Common Tongue

[F5]

I've been playing with variant language rules, suing a "tree" of related languages. I'll try and attach an .rtf file of a partial version of the tree I use. The basic premise is that the first languages were Celestial and Draconic, and most all other languages decended from them. Most languages are very closely related to each other, and so they're pretty easy to learn.

Basically, the rules work like this: everyone is fluent in their native language. They can make themselves understood in any language that's one "jump" away from their native language, but can't express complex ideas. Taking ranks in any language that is one "jump" away from your native language is considered a class skill for you, and fluency can be bought with one rank. Any other language is a cross-class skill, and buying ranks in that language gives you basic conversation, as if it was related to your native language. One more rank gives you full fluency, and basic conversation in all languages one "jump" away from the new language.

This system makes it easy to learn dozens of languages, since most of them are so closely related. It's a little more plausible than a "common language" that everyone happens to speak, but it has about the same effect: it's not hard to talk to other characters in the game. I can still throw in an oddball language (beholder-ish is not particularly related to anything else, for example) that no one can speak if I want language barrier issues to factor into an encounter, but it's easy to talk to most commonly-encountered people, and I find the game moves along better that way.

 

[Ravellion]

I think there is. For Common and Elvish, you know those languages, and are fluent in them. For the Dwarven "knows enough to get by" aspect, Bluff would be appropriate, possibly with a cirumstance modifier. For the "know-three-words/phrases" aspect, Innuendo works fine.

Not elegant, and not terribly realistic, but mechanically sound and within the system.

No, because with enough ranks in Bluff/innuendo you'd be able to speak ALL languages to a certain extent, which isn't true.

Rav

 

[Maerdwyn]

(A couple things before my take on language. First, I give characters a few extra skill points for background skills. Also, I use the concept of a "winter phase" from Pendragon to cover training and other non-adventuring activities.)

I use regional common languages, which are known and spoken by all of the sentient beings in a particular area, be they human, orc, etc. Some of the very ancient races, like dragons and fey have their own languages, which in some cases for the basis of the local common tongue.

No extra languages at the start, although an unlimited number of your starting skill points and background skill points may be spent on language acquisition during character creation. Thereafter, only two points per winter phase may be spent on languages

Wizards, Clerics, and Aristocrats gain Literacy in their first language free. Characters of all other classes must spend two skill points to become literate in their first language.

For all additional languages:

1 rank gets you decent understanding, "campspeak" and for phonetic languages, enough to read relatively simple passages of the language *very* slowly (if you are literate in your first language)

2 ranks gets you good understanding, passable verbal communication, and ability to read and write the language if it's phoneticly written and you are literate in your first language.

3 ranks gets you good verbal communications, including appropriate use of idioms etc, but you still have a foreign accent.
You must have access to someone who has at least 3 ranks in this language in order to progress to this level of fluency.

4 ranks in a language language allows you to speak as a native, but you must have access to someone with at least 4 ranks in the language to reach this level of fluency.

Learning to read and write a non-phonetic language unrelated to your first language cost 2 skill points

 

[Olive]

what i do is this:

1 skill point gets you the ability to speak a language.
another gets you the ability to read it.
some languages share alphabets.
there is no common tounge, but there is a educated person's language which a lot of people know., at elast in the region that the PCs are in now.

the idea of language groups etc. is nice, but not this campaign.

what are the KoK language rules like?

 

[darkbard]

the alternate KoK rules are, in a nutshell: each character gets a number of language points equal to 1 + int modifier [x4] at first level plus 1 + int modifier for each level gained. these language points are in addition to skill points and replace the speak language skill. s/he automatically has spoken fluency in from 1 -3 languages [based upon background], equal to +10 ranks in the language. then, on a point-per-rank basis, the character buys literacy and/or additional languages. each rank along the scale indicates what level of fluency the character has both in terms of spoken ability and written ability [assuming the character has purchased ranks separately for this skill for each language spoken]. the scale goes up to +12, the sphere of master orators, great poets, etc.

 

[Samothdm]

Slightly off topic maybe but I think it's related:

Why do most campaign settings have dozens of human languages, but only "Elvish" and "Dwarven"? Why would elves or dwarves on one side of a continent speak the exact same language as the elves and dwarves on the other side? That doesn't make sense to me.

