Jump to content

Borderline powergaming with regards to languages


Anton Tszyu

Recommended Posts

This thread will likely constitute an unpopular opinion, but I feel like it needs to be said anyway. Nothing written here is intended to be derogatory, so please do not take it as such. 

Since joining GTA World and playing as an individual from an Eastern European nation, I've noticed that there's an abundance of people who also know the Russian language. Knowing it In Character, that is. To me, this seems like borderline powergaming. I've noticed the same thing with other languages... and some of this borderline powergaming didn't even involve my own character. What I mean is people who will take on character names with no Eastern European origins and will just go about speaking the language without any plausible explanations for how they know it.

A minor disclaimer before I speak more on this: I definitely understand Spanish being common in Los Santos, and to a lesser extent, numerous Asian languages. After all, there's a lengthy history in Southern California (which San Andreas directly replaces, and in some ways mimics) of settlement by Spaniards, Latin Americans and Asians. Roger that; no problems there.

The issue especially crops up when dealing with sensitive matters, such as with regards to criminality. I've seen roleplay interrupted before by people who notice a rather obscure language being spoken, and they interject without any proper lead-up. Imagine two Hungarian emigrants speaking their native language to each other and discussing a drug deal in the street, or in a club somewhere. Someone with a plain English name comes up and begins speaking Hungarian to them, and asking for details about the conversation. When asked about how the local resident knows Hungarian, their response is simply "Oh, I got taught it" or "I have a cousin in Hungary". I'm just using Hungarian for the sake of the argument here; I don't actually mean to say that knowledge of Hungarian is widely powergamed, but the point still stands. Why would you know a second / third language which has basically no use in the country in which you reside? It makes no sense.


Russian, along with virtually all other Eastern European languages, are functionally useless in the U.S. Unless you're in urban ethnic enclaves such as Hollywood, some parts of Chicago and New York City. I will also include Detroit in this list. You don't require learning a foreign language to interact with the people in these urbanized immigrant enclaves. Chances are, the locals know English to at least a basic extent. And if they don't, then it isn't like you're going to be interacting with them anyway. For one, you can't even properly communicate with each other. Two, if they can't speak English, then they're going to be isolated away from mainstream society. I can understand learning languages for the fun of it, because frankly, there are actually people who do that. Trilingualists and polyglots do exist. But personally? I've never known anyone who speaks several languages like that, unless they've got a specific reason. Such as international business.

Another thing I don't understand is why people have an inclination to roleplay a particular ethnicity, without using a proper name from said ethnicity. So for example: people who use plain English names while saying that their characters are from a place such as Chile, Serbia or Cambodia. Again, these countries aren't meant to be specific examples but are just there for the sake of my argument. Research the name and do some real cultural immersion before getting involved with ethnic-specific roleplay. Not doing this is just laziness, and quite frankly, poor roleplay through an inability to briefly research what you're characters going to be about.

Just my two cents.

  • Upvote 5
  • Applaud 2
Link to comment

I've definitely had people RP asspulling knowledge of extremely niche and or complex languages. For reference, a white person in their mid twenties knowing Korean or Cantonese is at best an amateur novelty. You're not likely to know these languages in an environment similar to LA unless you grew up in a bilingual household. For someone whose main spoken language is English it takes roughly a decade of active study to learn an East Asian language.

 

Just to clarify if you want to RP a polygot at least put some effort into researching the languages you are saying that you know. Some people will powergame knowing Cantonese and then say they learned it in Shanghai. That's not how that works.

Edited by sio
  • Upvote 1
Link to comment

This is sort of a toughie because you can't really moderate what languages people say they know. They'll always come up with some explanation for how they know said languages. I originally come from a community where this was a huge problem to the point in which characters who knew multiple languages were expected to submit a biography explaining how they knew the languages they did; the most common answer always being, "X family member taught it to me."

 

Without direct interference from roleplay quality management, the only thing that can be done is leading by example and forcing personal standards. If you've made a character and you think they should speak some obscure language that isn't remotely tied to the geography of Los Santos, then you should really ask yourself the purpose of learning that language. Learning a language is hard unless it's practiced near-daily. Third generation immigrants usually don't speak the language of their homeland. If there isn't a tangible in character purpose for knowing the languages you know, then you shouldn't know them.

Link to comment

I'm a polyglot in real life but that doesn't mean I can use all the languages I know to an extent where I'd be able to decipher two fools talking in slang about dropping off their coke shipment in Kazakh or Turkish. This is not a flex but rather me pointing out that I'm no expert, but I know what I'm talking about and that some people should read up on the information below.

