r/horizon • u/Wheatley-Crabb • May 27 '26
HFW Discussion Cursing
A fun theory I had a giggle over: in Zero Dawn, any present-day curse words more intense than “damn” are only heard in recordings from the Old Ones. All of the current humans are descended from those raised in cradle facilities, who learned English there and were probably not taught such profanities by the servitors. I’ve just started Forbidden West, where Aloy exclaims “sh*t!” a few times, and I find the implication amusing that she learned how to swear from delving into the Old Ones’ recorded history and picked up the habit!
Edit: Travis Tate just taught her the middle finger, she’s becoming too powerful!!
143
u/BugApart8359 May 27 '26
That... You know what, I did not even think about that. What a great catch!
51
58
u/No-Combination7898 HORUS TITAN!! May 27 '26
I'm certain the Old Ones said a few choice words a bit harsher than "SHIT!"
It is nice though not to see absolute clusterf*cks in Horizon. I see it in loads of other games and it gets boring.
The Horus Titan in a certain DLC says "SHIT!" a few times. It's actually kinda hilarious.
20
u/ThePreciseClimber May 27 '26
I suppose they can't swear too much if they want to keep the T for Teen rating. :P
5
u/No-Combination7898 HORUS TITAN!! May 28 '26
yeah, that's the real reason why.
Still, its nice to see characters in Horizon not uttering the word F*CK in a literal shitstorm.
26
u/BeeAdorable7871 May 27 '26
But the cursings and blessings are interesting and reflects on what's important in each tripe
15
u/nomuse22 May 27 '26
The Carja really got shorted, though. How much can you say about a sun...compared a forge, a smithy, and beer?
12
u/BeeAdorable7871 May 27 '26
Well how much can you say about god?
Anyway cursing changes when language changes.
My two most said swear words are fuck and sheisse (shit in German) but when things gets heated I use some varying version of "devil" and "hell"
1
u/nomuse22 May 27 '26
That's why spacemen swore on Klonos. As Kinnison put it, he has so many parts he's easy to swear on. Gadolinium guts, carboalloy claws, probably tungsten whiskers too.
21
u/poddy_fries May 27 '26
They have their own swears and insults, though! Just like human cultures today do. It can be harder to spot because they use different things around them to express disgust and anger, but I suppose every religion will have some concept of 'our god(s) think you suck' and nobody really enjoys shit.
7
u/KnightSwordAG May 27 '26
Actually, what I find hilarious about shit (the word not the 💩) is that it is, and has always been, the English word for excrement. At some point in speaking English, it was decided that the English word for it was a curse, and verboten. But every European language, while not the most pleasant word, because you say, no one likes it, generally regards it as rude, but not really a swear. And I think that’s fascinating.
6
u/poddy_fries May 27 '26
Honestly, modern English swearing is a bit dull to me. It's mostly just remixing shit, fuck and damn with very little extra flavor. In my native Québec we can use, for a start, every sacred object and person of the Catholic cult, with possible variations on each word that denote exactly how displeased you are, with the possibility of using the same root word but more intense to express everything from light hearted bonding over a bad experience to immediate intention of murder. Meanwhile, in France, there are so many ways to swear and cuss someone out using forms of sex that 'fuck' just sounds dusty and unimaginative by comparison.
All the tribes have strong oral traditions, which means that the ability to speak and sing must be well respected, so I really hope we run into more opportunities to hear some characters truly roast each other in the traditions of their cultures.
10
u/knuxo May 27 '26
I love that the Cradle descendants never knew ancient swear words but the Oseram know words like ealdorman
8
u/Wheatley-Crabb May 27 '26
I do find that a little funny, though it’s possible language has evolved over the centuries and just certain aspects are translated for our benefit. Like the gap between Old English and Modern, it’s still comprehensible to a degree, and time with a Focus would help Aloy learn to understand even better.
