D&D General Languages suck in D&D.

[Jensaarai]

PERSONALLY... I don't think a 10,000 year old life span would result in your language being the same from your youth to the end of your life.

I think it'd wind up really freaking weird. Like this:


View attachment 399041

This is 100% valid, and also absolutely cursed in the best way

Maybe Galadriel was throwing all the slang built up over her long life, but she's old enough that the "slang" still just sounds mysterious and ethereal.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Me and Tolkien, over here, can not be the only linguistics nerds in Fantasy.

Will every table use it? No. But most tables ignore encumbrance and that's still in the book. Most tables stick with Common regardless of how flowery or over-dramatic their characters get with what is supposed to be a basic trade language which can't handle more complex or expressive material.

Just like encumbrance, most people ignore that.

Well. Let them ignore a -better- language structure, too. And have a better language structure for the linguistics nerds like me and JRR.

Hell. If D&D core rulebooks eliminated what "Most people ignore" from the pages it'd be a 30 page booklet.

It’s not about being a linguistic nerd. I’m a linguistic nerd, too. I could talk for hours about how interesting it is that Cent and Hundred are actually cognates, and how in languages descended from Proto-Indo-European, some languages that have a “k” sound instead have an “h” sound in their cognates (“Cynic” and “Hound” are also cognates). Or how about half of the English vocabulary come ultimately from Latin, because William the Bastard conquered England in 1066 and the language of the elite slowly changed the language of the common people. That is all fascinating to me. But I also don’t think it has much applicability at the table. There are bits and pieces you could include to make the world feel more alive. Like maybe there’s a country where the common people are humans but the elite are elves, so people use a lot more elvish words. That could be an interesting bit of worldbuilding. But I think regional languages, especially ones accurate to the Middle Ages where communication is much more difficult than it is in the modern world, would not a fun game make.

 

[Voadam]

I never got into the deep lore on Tolkien’s languages. I know he was a linguist and made full fantasy languages for fun but how many were actually in the Lord of the Rings? Dark Speech and elvish and dwarvish. Anything else? Were there variations of elvish? Different human ones? I don’t really remember anything besides those few.

 

[Alzrius]

Were there variations of elvish?

Yes, at least two: Quenya and Sindarin.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Glad you're so well-informed about the community that you can make so such bold, sweeping statements as if they were objective truth. I can only speak for myself and my group, but, I'm not the only one at my table who sees the value in more realistic language rules. A recent article in Level Up's Gate Pass Gazeteer even featured a variety of more granular rules for language in 5e. Your assumptions about others are just that.

And an article about an optional rule in a 3rd party game somehow demonstrates that the average player is a linguistics fan and always finds realistic simulationism super cool and fun?

If I spent 10 minutes at my table stopping the game in the middle of DMing to explain how the Elvish term “Bryyg” I just made up is actually a cognate of the Goblin war cry “Bree Yark,” because both their languages are descended from Sylvan, except when the Elf says “Bryyg” they’re using the original meaning of “I surrender,” which is interesting because it’s the opposite of the Goblins’ use. And the Hobgoblin “Brarkon,” is more similar in meaning to the Elvish term, but they use it as a curse, meaning “Coward/Person who surrenders” . . . my players would ask me if we could get back to the game instead of listening to me infodumping about cognates in made up languages.

 

[Steampunkette]

It’s not about being a linguistic nerd. I’m a linguistic nerd, too. I could talk for hours about how interesting it is that Cent and Hundred are actually cognates, and how in languages descended from Proto-Indo-European, some languages that have a “k” sound instead have an “h” sound in their cognates (“Cynic” and “Hound” are also cognates). Or how about half of the English vocabulary come ultimately from Latin, because William the Bastard conquered England in 1066 and the language of the elite slowly changed the language of the common people. That is all fascinating to me. But I also don’t think it has much applicability at the table. There are bits and pieces you could include to make the world feel more alive. Like maybe there’s a country where the common people are humans but the elite are elves, so people use a lot more elvish words. That could be an interesting bit of worldbuilding. But I think regional languages, especially ones accurate to the Middle Ages where communication is much more difficult than it is in the modern world, would not a fun game make.

Oh, no... you misunderstand me:

I don't want to make it impossible to communicate. Just slightly more difficult without the right languages -or- a broad linguistic understanding that lacks the nuance of local languages...

Instead of being utterly handwaved as "Everyone speaks common and no languages actually matter 'til you find the puzzle in a language that I forgot to check to see if any of you read and now the puzzle is impossible and we're going to sit here for three hours of trial and error unless I get so frustrated I just give you the answer."

The intent is not to perfectly mimic real world languages. No more than the intent is to bring a sword to the table to hit your DM with any time you swing on an orc.

Just to be more realistic than "Common" and a bunch of fantasy race languages that grow every time someone makes a new player race for some splatbook.

Yes, at least two: Quenya and Sindarin.

Technically Black Speech is also an Elven tongue, since it was created, specifically, to be used by Orcs who are, themselves, twisted elves.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And an article about an optional rule in a 3rd party game somehow demonstrates that the average player is a linguistics fan and always finds realistic simulationism super cool and fun?

If I spent 10 minutes at my table stopping the game in the middle of DMing to explain how the Elvish term “Bryyg” I just made up is actually a cognate of the Goblin war cry “Bree Yark,” because both their languages are descended from Sylvan, except when the Elf says “Bryyg” they’re using the original meaning of “I surrender,” which is interesting because it’s the opposite of the Goblins’ use. And the Hobgoblin “Brarkon,” is more similar in meaning to the Elvish term, but they use it as a curse, meaning “Coward/Person who surrenders” . . . my players would ask me if we could get back to the game instead of listening to me infodumping about cognates in made up languages.

Glad you've switched to talking about your own experiences, and not applying them to others.

 

[Alzrius]

Technically Black Speech is also an Elven tongue, since it was created, specifically, to be used by Orcs who are, themselves, twisted elves.

Yeah, no. Or rather, it's complicated.

The issue of how the orcs were created was one that Tolkien kept coming back to over the years, because he effectively wrote himself into a corner where their origin was concerned. That was because it was a fairly important point in his legendarium that evil could not truly create anything; it could only twist and corrupt what had already been made. But he also wanted there to be hordes of evil beings who could act as foot soldiers in evil armies, acting as fodder that the heroes could cut down without raising questions as to whether they were beings would souls (and so could potentially be redeemed, which was a theme meant to be focused on the likes of Gollum).

The result was that Tolkien came up with numerous ideas about the origin of the orcs, but never settled on one, which means that them being corrupted elves is just one idea out of several that he contemplated but never fully committed to.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Glad you've switched to talking about your own experiences, and not applying them to others.

Do you think that most players value realism so much? Do you think that most players love linguistics and would enjoy modeling the D&D language system off of the Middle Ages?

 

[occam]

I never got into the deep lore on Tolkien’s languages. I know he was a linguist and made full fantasy languages for fun but how many were actually in the Lord of the Rings? Dark Speech and elvish and dwarvish. Anything else? Were there variations of elvish? Different human ones? I don’t really remember anything besides those few.

Only Quenya and Sindarin, the two main Elven tongues, were well-developed; Sindarin, the "common" tongue of Elves in Middle-earth by the Third Age, being moreso.

There are tiny bits of other languages that show up: Khuzdul (the Dwarven tongue), the Black Speech, the language of the Rohirrim and other tongues of the Northmen, etc. But none of them were fully-developed languages.

Tolkien also developed some vocabulary for Westron, but I don't believe any of that appears in the main sources (Hobbit/LotR/Silmarillion), since the conceit was that all Westron was "translated" to English.