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Author Topic: Forget "Common" and Embrace the Dynamics of Foreign Languages!  (Read 2528 times)

Greywolf76

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Re: Forget "Common" and Embrace the Dynamics of Foreign Languages!
« Reply #15 on: October 06, 2020, 09:25:29 AM »
Greetings!

What are your thoughts on such languages and the "Common" tongue dynamic? Have you done something similar in your own campaigns? How have your players responded to such dynamics in the game world?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Greetings, Shark.

As a professional translator and amateur linguist I've been doing the same thing in my fantasy games for ages.

I almost always use some sort of regional "common language", but it's never used outside its geographical region. For example, my current campaign 2E is set in Forgotten Realms' Sword Coast, so a regional language (called Calant) could be considered as the regional "common" and is spoken in most places from the North to Daggerford, albeit with different accents.

However, no one speaks Calant outside these two regions. And people in the north also speak Illuskan, a language that belongs to another linguistic family, and thus it's not comprehensible by those who only speak Calant. Most Northerners are bilingual or, if not, have at least some rudimentary comprehension of their non-native language.

To add more realism, I divide languages into linguistic branches (languages from the same family share the same alphabet, grammar and have similar phonemes and are mutually intelligible, because they always come from the same ancient, old mother language) and subdivisions.

Most of my players love those little details.




SHARK

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Re: Forget "Common" and Embrace the Dynamics of Foreign Languages!
« Reply #16 on: October 06, 2020, 12:50:11 PM »
Greetings!

What are your thoughts on such languages and the "Common" tongue dynamic? Have you done something similar in your own campaigns? How have your players responded to such dynamics in the game world?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Greetings, Shark.

As a professional translator and amateur linguist I've been doing the same thing in my fantasy games for ages.

I almost always use some sort of regional "common language", but it's never used outside its geographical region. For example, my current campaign 2E is set in Forgotten Realms' Sword Coast, so a regional language (called Calant) could be considered as the regional "common" and is spoken in most places from the North to Daggerford, albeit with different accents.

However, no one speaks Calant outside these two regions. And people in the north also speak Illuskan, a language that belongs to another linguistic family, and thus it's not comprehensible by those who only speak Calant. Most Northerners are bilingual or, if not, have at least some rudimentary comprehension of their non-native language.

To add more realism, I divide languages into linguistic branches (languages from the same family share the same alphabet, grammar and have similar phonemes and are mutually intelligible, because they always come from the same ancient, old mother language) and subdivisions.

Most of my players love those little details.

Greetings!

Thank you, Greywolf! Your campaign sounds very cool! Your real-life job and interest in linguistics is pretty awesome, too! In my world of Thandor, geesus--*laughing*--I have done something entirely similar to what you have in your Forgotten Realms campaign. I have developed several ancient mother-root tongues, then there are several or more branch languages that stretch out from there. I have *dozens* of distinctly different languages in my campaign. Also like your own campaign, within each particular geographical location, there is typically a dominant "common" language--for example, within the Vallorean Empire, Common Vallorean is the de facto "Common Language". North of the northern borders of the Vallorean Empire, the barbarian language of the Ghebben is the most prominent language. Further to the east, Common Archaedian is the predominant language. And so on. Thus, there are many languages that are extremely useful, even essential to any character that seeks to travel beyond the boundaries of their village or province.

When I was in college, I had a friend and classmate that was majoring in Linguistics. He already was fluent in English, Vietnamese, German, French, Russian, Chinese. He is a Vietnamese-American, and grew up learning Vietnamese, Chinese, and English. Through school he had picked up and become fluent in Russian, French, and German, and now the guy was moving onto Latin and Hindi. *Laughing* I was thoroughly amazed. Interestingly, I have numerous friends and colleagues from foreign lands--and whether they are from Persia, India, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, or Kenya--it is not uncommon for any of them to be solidly fluent in three or four languages, and somewhat familiar with one or two more languages besides.

Thus, from my own real-world experience, and also from history, I love languages, and view knowledge of them is very useful and beneficial to an individual in so many ways, you know? The idea of a total global "Common Language" just seems ludicrous to me--and as I mentioned in the introduction, it makes possession of other languages irrelevant. From there, the various cultures and ethnic groups and customs all kind of get watered down and become a vaguely bland mish-mash. In my campaign, the players do not just go into dungeons, and then return to a pod-like existence in the generic town. They may be living in a particular area for many long months, even several years *in game time*--and building relationships with the local population, oftentimes which they are new arrivals in a foreign land, so making friends, having romances, hiring people, and getting drawn into the native environment in a more meaningful manner just becomes a whole lot more necessary and interesting if the players know or must learn one or more of the native languages spoken by the people of the area.

