The literally only thing that drives me away from 40k constantly are the weird pseudo Latin names for everything. Just saying “Ultima Segmentum” as some sort of location name aloud leads to strong vibrations along the streets out of Rome because there is tons of toga-wearing skeleton rattling around in their graves from a cringe even the dead cannot tolerate.
The only Roman skeleton that might be rattling is the Emperor. And if this guy tells you the new lingua franca is latina, you better start learning.
That armor looks a little large on him.
It’s near where the ultra Marines live, and they have a specifically greccoroman Latin style.
Overall yeah, “high gothic” has a monastic, Latin style, but that’s just the setting.
I don’t see it as cringe, not that 40k is free of cringe
More power to everyone who can enjoy 40k as-is! I’m absolutely not trying to convince anyone to let it go. I get the style, absolutely, yet the Latin used is just so… off. It’s a mixture of phrases from English that got translated without a thesaurus, so just “name a word that means X, don’t care about the connotations”, literally not looking up how Romans named their stuff and really blatant grammatical errors. To me, with my albeit very limited Latin from school, this is so off-putting. The reason this annoys me so gawd damn much is that I would love the franchise otherwise but can’t survive the cringe of those stupid names! I have tried so many times!
I’ll try to fabricate an example in English here (this is made up and not rooted in 40k-Lore, so I’m not playing at something out of that lore):
Imagine a world where the majestic, greatest, mystical human wizard person was emperor (hard to imagine, eh?) and his homeplanet was called “Leaderman Houserlivingplan0t” and everyone acted as if this name was all cool and carried tons of gravitas.That’s about what I feel when I read those oh so grim and fancy names…
<uncalled-for and unprovoked nerd-rage> IT’S “SEGMENTUM ULTIMUM” FOR FUCK’S SAKE, GET THAT LITTLE BIT OF GRAMMAR RIGHT AT LEAST! </uncalled-for and unprovoked nerd-rage>
So many of the things they invented their fancy name thingys for would have sounded way, way cooler with real Latin.
Astra Militarum (Star of the military? Kind of? Gramm. correct: Astra Militaria perhaps?); either use the real thing and go for “Cohortes Praetoriae” or do the literal thing “Custos Imperialis” or something.
Adepta Sororitas (“Adepta” is not a Latin word, but let’s keep it as “adept”, so this means “adept of the Sisterhood”, whatever that’s supposed to mean): Sorores Proelii/Pugnii (There are many words for conflict/battle/war in Latin, so there are more options)And I could go on for days!
You’re using a relatively recent understanding of a recently dead language. You aren’t factoring in the 28k years of evolution, data loss, and rediscovery. Followed by another 10k years of relative dark age and deification.
To further simplify, to question is heresy.
This is important to the setting too! They literally lost the story. Changed the tune. Everything is made up due to the passage of time, and loss of history.
In-Universe, correct Latin would be absolutely less believeable than what they have, that’s for sure. Why would the language have stayed the same? If only I could overlook the names… I mean… perhaps when I try to read/listen to the stories in German… English struggles with Latin at the best of times… Whenever I adressed someone in my previous post, I was adressing Games Workshop, not some figure in-universe.
I wonder if it was intentional so they could claim copyright on their products?
“Uh, Dad, this here is my new neighbor.”
“He’s Japanese.”
“No he ain’t! He’s T’au. Ain’t ya, Mr. Khan?”
