Good morning from Germany.
This is Boris and Ron has sent me here to solve a mystery.
My official reason for using different verbs in the UI is this:
Franklin
Due to the fact that Franklin has commands that end with the “-e” form because they have NO object (Stöhne, Verzage…) I wanted to keep ALL verbs in that form on the command line. And because Franklins verbs always were a secret pre-launch, I couldn’t tell this story when the first German screenshots hit the web and the discussion started.
The German grammar is broken in Point and Click adventures games since Maniac Mansion (actually since Murder on the Mississippi, but I don’t want to get super picky about that). Give A to B needs to be Gib B das A in German. Anything else is wrong and hurts my eyes - but I did not dare to rewrite the code for that in Monkey Island (I messed enough with it already to fix some small grammar issues). So discussing whether it needs to be “Nehme” or “Nimm” for grammar reasons seems to be the wrong discussion for me.
That leaves the “historical” value of having the same verbs as old games. I have no beef with that.
My suggestion to Ron for a patch is: Change the retro verbs into MI-style (Nimm, Gib) but keep the standard verb line as shipped.
So: It’s “Nehme” and not “Nimm” because it is “Stöhne” and not “Stöhn” for Franklin.
I would keep it that way, but if public demands a change, so be it. Changing the Retro verbs seems to be like a great compromise, but that is a personal opinion.
Thank you all for your support of the game - whether it is Nehme or Nimm,
Boris