Way too much of my time has been spent wondering why the fuck Fortuna has Latin, French, and Italian words all over the place, and my mind eventually settled on “because Corsica is also a place that exists in the real world, so why the fuck not”. So that’s what the Fortunan language is heavily based off of now. There’s still the fact that modern, standardized versions of French and Italian are also present on the island. And then we have to assume they speak English too in some capacity because foreigners.
So now we have this, my awful attempt at justifying these decisions through the power of worldbuilding, wiki deep-diving, and being a linguistics nerd! This is in order of more or less how I expect the language evolution to go. Please keep in mind that I am in no way a language/linguistic expert so please be nice.
Starting off with the first language of the island, Old Fortunan
The real-world analogy here is Corsican because in order to incorporate a language that includes Latin, Italian, and French words, Fortunan pretty much has to be a Romance language.
So basically, Fortuna had its own Vulgar Latin-based language during the time Sparda lived there. It’s actually the first human language he learned and spoke fluently.
Given that this was around 2000 years ago, it was probably still more Latin-sounding than it currently is. I have also decided that this was when a lot of the natural landmarks and locations were named (i.e.: Lamia Peak, Port Caerula, etc.)
A lot of old writings are written in either Old Fortunan or Latin. All of Sparda’s writings are written in Old Fortunan which is something he kept up after leaving, even if he did eventually learn other languages.
Fun fact: Vergil learns Fortunan this way! When he was young and Sparda was still alive, he would have his father read him journals of his old adventures and the places he’d been. Vergil eventually retrieved these books when he started his quest for obtaining Sparda’s power and studied the language from them so he could go to Fortuna and get more information. He was a little sad when he realized the language modernized.
Nero and Sera are shocked as shit when Vergil opens his mouth and starts speaking to them all “Shakespearean-like” one day and quickly start ribbing him for it because he sounds like he’s 800 years old.
Similar to Vulgar Latin, Old Fortunan was never the language of the educated, but it was the language that was spoken so it eventually got standardized enough to have a written version, but spelling is not super consistent. The educated counterpart was Latin, which also served as the official language of the church at the time.
While no one speaks Old Fortunan anymore, it’s still understood in the way that Shakespearean English is to present-day English speakers. This is because Old Fortunan is basically Modern Fortunan without the Italian and French influence so core vocabulary and grammar are the same.
The official language of the island and Order of the Sword.
Naturally evolved from Old Fortunan with occasional Italian influence. Fortuna really only had one invasion attempt on it and was super late in the island’s history so there was next to no effect on the language.
The spelling got standardized; there’s an ongoing debate about whether it’s worth trying to rewrite some old historical text with modern orthography. It wasn’t a huge priority of the Order (because things were constantly being rewritten), but the topic came up again as part of the reconstruction and revitalization.
Vergil is actually super useful in this regard because he’s used to reading Sparda’s old writings (which were already written pre-standardization and may as well be the Wild West when it comes to spelling) so he can breeze through anything as long as it’s legible.
Italy is the closest mainland country to Fortuna and people have always emigrated from there so there’s a ton of overlap with the languages.
In fact, Italian is mutually intelligible with Fortunan, so a lot of visitors who speak it have an easy time talking to locals. As a result, Italian-speaking foreigners are usually treated a lot better.
This is the language foreigners are recommended to learn if they want to visit even though it’s not as necessary as before.
It’s very much spoken only; the language is not used in any official capacity and never was. However, it is found on some occasional signage in the more touristy areas like the docks and nearby shops.
The presence of French on Fortuna is funny in that it exists in church settings only and most of the population pretends it’s not there.
The story goes that a long time ago (we’ll say the early 1700s), some French-speaking missionaries heard of the island of literal devil worshippers and tried to come over and convert them to Catholicism. It didn’t work, not even a little bit.
However, the Order of the Sword liked how the missionaries conducted Mass and adopted that and just replaced all references to God and Jesus with Sparda similar to the practices of the actual Catholic church ironically. So that’s why everything about the religion screams “Catholic” even though it by all rights shouldn’t be.
France later tried to come back with soldiers under the guise of “the island barbarians perverted the word and rites of God”, but soon realized that the Order of the Sword was a) more militantly competent than expected and b) 100% willing to lead the enemy straight to the hell gates that occasionally pop up on the island and let the demons have them and c) dubious scientific practices were a thing even back then and no Fortunans complained as long as it was enemy POWs that went missing.
There was a period when the aristocratic families tried to adopt the language as a way of differentiating themselves from the lower class, but again, it didn’t stick. (It lasted maybe one generation, but definitely not two) The only remnant of this is nobles occasionally having names taken from liturgical rites (i.e.: Kyrie, Credo)
Foreigners also adopt church names upon being baptized into the Order because it’s usually easier than trying to figure out their name’s equivalent in Fortunan (i.e.: Agnus, Gloria)
English is also here because suddenly that’s what all the new foreigners were speaking.
It only came to the island within the last 100 years so really only the young people can speak it competently. Older folks don’t bother.
Foreigners who plan on immigrating are expected to drop English. Like, you cannot fully be considered a Fortunan until you stop using it.
This mentality kicks in if you’ve been on the island longer than two weeks generally. If the locals consistently see you around and it doesn’t look like you’re leaving soon, they’re not speaking English to you anymore. The nice ones may start using Italian but English is done.
Nico is subjected to this really hard, especially once her relationship with Agnus becomes known (also her name throws people off and they assume she’s Italian speaking anyway)
Speaking of Agnus, he came to the island knowing both French and Italian which gave him a huge in with the Order.
Lady was also subjected to this really hard back during her investigation into the Order pre-DMC4 which is one of the reasons why she had Dante take over. She stuck around too long and the locals just stopped speaking to her in English and she didn’t speak or understand Italian well enough at the time to continue.
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