Regarding what we know of translation in the cosmere [Bands/Secret History spoilers]

[yurisses]

So Bands and SH have revealed to us how translation magic is used with the attribute Connection. Now, we can assume we know how Hoid, despite living everything through a magic translator, has an understanding of linguistics sufficient to make puns or question the etymology of axehound. With how much Connection the Southerners tape they still have an accent though... while Hoid and "Taln" do not. Would it be theoretically possible for a southerner to tap at a faster rate, fast enough to remove their accent? Or maybe one would have to store a slightly different kind of Connection in the metalmind, one that would take care of the accent problem...

 

Anyway, now we know that many of our worldhoppers have access to some magic system letting them not only be immortal but also change their Connection.

[Uilos he/him]

Allik  alludes to Identity being the cause of the accent. His connection grants him to speech of the land, but his Identity marks him as a non-native. Taln, whose nature is currently unknown, seems to be from Roshar. 

Hoid seems a special case, as he 1) seems to be collecting the magic system of the worlds, and it has been mentioned that this may cause him developing a Connection to the places. And 2) His Identity is mutable. This would make sense as he is seen in differing forms and names. 

So, it is quite possible that Hoid speaks like a native on all of the worlds we've seen him because he has developed enough of a Connection and has little Identity to hold him back.

Edited February 2, 2016 by Uilos

[lordofsoup]

Hoid is also one of the original humans.  I would expect this already gives him the necessary Connection to speak the languages.  

[King's Twit he/him]

Hoid is also one of the original humans.  I would expect this already gives him the necessary Connection to speak the languages.  

 

The languages of the time, maybe, but that was (at least) thousands of years ago. Many new languages would have developed since then, languages often evolve into drastically different forms over time, and the humans of at least one world were created by Shards, and so came after the time of the "first" humans. Connection magic seems to mostly be region-specific, so I'm not sure if being Connected to someone's ancestors would give you much of a Connection at all to them.

 

 

So, it is quite possible that Hoid speaks like a native on all of the worlds we've seen him because he has developed enough of a Connection and has little Identity to hold him back.

 

Isn't it possible that "sounding like a native" is just part of him being a pretty good actor. He plays all of these roles (beggar, storyteller) and has pretty high exposure to natives in these roles. You don't need Wayne's ridiculous skill with accent imitation to hide your own or imitate another well enough to not draw attention.

[+Authweight]

Hoid could be doing something like this, but keep in mind he is incredibly old, incredibly skilled, and extremely smart. It's plausible that, with how much time he's had, he's just good at picking up new languages and dialects, and already knows most of them anyway.

[FaeMofo]

Hoid is also one of the original humans. I would expect this already gives him the necessary Connection to speak the languages.

Seeing as it is mentioned that the shards created their humans using the originals as blueprints, this would make sense.

[ecohansen]

How much knowledge does Connection grant?  If a Roman time-travelled to the present and tapped duralumin to gain Connection, and then saw a car, would he call it a "fire chariot" or a "car"?  The ancient greeks had a dozen different words for different types of love (platonic, fraternal, sexay, etc), but no word for "love".  If I traveled to ancient Greece, tapped connection, and started talking about love, would I have an instinctive understanding of the fine-grained distinctions made by the greeks, or would the english word "love" come out untranslated?  What about languages like Eastern Pomo, which require evidentiality--i.e. citing your source?  Before you can make any statement, you have to modify the verb to tell people how you know what you're saying--for example pʰa·békʰ-ink’e="it burned (I felt it burning)", while pʰa·bék-ine="it burned (I saw evidence of burning, and inferred that burning must have happened)".  Currently, I don't remember how I learned most of the things I think I know, and would have great difficulty speaking Pomo, since I wouldn't be able to modify the verbs for evidentiality.  But if I tapped Connection, would I suddenly remember how I learned everything so that I could modify the verbs correctly?

 

For that matter, what about verb tense?  Chinese doesn't have to modify verbs to show time: Instead of saying "I ate" or "I will eat", in Chinese you just straight-up say the time, if you happen to think it's important: "yesterday I eat" and "tomorrow I eat".  Several studies have shown that Chinese people are much less likely than Westerners to remember the time-sequence of different events, since their language doesn't require that they remember it.  If a Chinese person tapped connection in America, would her memory of time sequences improve?

 

If I went to a club-room where only physics faculty members are allowed, and where everyday conversation constantly referred to physics, and I tapped Connection so that I would belong in the room, would I suddenly understand advanced physics?

 

We see that more advanced terms like "ettmetal" are left untranslated because the target language doesn't have a matching term.  But if the target language only has terms more advanced than the ones in my mind, am I suddenly able to master those advanced concepts?

 

****

Suppose I went to Brussels, where both French and Dutch are spoken natively.  Suppose further that I was in a room with a monolingual Frenchman and a monolingual Dutchman.  If I tapped connection, would I speak French or Dutch?  Could I control which one I spoke? 

 

If I were on a Panamanian ship in the middle of the Pacific, where no-one had ever been before, and channelled Connection, would I speak Spanish and be able to talk to the people on the ship?  Or would I speak the Polynesian language of the closest land-mass?  Or would I speak in dolphin clicks, since that would be the closest thing to a "language" that was actually native to the place I was in?

 

Suppose I went to the court of Norman-speaking William the Conquerer the day after he conquered the Anglo-Saxons.  I assume I'd speak Anglo-Saxon instead of Norman.  If I went to the same palace ten years later, would Connection make me speak Anglo-Saxon or Norman?  How long does a language have to be in a place before it becomes the language that Connection selects?

Edited February 3, 2016 by ecohansen

[Landis963 he/him]

For convenience's sake, I'm assuming if there are enough minds around calling a particular spot home and speaking a given language, then Connection would make you speak that language as they spoke it.  So speaking English to the Romans would return Latin, while speaking Latin to the Romans would result in Modern Welsh.  

[AerionBFII he/him]

He probably studied memorization techniques in his training to be a Jesk/Storyteller.

Also also Feruchemy couldn't hurt either but from a WOB that i cant seem to find, he uses a form of magic to translate what he says and what he hears thats how he gets the languages, i personally think it's a variation of sound from Lightweaving.