WotL OOC Thread II

[JadedDM]

Near-mindless slaves created by the yuan-ti from humans to serve them.

[Chris1234]

Nice pic, nasty looking beast.

Are you Yuan-ti in league with the invading army?

[JadedDM]

No. The army and the temple want them wiped out for being heretics against the true goddess, Takhisis. They are, in fact, enemies of the occupation.

[Chris1234]

Shame we can't use that to help undermine the invading army.

However, Shima continues to just try and show the party he's on the 'up an up' and tries to support the party as required..

[TristenC]

Grubnick had a similar thought, but once he saw what they were doing he changed

[Chris1234]

What were they doing? Do you mean transforming humans into Histachii ?

[HorizonsDream]

You're English isn't bad.

Much like Tristen, much to my understanding, English is one of the hardest languages to learn. We have so many exceptions to our rules that even the people that are native to the language have a really hard time. I think part of the reason why we have a hard time with English has to deal with the fact that our education system is...not the best. For example, in high school, I took honor's English (higher GPA rating), but when I went to college they put me into a non credit English class because I wasn't taught everything that I needed to prepare me for a college English class. The same thing happened to me with math, but I expected it when it came to math.

[TristenC]

You're English isn't bad.

I hope the rest of your post means the grammatical errors in the sentence above were intentional

What were they doing? Do you mean transforming humans into Histachii ?

Yes. Practically irrevocably and against their will.

[Chris1234]

Unless they can be persuaded to only transform draconians..
But even so, it does sit uncomfortably.

[spyguy1503]

So, why did we get left behind?

[TristenC]

Unless they can be persuaded to only transform draconians..
But even so, it does sit uncomfortably.

Tulbas was told, in a reliable way, that the mixture only works on humans.

[Chris1234]

Ok, need to put them down then

[djhyland]

So, why did we get left behind?

Probably because the people involved in organizing the expedition didn't say that they were leaving the inn. I was surprised at the abrupt departure, too, and wrote it so that Arulia saw the party leaving and hurried to chase after them. I feel bad that I didn't think to have Arulia go and get Ne-Chanz, since she came to the inn with him, but it was all in a rush so I suppose it's plausible that she didn't think of finding Ne-Chanz either. Sorry!

Much like Tristen, much to my understanding, English is one of the hardest languages to learn.

I love the saying that goes something along the lines of "English doesn't borrow from other languages, it lures them down a dark alley and mugs them for their stuff". It's pretty accurate, I think. English, at its base, is a Germanic language (Old English). When the Normans conquered in 1066, they brought their early French language with them, which dramatically influenced and changed the English language (Middle English). Modern English came a few centuries later with the printing press and the "standardization" of written language it brought about. All through this history, too, the Church's cultural influence lent a lot of Greek and Latin to English, and later in the histories, England's status as a world power brought terms from distant languages back to English.

Even if we only count the Germanic, French, Greek, and Latin roots of the language, there's still four pretty distinct and disparate sources to Modern English. This is why English is so hard to learn--which source's linguistic rules apply in which situation? What words are derived from which source and thus spelled according to that source's rules? It's a real mess, and I guess I feel fortunate that I learned it as my first language. I'm not near as good at learning languages as I'd like to be (I've taken years of French and Japanese classes in high school and college, I never got very good at either, and I've forgotten most of both by now), and I think English would have been particularly challenging.

[TristenC]

I love the saying that goes something along the lines of "English doesn't borrow from other languages, it lures them down a dark alley and mugs them for their stuff".

This is, hands down, my new favorite phrase. Thank you djhyland, and thanks to whatever source exposed it to you

[BishGada]

My native language is Hebrew. I learned englishin school and from computer games. But in any way I have no access to current modificationof the language, slang, special meanings of expression and so on. I regulary need auto-correction tools and every other word or so look it up a dictionary (unless the context gives the meaning andI'm too lazy to bother.)
In any case I got the impression thta most of you post using 'literature' english and so I ususally have no problem to manage under the conditions I explained above.
Finding PlanetADND, and you guys, really enriched my recent several years.

And by the way, I had no idea about this complex history of the language. When I read your description I thought that russain is similar in the way that it also was influenced by many languages (including very small amount of Hebrew), the difference I think (I don't really know, just assuming) is that in russain it happened faster than English so it was more like revolution and not evolution, and the mixture of the languages is more apparent.