Tilde LowengrimmJan 18, 2024
In Dungeons & Dragons, the Sending spell can convey exactly 25 words. In reality, linguists are unable to precisely pin down what a word is. Sending is one of only a few long-distance magical communication methods in the worlds of D&D, and this makes it an important tool in the hands of those who run large organizations, kingdoms, or empires.

This implies that mystical linguists in D&D worlds are out there pushing the technological boundaries of what constitutes a "word", experimenting with different hyphenation techniques, and assembling new compound languages like the fabled "Hypergerman", which are particularly amenable to compounding. All to improve the efficiency of Sending, and eke out a little more information from each scarce spell slot. How much additional information can you add if you start experimenting with tones?

I'm just imagining the æther-messengers of the Imperial Bureaucratic Service constructing Sendings with all the comprehensibility of a dialup modem sound, and blasting out whole paragraphs of information to someone on the other end who has Keen Mind and has to spend an hour with a diabolical grammar and particle reference translating this data-pulse back into the trade tongue.
Show threadCavyherd

@tilde

I have no idea how one would look it up, but I read a wonderful #SciFi #Fantasy story maybe ten-fifteen years ago about the invention of the "word." It felt incredibly plausible, & it pointed out that somebody somewhere had to come up with that idea. In fact, if you look at a lot of old Roman carvings of signs & quotes & whatnot, using a space between words was actually a fairly late innovation. >

Jan 20, 2024 at 5:04amWeb
Show threadCavyherdJan 20, 2024

@tilde

My other favorite thing in this vein is the thing I heard some years ago that the reason African "Talking Drums" were called that is because the beat, rhythm, & tone patterns actually replicated many of the characteristics of natural speech, rather than using some code in the way that Morse does, which would be the approach most obvious to a "modern" technical mind.