead of “Danish”, “Swedish” and “Norwegian”, so pretty confident it was a necessary simplification).



So, back to the event suggestion, it revolves around “la questione della lingua” (the language question) which is a discussion that lasted centuries in the italian peninsula and led to the creation and diffusion of modern Italian. Basically it really became a thing in the 16th century (1525, to be precise) when Italian intellectuals discussed what was “literary Italian”, settling on the language used by “le tre corone” (the three crowns are the three major italian authors at the time, Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca and Giovanni Boccaccio). La questione della lingua, however, it’s usually intended to start in the first decade of the 14th century, with a text by Dante Alighieri (it’s called “De Vulgari Eloquentia”, it discusses “vulagar languages” aka, languages spoken by the people and that are not Latin), this text kickstarted a reflection on the spoken languages in the peninsula. This is why modern Italian is closer to 14th century Florentine (not even “Tuscan”, it’s the specific variety from Florence XD ) than later Italian languages, it was literally used as a model (they’re not really the same language, but for the sake of simplification, let’s say they are).

The in game events would mimic all the major step in the discussion, but giving the chances to take an alternative route, so maybe instead of Florence becoming the “literal language model” it could be Naples or Genoa and “standard Italian” in the game timeline would be based on it.
There could be a series of events related to this, besides “la questione della lingua”, for example the creation of the “vocabolario della crusca”, the language use during foreign occupation, an so on, but this is the general historical context.

As a quick source on the matter, there is a wikipedia page on this topic even in english:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questione_della_lingua


Note that because the game starts in 1337, Dante has already past away (in 1321) but both Petrarca and Boccaccio are alive, respectively in their 30s and 20s, which mean they definitely should be characters who can join the player’s court (I wait to see what Johan has to say about works of art, but I suspect they will fit very well as artist who produce literary art). Because Dante has already started the reflection and is a known author in Italy, there could be minor events related to the language of the court, having great poets who writes in your dialect (in the sense used by the game, the “flavour oriented” oriented) and similar, having the chance to get famous authors from the time in your court etc.
Then in the early 16th century the major event triggers and one dialect among all the italian one is chosen as “standard literary italian”, based on the literary works of art produced and eventually other factors (like prestige, diplo reputations, etc).
If your dialect get chosen, you get bonuses with the other countries in the peninsula, mostly related to arts, diplomacy, prestige and similar. As in the current maps the peninsula is divided in two languages it’s not easy to fully represent what the event was, but it could be that your dialect is accepted as if part of the other language (the historical example Florentine, a dialect in the italian language, is acceppted by Milan, Genoa, Venice and Savoy as if it was a dialect of the cisalpine language). I know dialects are more flavour than mechanics, but I think this should not be a game breaking idea, as it checks the dialect and considers it part of the language. Eventually it could also just make the other Italian countries “switch languages” to yours, or starting to diffuse your dialect in the rest of the peninsula, converting the other dialects (and therefore languages) to yours.
If your dialect is not chosen, you get an event where you have chose if recognising the one that was chosen or not, having the chance of accepting it as your court language and doing the thing I described before but in reverse, giving you some bonuses related to arts, diplomacy and commerce with all the countries that accepted it.
An important detail, the Pope will probably reject it and Latin cannot be chosen, as part of the discussion was the “separation” from Latin and the liturgical language.
Note that historically the process was more about literature than every day language, but it slowly became a sorta of lingua franca, especially among the more educated groups (so it would be the noble and the burghers, as the clergy still prefers latin, while peasants don’t really care but are slowly converted to it).
The series of event could conclude with one triggering only if the Italian state is formed, as there would be the choice of which is the language of Italy, having of course the option to select the one who was chosen in the 16th century, yours (if not the one that was chosen), the more spoken (if not the chosen one), and eventually Latin, depending on the relationship with the Pope (or if one is the Pope).

I think these events would work pretty well in the new system, mostly as flavoured way to get some bonuses (and even some maluses), although I’m not 100% on how mechanically represent the “selection of one dialect”, I guess the simpler one would be a bonus toward the diffusion (along side other bonus for the countries, of course). The more historical one would be the possibility of creating a new language, like have cisalpine language and another name for the southern one, while at the beginning of the game the “italian language” is an empty tag and when the event triggers it select the winning dialect as language, but I guess it’s a bit convoluted ;P

 

[migdeu19]

Historically both languages have been called galician and portuguese depending of the country. However, until they were separate languages it would be more accurate to call it galician as it´s how it was known during medieval times (and that Galicia is where the language was originated).

The merge of two languages will be represented through the cultural assimilation mechanic, but during the time the whole game happens, many languages diverged in dialects and many dialects became separated languages, which was the case for dutch and german, catalan and occitan or the example given before. Is it going to be a mechanic in the game or are all languages going to stay the same? I think it could also be a great mechanic for dialects separated in different countries with bad relationships aside form the historical ones.

