"We" are brothers

[ThePiachu]

I recently solved that one dialogue translation between the bards and the alchemicals, and I think it could be a little improved. Both of the sides were saying "we are brothers", but they were using the "I plural", kind of indicating that each side separately is brothers, rather than maybe going for something that would have a meaning of reaching across their kinds, maybe "you me are brothers" or "you plural me plural are brothers".

Just something to think about from a perspective of weird language structures and having to figure out the difference between "we" as in the two people talking and "we" as in me and someone else I am talking to you about...

[Echoes of the Silk: Songpour]

But that's the point, 'we' no longer refers to each tribe collectively only now, because they're 'brothers'. It wouldn't make much sense to still keep separating themselves as tribes when the point of the sentence is to show they're together.

[ThePiachu]

You could make the transition mid conversation to drive the point! Start with"me you are brothers" and end with "me me are brothers". Heck, have something in the middle like "me you are me me".

[ULTRA]

nah

[symphony]

me plural literally means we. it's not "multiple me" or "us" (in this context). it's 1:1 representation of how we use "we" if this sentence was in english.

if he wanted to refer to his tribe specifically he would have said alchemists

[symphony]

the way they build words has completely different rules, so we can't read into the subtext like we would english. think of how "book book" doesn't mean 2 books, it literally means books

I see it similar to kanji. one word with a single extra stroke means a completely different thing even though it's based off the original word

[Cackles]

Part of the puzzle of those was deciphering each side into the way the other language is written. Like how the devotees just have the same word twice to indicate plural, the others had special symbols for it

[ThePiachu]

The plural might literally mean "we", but here we run into the idea of whether those languages exist in relationship to english, or as their own languages.

In english, there are some words that could be better defined. An easy example is "you", it can be both singular or plural. Polish for example doesn't have this ambiguity ("ty" vs "wy").

"We" is one of those words that cover multiple ideas as well - "me and people like me", "me and you the person I am talking with", "me and the people in my closest vicinity", etc. English doesn't have the nuance to discern between them, and neither do the bards, but it would be interesting worldbuilding if the alchemists did have the nuance due to their language being constructed differently.

It would be both linguistically interesting and thematic as heck to highlight that the alchemist is literally referring to the connection between him and the person he is talking to by using a different form of "we".