I wonder if Miqo'te can purr

[TinyRedLeaf]

Somewhat unrelated, but of interest: Given how imperative the movement and positioning of the tongue is for speaking, if Miqos and Mithra had cat tongue anatomy, I am almost positive they wouldn't be able to speak normally. A cat's tongue has papillae, which would divert the air over it differently. Just food for thought.

It'll make kissing a miqo'te a somewhat *ahem* rough experience.

As for everything else, fie on you! It's magical world. Catgirls can purr, even if they're just faking it. Don't you dare take that moe away from my fantasy!

[CyrilLucifer]

It'll make kissing a miqo'te a somewhat *ahem* rough experience.

As for everything else, fie on you! It's magical world. Catgirls can purr, even if they're just faking it. Don't you dare take that moe away from my fantasy!

Hey, the OP asked if it was possible. I don't believe it is and so I was defending my opinion as to why. If you want to use the "it's a fantasy world," I'm totally using that same reasoning to cuddle my non-existent Lahabrea minion. Or maybe just Lahabrea.

His evil laughter makes him totally moe, in his own way. He's just yandere for me, that's all.

[TinyRedLeaf]

^ Lemme throw you a couple of screaming comely mandragora to complete your yandere fantasies. >.>

I'm sure you won't mind, since vegetables aren't supposed to have vocal chords to scream with in the first place. <.<

[nothing_cool]

I never really thought about it until recently when I noticed a lot of the NPC Miqo'te rolling "R"s. And I figured, why the heck not. Assuming that one needs to vibrate one's "airpipes" to create a purr, I did consider the fact of changing the way speech sounds due to it. But if you do not try to purr when speaking, I should think that it doesn't affect speech much. I notice IRL cats can't "speak" and purr at the same time, and they cannot eat and purr at the same time (I've had several that will try), so if they do not speak, I would think thta the ability for purr wuold not affect speech to much. Anmd on the thing with having cat-like tongues, they would have no use for them. Could you imagine a Miqo'te trying to lick them selves clean in an effort to groom? I certainly can't (but I had fun and a good laugh trying to imagine it).

[CyrilLucifer]

I never really thought about it until recently when I noticed a lot of the NPC Miqo'te rolling "R"s. And I figured, why the heck not. Assuming that one needs to vibrate one's "airpipes" to create a purr, I did consider the fact of changing the way speech sounds due to it. But if you do not try to purr when speaking, I should think that it doesn't affect speech much. I notice IRL cats can't "speak" and purr at the same time, and they cannot eat and purr at the same time (I've had several that will try), so if they do not speak, I would think thta the ability for purr wuold not affect speech to much. Anmd on the thing with having cat-like tongues, they would have no use for them. Could you imagine a Miqo'te trying to lick them selves clean in an effort to groom? I certainly can't (but I had fun and a good laugh trying to imagine it).

The papillae part was a joke. It did amuse me though, hence why I mentioned it.

Though you're kinda proving my point here and you don't realize it. Cats can't use the same range of sounds as humans. Biologically, it's impossible, for many reasons, namely because their vocal chords are developed differently; this is the same reason male and female songbirds have very different vocal capabilities. And linguistically, they're not purring on every r, because that's not how either of the English rhotic r sounds work (you don't breathe out with the pressure you need to purr when you use r), nor is that how trilling works (trilling is a completely different sound). They may be able to purr, but they aren't doing it while speaking on every r. That's completely a fantasy that I can't even see working in a fantasy game or novel and is just used to emulate the sound, it's not grounded in linguistic reality.

So the real issue is if they're capable of it while not speaking.

^ Lemme throw you a couple of screaming comely mandragora to complete your yandere fantasies. >.>

You know, there is a relatively famous set of XI fanart (XIV uses the same white and black mandy models as XI, so it's essentially the same as something you would see in XIV) with females of the player races and mandies doing, er, lewd things.

Not that I would know. Nope.

[YakushiHinata]

One thing I remember reading a while back when someone pointed it out, miqote NPC's will say more rrrr's at end of words but only towards none-miqote races, So I guess as a miqote, you understand what they say but to another race they hear it. Weird but a cool little touch that goes unoticed~

[Ginal]

Whatever the case of real world anatomy may be, it's my headcanon that miqo'te absolutely can purr. Heck, my character even growls when she's angry, and can roar like a lioness when she's completely enraged.

You're talking about a world with fire demons, lizard men and an occasional world-shattering catastrophe as part of the weather forecast. I think letting the cat people purr fits right in.