Well the earliest evidence of our language not being called as Romance, Fala or anything alike called it as Portuguese. And that will be applyied up to Galicia as there is letters from Castillian nobility speaking about the "Portuguese" speaked in Galicia.

As well it would be not fair say that our language originated in (modern) Galicia as Braga, Tras-os-Montes and other areas in (modern) Portugal were as the origin of our Romance as Lugo or A Coruña.

I'm Galician and I really don't care about the name of the language as long as it's treated as the single language it was and it maybe still being.

 

[theolaa]

This is incredible
Small question, which language groups do archaic languages like Latin and Church Slavonic fall under? Just lumped in with Romance/Slavic, or do they get a special "Dead Languages" group? Also, is it possible to reinstate Latin as a living language (court/common/market whatever)?

 

[Solo_Adhémar]

Arpitan is often overlooked when representing the french romance languages but it had its historical importance as a mountain culture and language (it's even more of a missed opportunity for CK3 with the burgundian kingdom, the reasons of its weakness and its aftermath). At the time, in the acts of what would become the parliament of Dauphiné, they would still qualify occitan & french speakers as (vile) foreigners and local lords certainly had no love for foreign parties meddling into their affairs (that is the ongoing hundred years war between Savoie and Dauphiné that wont be settled until the early 1360's).

 

[Being Earnest]

Is there a way to spread language beyond one's borders? It seems like language is fundamentally tied to cultures, which are not dynamic, so I'm really asking about culture conversions, is that right?
Would it be impossible to effect Anglophonic global supremacy without doing a world conquest first?

 

[FleetingRain]

I wonder if dialects will not explode within some communities as a culture war.
Edit: in real life I mean

Pavia: "Man, the Balkans TM was pretty tame, I expected a flame war"
Johan: "Don't worry, I have an idea"

 

[Atromb]

Honestly, regarding the dialects in the Iberian Peninsula. Two main problems.

1) They clearly match modern one sided political pseudoconcepts of languages.
If you break Galician-Portuguese between Galician and Portuguese as "dialects", it would look more reasonable, being more organic and natural (less 21st century politiced) to do it in a more real and less political way, like for example, Galician (which would reach up to Braga), Portense, Coímbran (Coímbra-Lisboa dialect), Alentejano.
That happens as well with Occitan, at that point you could break both Catalonian and Occitan varieties in more than two dialect.
And SPECIALLY with Castillian/Spanish. It would be much more organic if you use actual Castillian dialects (not different languages as Leonese and Aragonese), even "trivialised" in the name and extension as Andalusian (which linguistically could be broken up into 2 or 3 dialects), Manchego, Riojano, etc, etc.
Btw, looking how Castillian/Spanish language/culture -and population numbers- has been depicted, it seem that Castille/Spain will be massively overpowered and unbalanced gameplay-wise, breaking it in smaller units as you did with other cultures -Galician-Portuguese-, may help to solve this unbalance problem).

2) In the Iberian Peninsula WRONGLY assigned dialects. Astur-Leones IS a language, no a dialect. Dialects of this language range from Leonese, Asturian, Cantabrian, Extremeño, etc, etc. You have the same linguistical reasons to claim Leonese as a dialect of Castillian as u will have to claim it as a dialect of the Galician-Portuguese language as it is linguistically sharing features from both linguistic complexes. So you take such decission over the 21st century political "status quo"/"opinion" (I'll explain it later), while the game developes between 14th to 18th centuries, having nothing to do with this 21st century pseudo-concepts I refeered before.
BTW, the same problem goes to Navarro-Aragonese, with its main dialects depicted in the artificial name of the LANGUAGE (no Castillian/Spanish dialect).

It will be nice to see those issues fixed, specially as it is sensible to the speakers of those still-barely-alive languages, which are politically misconsidered as dialects (Spanish Constitution and old Francoist and modern school textbooks) but which are, linguistically speaking, languages of their own.


I'll seat here a map as reference (20-21st century linguitic map) to help improving those two issues:

View attachment 1212716

Is worth noting that in most places what the game refers to as dialects correlates more with "languages" and "languages" correspond to "linguistical families". Galaico-portuguese seems to be an exception to this, probably to give Portugal a different language than Castile, but in the map that's more of an exception.

 

[migdeu19]

Is worth noting that in most places what the game refers to as dialects correlates more with "languages" and "languages" correspond to "linguistical families". Galaico-portuguese seems to be an exception to this, probably to give Portugal a different language than Castile, but in the map that's more of an exception.

Well, at that period Galician-Portuguese and Castillian were very, extremely almost, different. Still is sad seing some languages as Leonese misregarded as a Castillian dialect.

