A Common problem.

[Sunseeker]

Of course, many campaigns really stay in one region or kingdom, and different languages don't matter as much.

heh

Sure, in which case the language doesn't matter for anything other than a little fluff(which is all I'm really looking for, giving the humans a little more fluff).

Never really bothered me. I always thought of language issues as a very occasional plot injection, and over-using language just tended to create frustration. To me, having a common language is just another bit of "grease" in the proverbial engine to keep things ticking over, and Im happy with that.

Of course, I'm not arguing that point. I'm just saying humans should have a linguistic level of fluff like most other races do, even if everyone still speaks Esperanto at the table.

 

[Mattachine]

Also, why would only humans have the multiple languages? Shouldn't the wood elves of one region speak a different language than the wood elves of another?

I can see the reasoning for having multiple human languages. Some campaign settings come with a bunch (Greyhawk, for instance), and then also "Common". In such settings, Common was always pegged out as an inferior and limited language . . . and that has fallen by the wayside as the editions have moved on.

 

[pemerton]

I really enjoyed the way Kingdoms of Kalamar handled language.

You get your region for free, Then other languages you buy with special language points and I do believe that you are limited to how many languages by your intelligence modifier.

In my experience, most RPGs make multi-lingualism far to expensive in PC build.

In the real world, people who live in mulit-lingual parts of the world grow up speaking the requisite range of languages whether they are stupid or clever. (In Kenya, for example, fluency in 4 languages - Swahili, English, Kikuyu, and one's own tribal language, or Somali if one is a refugee from across the border - is pretty typical.)

And there is also the fact that a more languages a person knows, the easier it is to learn further ones - whereas intelligence limits push in the opposite direction to this.

So if the game is going to go mulitlingual, it needs to handle this properly. (Personally, I'm not too fussed either way. Even when I have used multi-lingualism, it has been nothing like the real world in terms of linguistic diversity, because it becomes too hard to track and be bothered with.)

 

[Sunseeker]

Also, why would only humans have the multiple languages? Shouldn't the wood elves of one region speak a different language than the wood elves of another?

I can see the reasoning for having multiple human languages. Some campaign settings come with a bunch (Greyhawk, for instance), and then also "Common". In such settings, Common was always pegged out as an inferior and limited language . . . and that has fallen by the wayside as the editions have moved on.

Certainly two large and different kingdoms of elves, even of the same type, may speak differen't languages. My main point is that humans don't have a language to themselves AT ALL, and they should. Each race should have a default language of it's own, additional, variant or national languages can be added as a setting calls for them.

 

[Minigiant]

I actually think of all races, humans would the race have more than one language.

The other races stereotypically condense their entire race into one area and rarely isolate themselves form others of their kind. All the wood elves live near each other and they are always in contacts with the other elves. Orcs are always running into each other. Dwarves all live in friendly kingdoms.

But humans are natural explorer and adaptable. They could break off and have communities everywhere that develop many languages.

So it my games, Common is not the language of humans. They have the language for their regional human kingdom. One for each area. Common is adventurer speak. "heal me." "kill the caster" "Stop. A trap is ahead.".

 

[Elf Witch]

In my experience, most RPGs make multi-lingualism far to expensive in PC build.

In the real world, people who live in mulit-lingual parts of the world grow up speaking the requisite range of languages whether they are stupid or clever. (In Kenya, for example, fluency in 4 languages - Swahili, English, Kikuyu, and one's own tribal language, or Somali if one is a refugee from across the border - is pretty typical.)

And there is also the fact that a more languages a person knows, the easier it is to learn further ones - whereas intelligence limits push in the opposite direction to this.

So if the game is going to go mulitlingual, it needs to handle this properly. (Personally, I'm not too fussed either way. Even when I have used multi-lingualism, it has been nothing like the real world in terms of linguistic diversity, because it becomes too hard to track and be bothered with.)

I don't have my Kalamar books handy. Most of my stuff is in storage and that is driving me crazy.

But I don't recall it being that expensive to learn new languages the language skill points were separate then the other skill points.

What you are saying about people being multilingual may be true now but it wasn't always so. A peasant living in small hamlet in France is not going to speak English, German, or Italian. He will speak his language and maybe know some Latin from going to church.

Now someone living in a big city that has trade may pick up some languages and educated wealthy people may speak other languages.

I like a game that reflects this and I often use different languages in my campaigns I have never found it to complicated to keep track off.

I would love to see this introduced in 5E maybe as an optional rule for people like me who like this little bit of verisimilitude.

 

[hamstertamer]

I think that is assumed that common tongue is the human tongue. Do to human domination of the land and diplomacy/trade to the other fair races (elves, dwarves ,etc.) it has become the commonly used one. Most D&D games and medieval fantasy worlds assume a human-centric worldview.

 

[Alan Shutko]

Also, why would only humans have the multiple languages? Shouldn't the wood elves of one region speak a different language than the wood elves of another?

Languages change by generations. A race that has a very long lifespan would tend to keep the language the same longer. Perhaps different elven regions speak in dialects (i.e., Québec vs Paris, or Mexico vs Spain) but they'd be close enough to get by. As long as all the elves had a reasonably common background (as they do in many settings, like Mystara) that would be fairly reasonable.

 

[Rogue Agent]

This pissed me off to no end about Stargate. Uncharted worlds? Alien races? No problem, everyone speaks English here!

Ultimately, it's unavoidable: The story of "learning the alien language" looks pretty much identical every time you do it. So doing it more than once on a TV show is going to be boring; and it's also going to chew up narrative time so that everything else on the TV show also suffers.

 

[Elf Witch]

Ultimately, it's unavoidable: The story of "learning the alien language" looks pretty much identical every time you do it. So doing it more than once on a TV show is going to be boring; and it's also going to chew up narrative time so that everything else on the TV show also suffers.

Which is why they did it.

In one of the novels they try to explain that if you go through a Stargate that has a working DOD at each end it puts some kind of language nanobots in your blood stream sort of what the Tardis in Dr Who does now.