weird idea we just had: language that contains grammatical features that are solely for use by fictional characters in books and movies and such
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@Patashu i'm thinking it would fit very well in a culture with a heavy emphasis on fiction, possibly one that ascribes greater importance to fictional worlds than to the "real" one
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@Felthry Not so weird, actually. A number of North American languages use various deformations for the speech of certain mythical animals, e.g. in Hupa, when Frog is talking, s is replaced with sh. I'm pretty sure there are other languages where there really are grammatical markers for specific characters speaking, but I can't find any references right now.
@KamareDrache Is that a grammatical marker, or an imitation of a speech impediment, though?
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@Felthry The latter, yes, but [language feature used only by specific characters] is a thing, and it's not a stretch to imagine that some language goes further and, say, uses alternatives words or markers, or even introduces new markers - and I'm sure I've read of languages that do do this, I just can't remember what they are. Languages do even weirder things than this, after all.
@Felthry
'signposts that this is fictional' hmm...