I have different languages of elven, dwarven, etc. just like I have different ones for my humans. It makes the "racial language" bonuses a moot point, so I let players select other languages to fill up those racial language bonuses with other languages based on the languages that are commonly spoken in the area where they were born.

I have a pretty extensive language tree, by continent, listing which languages are spoken in each country of that continent, and which of those languages have become the default "common" tongue for that continent. The "common" tongue is actually not really like common at all in my world. I treat it more like Latin in that it's the speech used by the nobility and the clergy for politics and trade. An average 1st level commoner living in a particular country in my world would not speak the "common" tongue because it's of no use to him. He would speak the language that his parents spoke, which is most likely his country's language (using a real world example, during the Middle Ages, an English peasant wouldn't know how to speak common and wouldn't really be able to speak with and understand a French or Spanish transplant into his country. But, he'd be able to speak with his neighbors with no problem whatsoever).

The elves and dwarves in my world live amongst the humans so they may also speak these "country languages".

 

[randomling]

Samothdm:

I agree with you completely. (By the way, I'm an undergraduate studying linguistics.)

I'm in the middle of creating my homebrew, and I want to handle languages in a similar way: elves in different regions of the country will speak different dialects or even languages, just as humans, halflings or dwarves will. IMC, there is a "unifying Elvish/Dwarvish tongue" -- and a unifying human tongue, Temeric. But none of these are really used in everyday talk. They're all effectively dead languages, used only for religious and ceremonial purposes, like Latin used to be. The "lingua franca" in my current setting will be Cellsori (a human tongue, the official language of the country), but that's because it's a human-dominated area. In the more northerly parts of the country, the local language is a dwarvish one, even for humans.

Choice of language rests with the people in power. I guess that in the standard D&D setting, humans dominate: elves, dwarves, and the rest are outsiders. IMC, different races dominate in different areas (though my campaigns are likely to start in a human dominated area).

I like the various "ranking" systems for languages that have been presented, but I'd want to keep languages learned in childhood and languages learned as an adult separate (adults generally can't achieve the same level of linguistic competence as young children). I guess I'd keep true fluency for your mother tongue and perhaps one other language, then use a modified version of the ranking system for language learning after the age of 12 or so.

Just my random thoughts!

 

[333 Dave]

I have a language tree for New Dawn that is pretty good. There are several 'base languages' which have their own off shoots (except kel-zaran, there are no kel-zaran subtongues). There is one language that is both an offshoot of Old Taggothian (the common of ND) and Najamu (sort of like Oriental Common, if that makes any sense). All in all I like the system.
And of course, Draconic is unpronouncable to mortal tongues, unless you cast a spell that lets you do so (aptly named Dragon's Tongue) or are in a Dragon Cult. But now I'm giving too much away...

 

[s/LaSH]

IMC, which is set in medieval Europe, every PC speaks Latin - two as native speakers, the elf for religious reasons, and the mage for educational reasons. Latin is the common tongue of just about everywhere...

Except when they went to Africa, and only the mage spoke Arabic, which was the common tongue for even more area than Latin. So yeah, I enforced that language barrier thing. It's easier to do in the real world, though...

Elves and dwarves? There are several (many) nations of them. Although I think one player has 'elvish' written on his sheet, some of them speak different languages to others. I think 'elvish' in this case would refer to Hochdeutsch (German), or some root language that hasn't died out yet because of elven lifespans. That really governs from Belgium to Budapest, in my setting. But each area has its own dialect or full language; the Frankish elves have their own branch, distinct from the Swedish elves or the Irish elves.

Then again, I'm not certain of Arabic as a common tongue (it seemed handy at the time, is all). Does anyone know whether Arabic is a language as uniform as English, or if there are pronounced dialects?

(Linguistics is fun.)

 

[Maerdwyn]

Then again, I'm not certain of Arabic as a common tongue (it seemed handy at the time, is all). Does anyone know whether Arabic is a language as uniform as English, or if there are pronounced dialects?

(Linguistics is fun.)

If you want really absurd (to the point of uselessness) level of detail, let me know - and let me know what years your campaign is set in. Short version:

There are both verbal and (to a lesser extent) written regional variations in Arabic, and in the medieval period, Turkish and Persian (and their dialects), as well as Berber, were more dominant than Arabic in many places. If you are looking for a lingua franca for the area, however Arabic should work just fine.