167 réponses à ce sujet

[Fast Jimmy]

I posted this in the Twitter thread in regards to some of Gaider's snark about this topic coming up again, but I'll post it here:

David Gaider ‏@davidgaider

"This man is German." "WAIT WAIT...do you mean he's a German citizen? Or he's culturally German? WHY IS THERE NOT A SINGLE WORD?" #whyindeed

That's blatantly ignoring the real issue. It would be like saying everyone who is Catholic should be, instead, called Italian, since that is where the Catholic Church is located. And then being surprised when people can't tell the difference between Catholics and people who hail from the country of Italy.

[Dean_the_Young]

CybAnt1 wrote...

Qunari.

Good Dean. Now prove it.

"Bob is a Qunari". 

Do you know, given that sentence, and no other context, wheter Bob is
a) a member of the qunari race but not b
a practicioner of the Qunari ethos but not a
c) both

...er, is this a trick question? Because the answer to your question is yes. Bob is implied to be one of those three.

Now, if I say Bob is a Kossith, we do know something:

a) he belongs to the horny-folk race
he may or may not belong to the Qun (but given the attitudes of 'modern-day' Qunari to their past and the term, most likely not) 

You forgot the remaining ambiguities, though. Is Bob one of the non-horny horny-fold race? Is Bob a living kossith? Is Bob a male or a female? Is Bob big? Strong? Is Bob important? There's a lot of information about Bob we don't still don't know, and the most important piece of context missing is 'so what if he is?' Knowing that Bob is a member of the Qunari race is irrelevant information without a context in which we need to know race. If we have the context to know that we need to identify race, though, we have enough context to understand 'Bob is a Qunari' if provided as an answer to 'what race Bob?'

Of course, you're relying a false delimma that does not apply on an internet forum. We aren't faced with context-less delimmas where 'Bob is a Qunari' is the only information we have access to. There is a context, which is the thread of discussion, and you have the ability seek clarification... such as why identifying Bob's race is needed.

Reduction of ambiguity, is a glorious thing. When a word works better without having to throw in a lot of hyphens. 

If a hyphen solves the ambiguity, separate words are less glorious and more needlessly redundant.

Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 05 février 2014 - 12:42 .

[Dean_the_Young]

TurretSyndrome wrote...

"I wish I was a Qunari"
"Do all Qunari have a sweet tooth?"
"I wonder why so many Qunari despise magic."

There's your summer homework kids, try to find out who or what I'm referring to.

The coolest people on Thedas. Done.

Of course, that works just as well with any other identifier as well, including Kossith. 'I wish I was X'  has all the vagueries of what one believes X implies. Whether racial or cultural,  'Do all X have a sweet tooth?' is a question of grouping from the perspective of the asker, which varies by asker. 'I wonder why so many X despise magic' faces the same abiguity of classification.


Now, here's the question for you: in what context do you try to communicate your views or questions without context?

Edit: Oh also the recent thread made about Kossith settlements(where it was easily understood that the OP was tallking about the overall race in general)
If he had made the thread with the title "How many Qunari settlements are there in Thedas?". 

Then we would have understood from the OP what the context was, just as we have to read the OP to understand the ambiguous intent of Ieldra's thret title.

Of course, if the Qunari don't identify by race in the first place there's no reason to believe they discriminate their holdings by race either. Saying a Kossith settlement would be misleading if Qunari distribution across the Qunari territories was accidental rather than deliberate. It'd be like asking how many white American bases there are in Afghanistan.

[Banxey]

I liked it when David Gaider suggested we call them "floating cheese wheels." Why not just run with that?

[CybAnt1]

*sigh* 

At least they could release some game details, so we can argue over things that actually matter.

Ehhhh, where's that mage-templar war thread, it must be at around page 2,634 by now. 

Modifié par CybAnt1, 05 février 2014 - 12:53 .

[Dean_the_Young]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I posted this in the Twitter thread in regards to some of Gaider's snark about this topic coming up again, but I'll post it here:

David Gaider ‏@davidgaider

"This man is German." "WAIT WAIT...do you mean he's a German citizen? Or he's culturally German? WHY IS THERE NOT A SINGLE WORD?" #whyindeed

That's blatantly ignoring the real issue. It would be like saying everyone who is Catholic should be, instead, called Italian, since that is where the Catholic Church is located. And then being surprised when people can't tell the difference between Catholics and people who hail from the country of Italy.

