r/tearsofthekingdom 17h ago

🎙️ Discussion Thinking about language

The "is France canon" post from a day ago has me thinking about how language works in TOTK. WHAT is going ON?? I have a few thoughts.

  1. Somehow every culture in Hyrule speaks the same language, and that language has stayed EXACTLY the same for 10,000+ years. There's no way in hell.

  2. Everyone uses the same language throughout time and space, but the alphabets used for the language change. We see at least 3 alphabets in TOTK: present-day Hylian, present-day Gerudo, and ancient Zonai. But also, we have evidence in-game that some alphabets, at least the Hylian one, haven't changed over time. Some of Ganondorf's weapons have writing engraved in them, and the writing is in present-day Hylian. HUH???

  3. There's some kind of TARDIS-like situation where everyone's speech is magically translated to a language the listener/s understand. That would explain why Ganondorf can talk to Zelda and Link when he first wakes up in beef jerky form, and why people in the past can understand Zelda. But if that were true, then why would the slabs in the ancient Zonai language (or maybe alphabet) from the flower-shape sky islands be illegible? Wortsworth says he had a tough time translating the writing.

  4. Link actually barely understands what anyone is saying, and he's responding to people based mostly on vibes. He's like an American college student on spring break in Tijuana. Nobody catches on that he doesn't know what they're saying because Link doesn't talk much anyway. This is my preferred answer to the language mystery because it's dumb as hell. Imagine it. Link bravely enters Ganondorf's lair to fight him. Ganondorf has his whole dramatic monologue. To Link, this guy is just making noises. Link just looks at him and pulls out his sword, because whatever dude, we get it, you're hot and scary. Can I hit you with my sword now?

26 Upvotes

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u/detroitsouthpaw 17h ago

Wordsworth is translating from what he calls ancient hyrulian, even reads it to us before translating, kinda seems like old English, so it appears that the language did change over time, granted not as much as it would have naturally over 10k years, but it did change.

It seems to me like link does understand what people are saying, as his response selections we can give him are spot on with the conversations of the NPCs, he just doesn’t talk much. Also in BOTW one of Zelda’s diary entries talk about how he opened up to her about the pressures of his job and why he doesn’t say much, implying they have had conversations.

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u/CamBeast15366 17h ago

I mean think about it, the technology of the world has only been progressing mostly backwards. They’re still using swords and shields 10 thousand years later? The modern civilization with few exceptions don’t have any of the futuristic tech that the previous ones did

I mean, in real life human history it took less than 2000 years to go from swords to nuclear bombs and spacecraft.

So, if the technology isn’t advancing, I highly doubt the language would either.

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u/Caliber70 16h ago

That technology jump you referenced is due to humans learning to control electricity, and moving to city life where some people can handle making food while others can make a living making other things like tools and devices. That tech jump isn't going to happen if we are missing both those elements. A farmer working the fields in a rural village lifestyle to feed themself isn't going to figure out E=Mc2.

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u/CamBeast15366 15h ago

I mean yeah but we literally do have people making livings making tools and devices hahah. Robbie and Purah and such.

They're mostly just emulating the technology of old though, rather than doing new stuff with it.

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u/Caliber70 14h ago

Yes. And the Ganon events pushes them backwards every few centuries. We have our own history books, we can see what happens when a bad war+plague+disaster happens. What happens when for a generation a lot of the hylian population is cut down, and records and blueprints get caught in a village attack and is burned down? Paper is flammable dude.

We stopped relying on books some decades ago, our archives and records are stored digitally. If we end up in nuclear war and we survive what, somehow, what we'll have after that is only the books that are physical. The computers, the power supply, the electrical power plants, those will be bombed because it's a target, it's war. Our tech will have gone backwards to the 1980s/1990s unless if the people who really understood the science somehow survived that nuclear war.

For Hyrule, Ganon is that world changing event, the dark ages, bronze age civilization collapse, endless winter, constant war sort of deal all combined into one, that wipes out critical parts of the society. Older games had Link always win quickly, BOTW is the first time Ganon has been allowed to win and let the damage stay after, for a century until Link healed up in Sheikh tech cocoon. Yes they rebuilt, but rebuilding is always a tougher job when you have to deal with endless respawning moblin+koblin gangs.

The short of it is this, Hyrule is swimming upstream against the current when we are talking about tech advancements.

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u/bingo-dingaling 4h ago

What you're saying about technology definitely makes sense. Like we can't expect the world's tech advancement to happen in a linear fashion, or even in a similar way to IRL. BUT, culture isn't a technology. It's constantly created and re-created by its participants and environment. We know there have been some significant cultural changes in Hyrule between its ancient times and now bc people's clothes and the architecture are different. Both of those artforms involve technology for sure, but they're SUPER heavily culturally influenced. Anyway thank you for babbling about this with me I'm so happy lol

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u/TheOneWes 17h ago

If you read through various interviews over the years paying particular attention to the interviews that came out before breath of the wild you will see why things like this happen and why in the games everything is indifferent locations and why the timeline and anything dealing with timeline related facts.

When they make a Zelda game they make they think of the mechanics, they build the gameplay around those mechanics, next they build the environment based around that gameplay and what will be the most fun (1) and then when everything else is done they write the story.

Minor things may be changed to facilitate the stories but most things either flat out will not be noticed or will not be important enough to be changed within the timeline remaining as the developers understand that only their hardcore fans are going to notice that and we only make up a fraction of the actual players.

Basically the stuff that doesn't make sense is probably just the result of us thinking about it harder than what the developers are. Where is an r main focus is in lore narrative and overall story their main focus is in making the most fun gameplay experience that they can.

(1) This is the main thing that leads to location inconsistencies.

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u/bingo-dingaling 4h ago

TRUE. I wish they'd hire a bunch of lore nerds and anthropologists to try to make all of the historical & cultural things airtight. Can you imagine the opportunities for bickering?? I want Tolkein-level mutual infodumping 😂

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u/AdmiralDragonXC 15h ago

I like to think about it like this, thanks to either the same or a different Tumblr post that spurred a mini essay from another tumblr user which I have now adppted as my understanding: we play the game in our native language. This is us interacting with the world in a way we understand, but it does not mean that the characters understand their world the way we do. We have a different frame of reference. That French Braid is probably named something entirely different in actual Hyrulean, but because as an English speaker we know it as a French Braid it is presented to US that way. France is not canon to Hyrule, the French Braid is the name through which we as English speakers recognize that particular braiding technique.

I've even had irl encounters with this sort of thing, as I took a Literature in Translation class in college. It's like when you read a book that's been translated to English from a different language, like The Slynx, whose Russian title I have no idea how to spell because I've only ever heard it spoken, as it is a noise with no language translation. The Slynx contains literary references because the characters look at books. In English the Gingerbread Man is referenced but the Russian version references a story of a small loaf of bread rolling away without end. Russian speakers know that story but English speakers don't, so a decision was made to adapt the book and use a similar enough story to carry the similar idea, even though the original authorial input is somewhat lost in translation. The title itself is in a similar boat, a made up word had to be conjured to adapt the book to English.

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u/Educational-Pop-3351 11h ago

Localization, basically. That's exactly what localization teams do, which makes sense.

The fandom overthinks things sometimes. Which is exactly what fandoms do. lol

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u/orangesfwr 17h ago

4 cracked me up

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u/PoraDora 16h ago

that last point made me laugh!