I have also noticed that even though embracing such language rules or dynamics, that while the Players must devote effort and attention to learning additional languages--as there is no universal "Common Tongue"--they have all responded well and with enthusiasm to the principle. They have all enjoyed the enhanced sense of realism to the campaign as a whole, so I believe the effort is definitely worthwhile in creating a more realistic and dynamic campaign!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
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ThatChrisGuy

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Re: Forget "Common" and Embrace the Dynamics of Foreign Languages!
« Reply #17 on: October 06, 2020, 03:23:10 PM »
I try to strike a balance between "something more real-feeling" and "playability."

What I'd like to do would be have large kingdoms and many languages and peoples in them  Something like France with Languedoc and French or the Iberian tongues, or enough versions of Orcish to choke a scholar.

What I actually do is make them broader than that so players don't have to waste time finding a translator every time they travel a hundred miles or cross a border.  So "Spanish" instead of "Catalan."  Mutual incomprehension is fun on occasion but it gets tiresome if it happens all the time.
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Delete_me

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Re: Forget "Common" and Embrace the Dynamics of Foreign Languages!
« Reply #18 on: October 06, 2020, 04:11:12 PM »
I like how the Scarred Lands handled it in 3.5. There was an effectively dead language, Ledean, spoken by the old Ledean empire (Rome). While they were gone, they had once ruled most of the continent.

There was no common, but most people in the merchant class, the upper class, or the learned, could read, write, and speak Ledean. So you had your regional language and, if you had a bonus language, it was Ledean. And several languages had roots in Ledean, so you could kind of make yourself understood. (Same thing between Middle English and Albadian; to the point where one would be considered speaking the High Queen's English, or possibly late Middle English, and the other would sound like they're from Alabama. . . it's a related language, but it's not the same).

Greywolf76

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Re: Forget "Common" and Embrace the Dynamics of Foreign Languages!
« Reply #19 on: October 06, 2020, 04:25:22 PM »
Greetings!

What are your thoughts on such languages and the "Common" tongue dynamic? Have you done something similar in your own campaigns? How have your players responded to such dynamics in the game world?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Greetings, Shark.

As a professional translator and amateur linguist I've been doing the same thing in my fantasy games for ages.

I almost always use some sort of regional "common language", but it's never used outside its geographical region. For example, my current campaign 2E is set in Forgotten Realms' Sword Coast, so a regional language (called Calant) could be considered as the regional "common" and is spoken in most places from the North to Daggerford, albeit with different accents.

However, no one speaks Calant outside these two regions. And people in the north also speak Illuskan, a language that belongs to another linguistic family, and thus it's not comprehensible by those who only speak Calant. Most Northerners are bilingual or, if not, have at least some rudimentary comprehension of their non-native language.

To add more realism, I divide languages into linguistic branches (languages from the same family share the same alphabet, grammar and have similar phonemes and are mutually intelligible, because they always come from the same ancient, old mother language) and subdivisions.

Most of my players love those little details.

Greetings!

Thank you, Greywolf! Your campaign sounds very cool! Your real-life job and interest in linguistics is pretty awesome, too! In my world of Thandor, geesus--*laughing*--I have done something entirely similar to what you have in your Forgotten Realms campaign. I have developed several ancient mother-root tongues, then there are several or more branch languages that stretch out from there. I have *dozens* of distinctly different languages in my campaign. Also like your own campaign, within each particular geographical location, there is typically a dominant "common" language--for example, within the Vallorean Empire, Common Vallorean is the de facto "Common Language". North of the northern borders of the Vallorean Empire, the barbarian language of the Ghebben is the most prominent language. Further to the east, Common Archaedian is the predominant language. And so on. Thus, there are many languages that are extremely useful, even essential to any character that seeks to travel beyond the boundaries of their village or province.

When I was in college, I had a friend and classmate that was majoring in Linguistics. He already was fluent in English, Vietnamese, German, French, Russian, Chinese. He is a Vietnamese-American, and grew up learning Vietnamese, Chinese, and English. Through school he had picked up and become fluent in Russian, French, and German, and now the guy was moving onto Latin and Hindi. *Laughing* I was thoroughly amazed. Interestingly, I have numerous friends and colleagues from foreign lands--and whether they are from Persia, India, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, or Kenya--it is not uncommon for any of them to be solidly fluent in three or four languages, and somewhat familiar with one or two more languages besides.

