i have come to you all with some of my op language headcanons!!!◝(ᵔᗜᵔ)◜
ps: this is not a comprehensive list, this is most of what i have thought out but not everything is there, mainly due to some of my other ideas not being fully formed/hard to explain. so, i might come back here at some point and add/edit :]
i think of the north blue as the continent of europe, as many people do, which means that there's both a large variety of languages and a lot of sister languages
i like to think that it works the same as in real life, however, where the more northern you go the more nordic the languages are, and the more southern you go the more romantic/latin the languages are. i think we can see this flevance and germa kingdom (even though germa kingdom moves). flevance is somewhere in the middle of the north blue, and law is said to be german, which makes sense as germany is a middle between mediterranean and nordic countries. whereas germa kingdom, assumedly originally, was much nearer to the south, which makes sense because sanji is said to be french
because of this i think, depending on where you are, you can easily understand other people from the north who speak their native languages. germanic languages, latin languages, slavic languages etc. although, obviously, you can't understand everything, you can get a good grasp!
despite that, i think there are a few broader languages spoken aside from common that people use to communicate depending on their area. for example, interslavic in real life.
however, i think the most common way of people speaking with each other from island to island is using common, much more than any other blue. mainly due to the insane amount of militarisation (which i've already made a post about but holy shit. seriously what is going on there??) and their colonial history. again, much like mainland europe today. and i think they speak common a little different from everyone else because of that; there's a lot of marine slang/words/phrases used that kind of freak everyone else out lol
i mainly see the west blue as being based on the pacific islands. this is mainly due to a lot of the tropical scenery/weather we see, as well as taking some inspiration from characters physical appearances (i know anyone can be from anywhere, but most of the characters we see from the west blue have dark hair and brown skin, so.)
this means that the languages spoken are primarily oceanic languages such as maori, fijan, samoan etc
i also think there are a lot of borrowed words because of the amount of inter-blue travelling there is between the islands, especially among researchers and academics
although, i think that there's also a lot of older words/phrases used as well, which dates the languages and makes them incredibly easy to recognise. this is largely due to people trying to preserve their languages from the marines/world gov, which seem to operate heavily there, which creates a form of language isolation which means it doesn't develop/evolve as quickly as others
now the east blue has seriously fucked me over when it comes to neat categorizations because what the hell, oda. but! after much consideration i have come up with a perfect excuse for this: pirates!
it seems as though pirates frequent the east blue incredibly often, which makes way for a melting pot of languages and accents, which means i'm not able to assign a specific region or continent to the east blue. i think of it more as a diverse city, like london or la or new york.
although notable, canon languages across this ocean include: swedish, afrikaans, br portuguese and japanese. i think common is incredibly frequent as well
i believe that, because of the amount of travelling going on, although there are distinct languages throughout the east blue, there is a lot of word borrowing as well. you'll find words and phrases from literally every island in the east blue in someone's vocabulary, which, in my opinion, is how the east blue crew could understand each other so easily! because they already knew about half the words the other people were using!
i think, dialect wise, there's also a lot of (mostly pirate) slang thrown in there as well
tldr: the east blue is an absolute anomaly when it comes to languages. only they can understand each other /j
same thing here unfortunately, another absolute clusterfuck that has left me like charlie from it's always sunny trying to find out who pepe silvia is. you got scots, americans, mexicans. again oda, what the hell.
i think it's much like the same as it is the east blue; i can't assign a specific region or continent, i think it's just another mixing bowl situation. but, i would say it's a bit less diverse language wise. the regions don't borrow words, and they still have distinct accents and dialects. i do think there's still a lot of pirate slang, though.
i think there are quite a few sister languages as well, and i think common is used a lot between islands, but definitely not as much as the north or east.
tadaaaaa here it is! i hope you enjoyed, and if you have any thoughts/ideas please feel free to add them in the reposts!!!!!
tags: @hiphoppyfrog @hawkeyes-mihawk (tagging you as well because you seemed interested when i mentioned it :D))