If Italy is an arbitrary distinction of your own creation that they don't identify as, that's kind of your own fault. Especially if they would just say 'Catholics from the Italian Peninsula' if their geographic location was relevant. We can also run into the issue for any other location, on a larger scale (Europeans) or smaller (Sicilians). Such identifiers are meaningless to people who don't care about them. Even the word 'Italian' wouldn't remove ambiguity, since there would still be sub-classifications galore.

Of course, the writers have already noted that in this analogy if outsiders refer to Catholics people will defaultly assume you're refering to the Italians. So the outside context word for Italian would be... Catholic. And if you wanted to talk about Catholics outside of Italy, you would specify.

[Dean_the_Young]

Filament wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Now, here's the question for you: in what context do you try to communicate your views or questions without context?

In the context of endless pedantic internet arguments.

You know, I thought about adding some variation of 'except for artificially contextless statements you would never communicate regardless of descriptor outside of the context of creating artificially contextless statements,' but I just couldn't make it work.

[Fast Jimmy]

Dean the Young wrote...
If Italy is an arbitrary distinction of your own creation that they don't identify as, that's kind of your own fault. Especially if they would just say 'Catholics from the Italian Peninsula' if their geographic location was relevant. We can also run into the issue for any other location, on a larger scale (Europeans) or smaller (Sicilians). Such identifiers are meaningless to people who don't care about them. Even the word 'Italian' wouldn't remove ambiguity, since there would still be sub-classifications galore.

Of course, the writers have already noted that in this analogy if outsiders refer to Catholics people will defaultly assume you're refering to the Italians. So the outside context word for Italian would be... Catholic. And if you wanted to talk about Catholics outside of Italy, you would specify.

But no word "Catholic" exists for the Qunari.

Again, it would be like saying all people from the nation of Italy are Italians. And everyone who is part of the religion located in Italy (what we call Catholic, but in this fictional scenario are still called Italian). And anyone who lives in Germany and converts to Italian has to identify themselves as Italian, even though they do not live in, not were born in Italy. Additionally, people who are from the nation of Italy but aren't of the religion Italy are still called Italian.

Every time you say the word Italian, you'd need to clarify (either throuh pretty elaborate context or adding modifiers) the nationality, the religion and the possibly either/or stays of those two states.

Or, you know, you could call Catholics Catholics and Italians Italians. Calling someone born of the gray skinned, horned giant race Kossith is doing exactly this, regardless of the word's etymology in the mythical world of Thedas.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 05 février 2014 - 01:04 .

[Commander Kurt]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I posted this in the Twitter thread in regards to some of Gaider's snark about this topic coming up again, but I'll post it here:

David Gaider ‏@davidgaider

"This man is German." "WAIT WAIT...do you mean he's a German citizen? Or he's culturally German? WHY IS THERE NOT A SINGLE WORD?" #whyindeed

That's blatantly ignoring the real issue. It would be like saying everyone who is Catholic should be, instead, called Italian, since that is where the Catholic Church is located. And then being surprised when people can't tell the difference between Catholics and people who hail from the country of Italy.

Your example is the same as his but for one difference. Yours is about taking away a term that exists and is in widespread use today. His is about a term that can mean two different things as we use it today. If we had always called Catholics Italian then there would actually be very little confusion. Some would get it wrong, naturally, but odds are that those people wouldn't care enough to learn two different terms anyway.

Kossith is a term that a small number of people use on an internet forum. His example is more valid.

[CybAnt1]

I know this is a crazy idea, but how about the people who like Kossith continue using it, and the people who don't, don't.

I know. That, as always, would be too simple a solution for the BSN.

I should stop selecting the Diplomatic option, it never f'n works.

If people would agree to that solution, I would stop participating in this admittedly fairly inconsequential 'debate'.

But I know: that would be too simple. Let the bickering re-commence.