Thus, from my own real-world experience, and also from history, I love languages, and view knowledge of them is very useful and beneficial to an individual in so many ways, you know? The idea of a total global "Common Language" just seems ludicrous to me--and as I mentioned in the introduction, it makes possession of other languages irrelevant. From there, the various cultures and ethnic groups and customs all kind of get watered down and become a vaguely bland mish-mash. In my campaign, the players do not just go into dungeons, and then return to a pod-like existence in the generic town. They may be living in a particular area for many long months, even several years *in game time*--and building relationships with the local population, oftentimes which they are new arrivals in a foreign land, so making friends, having romances, hiring people, and getting drawn into the native environment in a more meaningful manner just becomes a whole lot more necessary and interesting if the players know or must learn one or more of the native languages spoken by the people of the area.

I have also noticed that even though embracing such language rules or dynamics, that while the Players must devote effort and attention to learning additional languages--as there is no universal "Common Tongue"--they have all responded well and with enthusiasm to the principle. They have all enjoyed the enhanced sense of realism to the campaign as a whole, so I believe the effort is definitely worthwhile in creating a more realistic and dynamic campaign!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Hello, Shark.

Yes, I love languages, too, and it's one of the main reasons I became a translator.

Besides my native Portuguese, I'm fluent in English and three other languages. Now I've started learning Greek, and learning Japanese and Irish Gaelic are on my bucket list, too. LOL.

Anyway, I see you like the same amount of detail in your campaigns that I do. Little things, like different languages, different kinds of clothing, even different architectural styles are very important to me.

One of the things I do is that I make regional a list of names with similar sounds. So you'll never find people named Rufus, Alistair and Jean-Paul living in the same place. In fact, I use English names for most of the villages, cities and people in the area my players' characters are living. In the North I mentioned before I use Scandinavian-like names, and names inspired by Iberian languages in the Southern Sword Coast. And so on.

One my biggest pet-peeves are nonsense village names without any real meaningful names (like Secomber, Sumbarya, Gollothilia,  or something silly like that). I changed most of the place names to names that mean something (Fair Haven, Stonehills, Eastdale, and so on).

Anyway, I heartily recommend the article "Speaking in Tongues", by Thomas M. Costa, from Dragon Magazine Annual 4. It's a linguistic atlas for the Forgotten Realms, but it's one of the best articles on fantastic linguistics I've read, and can be used as a basis for any fantasy setting.

And I've always liked to build and develop a base of operations or hometown for the PCs between adventures, where they can relax in their favorite taverns, develop relationships with different NPCs (sages, merchants, priests, and so on). Like I said above, these little things are as much important as high adventure and memorable villains.

Nice talking to you.

Greywolf

Chainsaw

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Re: Forget "Common" and Embrace the Dynamics of Foreign Languages!
« Reply #20 on: October 06, 2020, 06:48:20 PM »
I love languages. Majored in Latin and Ancient Greek, then taught them for a while.

Nevertheless, one has to balance realism and playability. So, my preference is to use "human" as a crude "trade language" known by most humans, demi-humans and humanoid monsters within reasonable "gaming distance." The foreign traveler at the local inn, the merchant from that neighboring kingdom, the elves who live in that forest to the south and the orcs who live under that giant mountain looming over the valley all know it. Now, if you want to gain their friendship, resolve a tense situation favorably, hold a complex negotiation, secretly eavesdrop on their conversation or decipher their texts/markings, you still need to know their language. In other words, there are still many legit reasons for learning languages or using language spells.

My goal is to make languages enrich the game, not bog it down.

Shasarak

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Re: Forget "Common" and Embrace the Dynamics of Foreign Languages!
« Reply #21 on: October 06, 2020, 06:53:41 PM »
What are your thoughts on such languages and the "Common" tongue dynamic? Have you done something similar in your own campaigns? How have your players responded to such dynamics in the game world?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Sounds like one of those things that would make DnD 30 minutes of fun for every four hours of game time.
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Darrin Kelley

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Re: Forget "Common" and Embrace the Dynamics of Foreign Languages!
« Reply #22 on: October 07, 2020, 07:41:06 PM »
The campaign I am in uses Tradespeak instead of Common. Which has a long tradition in Earth history. The Phoenicians for example used their own language as a common touchstone between other cultures to perform their business. So the precedent is clearly there.
 

