Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="randomling" data-source="post: 703216" data-attributes="member: 8432">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 &quot;unifying Elvish/Dwarvish tongue&quot; -- 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 &quot;lingua franca&quot; 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&amp;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 &quot;ranking&quot; 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!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="randomling, post: 703216, member: 8432"] 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! [/QUOTE]

Verification