Mamool Ja's Broken English

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Sounds more like you've just invented something to be mad about, and are now getting mad that you can't convince other people it exists.

I'll be mad if we get there and they are inexplicably the only ones talking in simple English. But until then you're literally getting angry at nothing.

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That doesn't even make any sense. But let's bet!

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

My read has generally been that the Mamool Ja we've seen are speaking in broken Eorzean. The Echo can translate languages (evidently both ways, or else we'd have been pretty screwed for half of Stormblood), but it can't do much to clean things up when they aren't speaking clearly in the first place. Over in Tural the Mamool Ja will be speaking their mother tongue, so it'll be fine.

Alternatively, maybe that's just the Mamool Ja's thing, like how the sylphs struggle with names and first-person pronouns. Perhaps the Mamool Ja are perfectly intelligent, but don't feel the need to express that via complex language. If one or two words will get your point across perfectly fine, why structure a whole sentence around it?

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Just to add, for all we know the Mamool Ja might not communicate exclusively via verbal means. That is to say, as lizard-types, they might use smells/body language/color flashes.

Entirely speculation, but this would suggest why certain expressions are entirely unspoken.

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I like this explanation. Explains some of the other races’ verbal quirks too.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Almost every spoken race in Etheriys seems to conveniently know Common for...
I never really got the impression there was much of a language barrier between the beastmen and human races, though, as we see them communicating with non-Echo bearers rather routinely and the Gajasura tribe of the Matanga are the only ones specifically noted as having difficulty with the common tongue, which led to them being discriminated against by the Garleans.

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In the 1.x story, all of the tribes spoke their own distinct languages that all but prohibited their ability to communicate with the "player races". Minfilia's organization at that time, The Path of the Twelve, had the goal of communicating with the tribes to try to facilitate peace; to achieve that goal, the organization was mostly made up of people with the Echo, since Echo-users can understand any sentient being regardless of language-barriers. And because of their ability to communicate with these tribes, at this point in the story Garlean policy treated those with the Echo as if they were members of these tribes (which is to say, they were free to oppress them).

However, by the time 2.0 comes around, nearly everyone is speaking the same language (or at least understanding each other). I'm not sure if there's explicit lore around this, but my interpretation has been that the additional soul density from the Rejoining somehow facilitated this new threshold of understanding.

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Originally Posted by Eisi

So are we supposed to believe that the Mamool Ja who not only intermingle with other tribes but in fact do so on a day-to-day basis and rule their entire empire speak "Common" with a specific quirk while the other inhabitants of Tural do not? What are they too alien to properly learn the basic language of communication of their own homeland where they are perfectly integrated and make the king?

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With respect, I think this is making a lot of assumptions about how monolithic the Mamool Ja are. It's entirely possible that Mamool Ja in Eorzea speak in a different dialect compared to Mamool Ja in Tural. For example, Sharlayans and Lominsans of the same race speak with wildly different dialects, and this follows with how language works in the real world, where the environment you were raised in is going to be the primary determining factor of how you speak, not your biology.

That said, if the writers decide that yes, all Mamool Ja talk the same, it wouldn't be a surprise because generally speaking that's how they often treat dialect; even in integrated communities, so-called "beast" races tend to speak in a distinct dialect compared to the "player races" that otherwise comprise their communities. I assume they think it adds spice to the writing, even if it defies sociology. Just remember that this game was written by imperfect humans who didn't entirely understand the ramifications of the words they wrote at the time they wrote them.

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Originally Posted by Eisi

That doesn't even make any sense. But let's bet!

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People told you several completely reasonable explanations for why the Mamool Ja we're going to meet in Dawntrail might either speak perfectly fluent English, or have an alternative speaking style that makes sense for the context in which we're meeting them.

You proceeded to baselessly reject every single one of them to instead say 'nah they're gonna do the bad thing I've said they're gonna do', with absolutely no evidence indicating this, since we haven't heard a word from a single Mamool Ja in Tural. (That we know of; the voice at the end of the trailer is still unidentified.)

You are literally inventing a problem to get angry at. I don't know how you can't make sense of that.

Interesting Mamool Ja lore from Gubal (Hard):

It is widely known that the Mamool Ja boast one of the most impressive indigenous societies to be found in the New World. It would be a mistake, however, to view the Mamool Ja as a single, uniform people. A careful analysis of documents brought back by explorers reveals that the Mamool Ja are more accurately described as a federation or alliance of numerous distantly related tribes, each with distinguishing physical characteristics: the brown-scaled Hoobigo with their distinctively long combs, the large-eyed, blue-scaled Boonewa, and the mottled Doppro. It is further said that although Mamool Ja rarely marry outside their own tribes, such unions do occur on the occasion of certain religious observances, and are known to produce two-headed offspring that are hailed as “blessed siblings” and groomed to be warlords from a young age. Indeed, the Autarch, ruler of all Mamool Ja kind, is known to be one of them...