People have to start seeing the difference between knowing and speaking a language. You can have very decent knowledge about a certain language, it's family or just know basic shit about how sentences are formed and still, in most cases you will not be able to decipher a language that easily in order to understand 100% of it.

Now this isn't bashing on Americans and calling them dumbasses but rather stating a fact. Americans and the UK folk (majority of GTAW characters), due to how their vocal cords/throat are formed during childhood, have it extremely hard when it comes to learning most languages. It doesn't go only for Americans and UK people, but also for anyone who is a native English speaker. Hungarian or Russian are a good example here. There are sounds in both Russian and Hungarian which simply DO NOT EXIST in the English language, therefore if you're a native US-English speaker, the chances of you nailing that shit are borderline impossible. Sometimes, people who are native English speakers can't even decipher these sounds so they hear them as something else. For example, it's very hard for them to pull out a hard Polish "E" so instead of that particular sound, they say "AY". And they think they're doing good, but we Polish can hear it clearly that they've got that American ayy to it. This is once again not bashing on anyone, it's pointing out a fact. I respect anyone who's trying to learn any language to any extent, all power to you. 

To prove my point further and make a statement that this isn't some kind of bashing and unrealistic ass-pulled argument, I will bring up another example. The Japanese have a hard time distinguishing L and R. Why? Because in their language, the letter L doesn't exist. When foreign words are brought into the Japanese language, they say words with L with a R. It's not a stereotype, it's an actual language thing. They have a hard time even HEARING when a L is present because they never used that sound in their childhood or everyday life.

Furthermore, Russians for example, have a hard time pronouncing the English "the", therefore it sounds like "zee" or something similar to a "dee". They also do not have the sound of the English W in their language, so they pronounce W as a V. In certain situations, they even pronounce H as a G.

But okay, pronunciation might not be the point here. Certain people can and will learn it. But you will never, and I'm gonna emphasize it, NEVER be on the level of a native speaker. In order to learn a language and maintain a good ability to speak it, you need to ACTUALLY speak it. If you ass-pull the knowledge of a language, that's fine. This is a problem when you ass-pull perfectly understanding a language that you never use in character besides that one time when you overheard some shady fucks talking about a coke shipment in Albanian.

TL;DR: You might learn pronunciation, but if you don't speak a foreign language on a regular and you proceed to ass-pull PERFECT knowledge of said language when you overhear something spicy, you're basically portraying an unrealistic character because no-one in real life can maintain a decent ability to speak a language they don't actually speak.

I'm half Russian and grew up in Poland for the majority of my life, ask nateX or stupidly about my Russian pronunciation and they'll tell you I can barely utter words nowadays. That's what happens when you literally lose a language due to "inactivity".

My advice is, start putting yourselves as a disadvantage over all when roleplaying. It is seriously boring to roleplay these perfect characters who are indeed so perfect that they turn into Google Translate within two seconds. It's okay to lose or be at a disadvantage, it's fun, it encourages development over all.

/rant

  • Upvote 3
  • Applaud 3
Link to comment

I’m going to agree with this post. It just makes a lot of sense. People do like to roleplay knowing a second language because it could help them in a situation. Someone commented that they see mostly LEOs do this, and I just can’t really see how they gauged such a thing. I’m from an Albanian speaking city but was born in the USA. My dialect is much different than proper Albanian, and within Albania, you have many different dialects. People from Kosovo also have their own dialect. I have to pay close attention and do some brain storming in the hopes I can understand other Albanians in this community 🤣. With that said, I can totally back @hentai!’s entire post. Americans have a hard time speaking any other language really. I grew up around Albanians, Americans, Arabs, and other Europeans, so thankfully I can pronounce things in various languages. I even went through learning Arabic in school for most of my life, and in no way could I ever tell someone I spoke Arabic, but maybe that’s my fault 😂

 

Learning languages isn’t as easy as some people make it to be. Going to school really isn’t enough IMO. You need to be around people that speak the language and engage with them. You can learn sentences/phrases but I highly doubt people will be fluent. It’s why I never roleplay my characters speaking anything other than English unless they’re children of immigrants. 

  • Upvote 1
  • Applaud 1
Link to comment

I think the more systems you force to be tied to a script, the worse for roleplay. But I think perhaps the least intrusive way to implement some sort of a counter to this is if players had to declare ahead of time exactly which languages their character speaks. At the end of the day admins don't really have the time to be going through everyone's backstory and approving/denying/managing that, so it'd be best for this sort of a system to be really self-guided.

 

If there was a /languages command, you could add languages your character speaks, rate how well your character speaks that language from a list of options (such as Academic, Fluent, Conversational, Learning, Poor, etc), and fill in some brief comments about how your character learned this. It doesn't need to be an essay.