 

[FleetingRain]

This language/dialect mixup is annoying because clearly it would be better to rename "tier 1" to Languages and "tier 2" to Language Branches or something, but "tier 2" is the element with actual gameplay relevance (Court Languages etc).

I think we'll have to go stupid and call Dialects "Sub-languages". Who cares if it's not a scientific term, the current usage of Dialects is not only unscientific but detrimental to understanding the concept!

 

[Milusky]

Well the earliest evidence of our language not being called as Romance, Fala or anything alike called it as Portuguese. And that will be applyied up to Galicia as there is letters from Castillian nobility speaking about the "Portuguese" speaked in Galicia.

As well it would be not fair say that our language originated in (modern) Galicia as Braga, Tras-os-Montes and other areas in (modern) Portugal were as the origin of our Romance as Lugo or A Coruña.

I'm Galician and I really don't care about the name of the language as long as it's treated as the single language it was and it maybe still being.

Well, until late medieval ages the north of Portugal was still cnsidered part of the galician region, and the castillian nobility refering to galician as portuguese happened due to the attemps of centralization of the languages in the country, sure you also know it was later called a spanish dialect (ofc this happened after the time the game ends) so it has more to do with politics rather than a linguistic perspective.

I´m galician too , I try not to fall into those nationalist arguments (which are usually as wrong as the anti-galician ones) but it would be strange calling galician portuguese while in other paradox games they are separated as two different. However, the way it is named is not that important (at least while they´re considered the same language), but keeping both as the same language until the end of the game is inacurate as galician and portuguese were already separated languages when bourbons ruled Spain.

 

[migdeu19]

This language/dialect mixup is annoying because clearly it would be better to rename "tier 1" to Languages and "tier 2" to Language Branches or something, but "tier 2" is the element with actual gameplay relevance (Court Languages etc).

I think we'll have to go stupid and call Dialects "Sub-languages".

Tier 1: macro families, Tier 2: diasystems, Tier 3: Regional Varieties.

Tier 2 could be the only reference if it was a bit better done (not critisicing the effort put on it anyway). But Tier 1 could not work as a functional single language at that point, at least regarding Romance Languages, Greek ones, etc.

 

[migdeu19]

Well, until late medieval ages the north of Portugal was still cnsidered part of the galician region, and the castillian nobility refering to galician as portuguese happened due to the attemps of centralization of the languages in the country, sure you also know it was later called a spanish dialect (ofc this happened after the time the game ends) so it has more to do with politics rather than a linguistic perspective.

I´m galician too , I try not to fall into those nationalist arguments (which are usually as wrong as the anti-galician ones) but it would be strange calling galician portuguese while in other paradox games they are separated as two different. However, the way it is named is not that important (at least while they´re considered the same language), but keeping both as the same language until the end of the game is inacurate as galician and portuguese were already separated languages when bourbons ruled Spain.

Nn poso concordar contigo en canto a diverxencia etre galego e portugués, copio e pego o que lle contestei a un rapaz que argumentab algunha cousa similar:

No quite, the divergence of the Galician-Portuguese could be dated to 21st century or late 20 century due to standarization of one single dialect over others (Portuguese with Coímbra-Lisboa dialects becoming the "padrão" and with Galician autorities producing a new standarization bassed on Castillian writting norms "Decreto Filgueira") and the appearance of mass media promoting only state languages.
In the Galician and Portuguese case this will go further as Galician number of speakers is drastically being going down due Spanish and Galician Xunta linguicidal policies resulting in less native-dialectal speakers with a majority not knowing any Native Galician or having "Decreto Filgueira" standarization (which was build over Castillian/Spanish) as L2.
I can not say what led to the Protuguese speakers quickly addapting to Coímbra-Lisboa dialect while lossing their regional dialects but it is as well a phenomenom from the last 50 years, no older (you can still finding people younger than 50 speaking highly divergent dialects in Portugal as in São Miguel -Açores- and Braga).

Isto digoo en base sobre todo a miña experiencia persoal, vivín en Lisboa bastante tempo e teño visto falantes de Portugués de todo tipo. No barrio en que vivía (Chelas, que tivo bastante migración do norte) as avoas falaban como a miña (Lobios) dunha maneira que nen podes imaxinar. O portugués estandar, o lisboeta é unha couse que en duas semás estás a falar con total soltura (se ben se vai notar q nn es dalí), pero outros portuguesés, o caso de Azores, son incomprensibles ao extremo. Tamén no norte, polo menos o que sería Miño-Limia falan máis "galego" que "portugués". Realmente a diferenciación penso que é máis un problema de identidade moderna e sobre todo de falta de exposición mutua que dunha verdadeira diverxencia lingüística (polo menos os que son de casas galegofalantes), os neofalantes xa é outra historia.

