Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

@Riot, How many Ionians can speak to outsiders?

PhantomGG·7/23/2019, 11:31:28 PM·4 votes·5,042 views

It has been made Canon that Ioania has their own language, and the large majority use it as their primary. To the point when Riven became a Noxus runaway soldier to hide in Ioania, she had to teach herself the language in order to survive so she could work a semi stable job and interact with the locals, for essential reasons.

-Buying food -Simple hellos and goodbyes -The normal words you would need to know to survive in a foreign country

That being said though. I do have a major lore question involving Ioania, and hell the game itself.

One thing i dislike about the game, is the fact, every champion in the game, speaks the same language. If you chose the NA server they all speak english. If you chose korea, they all speak Korean.

One problem with that. It has been made Canon, that the countries and kingdoms have their own languages. There is a good chance if you made Olaf meet up with Zed, that they would quite literally only be talking with their fists, and any words would just be pointless as they have no fucking clue what the other is saying.

TLDR:

-What is the global language of the world of LoL, i'm assuming it's whatever Noxus speaks as they are basically the England of the game, going to other countries, conquering and influencing them.

-How many Ioanians could actually have a conversation with a Noxus Citizen.

3 Comments

mrmeddyman7/24/2019, 7:45:17 AM1 votes

For storytelling purposes they probably all speak "Galactic Basic"

In other words it's like the TV show Vikings, a show where Scandinavians, Englishmen and Frankians have to converse with one another despite language barriers in every other scene. They all speak in English for the viewers convenience, but at times the show shows whats' going on from one parties point of view whether it be the Vikings roaring in their brutish mother tongue during a battle at the demoralized Europeans or having the English nobility speak in old Latin while the Vikingstry and fail to circumnavigate all the little subtleties of their culture like eating dinner with utensils like a civilized human being.

Otherwise they totally understand each other at all times and why? Because language barriers are frustrating and boring tediums in real life why do we have to simulate them in our fiction?

99% of the time it just gets in the way I'd prefer if Riot continued to ignore it except to add flavor every once in the while I.E shove in one asian sounding word to every other Ionian sentence.

IlyaK19867/24/2019, 5:15:45 PM1 votes

So, if you read Riven's 3-part story, she fully understands the judge.

Yasuo is able to communicate effectively with Taliyah (Shuriman).

Irelia has character-specific taunts to Riven and Swain (Noxians, well...former Noxian for Riven), among others.

As for Noxus, they're far closer to Rome. You know, what with a conquering empire and all.

As for "which Ionians are able to hold a conversation with outsiders", the answer seems to be "some of them". Namely, at least some of the champions (Irelia, I'd imagine some of the ninjas). Someone that's just a basic farmer probably isn't fluent in foreign languages, and may not even be literate, but we don't really have much detail about how much education citizens in any nation in Runeterra really receive.

Mogarl7/25/2019, 7:32:17 AM1 votes

I would suspect that the Lingua Franca is whatever Piltover speaks opposed to whatever Noxus speaks. The two languages are likely similar, but I would expect Piltover to have some Shuriman influence. There's a lot more reason for a merchant or a commoner to learn the language of someone trading with them than someone who wants to steal from you. I would expect an answer to this whenever Riot expands on "Ninjas in the Twin Cities". Since Zed and Shen's ability to communicate with the locals will have to come up at some point.