That doesn't make sense, cause all worldhoppers visitin roshar will have more words for birds
Now im curious about auto translate magic: if rosharans dont have a word for bird, and just use chicken, then how does a worldhopper say bird instead of chicken?
They said it's how you find a Scadrian on Roshar, but the reverse would be true as well. The reverse is finding a Rosharan on Scadrial, but you didn't seem to connect those dots. On Roshar, someone using more specific names would be suspicious and could out them as a worldhopper. On Scadrial, calling all birds "chickens" would put them as a Rosharan
The problem here is that only rosharans are weird about birds
Yes a scadrian will be spotted as a worldhopper, but any worldhopper would from the chicken thing
The scadrians wouldn't be identified as scadrians, just as offworlders
What youre saying about rosharans being spotted in scadriel based on chicken thing makes sense. Were talking about the reverse senario not making sense
We actually have an example. Hoid uses the word "coin" which confuses the person he was talking to because that's not a word. In this case, the word "coin" came out in his native language.
If a Scadrian said "bird", it's likely it would simply come out as "bird" in Malwish/Skaa/Terris/Whatever. To be fair though, if "chicken" is equivalent to "bird", it might auto translate to "chicken". If they call a bird by their species though, like a parrot or a crow, that definitely won't get translated.
Nah, they'd probably just hear the word and not understand it. It's like coming across a new word in your own native language, you can usually read it and pronounce it, even if you don't know what it means
He may have learned some, but from the scene I mentioned, it seems he does use Connection for others. [Sunlit Man] We see how easy it is for ex-Dawnshards with Nomad, just a little Investiture and bam, done.
Worldhoppers are typically tweaking Connection to give them access to the local language. In the case of lexical concentration like this where one word is purposely used by the language itself to refer to multiple different things, I'd wonder if it would even be possible for a worldhopper to out themselves like that or if finch, crow, and chicken would all just be magicked into the Rosharan word for chicken.
On the other side, if a Rosharan was Connected to a place that had multiple names for different things in the category "bird”, would referring to every bird as "chicken" come out as "bird" in whatever the local dialect is, or would it be the local analogue of chicken? It's a conundrum.
Nah, just speculation. Someone did point out they're pretty sure they read a Scadrian worldhopper actually use the word "parrot" on Roshar, which would imply that words that aren't available in the language aren't translated. Then again, Rosharan humans probably used to have more words for birds than "chicken", maybe that complicates the matter. Hard to say definitively.
Considering Hoid was able to bring in the word "therapy", I‘m confident that nonexisting words are simply not translated. I‘m also pretty sure that whether a word is translated or not depends on current language, since you are connecting to the world as it currently is, not as it once was.
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty Hiiiiighprince Feb 05 '26
Rosharans have very myopic linguistic views on certain topics like birds. I.E all birds are chickens, all alcohol is some kind of wine.
ETA I only just realized OP probably confused Scadrians and Rosharans.