text; @The Seventh Crown of the Seventh Demon King;

[unrequite]

[ Four lines of text. ]

This is written in Victorian.
Kore wa Laterano-ji Higashi-go de kakareteimasu.
This is written in Higashinese.
This written by in Yanese. (Might be bad. Sorry.)

Please do let me know how many of these sentences you understand.

[ The first is in what would be considered Earth English, the second is what would be known as Japanese written in Romaji, but he's called it "Laterano-ji Higashinese". The third was written in Japanese, the fourth was written in some rather poor Chinese. He's called the languages themselves clearly incorrect names. What's more important, though, is that only the second one should parse as phonetic, and should only be understandable to fellow Japanese speakers. The rest are in whatever language is most understandable to whoever reads it. Funny, huh? This city sure is strange! ]

Comments

@Alhaitham

[justscribing]

[Maybe two minutes after Kaveh has made sure that Alhaitham has seen this.]

1, 3, 4 are all perfectly readable to me, but not in the original language you described.

The second one is the same as the third but using an alternate alphabet, isn't it? It resembles Inazuman phonetically, but the writing system is different.

[unrequite]

[ Ah, Kaveh's promised Inazuman speaker. The purported silly blockhead. ]

Thank you. That does seem to be the general consensus, although this is the first I've heard of Inazuman. The practice of writing Higashinese using the Laterano alphabet is a result of the spread of Victorian as the lingua franca on Terra. Laterano-ji a common way of writing Higashinese text, but it is, at its heart, still a phonetic transcription of the language. I suppose that's a distinction the city's decided to preserve.

[justscribing]

And I've never heard of Higashinese, but that's easily explained by us being from different worlds entirely.

I understand the idea of it. The common script of Teyvat is used similarly. What's interesting to me is that this place doesn't seem to regard that as a natural form of language that should be translated. But why is that a limitation?

[unrequite]

In the sense that this place can't translate it, or won't? I rather thought this is the system working exactly as intended — that is, that as a phonetic transcription, the sentence is correct as it is — but if the intention of the translations provided was to make all communications between us intelligible, then a failure to translate phonetically written but otherwise perfectly correct language would be an outright bug in the system.

[justscribing]

That's right. Given we don't seem to have a lot of control over what is being translated for us, it seems like an oversight to be able to bypass it simply by changing the script. Especially if the phonetic transcript of Higashinese is something you were familiar with.

[In that case, it couldn't be an issue of it not being a form of language that someone in the City didn't know before.]

How common is it for people to communicate to each other in Higashinese using the Victorian script? Could you hold a conversation with the same nuance?

[unrequite]

It's situational, used in cases where our own alphabet is unavailable. Happens every via network communication every so often, actually. All manufactured keyboards use the Laterano alphabet, as far as I'm aware. As for nuance... Well, a mundane conversation can be communicated in Laterano-ji just fine, but a work of Higashinese literature and poetry is likely to lose some portion of meaning without use of the Higashinese alphabet, especially if one is prohibited from the used of Yanese characters. Lots of homonyms for similar verbs that require different characters, and so on.

[justscribing]

Even if the reader would easily misunderstand, the writer would know what they intended when they wrote it. If there is a limitation on what can be translated based on that, we can surmise it probably doesn't function just by reading our thoughts.

We could be talking through an external filter, then. [Which means intentions can get much more easily lost the more different two languages are. But also, it means they may have an easier time manipulating it.]

[unrequite]

It makes my last sense make sense, now that I think about it. I'm at a beginner level at Yanese, but if my intention counted for anything, my sentence would read perfectly to everyone, including myself in hindsight. Someone was able to find and correct my errors, though, and I'm able to see my own errors after the fact.

[ It's not exactly confirmation that this place can't read minds, but that's what Midnight's getting out of this, and he'll take that. ]

[justscribing]

The grammar also looks off to me, though it still translates into Sumeran.

So is this only for our benefit, or someone else listening in as well?

[unrequite]

That is a thought, isn't it? All of this as closed-captioning for someone who needs our conversations in their language. Perhaps our ability to communicate is just an afterthought, at best. Or a necessary evil.

If it was deliberate, then one could see this tool as a means to create unity between ourselves. If the goal was to leave us fragmented and isolated, there would really be no need to lift the language barrier at all. Which I suppose would explain what we found in the bank, and what we were meant to do.

[justscribing]

"Nothing is yours. It is to use. It is to share. If you will not share it, you cannot use it."

Though it seems more people got mementos than tools to use. And a city with limitless and free resources removes a lot of sources of conflict between people. Still it's possible it could be both for our own unity and so a third party is capable of following our conversations with ease.

[unrequite]

Well, a memento is a tool in its own way... But I understand your point.

I do wish our admirers would come out and ask for what they wanted. They've made so many inroads to communication without demanding anything specific or overarching that it's tempting to imagine them as a bit awkward or shy.

[justscribing]

Perhaps they don't want to interfere with what they've set up here, or they don't trust us not to harm them after revealing themselves.

[unrequite]

The former seems more likely to me. The latter... Well, I can't speak for you, but I can't imagine what it would take for someone with the power, patience, and omnipotence to maintain all of this to fear someone like me.

[justscribing]

I'd agree.

[Someone, or someones, pulling this much off as too much power to fear the rats they've trapped. And it all feels very experimental. But he's missing the right pieces to be able to put the hypothesis to the test.]

[unrequite]

Well, even if it's unlikely, I do hope they're just shy, if not afraid. Shyness is a simple problem with a simple solution.

[ Midnight doesn't have much to contribute besides that. He's a vaguely chaotic instigator, not a deep thinker. ]

[justscribing]

[Consider: you can be both.]

Is it? Are you hoping they'll be nice enough you can convince them to just let you go?

[unrequite]

[ Midnight is a proud, cardholding member of the singular brain cell club, thank you! ]

Yes, of course. If they're open to conversation, I'll allow it. Who knows? They might be quite lovely, penchant for kidnapping aside.