There's been some debate lately about whether "Common" makes sense as a language in D&D worlds.
My answer is that common can make sense, but not how it's typically used.


[video=youtube_share;ojssyryzYy8]https://youtu.be/ojssyryzYy8[/youtube]

It makes sense as a trade language, but not as tge defacto human language.

I agree with you.

When I use a "Common" language, I normally take the time to explain why its the most widely used language.  Normally, its because of the economic supremacy of the people who speak it. Or perhaps its because it was the langauge of an anchent empire that once covered the contenent and so the people in the former imperial lands still speak it, or at least a version of it.  

Honestly, I have always hated the way D&D handles languages by having them based on race.

Latin, Arabic, or Guanhua (court Mandarian). Plus the fictional Westron in Middle Earth which was created by an author who was a linguist. So having common isn't that far fletched.

Having a common language that a majority of the campaign world uses is simply a device that permits ease of play for a game that relies heavily on interaction between player characters and the fictional inhabitants of the game world. Game play needs to be the first consideration here. The construct can be more or less plausible depending on how it is implemented but without it the flow of the game would hampered severely unless all PCs were highly proficient in many languages which would pose an entirely different plausibility problem.

My "common" is more a group of dialects of the last Empire's tongue (which fell c. 200 years prior) still close enough to each other to be mutually understood (though with some penalties to social tasks if it's not a familiar dialect). Within the next hundred years or so the major regional dialects will diverge enough that they'll become separate languages (akin to French, Italian and Spanish evolving from the vulgar Latin of their regions), but it's not quite there yet.

There’s also still a “High Imperial” used as a diplomatic language, but it’s NOT actually common outside of diplomatic circles.

Also of note is that becoming fluent in dialects and languages is completely separate from level advancement and exists on a gradient (basically a target number you need to hit to not take penalties on social tasks when conversing in that language that drops a little each day you successfully make check to do so... eventually hitting a TN of 0 where it is impossible to fail the check to speak like a native (you might pull off a de facto automatic success before then, but you still sound like a foreigner until the TN hits 0).

You could go away from an Earth-like model of linguistics and embrace the fantasy. It could be that the predecessor to the Common tongue was developed by a god to allow conversation with the hundreds of other gods out there, and somewhere along the line, a Prometheus-like figure brought that tongue to mortals. The now-debased version of that tongue is the Common spoken by all sorts of creatures today.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1059244There's been some debate lately about whether "Common" makes sense as a language in D&D worlds.
My answer is that common can make sense, but not how it's typically used.

I confess that I don't watch videos because of low signal-to-noise, but to answer the written question: "Common" at my table means "the prevalent language you guys all grew up speaking." I may choose a language (Elvish, Dwarvish, Latin, Greek, English) and designate it "Common," and it's even possible for players to meet extradimensional creatures like Githyanki and discover that they speak "Common" if Common for that planet/campaign world is actually descended from Gith for backstory reasons.

But no one will actually call it "Common," and it won't be the same from campaign to campaign.

I like how I handled it in my Carcosa campaign; every race had its own language, but the language of the black men was the 'common' lingua franca understood by 50% of all men.

I think you hit the major points in the video.

There are and have been "common" languages throughout history, just not quite to the level as as given in many RPGs.

I think it is safe to argue English, French and Spanish are the modern equivalents of a common tongue, as these languages have spread widely around the world with (67, 29 and 20) nations using them as a primary language. In addition to their use as primary languages, they are also widely taught as secondary languages which extends their influence. Portuguese also has a relatively large distribution but to a much smaller degree (10 nations, on 3 continents).
   
Some will point to Mandarin as the most spoken due to the number of people using it (850 million, or more than double #2, Spanish), but geographically it is quite limited.


As mentioned in the video Latin and Greek were wide spread in medieval Europe, but limited by class. A peasant may only speak a very geographically limited local tongue while a guard on a merchant caravan might have the ability to speak several languages on at least a basic level.



I don't find the idea of a broadly used common tongue in a fantasy game highly out of place. It is a simplification based on reality, so it certainly won't impact my sense of immersion.

It is however somewhat simplistic and takes the easy way out. While I don't want to get bogged down in the weeds over languages it makes a lot more sense for well traveled adventures to know many languages.

I was talking to a European about the typical depiction of Americans as too self absorbed to bother learning another language. He pointed out in North America, it is possible to travel 3000 miles and still run into people who speak English. In Europe if you just drive 300 miles (482 km) you can easily run across 2 or 3 primary languages in use. The result is people in Europe tend to learn multiple languages out of necessity, unless they just don't travel much.

Ignoring the communication issue, there is a different reaction when speaking to someone as a native vs an outsider. If I go to England my American accent will set me apart from the locals, just as a person speaking English with a French accent will set them apart in the US. In an upper class society, the French accent may make them more appealing, in other situations it may other them in a negative way.

A generic Common tongue eliminates a lot of role playing opportunities.



BTW I notice there is not much mention of language in Lion and Dragon, but perhaps there is in Dark Albion which I have not gotten yet. Language in the medieval world might be an interesting topic for an RPG Pundit Presents.

Yes, we have one right now.  It's called English.

Playing language games is fun for the RPG gear head, but not so much for regular folks

Not really, but an entire campaign where nobody speaks the local language gets real old, real fast.

For RP purposes I find it useful to be good at accents and knowing some colloquialisms is a good way of conveying that even though everyone is speaking "common" that it's not exactly the same language everywhere.

We've had a Court focused game where the local commoners generally speak in a Cockney, while the local nobles use Recieved Pronunciation (aka BBC English). The Ambassador and their staff from the Free Cities to the south have an antebellum southern drawl and the visiting nobles of the Kingdom of Ulstiva in the far north get portrayed with a Scottish accent and when most Elves speak "common" they have an Irish accent (theoretically Gaelic is our stand in for Elven).

So everyone is using English and the local nobles are generally understood by everyone, but the Free Cities people have a few hiccups when chatting with the locals due to both Cockney and Southern US dialects having notable differences in pronunciation and using certain turns of phrase more specific to them.

Quote from: EOTB;1059299Playing language games is fun for the RPG gear head, but not so much for regular folks

Yes and no. Obviously making language rules super complex is going to be tedious for most, but the lack of them can also be pretty dull.

Being able to mingle and vanish into the crowd, to become one with the locals is a huge thing in some games and this kind of goes away when languages are hand waved. An escaped POW on the run deep in Germany, or a cold war spy working the streets of Moscow? Having the right accent and cultural knowledge is critical. There is no reason that the same wouldn't apply to a fantasy game except "boring" so it isn't commonly done out of the tradition that everyone speaks common.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1059310Not really, but an entire campaign where nobody speaks the local language gets real old, real fast.

Definitely becomes a problem when language becomes the whole focus of a game. 6 hours of RP-ing Where is the Toilet, or I'd like a beer, oh joy where can I sign up?  On the other hand getting that critical knowledge of where to find the Chief of the local thieves den because you speak fluent "common scoundrel" can be great fun.