[Fast Jimmy]

Commander Kurt wrote...
Your example is the same as his but for one difference. Yours is about taking away a term that exists and is in widespread use today. His is about a term that can mean two different things as we use it today. If we had always called Catholics Italian then there would actually be very little confusion. Some would get it wrong, naturally, but odds are that those people wouldn't care enough to learn two different terms anyway. 

Kossith is a term that a small number of people use on an internet forum. His example is more valid.

No it isn't. How can you convert to culturally German? Wearing lederhosen and drinking copious amounts of beer?

A religion crosses nationalities, demographics and borders. It is a mindset, a set of ideals that can be picked up by anyone. Naming a nationality after a religion and then acting incredulous that people would want a way to distinguish the two is silly.

And there is no correlation to this in the real world because it is the definition of unrealistic. If I was a scribe for the Viscount and writing a report, it would be my job to clarify that when my report talks about Qunari, I'd need to make a distinction between the giants who are stranded in Kirkwall versus the elves, humans and others who have converted since they landed.

It is pedantic, but that's the nature of ALL definitions... for technical reasons, it is important (in game) that people can easily communicate with each other. Kossith may not be the right word that people of Thedas would know/use... but they would come up with SOMETHING. Just assuming that people I a fictional setting would go CENTURIES without attempting some form of clarification for an enemy that has conquered their nations and who have converted many away from the Chantry is silly.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 05 février 2014 - 01:20 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

I think Gaider's snark is exactly on point. Descriptors like this are generally imprecise, except in constructs like games. When they designed a game to use language more like how th ereal world uses language, everyone freaks out, even though they're content to use ambiguous terms like "German" in their daily lives.

French might be an even better example, given their rich colonial history.

[Dean_the_Young]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Dean the Young wrote...
If Italy is an arbitrary distinction of your own creation that they don't identify as, that's kind of your own fault. Especially if they would just say 'Catholics from the Italian Peninsula' if their geographic location was relevant. We can also run into the issue for any other location, on a larger scale (Europeans) or smaller (Sicilians). Such identifiers are meaningless to people who don't care about them. Even the word 'Italian' wouldn't remove ambiguity, since there would still be sub-classifications galore.

Of course, the writers have already noted that in this analogy if outsiders refer to Catholics people will defaultly assume you're refering to the Italians. So the outside context word for Italian would be... Catholic. And if you wanted to talk about Catholics outside of Italy, you would specify.

But no word "Catholic" exists for the Qunari.

Sure it does: Qunari.

The word that doesn't have a counterpart is Italian, but that's for the same reason that very few people identify by their home town. They don't care, because they identify as something else, and few others care because the common identifier serves them well enough. In this case: Qunari when talking about horn-heads.

Again, it would be like saying all people from the nation of Italy are Italians. And everyone who is part of the religion located in Italy (what we call Catholic, but in this fictional scenario are still called Italian). And anyone who lives in Germany and converts to Italian has to identify themselves as Italian, even though they do not live in, not were born in Italy. Additionally, people who are from the nation of Italy but aren't of the religion Italy are still called Italian.

Every time you say the word Italian, you'd need to clarify (either
throuh pretty elaborate context or adding modifiers) the nationality,
the religion and the possibly either/or stays of those two states.

You know, the world's largest nation has already faced that delimma. It's name is China, and it's one of the greatest cultural unifications in history. It has assimilated countless cultures, composes over a billion people, and has enough minorities to make literal oceans of blood. It also has one of the largest ethnic groups in the world, the Han Chinese, which are what everyone thinks of when they here the word. There are plenty more sub-groups than just the Han: other ethnicities, other linguistic groups, and the world's third-largest nation for geographic identifiers.

Why does the most populous empire in the world identify by something other than geographic location? Why doesn't it's people identify by ethnic group, by geography, by religion? Why does the rest of the world identify them by the same? Because culture- the shared beliefs and identity of what they have in common, rather than what they see as meaningless differentiations.

If over a billion people can identify themselves as Chinese, and another 6 billion can handle recognizing them as Chinese despite countless possible subcategories, the concept of a unifying identity that can be understood both internally and externally doesn't seem to be as hard or confusing as you make it to be.

Or, you know, you could call Catholics Catholics and Italians Italians. Calling someone born of the gray skinned, horned giant race Kossith is doing exactly this, regardless of the word's etymology in the mythical world of Thedas.