EOTB

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Re: Forget "Common" and Embrace the Dynamics of Foreign Languages!
« Reply #23 on: October 08, 2020, 12:48:05 AM »
I don’t find the juice to be worth the squeeze
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Re: Forget "Common" and Embrace the Dynamics of Foreign Languages!
« Reply #24 on: October 10, 2020, 08:15:13 AM »
I have been in parties where 2 PCs have not shared a common language and it has been painful to play. We much prefer having a Common or TradeTalk available, just to everyone in the party can communicate with each other.

Where Common is used, it works at one level, but I normally play that NPCs prefer it if you speak to them in their own language, maybe getting bonuses for using that language. But, Common is a good fallback.
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Re: Forget "Common" and Embrace the Dynamics of Foreign Languages!
« Reply #25 on: October 10, 2020, 09:07:14 AM »
IME, communication issues can be fun when they appear in small doses. As ongoing problems, they're more annoying than anything else. For a short while, I dabbled with more realistic languages, or severely limited whatever the "common" equivalent was but, in the end, realised it's there for a good reason.

Delete_me

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Re: Forget "Common" and Embrace the Dynamics of Foreign Languages!
« Reply #26 on: October 10, 2020, 07:16:13 PM »
I have been in parties where 2 PCs have not shared a common language and it has been painful to play. We much prefer having a Common or TradeTalk available, just to everyone in the party can communicate with each other.

In a Star Wars game, we had the opposite experience: we had a pacifist wookie who nobody but the murder droid could understand. The murder droid would constantly 'creatively translate' his messages. Out of character, we could all hear what the guy was saying and what the droid player was saying. It was hilarious.

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Re: Forget "Common" and Embrace the Dynamics of Foreign Languages!
« Reply #27 on: October 11, 2020, 07:40:22 AM »
In a Star Wars game, we had the opposite experience: we had a pacifist wookie who nobody but the murder droid could understand. The murder droid would constantly 'creatively translate' his messages. Out of character, we could all hear what the guy was saying and what the droid player was saying. It was hilarious.

 :) Brilliant, love it.
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Slipshot762

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Re: Forget "Common" and Embrace the Dynamics of Foreign Languages!
« Reply #28 on: October 20, 2020, 08:38:20 PM »
i always struggled with the concept of a common tongue in an rpg especially when so many racial languages were present, earlier editions liked to give every race or even subracial category its own language. i imagine in the real word latin or greek served as the basis for a common language; and i've used that in playing D6 fantasy on different quantum iterations of earth past, or in some cases assumed a common tongue (and even common currencies) was derived from atlantean. you find a 1000 year old temple with chests of gold coins in it, who minted them, for example? some say it doesnt matter, all that matters is that everyone wants to get them and melt them down and recast new ones with their own sigil or face on them.

eta
since i use D6 system language is governed by a skill, dice you roll, so even absent a concrete prior-era common language you can roll to see if you get the gist of what the other person says, so i guess its more an issue with iterations of d&d were you either have the language or don't.
« Last Edit: October 20, 2020, 08:40:15 PM by Slipshot762 »

Opaopajr

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Re: Forget "Common" and Embrace the Dynamics of Foreign Languages!
« Reply #29 on: October 22, 2020, 06:32:38 AM »
I keep "Common" as regional dominant language with allowances for patois and pidgin. Often in my Fantasy this means Human-Dominant, with young mortal demi-human-oid with their "Racial" tongue fused to this human "Common." So Halflings or Orcs might have "Halfling-Latin" or "Orcish-Chinese." Whereas elder races might have "Cormanthyran-Elvish" or "Morian-Dwarvish" and diversify from there if humans overlap upon their regional influence. So you could get an inversion from DemiOidRacial-HumanCommon to HumanCommon-DemiOidRacial, like Fulani-Semberian Cormanthyran (Elvish) instead of Lluiren-Fulani Halflingese.

Yes, I am here to oppress you.  ;D

It's basically a way to keep secrets and draw upon the exotic. But it can also work the other way around, too, so not just a penalty but a rapid way to seek commonality. Alignment Languages, Druidic, Thieves Cant, Trade Pidgin, et alia *can* transcend like pidgin & gestures across vast language gulfs and thus make fast allies in a strange land. And large linguistic foundations, like Latin or Cormanthyr, can leave mystic ancestral footprints (transcending time) AND form basis as a 'high language' (transcending spatial linguistic branching).
« Last Edit: October 22, 2020, 06:38:45 AM by Opaopajr »
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