En base á evidencia histórica só podo dicir (para alén do xa dito) que as comunidades de emigración galega a países lusofonos nunca formaron ghetos ou comunidades illadas (e Portugal foi o principal destiño migratorio durante 400 anos -augadores de lisboa e profesións liberais- e Brasil o 3º no s. XX), cousa que nn se pode dicir dos países hispanófonos coas comunidades galegas de Buenos Aires e demáis.

 

[Ekyman]

Honestly, regarding the dialects in the Iberian Peninsula. Two main problems.

1) They clearly match modern one sided political pseudoconcepts of languages.
If you break Galician-Portuguese between Galician and Portuguese as "dialects", it would look more reasonable, being more organic and natural (less 21st century politiced) to do it in a more real and less political way, like for example, Galician (which would reach up to Braga), Portense, Coímbran (Coímbra-Lisboa dialect), Alentejano.
That happens as well with Occitan, at that point you could break both Catalonian and Occitan varieties in more than two dialect.
And SPECIALLY with Castillian/Spanish. It would be much more organic if you use actual Castillian dialects (not different languages as Leonese and Aragonese), even "trivialised" in the name and extension as Andalusian (which linguistically could be broken up into 2 or 3 dialects), Manchego, Riojano, etc, etc.
Btw, looking how Castillian/Spanish language/culture -and population numbers- has been depicted, it seem that Castille/Spain will be massively overpowered and unbalanced gameplay-wise, breaking it in smaller units as you did with other cultures -Galician-Portuguese-, may help to solve this unbalance problem).

2) In the Iberian Peninsula WRONGLY assigned dialects. Astur-Leones IS a language, no a dialect. Dialects of this language range from Leonese, Asturian, Cantabrian, Extremeño, etc, etc. You have the same linguistical reasons to claim Leonese as a dialect of Castillian as u will have to claim it as a dialect of the Galician-Portuguese language as it is linguistically sharing features from both linguistic complexes. So you take such decission over the 21st century political "status quo"/"opinion" (I'll explain it later), while the game developes between 14th to 18th centuries, having nothing to do with this 21st century pseudo-concepts I refeered before.
BTW, the same problem goes to Navarro-Aragonese, with its main dialects depicted in the artificial name of the LANGUAGE (no Castillian/Spanish dialect).

It will be nice to see those issues fixed, specially as it is sensible to the speakers of those still-barely-alive languages, which are politically misconsidered as dialects (Spanish Constitution and old Francoist and modern school textbooks) but which are, linguistically speaking, languages of their own.


I'll seat here a map as reference (20-21st century linguitic map) to help improving those two issues:

View attachment 1212716

That's just how the game is using these terms. "Languages" in game tend to be macro-categories - either aggressively lumping languages with any degree of mutual intelligebility, or being cultural macrolanguages like Chinese - and "dialects" are the fairly-mutually-intelligible subdivisions that are still generally considered languages. See the situation in Scandinavia for example.

Tier 1: macro families, Tier 2: diasystems, Tier 3: Regional Varieties.

"Macrofamily" typically refers to hypothetical high-level families and can carry a negative connotation. Even in the most generous definition things like Romance and Germanic aren't macrofamilies. "Diasystem" is way too technical.

I think "Language family" is perfect for tier 1, "Language" is fine for tier 2, but tier 3 should maybe be "Language variety." This is an actual term used by linguists to be neutral on the language vs dialect debate, and IMO isn't overly technical and is clear enough for newcomers. "Lect" or "isolect" would also be good neutral alternatives but might be considered overly technical and less clear to newcomers.

 

[sillycatwarlord07]

This is very a cool Tinto talk! I love looking at the map modes lol. btw When I'm Spain I will Change my primary culture to Sephardi for fun

 

[honkajoki]

Late to the party, didn't read all comments, so these may already have been asked. I did read the dev replies and saw none for these.

View attachment 1212048
A list of cultures present inside Aragon, with two-way opinions relative to the primary culture Catalan. Please note that these opinions are WIP, and might not be final.

I assume there are different relations for religions than there are for cultures. Are there some links between cultures and religions, like a culture having a primary religion or vice versa, and do those links limit the possible relations? Eg. would it be possible for Spain to view Sephardi culture as positive while hating the Jewish religion, or does the hate for the religion automatically limit that cultural relations can be neutral at best?

In general, you will want to adopt a liturgical language with high language power, as it affects your research speed.

I dislike the idea that all research is done by clergy. They weren't that involved in everything, eg. military matters. But I think this was already discussed under a previous TT.

Does the liturgical language affecting research speed mean that countries become less innovative when they turn Protestant during the reformation?

Are there bonuses in other areas for choosing another liturgical language, eg. selecting the common language as the liturgical language leads to faster religious conversion?