So I guess it's entirely possible that the Mamool Ja we've encountered so far are not from Eastern Tural or might be part of the tribes that really thoroughly learn the common tongue (or they are just having a hard time learning it, personally)

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Originally Posted by MercuryD

Interesting Mamool Ja lore from Gubal (Hard):

It is widely known that the Mamool Ja boast one of the most impressive indigenous societies to be found in the New World. It would be a mistake, however, to view the Mamool Ja as a single, uniform people. A careful analysis of documents brought back by explorers reveals that the Mamool Ja are more accurately described as a federation or alliance of numerous distantly related tribes, each with distinguishing physical characteristics: the brown-scaled Hoobigo with their distinctively long combs, the large-eyed, blue-scaled Boonewa, and the mottled Doppro. It is further said that although Mamool Ja rarely marry outside their own tribes, such unions do occur on the occasion of certain religious observances, and are known to produce two-headed offspring that are hailed as “blessed siblings” and groomed to be warlords from a young age. Indeed, the Autarch, ruler of all Mamool Ja kind, is known to be one of them...


So I guess it's entirely possible that the Mamool Ja we've encountered so far are not from Eastern Tural or might be part of the tribes that really thoroughly learn the common tongue (or they are just having a hard time learning it, personally)

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Indeed, the Blue Mage NPCs are actually from either a different tribe or a sub-tribe, the Latool Ja. And maybe because of their nature as regular NPCs that get... y'know, cutscenes and dialog, they're noticeably better with the language than the Mamool Ja we see from ARR FATES and dungeons that are rarely allowed full sentences just by the nature of the content they're in. Notably, the one Hyur we meet from the Whalaqee tribe does speak in proper English, so it seems like it's more that the hiccup is on the Latool Ja's end rather than just a product of the actual regional gap.

I'd generally describe the Latool Ja as having solid 'ESL speaker'-level grasp of the language; they're perfectly understandable, but they get grammar wrong in consistent ways that imply they don't quite have all the rules down. I've met and worked with plenty of people who have about that grasp of English, and while the Latool Ja don't sound exactly like any I've met, the spirit is definitely there. If I weren't really tired right now I'd go through their dialog to try to pin down the actual grammatical structure, because it does seem like there is an actual logic to it, and you can probably intuit a bit of the Latool Ja's language structure by what they're getting wrong.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

You are literally inventing a problem to get angry at. I don't know how you can't make sense of that.

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What problem? There is no problem at all unless you think the game not having an explanation for everything is a problem. Here:

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

That said, if the writers decide that yes, all Mamool Ja talk the same, it wouldn't be a surprise because generally speaking that's how they often treat dialect; even in integrated communities, so-called "beast" races tend to speak in a distinct dialect compared to the "player races" that otherwise comprise their communities. I assume they think it adds spice to the writing, even if it defies sociology. Just remember that this game was written by imperfect humans who didn't entirely understand the ramifications of the words they wrote at the time they wrote them.

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One hundo percent true.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Indeed, the Blue Mage NPCs are actually from either a different tribe or a sub-tribe, the Latool Ja.

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You've got your lore wires crossed somewhere. The two individuals are Latool Ja and Gaheel Ja, and they are from the Boonewa tribe.

As for the three tribe descriptions given in the Wanderer's Palace - "the brown-scaled Hoobigo with their distinctively long combs, the large-eyed, blue-scaled Boonewa, and the mottled Doppro" - the first two of those are just describing the two types of Mamool Ja model that have been wandering the Bronze Lake area since the beginning of the game. Effectively just physical fighter and mage, and then the two-headed final boss has one head resembling each of those tribes and is holding a sword and staff in the corresponding hands.

The third tribe doesn't seem to be around so obviously, although having gone through the dungeon, I think first boss Frumious Koheel Ja might be one. It's hard to get a good look but he's blue and seems to lack the chameleon-eyes of the Boonewa model.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

You've got your lore wires crossed somewhere. The two individuals are Latool Ja and Gaheel Ja, and they are from the Boonewa tribe.

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Fair enough! My bad, and in my defense, I'm sick and at that point was running at like, 85% tops.

Still, Latool Ja and Gaheel Ja show that the Mamool Ja aren't really consigned to the borderline caveman-speech we see in ARR. That tells me that the absolute floor of what we're gonna see from them in Dawntrail is 'fairly eloquent but not scoring 100% on grammar'.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Still, Latool Ja and Gaheel Ja show that the Mamool Ja aren't really consigned to the borderline caveman-speech we see in ARR. That tells me that the absolute floor of what we're gonna see from them in Dawntrail is 'fairly eloquent but not scoring 100% on grammar'.

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Yo I just checked some quotes from Gaheel and Latool in German and they speak German better than me to a poetic degree, the only quirk I could see was them referring to my character by name rather than saying "you" in one instance.

However Wanderer's Palace's Mamool Ja including their leader Molaa Ja Ja as well as Mamool Ja NPCs throughout ARR speak very broken English. Not to say the German version is definitive over the English one or vice versa, no if such drastic differences between the individual Mamool Ja exist then the writers definitely wanted to make a point here.

Maybe the mercenaries mostly mingle among each other and so rarely see the need to communicate with other people or maybe even Mamool Ja tribes with their individual dialects.