Drunkard's Walk Forums

I've been wondering about this one for a while. Doug has to understand the language a song is in to get a power from it, I know that was mentioned somewhere. And mixtures of languages he knows are probably okay, since otherwise he'd have trouble with japanese songs with random english in them...
But what about a song that was in two languages, one of which he knew and one he didn't?
I'm thinking about this in relation to the game "Ar tonelico", which has some songs that are mixed japanese and "hymno", a language the game's creators made up. (And finding singers for that must have been interesting, given that hymno seems to involve a lot of sounds that japanese doesn't have...)
I don't really have any ideas for an actual stagger or anything, but it'd be interesting if Doug got a power out of a song that has special effects of it's own in the original context. Of course, since I don't know what any of the lyrics mean no matter what the language is, it's hard to figure that out...
-Morgan. It doesn't help that I can't even find half the lyrics for "EXEC_PAJA/.#Misya extracting"..."Mikuru-chan molested me! I'm... so happy!"
-Haruhi, "The Ecchi of Haruhi Suzumiya"
---(Not really)

Mm. That's something I never thought about, at least not directly. I have imagined using certain songs that mix languages like this, but I never thought about the impact of the mixed languages themselves.
Having actually read this yesterday and having a day to think on it, I would say that only whatever meaning he gets from the lyrics he understands would control the effects of the song. If his metagift could mystically extract meaning from lyrics in languages he didn't understand, he would be able to use any song at all in any language regardless of his comprehension level.

-- Bob
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I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen and incessant quotations from Now We Are Six through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head. So theeeeeere....