Italian as a grouping makes little sense if there is no Italian polity or identify. You might as well call them Romans. Or Oscans. Or Flying Cheese Wheels.

If the only ethnic group anyone identifies as the Catholics are the people from the Italian peninsula, and everyone in the world understands that when you refer to a ethnic Catholic you are referring to the people from the Italian peninsula, the practical application is... Catholic.

Kind of like how, in the real world, we can refer to Italians as both a non-synonymous ethnicity or nationality. If I tell you my lover is Italian, which am I refering to?

[Dean_the_Young]

CybAnt1 wrote...

I know this is a crazy idea, but how about the people who like Kossith continue using it, and the people who don't, don't.

I know. That, as always, would be too simple a solution for the BSN.

I should stop selecting the Diplomatic option, it never f'n works.

If people would agree to that solution, I would stop participating in this admittedly fairly inconsequential 'debate'.

But I know: that would be too simple. Let the bickering re-commence.

And the insufferable paternalism. Where would we be without your desperatly needed contribution to the quality of the discussion?

[Commander Kurt]

It's actually really interesting. When does new language hinder more than it helps? We could have different words for brown wolfs and grey wolfs, eliminating the need for qualifiers, but would that help us communicate or would it just complicate things?

In the Sami language, there are more than 100 words for snow. It makes it easier for Sami to communicate crucial information to one another, but it is also a barrier making it more difficult to communicate with outsiders.

My opinion is that on an internet forum, frequented by experts and newbies alike, not specifically devoted to discussion about Qunari, it's probably better to keep it simple. Use qualifiers and avoid very specific terms in order to be understood (if that is the goal). However, language has never evolved to satisfy anybodys opinion. Time will tell if the Kossith mutation will survive, us arguing about it means null and nothing.

[Fast Jimmy]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I think Gaider's snark is exactly on point. Descriptors like this are generally imprecise, except in constructs like games. When they designed a game to use language more like how th ereal world uses language, everyone freaks out, even though they're content to use ambiguous terms like "German" in their daily lives.

French might be an even better example, given their rich colonial history.

Again... I really don't think this applied. Mainly because you are talking about culture and nationality versus religion. If you are born in India, you are Indian. If you were raised under the common Indian ethos, you'd be Hindu. 

I, as an American born, can't convert to being Indian. I am not the right ethnicity, nor do I have the cultural background. Yet I CAN convert to Hinduism quite easily if I so choose. To say that makes me Indian would be very confusing. 

One cannot convert to a race, nationality or culture. One can EASILY convert to a religion. To conflate the two into one word just wouldn't happen in real life. Because it would get way too confusing way too quickly. People would invent their own words and terms to differentiate the two statuses. That's ALMOST what fans have done with taking the Kossith word and molding it to their uses. That this wasn't how a Thedosian would do it or what the writers intended is a little irrelevant - it fucntions to cross a communication gap that was identified within mere years of the idea being spread amongst the general populace. To assume a fictional world wouldn't do the same thing over centuries of possible confusion really ignores some very basic tenets of human psychology and the evolution of language.

People may constantly use INACCURATE terms, but they hardly ever stick with using confusing ones.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 05 février 2014 - 01:36 .

[Fast Jimmy]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

You know, the world's largest nation has already faced that delimma. It's name is China, and it's one of the greatest cultural unifications in history. It has assimilated countless cultures, composes over a billion people, and has enough minorities to make literal oceans of blood. It also has one of the largest ethnic groups in the world, the Han Chinese, which are what everyone thinks of when they here the word. There are plenty more sub-groups than just the Han: other ethnicities, other linguistic groups, and the world's third-largest nation for geographic identifiers.

Why does the most populous empire in the world identify by something other than geographic location? Why doesn't it's people identify by ethnic group, by geography, by religion? Why does the rest of the world identify them by the same? Because culture- the shared beliefs and identity of what they have in common, rather than what they see as meaningless differentiations.

If over a billion people can identify themselves as Chinese, and another 6 billion can handle recognizing them as Chinese despite countless possible subcategories, the concept of a unifying identity that can be understood both internally and externally doesn't seem to be as hard or confusing as you make it to be.