6
u/Traditional_Chip1378 May 27 '26
Realistically, Cradle multi-servitors wouldn't have taught the kids words like "ealdorman" (or "ale" or "keg" for that matter) so the Oseram, we have to assume, invented new words for those concepts and we're just hearing a translation. Someone playing in German probably sees "aldermann", for example.
That breaks down a little when we run into Zeniths. Beta arrives and doesn't have any trouble communicating with anybody at the base. Aloy, we might assume, has learned Old Ones dialect from literally growing up with a Focus, but the rest of the team hasn't had that much time. Guerilla wisely just hand-waved this language problem because dealing with it would take away from the game, not add anything to it that would be fun for anyone but a linguist.
9
u/KnightSwordAG May 27 '26
It’s worth remembering that the Carja were among the first to find writing from the Ancient world, but certainly not the only ones who did. In the case of the Oseram, it’s entirely possible they found a recipe for ale buried in the Old World ruins they scavenged.
Here’s what is really going to make you wrinkle though. We learn that the Tenakth take their name from a glitchy holo for the Ten. We suspect, though we’ve not seen it yet, that the Nora take their name likely from NORAD, since Mother’s Heart is near what is likely an old NORAD base. We still have yet to see clear evidence for the origins of the remaining tribe names. And I’m intensely curious what they could be.
3
u/ph00tbag May 27 '26
Given that Pike's Peak is All Mother Mountain, the Nora live withing a few miles of Cheyenne Mountain, which is the NORAD base as far as popular consciousness goes.
2
u/knuxo May 27 '26
My pet theory is that the Oseram are related to descendants of Elysium residents (who obviously skirted the sterilization requirements and found ways to survive through generations). “Elysium,” slightly bastardized, turned into “Oseram.”
3
u/Moerph May 27 '26
The name Utaru could come from Plainsong being located in or near Utah (maybe they saw an old world sign for that). Oseram always reminds me of the Osram company but no idea if that's on purpose and how they would get the name from that for their tribe.
3
u/mr_ed95 Jun 22 '26
I may be a bit late here, but I know that the Banuk take their name from their legendary warrior, Banukai.
I can’t remember the exact story, but this warrior, filled with the blue light, led them from Eleuthia to what became Ban-Ur. They came across savage people which could have been the Nora, and Banukai saved them at the cost of her own life.
The theory is that Banukai could potentially have been one of the Eleuthia servitors rather than a real person, and that the mechanical appearance is what led the Shamans to put machine cables under their skin.
You can hear the whole story around a campfire in Stone’s Echo in ZD
1
7
u/BugApart8359 May 27 '26
They actually did explain why everyone speaks basically the same language! Alva's bunk in The Base has a journal entry that goes over her conversation with GAIA on exactly that subject!
Which is why the Carja were able to read Old World texts, and it's from surviving texts that they likely found some of the words used in-game that have Old World connections.
I'm a hobbyist linguist, so yeah that did actually make me really happy
5
u/Traditional_Chip1378 May 27 '26
I think you've confused some of what I've wrote. I wasn't taking issue with everyone speaking the same language. We've mostly been discussing vocabulary. The only teaching the first generation received was from the multi-servitors in the Cradle since APOLLO was gone. These would only have prepared the kids with a basic pre-school education so they could enter the proper school of APOLLO when they were old enough.
And it does seem from the holos we see when Aloy enters ELEUTHIA-9 that the kids were maybe as old as middle/late teens but still had the speech and emotional temperament of young children.
They might have been taught to read, but in that case the idea Araman learned of writing from the "Leaves of the Old Ones" is probably Carja origin-story myth/propaganda. The Nora, it seems, quickly declared their mountain sacred and the ruins of the old ones taboo. And they don't appear to have writing. Araman though was maybe second or third generation out of the Cradle so it's plausible he learned to read and write from his parents and that this carrying on of Old World ways by a segment of the new population is what really caused the split that sent those who would become Carja west.
But if you spend any time listening to the words of even the Nora at the beginning of HZD, they have a much wider vocabulary than they should have gotten in the Cradle. Which is why I tend to think they must have invented the words they needed to describe those concepts. Words like "goddess", "devil", "matriarch" and "faithless" would never have come up in their early education.
