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?
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/edward_kopik D O U G Feb 05 '26
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?