What Language the Lugiones Speak in-Game?

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Ditto.

I've been trying to decipher it, but it's different from the Sweboz although it has Germanic elements thrown in culturally around. But most of it seems to be some kind of reconstructed Proto-Balto-Slavic, or something like that at least. Am I correct about this?

Also, on a second but rather unrelated question, the Hayasdan units speak Pahlavi at least. But is there a proto-Armenian voicemod for them? Never tried them, but am curious if the EB team ever tried it.

[Genghis Skahn]

The Lugians are getting a linguistic overhaul next update, since the team has generally come to the conclusion that the Lugians weren't Balts and thus didn't speak a Baltic language. Nobody is really sure of what language they spoke. Their linguistic reconstructions in the past/current state of the mod were made using Old Prussian, Lithuanian, Proto-Celtic and Gaulish(acting in place of Noric/East Celtic since basically nothing has survived of that language) IIRC. There isn't a slavic element to their language, as far as I can tell, in no small part due to the fact that the Slavs weren't living in Poland at this time and it's far too early to even speak of any Slavic language yet, to my limited understanding.

We do know that the Lugians start out Celticized and then later become Germanized--so the end-result for the next update will be a list of character names which can be read as either Celtic or Germanic. This is important since this won't conflict with their later Germanization reform or their earlier Celticized beginnings--so you won't get purely Germanic names before the reform, nor will you have purely Celtic ones in the post-reform period. Anyhow, there are still lots of important changes for the Lugians in the future, but they are an extremely confusing/poorly understood faction, to say the least.

[Septentrionalis]

The Lugians are getting a linguistic overhaul next update, [...]

Even though I have nothing to contribute per se to the issue described by Genghis, I must say as a linguist that this level of attention to detail and commitment to historical accuracy is nothing short of fabulous. I only wish that I could chip in somehow.

[Genava]

The Lugians are getting a linguistic overhaul next update, since the team has generally come to the conclusion that the Lugians weren't Balts and thus didn't speak a Baltic language. Nobody is really sure of what language they spoke. Their linguistic reconstructions in the past/current state of the mod were made using Old Prussian, Lithuanian, Proto-Celtic and Gaulish(acting in place of Noric/East Celtic since basically nothing has survived of that language) IIRC. There isn't a slavic element to their language, as far as I can tell, in no small part due to the fact that the Slavs weren't living in Poland at this time and it's far too early to even speak of any Slavic language yet.

We do know that the Lugians start out Celticized and then later become Germanized--so the end-result for the next update will be a list of character names which can be read as either Celtic or Germanic. This is important since this won't conflict with their later Germanization reform or their earlier Celticized beginnings--so you won't get purely Germanic names before the reform, nor will you have purely Celtic ones in the post-reform period. Anyhow, there are still lots of important changes for the Lugians in the future, but they are an extremely confusing/poorly understood faction, to say the least.

It reminds me about the never ending problematic, what are the differences between pre-Roman Iron Age Celts and Germans?

"Caesar portrays the Gauls and the Germans as very different (Walser 1956, Dobesch 1989). The Gauls, in his account, have towns, political counsels that he likens to the Roman Senate, and elaborate religious rituals similar in some ways to those of Rome. The Germans, on the other hand, Caesar represents as more primitive than the Gauls, and much less like people of Rome. They have no towns, little-developed agriculture, no permanent political leaders, and no elaborate rituals. Caesar even goes so far as to describe mythical animals that he claims live in the forests inhabited by the Germans. When we compare the archaeology with Caesar’s assertions, it is clear that Caesar did not know much about the peoples east of the Rhine. Either he wrote on the basis of poor information gathered from others, or he made up most of what he wrote to suit his purposes. Today linguists distinguish between Celtic and Germanic languages. But Caesar did not make any use of language as a distinguishing feature between Gauls and Germans, probably because he did not know much about the languages the indigenous peoples spoke. Furthermore, as Untermann (1989) points out, the categories “Celtic” and “Germanic” in reference to languages were only created in the nineteenth century by scholars in the field of historical linguistics. The languages that Iron Age peoples west and east of the Rhine spoke might not correspond to either of those categories. Recent linguistic studies of inscriptions (mostly from the early Roman Period) and place-names suggest that many groups probably spoke languages that modern linguists could not easily classify either as Celtic or Germanic, but rather languages that mixed elements of what modern linguists recognize as distinct categories (Meid 1986)."
- Peter S. Wells, in European prehistory: A survey. 2011.

https://www.degruyter.com/view/books...867343-010.xml
https://www.degruyter.com/view/books...864717.211.xml

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Hi there Genghis Skahn,

I understand your point of view.

I would rather say that by this time, Slavic hadn't yet slipt off from Proto-Baltic as a distinct language clade/ethnic group. In fact the evidence we have is that it occurred much later, with Common Slavic being spoken all the way to the High Middle Ages.

Their names just sound Baltic, and given that Baltic is the closest IE related branch to Slavic, my guess would be Proto-Balto-Slavic or something like that just before the split.