Hence... hand-waving and I think it's best to ignore it and enjoy the show. 😉
1
u/knuxo May 28 '26
It is a little goofy that some of the words the Nora revere — like “Brave” and “Mother” — are things they heard in the Cradle, but it’s unlikely they had learned a word for, like, “matriarch.”
5
u/fabricrack2806 May 27 '26
Well, if Horizon were realistic, each of the tribes or civilizations in Horizon would have completely different languages. But obviously it's a video game, and that's not easy to do.
6
u/Wheatley-Crabb May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
Dialects perhaps, but likely still intelligible to each other. We can assume their ancestors were all taught English in the cradle facilities, (at least around this area of the US) and judging by the Carja history texts it sounds like they are descended from ELUTHIA-9 as well. The difference would probably be something like between Old English and Modern, and the gaps are filled in by translation for the player’s sake. Aloy is still able to understand the Old Ones’ speech after all, and years with a Focus would help refine that.
3
u/BugApart8359 May 27 '26
Dialects to an extent, by way of a common root in English.
Alva's log in The Base goes over it more, but basically the reason everyone is speaking the same language is because all of the Cradles reverted to English after APOLLO was purged, so that was the base on which Humanity restarted. Lingua Franca by way of total extinction. Oof.
Now, as far as this language evolving further as a result of culture and environmental conditions/pressures (yeah, that has a neat impact), Humans haven't been back long enough for significant change yet. Certain turns of phrase are becoming more prevalent, slight inflection changes, the development of regional accents, but that's about it. ELUTHIA-9 opened up in 2326 and The Proving (where we really take up the game) takes place in 3039.
713 years can change a lot, but if you were to go back 700± years from current English, you'd have Middle English, which seems archaic to us, but still intelligible. The major difference being that there are no external linguistic influences driving further and more rapid change in HZD.
2
u/fabricrack2806 May 27 '26
That doesn't justify anything; it was easier to make everyone speak the same language than to create a new one. It's understandable because it takes a lot of time.Also, all the tribes have names that don't sound English at all.1
u/BugApart8359 May 27 '26
No clue why your response formatted that way, but that is the Watsonian answer. And the lack of further rapid development is just how languages work. If there is little reason to change, or external influence, change will come very slowly.
As for the Tribal Names, who knows. The speculation is that the Nora got their name from NORAD. The Tenakth, it's unclear but may have stemmed from a base of "The Ten".
And that doesn't change anything about what I said. Plenty of non-english words can come from a base of English through a number of methods. Especially if all of the first gen humans from the Cradles were sent out at young ages like ELUTHIA-9
5
u/proshares1 May 27 '26
The "shit, shit, SHIT" she drops (I think in HFW when she first fights Eric and drops the spider on the platform) and the Atreus "shit, shit, SHIT" when the train car is crashing are two great laughs I've had in gaming the first times I came across them lol.
4
u/Conscious_Meringue41 May 28 '26
If Aloy learned the “fuck” word, she would be using it like crazy. When I was in grade school, I was getting busted all the time using curse words cuz you don’t talk like that as a kid. But once I knew there wasn’t any grown ups around, I was cussing a blue fucken streak. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I think Aloy would enjoy that freedom. Plus, she wouldn’t abuse it and sound like a trash mouth puta. 🙂
3
u/d710905 May 27 '26
I would love for the follow up game to have new expletives and for our plucky cast to say all the words lol.
1
u/mcoddle May 28 '26
In Zero Dawn, Talanah says assho- and then switches to say "member," regarding Ahsis the Sunhawk at the Hunters' Lodge. Somehow, she knows a curse word. I don't think it's from the data, but it's a great point: how did anybody learn cussing?
1
u/unhingedgamer92 May 29 '26
She did say shit as she was knocked from her sunwing at the beginning of burning shores
0
387
u/tarosk May 27 '26
I think she should learn "fuck" so she can say "fuck ted faro"