This doesn't work as an example. China is a culture and a nationality. I could no more convert to being Chinese than a dog could convert to being a cat. 

I COULD convert to Buddhism, or Taoism, or Hinduism (one of China's many religions). Does that make me Chinese? Wouldn't it be insaenly confusing for me to start introducing myself as a Chinese person just because I adopted a different set of world views?

talian as a grouping makes little sense if there is no Italian polity or identify. You might as well call them Romans. Or Oscans. Or Flying Cheese Wheels.

If the only ethnic group anyone identifies as the Catholics are the people from the Italian peninsula, and everyone in the world understands that when you refer to a ethnic Catholic you are referring to the people from the Italian peninsula, the practical application is... Catholic.

Kind of like how, in the real world, we can refer to Italians as both a non-synonymous ethnicity or nationality. If I tell you my lover is Italian, which am I refering to?

Yet this is NOT the case. In our fictional example of Qunari or in Catholicism. Catholics can be found all over the world. Even if medieval times, they were never confined to Italy, despite that being the headquarters of the Catholic relgion.

You act like Pal Vollen is the only place in the world where people of the Qunari faith can be found, yet we see that Rivain has many HUMAN converts who practice devoutly. As does areas of Tevinter. And, apparently, pockets of people in Kirkwall. 

The current model would mean you'd have to find some way, either through context or explanation, of saying someone was a human Rivanni member of the Qun... as opposed to an Elvish Free Marsher member of the Qun... as opposed to a gray-skinned giant from Pal Vollen who is NOT a member of the Qun.

It has the potential to be just as confusing as that. Without even trying.

[TurretSyndrome]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

TurretSyndrome wrote...

"I wish I was a Qunari"
"Do all Qunari have a sweet tooth?"
"I wonder why so many Qunari despise magic."

There's your summer homework kids, try to find out who or what I'm referring to.

The coolest people on Thedas. Done.

Of course, that works just as well with any other identifier as well, including Kossith. 'I wish I was X'  has all the vagueries of what one believes X implies. Whether racial or cultural,  'Do all X have a sweet tooth?' is a question of grouping from the perspective of the asker, which varies by asker. 'I wonder why so many X despise magic' faces the same abiguity of classification.


Now, here's the question for you: in what context do you try to communicate your views or questions without context?

"I wish I was X" is only vague when you're using the word Qunari, which is my point. The word makes the sentence vague, the sentence itself isn't. "I wish I was Kossith" is as clear-cut as it can be, as it would mean one refers to the race and race only without needing further expansion. The same goes for the other two examples.

Then we would have understood from the OP what the context was, just as we have to read the OP to understand the ambiguous intent of Ieldra's thret title.

Of course, if the Qunari don't identify by race in the first place there's no reason to believe they discriminate their holdings by race either. Saying a Kossith settlement would be misleading if Qunari distribution across the Qunari territories was accidental rather than deliberate. It'd be like asking how many white American bases there are in Afghanistan.

It's not misleading at all, since, when he says Kossith settlements, he means settlements of the people of that race in general, in all of Thedas. He includes both Qunari and Tal-Vashoth, and anyone else(since we saw in DA 2 that not everyone likes to identify themselves as Tal-Vashoth either) littered in the entire known world. 

You would understand what he's talking about as he expands further in the thread, true, but the title by itself will stay vague unless a better identifier is used, which is Kossith, and he did. 

Modifié par TurretSyndrome, 05 février 2014 - 01:45 .

[Dean_the_Young]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Commander Kurt wrote...
Your example is the same as his but for one difference. Yours is about taking away a term that exists and is in widespread use today. His is about a term that can mean two different things as we use it today. If we had always called Catholics Italian then there would actually be very little confusion. Some would get it wrong, naturally, but odds are that those people wouldn't care enough to learn two different terms anyway. 

Kossith is a term that a small number of people use on an internet forum. His example is more valid.

No it isn't. How can you convert to culturally German? Wearing lederhosen and drinking copious amounts of beer?

Being a third generation desccendent of Turkish immigrants who gained German citizenship and whose descenants have been raised having known nothing but German language, education, and cultural upbringing... would generally be considered a claim. After all, Germany only gave citizenship to over a million foreigners between 1995 and 2005, out of a population of only 80 million.


