Monday, November 08, 2010

geeking in another language

In the World of Warcraft, you can sign up to be randomly assigned to a group to go into a dungeon, which is a part of the world with rigid boundaries (you can't just wander into one) where there are much more dangerous and difficult challenges to be faced than in the rest of the game. In olden times we'd have to round up help ourselves in order to be able to even try these things, but nowadays Blizzard has given us the power to request to be assigned to a random group, making it all so much easier. Normally the English speakers are all grouped together, but over the past couple of days I was lucky enough to be put in Spanish speaking groups. Not everyone enjoys that (there was another English speaker in one of those groups, who whined "I don't speak Spanish!"), but I do. My Spanish is rusty but serviceable.

Today I ran the Citadel on heroic setting with some Mexican players and a Brazilian (incidentally Portuguese is so similar to Spanish that I can read it). We ended up speaking a mix of Warcraft-English with Spanish/Portuguese. A player scolded another: "healer echame las maldiciones." I reached out for help: "Por favor tengo un quest aqui."

I loved the blend of Warcraft-speak and Spanish so much, that I started fantasizing about going to graduate school and doing a thesis on how language is used in gaming, examining how much English carries over into other languages. Why would a player who is speaking Spanish type in "ty" for "thank you", rather than "mg" for "muchas gracias"? I'd like to know. In reality, I'll just hang around the house playing Warcraft, sigh.

8 comments:

J9 said...

It's Monday and I cannot come up with a pithy remark on this.

LaVikinga said...

What a coincidence. The word verification is "unces," the second-person singular of "uncir" which means "to yoke." Hmm, maybe it's time for you to start on that thesis after all!

Silliyak said...

Have I stumbled into a MENSA blog?

Carroll said...

At one time I fantasized about doing an advanced Psychology degree with research based on the effects on a marriage of interactions experienced at boat ramps while launching family watercraft. Instead I just bit my tongue and went water skiing with the family.

Current "captcha" word = ovesseda. Sure sounds Portuguese to me!

Claire M. Johnson said...

Having my own very deep roots in a different but no less compelling fandom, it's fascinating to me as well how there is this language and secret handshakes. I'm not sure this is true in WOW, but within a fandom the secret handshakes change depending on those active in the fandom. It makes for a closed society, which makes for lots of unhappy, fifth grade, mean girl dynamics, also a lot of bonding, but also a LOT of mean. I would imagine given that there isn't so much of a sexual divide among the players of WOW that the mean girl dynamic is at a minimum. But there must be some sort of other dynamic because we are still taking about tribe mentality and using language to identify members of said tribe.

Tracy said...

I would say that 90% of the people I end up running randoms technically speak English, even though it's impossible to tell - like the guy that kept saying 'alpost' instead of 'supposed'. I'm one of those snooty people that never says anything in dungeons.

the Drunken Housewife said...

I forgot to share that instead of "lol", Spanish speaking players type in "jajaja" a lot. I found that cute.

Anonymous said...

this made me laugh signed joyce