 

English - Fluent - Born in America and went to school [Added September 18, 2020]

Spanish - Conversational - Studied Spanish for 3 years in high school, 1 year in college, vacationed in Mexico, works with Latino immigrants. [Added September 18, 2020]

French - Poor - Started learning French online, very little practice or vocabulary. [Added January 27, 2021]

 

What's the point of this? Well, admins can check what languages a character knows, and can also see when they added the languages. That way if someone sees a couple of Armenian dudes chatting about him and he roleplays knowing Armenian, the admins can check and see whether A) he has the Armenian language at all, B) when he added the Armenian language (did he just throw it on 30 seconds before his RP of understanding it?), and C) what the reason he wrote as his character having the Armenian language is. 

 

It should be up to players on a heavy RP server to hold themselves to a higher standard about what their character would know and not know. A system like this would be a simple middle ground which is easy to implement and doesn't get in the way of RP. A system like this could also have prompts when someone tries to add a language as Fluent which just asks them to confirm "are you sure your character is actually fluent in this language? It takes a lot of education and practice to be fluent."

Edited by Ink
  • Upvote 3
  • Applaud 1
Link to comment

I wouldn't necessarily go as far as saying that even more scripting should be implemented. That can arguably cause micromanagement through the introduction of RPG-esque elements. So on that point, I agree with you. I also agree with your comments about players, as individuals, holding themselves to higher standards with regards to this.

There should be some informal push towards cultural and language familiarization before people start off on new characters. Yes, this is a largely individual effort, but this extends to names as well. If you're going to roleplay as an immigrant from say Croatia, why would you pick a name like Casper Thomas? Barring a legal name change after your character got to the U.S., I don't see why immigrants from outside of the Anglosphere would have English names. This practice is a form of laziness, as I've detailed in the main post, because people can't be bothered to research names that are exclusive to a particular ethnicity. 

But that is largely besides the point. My main concern centers on powergaming and metagaming. Because if this laissez-faire approach is taken to the extreme, then really, nothing stands in the way for OOC disruptions of roleplay to happen. It'll enable someone to gather potentially sensitive information on say, criminal activities or legal matters, that are communicated in a foreign language. What do I mean? I'll give an example.

Joe Smith eavesdrops on a conversation with two Chinese nationals at the Jetsam Terminal. The Chinese nationals are speaking a localized dialect of Mandarin that not many outsiders would have working knowledge of. They're discussing a scheme to traffick narcotics l into the country through the port. Joe Smith then uses this opportunity to either a) interject in the roleplay by speaking Mandarin, or b) informing the Los Santos police about what's happening after claiming to know the language as well. When confronted from an OOC standpoint, Joe Smith will simply say "Haha well my character studied in Beijing for 10 years" or "he's half Chinese and knows the language". When put this way, it's nothing more than a lazy excuse for being a shit disturber, and covering it up through vague background details. I wouldn't be surprised if something of this nature has happened before on this server. The most that I've ever encountered is random people being able to speak languages, to my character, that are barely found anywhere in North America. Which in and of it self is innocuous, and at most, it's just off-putting and immersion breaking.

At that point, you can make a report for Metagaming or Powergaming; sure. However at the same time, there's likely already been a fair amount of OOC damage done to a particular group of people or faction. That can get messy and requires Admin intervention, which can possibly be relatively lengthy.

Edited by Anton Tszyu
Link to comment

Just be reasonable and use common sense, I like to think everyone in this community is level headed enough and is of integral character to be trusted with something minute as language to add flavor and depth to their character.

 

Think hard and deep why your character is going to speak a language and if any of the reasons are "it gives me an advantage" then it isn't the right reason by any measure.

 

A gang enforcement officer speaking Spanish, fluent or broken, that has a tangible reason to it.

 

John Smith rolling out of the club and hearing Ruskie 1 and 2 discuss jumping him in their native tongue and suddenly turning into baba yaga is no bueno.

  • Applaud 1
Link to comment
58 minutes ago, Ink said:

That way if someone sees a couple of Armenian dudes chatting about him and he roleplays knowing Armenian, the admins can check and see whether A) he has the Armenian language at all, B) when he added the Armenian language (did he just throw it on 30 seconds before his RP of understanding it?), and C) what the reason he wrote as his character having the Armenian language is. 

I could see this being helpful, yes. I’ve even seen a roleplay server where you had to add languages when you just made your character. If you tried to add it when you’ve already started roleplaying, you had to explain to an admin how you understood such a language. I don’t remember what server that was though.

 

I agree that it should be up to the roleplayers at the end of the day to make sure they know where their character lies with regards to knowledge of languages.

Link to comment
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...