Certainly works well for Americans, even though 'American citizen' used to be virtually synonymous with 'white'.

A religion crosses nationalities, demographics and borders. It is a mindset, a set of ideals that can be picked up by anyone. Naming a nationality after a religion and then acting incredulous that people would want a way to distinguish the two is silly.

Who's incredulous? We're just pointing out that you can already distinguish between the two as necessary.

And there is no correlation to this in the real world because it is the definition of unrealistic.

I won't contest your feeling that's it's unrealistic, but
history doesn't have to be realistic: it just has to happen. And ethnic
identifiers blending with broader cultural groups is a matter of
history, much of it living.

If I was a scribe for the Viscount and writing a report, it would be my job to clarify that when my report talks about Qunari, I'd need to make a distinction between the giants who are stranded in Kirkwall versus the elves, humans and others who have converted since they landed.

As the two groups are united and under the leadership of the same figure, where do you need a difference that you wouldn't otherwise identify in context of your report?

It is pedantic, but that's the nature of ALL definitions... for technical reasons, it is important (in game) that people can easily communicate with each other. Kossith may not be the right word that people of Thedas would know/use... but they would come up with SOMETHING.

'Qunari' and 'Qunari converts' worked well enough.

Just assuming that people I a fictional setting would go CENTURIES without attempting some form of clarification for an enemy that has conquered their nations and who have converted many away from the Chantry is silly.

Well, you can be silly or realistic in this case. Given how long racial slang and national identifiers has sufficed in the history of our world, calling horned giant invaders 'Qunari' and 'ox-heads' is positively tame.

What's wrong with ox-head anyway? It's used in the game. Is it not clear enough for you?

[CybAnt1]

And the insufferable paternalism. 

That's an odd accusation, when I'm actually arguing people should do whatever they think is correct.

[addiction21]

CybAnt1 wrote...


I know. That, as always, would be too simple a solution for the BSN.

Not the BSN. Humankind in general.

Dean_the_Young wrote...

And the insufferable paternalism. Where would we be without your desperatly needed contribution to the quality of the discussion?

I imagine  this thread would still be here and the bickering and would be going on as usual.

[Gwydden]

@Fast Jimmy

I believe the issue isn't that it is confusing for us, but that it isn't for the people of Thedas. For the average Thedosian, the term qunari refers only to the race. They wouldn't call an elf who follows the Qun a "qunari".

[Commander Kurt]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

No it isn't. How can you convert to culturally German? Wearing lederhosen and drinking copious amounts of beer?

A religion crosses nationalities, demographics and borders. It is a mindset, a set of ideals that can be picked up by anyone. Naming a nationality after a religion and then acting incredulous that people would want a way to distinguish the two is silly.

And there is no correlation to this in the real world because it is the definition of unrealistic. If I was a scribe for the Viscount and writing a report, it would be my job to clarify that when my report talks about Qunari, I'd need to make a distinction between the giants who are stranded in Kirkwall versus the elves, humans and others who have converted since they landed.

It is pedantic, but that's the nature of ALL definitions... for technical reasons, it is important (in game) that people can easily communicate with each other. Kossith may not be the right word that people of Thedas would know/use... but they would come up with SOMETHING. Just assuming that people I a fictional setting would go CENTURIES without attempting some form of clarification for an enemy that has conquered their nations and who have converted many away from the Chantry is silly.

Yes. It is. You can't convert to a culture (or a race), but you can convert to a nationality (or a religion). Culture also crosses nationalities, demographics and borders. We have people in Sweden who are swedish, but practice Islam and others who are Sami. Nobody needs to distinguish what type of Swede did something in various reports, generally it doesn't matter. When it does matter, it can easily be clarified.

[Commander Kurt]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I could no more convert to being Chinese than a dog could convert to being a cat. 

I COULD convert to Buddhism, or Taoism, or Hinduism (one of China's many religions). Does that make me Chinese? Wouldn't it be insaenly confusing for me to start introducing myself as a Chinese person just because I adopted a different set of world views?

I'm confused. What would you call yourself if you became a Chinese citizen?