[Velox]

I'm not sure if, with those specialized vocal cords, they would be able to make the same range of sounds as the other Spoken races. I honestly don't think SE put that much though into it.

The extra H's we see in names such as “Bhee,” “Kuzh,” and “Pahsh” represent a slight hissing/spitting sound that is made when the name is pronounced by the cat-like Miqo’te. Many of the other races in Eorzea cannot accurately reproduce this sound, so the H's end up going silent when read (Bee, Kooz, Pash).

It would seem that, on a biological level though, Miqo'te vocal chords are fundamentally different than most of the other races for them to be able to produce sounds that the others are physically unable to. No different than a human trying to mimic purring but not being able to actually purr.

I think SE has put a lot more thought into it than you realize. :P

[CyrilLucifer]

It would seem that, on a biological level though, Miqo'te vocal chords are fundamentally different than most of the other races for them to be able to produce sounds that the others are physically unable to. No different than a human trying to mimic purring but not being able to actually purr.

That doesn't necessarily imply a biological difference between races, because it says "many races" without specification. It implies a difference in accents and manner of speech. You can equally say, by replacing a few words in that sentence:
"Many English speakers cannot accurately reproduce the trilling sound, so they replace it with a r when read."
Or, alternatively:
"Many non-English speakers cannot accurately reproduce the "ing" sound, so the g is going to end up silent when read (In/een instead of ing)." [Note: This is actually an issue, along with some languages and a "th." Alternatively, for a more familiar example, Japanese r/l, they kind of stick with one sound in the middle. Those unfamiliar and just learning the language can't actually hear the difference between "een" and "ing," and some can't pronounce "th" even when they can speak the language perfectly, it ends up more of a "d" sound. This usually happens for non-Germanic and non-romance languages and those who grew up on languages farther from English like, say, Arabic.]

Let me rephrase this, since I'm not sure if I'm getting my point across:
If Miqos are capable of purring, it's because of a change in their vocal chords, which I believe we can agree with because, obviously, humans can't purr and purring occurs in the vocal chords. However, this change would also probably render them incapable of certain other sounds, so they would be incapable of speaking like other Eorzeans. That's how vocal chords work, they are a very precise and finely tuned machine where even the smallest difference can lead to completely different voices and sounds. Even identical twins have different voices.

But we don't see that, we see Miqos speaking pretty much identically to the other races.

If they have put that much thought into linguistics, then they would be quite aware of what I'm saying and it can't just be thrown off as "it's a fantasy game, I can purr if I want to."

This leads me to 2 conclusions:
1. SE really is ignoring anatomy and linguistics because muh fantasy. In which case, they may be capable of purring because it has no basis in reality, in which case asking if they can purr is up to interpretation and the OP of this thread would be pointless, yes?
2. SE is respecting anatomy and attempting to be true to linguistics, in which case they probably can't purr and most definitely wouldn't be purring at the end of a word that ends in r. Or, if they can purr, their speech would sound quite different than a non-Miqo Eorzean, quite possibly rendering them incapable of certain other sounds.

I'd find it more interesting if they actually did have specialized vocal chords that would change their capability of speech compared to the average Eorzean speaker, similar to how a fantasy snake-person with a smaller tongue is generally depicted as making strange, raspy sounds and not just a few extra convenient "cute" sounds. It would add a sort of unique flavor to the very homogenized races this game has. The same goes for the foreign Au Ra, I'd love to have them with some different capabilities of speech completely, due to anatomical differences. Preferably ones that take advantage of their specialized ears, so maybe being capable far lower sounds that are impossible for anyone but other Au Ra to hear. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be depicted that way because SE is going for cute and attractive, rather than interesting and unique due to Japan tending to favor the former, rather than the latter.

(unrelated, but linguistics is so fascinating, I am extremely jealous of those who get to study it at a professional level.)

[Zojha]

This leads me to 2 conclusions:

And the former is the more likely.

Though, we can easily solve this mystery by doing the following assumption: Miqo'te can in fact purr by channeling aether into their (regular) vocal cords.

Personally, I'm pretty sure a being like Nidhogg would not be able to realistically fly, especially since his bones do not appear to be hollow at all. The wings are downright cute for what they need to hold up. Similarly, dragoons would most certainly crush themselves if gravity on Eorzea worked remotely as it does on earth, which is heavily implied. And how the anatomy of slimes and similar creatures work and how they can be killed by stabbing them remains a mystery. I'm inclined to believe miqo'te purring follows a very similar logic.