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xenolinguistics
xenolinguistics
#1
The Fourth Edition language rules may actually cope better with Kyz!ynoa* than Third Edition did -- non-empaths have a maximum comprehension level of Broken/None. (Whether it specifically requires Empathy with the Telepathy power modifier, and/or whether Telepathy Talent by itself would allow Accented fluency, is open to debate.) Myeerrrarr would presumably require Language Talent or the Meeranar cultural familiarity to learn above Accented.

Also, this has been bugging me on and off for over 20 years: which emotion does the ^ diacritical in the name "Nea!son^ma" represent? I assume the shoutpole is the same "familiar comfort" diacritical as in "Kyz!ynoa*", but there are so many candidates for the caret that I can't ever seem to narrow it down.
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#2
Why would non-empaths not be able to read Kyz!ynoa* ? They'd need to learn what all the emotion diacritical marks mean, but I doubt that would be much worse than learning all the diacritical marks for traditional Chinese.

(If this is something carried over from GURPS 3e, we could fix it.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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#3
The sidebar on p.IST33 says the emotional diacriticals "cannot be taught to a person lacking the Emotion Sense super-skill." To use your comparison of Chinese diacriticals, imagine trying to teach the tones involved with each diacritical to a deaf person. And Mandarin only has four diacriticals; Kyz!ynoa* may have over a thousand (p.IST34 says they represent "nearly 1,300 different emotional shadings").
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#4
I would imagine that without Empathy (or some other method of sensing intent behind words, maybe a use of the Detect Lies skill) listening to Kyz!noa* would be like a tone deaf person trying to master Chinese.

M
Michael R. Smith (lastfreehuman@gmail.com)
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