Gaming and proficiency with language

[Jon_Dahl]

During one roleplaying weekend we had a foreign exchange student gaming with us so we had to play in English. Experience was short-lived and nice, but it did bring some challenges. E.g. Getting even a bit drunk severely dented any use of lingua franca and almost everybody (especially that German guy) started to yell a lot. For some reason people think that it will improve their English if they speak louder.

It relaxes your mind when you use your mother language and relaxed mind is essential when you do something creative. I've also noticed that grammar-nazism and linguist perfectionism are both traits of many roleplayers.

Would you feel comfortable gaming with someone who is not a native speaker or would you like to game in lingua franca?

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Our lingua franca is a curious mixture of German and English, even when playing with Germans exclusively. This is no doubt due to the fact that we use English rule books and nobody is like to translate rules terms.

RPGs employ a lot of specific terms, so the typical vocabulary used in a game is probably 20-30% English anyway.

We have had several sessions with English language guests over the years and didn't encounter any problem. Well, to be honest, some of those guests had peculiar ways of pronunciation, which did pose some problems for some of our players.

Our modus operandi was for me as GM to switch to English. The guest spoke English to, the other players switched according to situation. Most text addressed to me remained in German, anything specifically relevant to the guest was English, and I acted as some sort of interpreter.

I must remark that most of my regular players over the years had a pretty good commandment of the English language...

 

[Hand of Evil]

We created "comment cards" that had the phrase and its translations on them, stuff like: role to hit, what is your AC, the numbers from 1 to 20, etc. we saw it as a way to learn the phase in both languages.

 

[Fox Lee]

I probably would have a lot of trouble gaming with somebody I couldn't properly communicate with. Verbal communication is just too important to the way my group plays... grammar nazi or not (and I am), I just can't see it working out.

 

[Cor Azer]

I've never had a real opportunity to game with some who doesn't speak my native language (although there have been some thick accents), but as long as there's some sort of shared language, I think it's doable.

In fact I'd love to try it sometime, if only to practice my French and Spanish - I've always found a focused immersive conversation better for practice than generic "this is a ruler; this is a cat; peter has four blue balloons" type conversations.

 

[S'mon]

Would you feel comfortable gaming with someone who is not a native speaker or would you like to game in lingua franca?

I play a lot with non-native-speakers at the Meetup. IME native German speakers tend to be 100% fluent and comprehensible in English, French 99%, but I do have difficulty with understanding native Spanish speakers, who are probably the majority of non-Anglosphere foreigners at the Meetup. Haven't noticed that with Portuguese (usually Brazilian) speakers, though.

I don't know if the very striking German fluency is due to their superior education system, their ubermensch genetic superiority compared to us Brits (surely not), or because compared to the Romance languages German is very close to English in vocabulary & pronunciation, despite grammatical differences. Native English speakers like me tend to struggle over German grammar; maybe the looser style of English combined with familiar root phraseology makes English really easy for Germans.

 

[MoxieFu]

Many people I know who were born in and grew up in the US sound like English is their second language. Especially on discussion boards where writing skills are critical.

 

[Umbran]

. I've also noticed that grammar-nazism and linguist perfectionism are both traits of many roleplayers.

I've seen such only concerning the written word. Speaking face to face is a different animal - for one thing, it generally becomes obvious that there's a language barrier, which is not always as clear when you see writing online. For another, well, folks are more willing to be rude when the internet is between the author and reader, as compared to speaking face-to-face.

Would you feel comfortable gaming with someone who is not a native speaker or would you like to game in lingua franca?

I'm not functionally multi-lingual (I used to have a good grasp of French, but having not used it since high school, it's wasted away to nothing). I would be perfectly happy working with someone who wasn't so great with English, if they were a cool person and willing to be as patient as I was with the barrier.

 

[Storminator]

I used to game with a friend from Austria. The game was exclusively in English, because everyone at the table spoke that (our only common language). One session his friend Harry came over from Austria. Harry spoke German, so our GM took turns switching from English to German and back, and summarizing what was discussed in the other language at each switch.

In game, the bar scene started to go bad, and Harry started cussing some pirate out in German. Our GM turned to us and said, "uh, Harry says..." and I interrupted "I know what Harry said and I start to draw my knife."

PS

 

[Jan van Leyden]

I don't know if the very striking German fluency is due to their superior education system, their ubermensch genetic superiority compared to us Brits (surely not), or because compared to the Romance languages German is very close to English in vocabulary & pronunciation, despite grammatical differences. Native English speakers like me tend to struggle over German grammar; maybe the looser style of English combined with familiar root phraseology makes English really easy for Germans.

I guess it's more due to the peculiar subsample of the German population you're dealing with: people who have selected an English-language game as their hobby are bound to pick up some language skill along their way. And once we've mastered the pesky "th" the sound of English isn't to different to the music we're socialized with in our teens.

But as you've mastered exception-based games like 4e, exception-filled grammars like the German shouldn't be too hard for you.