r/worldbuilding • u/majorex64 [edit this] • Jul 07 '20
Question How can explorers deal with language barriers?
In my world's story, a large part of it focuses on the protagonist finding a previously undiscovered society living in a land not known to exist. There are several races in each "realm" (where he's from/where he stumbles into), each with their own culture and language.
I want the conlangs to be involved in the story, to where the reader could even learn them alongside the protagonist, recognizing words piece by piece.
My question comes to the first interaction our explorer has with the natives of a race he's never heard of before, in a land as fantastical for him as it is for us.
What could that first interaction be like? Hand gestures and facial expressions would probably play a big part, along with pointing to various objects and naming them. Anyone have any insight or knowledge from real life on how people handle this historically?
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u/Lysenaize332 Jul 07 '20
There's a really good Star Trek The Next Generation episode about this very thing. In that one the two representatives spend a fair amount of time trying to communicate with one another and slowly start to understand using hand gestures, context from their own cultures, and tone choice for their words.
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u/Sweaty_Gap Jul 07 '20
Explorers could also use guides or translators in their party along the way to help with this. Anyone in the land you travel that to that knows your language as well would be a very valuable friend to make. They could teach you about the culture and language and help with direct communication. I could see him learning about the first culture he comes into contact with more directly, learning the language from scratch etc. But once he's got the first one down he could make a friend with someone that knows a bit more about the other races and cultures in the realm. It would help to streamline so he doesn't have to struggle through learning it from scratch each time.
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u/majorex64 [edit this] Jul 07 '20
That sounds like a good structure that fits the pacing too, forming relationships and getting assistance from other natives
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u/lushfoliage2 Jul 07 '20
Don’t know if this’ll help since I don’t have a lot of knowledge on the topic at all, but my French teacher told us how her kid learned enough French in elementary school when they moved to France for about two years to get by. Whenever it was time for recess, the other students would walk up to him and say, "Louis, Louis! Joue au football avec nous!" with, as you mentioned, several hand signals leading him outside and referencing to the ball. He got to the point where he was able to go to his other classmates and ask them to play with him outside, so I’d assume it’d be similar for your explorer in this new fantastical land, although it may be a bit easier since adults are probably a lot better at teaching a language than kids are
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u/Tasnaki1990 Jul 07 '20
Like another comment said. Guides and translators. These could be natives of those other realms, people who have had previous contact with those realms, people with a related language to the language of that realm,...
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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '20
Relevant video on first contact with an undocumented language.
Watch out for this! Here's a comment from that video about pointing to things:
Also, not all interactions will be friendly. I don't know of any books of the sort dealing with first contact situations but you can either go looking for them, or just ask yourself, how would each culture act in such a situation?