Correspondence between real and fantasy languages

[Roman]

I thought it would be kind of nice to have fantasy languages in my world patterned after real world languages. The idea is that for the purposes of flavour each fantasy language soundsl ike (or perhaps is even written like) a real world language. What real world languages would you suggest for which fantasy languages?

I was thinking something along the lines of:

Common: English
Elven: French
Dwarven: German
Draconic: Russian?

Hmm, any suggestions for further language correspondences or suggestions why the above should be changed and how?

 

[BRP2]

I did this too, makes it really easy/cool to name NPCs and cities.

 

[Kwitchit]

Likewise, but I do it differently:
Common: English
Elf: Welsh
Dwarven: Russian
Gnomish: Yiddish
Halfling: i don't know, maybe a thieves' cant
Draconic: Latin
Orc: ? (I don't want to offend anyone)

 

[Phlebas]

Impierial (Common): English
Elf: Gaelic
Dwarven: German
Gnomish: Dutch
Orc: Klingon! (what else)
Halfling: Probably something weird like Finnish - Halflings IMC are from 'somewhere else' and so shouldn't have a language like anything else

I have several regional languages for humans, the northern are more scandinavian based, the south-western more arabic / indian depending on how far south you go.

Hmm just realised i don't have any 'Romance' languages in the system. If I maybe make Draconic = latin then I could have lizardfolk speaking spanish dialects? Saragossa does sound like its pronounced easier with a forked tongue
(Thats more a comment on my language skills than the language btw)

Naming cities is now easy than ever thanks to mapquest or Mapit etc
Type in country, zoom into random area and pick name from tiny village. Done

 

[mythusmage]

It's well known that Professor Tolkien derived Quenya from Finnish. Less well known is the fact he based Dark Tongue (Orcish if you like) on Sumerian.

For a real old feel for your languages you could try the following ...

Elven: Proto Frisian

Gnomish; Frankish (ancestor to French)

Halfling: Saxon

Orcish: Proto Soumi

Goblin: Proto Etruscan

There are those in the world making community who invent languages of their own, I'll look a few of them up and post the link here.

 

[AbeTheGnome]

Common: Don't use it.
Elven: Gaelic
Dwarven: German
Gnomish: Hebrew
Halfling: usually, they use the regional language, but they have a cant of their own
Half-Elves: French
Orcish: Slavic with a heavy smattering of German (Sorban); also Russian
Centaurs: Turkic
Fire Genasi: Arabic
Draconic: my dragons don't speak

 

[theredrobedwizard]

Common: Um, I guess English, since that's what the PCs speak.
Elven: Gaelic/Welsh fusion.
Dwarven: German
Halfling: Arabic
Gnomish: Spanish
Orcish: Russian
Draconic: Latin
Giant: Hungarian/Magyar

For the elemental languages, I assume they're fairly alien, but in the few instances where a creature only speaks an elemental language, I tend to ham it up. Below are the actual spoken words of various summoned creatures.

Earth Creature: Rock rock rock, gravel, stone, rock...
Air Creature: Whoosh, wind-noises, gust...
Fire Creature: Burn, flames, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire...
Water Creature: Wave, tide, rain, water, water, wave...

For some reason, elementals are poke-beasts, appearantly.

-TRRW

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Dwarven: German

Was soll das heißen????

 

[kigmatzomat]

I use bablefish a lot for place names, titles, etc.

I like russian, particularly intentionally mispronounced russian, for draconic languages. I've used portuguese and swedish for remote areas. I've also dipped into some SCA (society for creative anachronism) site for information on mongol words.

 

[prosfilaes]

Hmm, any suggestions for further language correspondences or suggestions why the above should be changed and how?

I'd keep in mind the real-life relations of the languages. Most of the European languages, except for Basque, Finnish and Hungarian and possibly a couple other minor languages here and there, are historically closely related. Most of them can be broken down into three groups--Romance, Germanic and Slavic. All Romance languages descend from Latin, and hence should be closely related in the game world, and descend from any language that is closely related to Latin. Germanic languages, likewise, should be closely related. English has basically a heart of Germanic with a huge amount of adopted French and Latin.

To me, making the elves speak French says a lot about the relation of the elves to the humans. Making the dwarves speak German again says a lot about the relation of the dwarves to the humans. Making the elves speak Gaelic, especially if the dwarves speak German, says that the elves aren't a big cultural source for Common.

Gnomish: Yiddish
Halfling: i don't know, maybe a thieves' cant
Draconic: Latin

Draconic being Latin is a nice touch. It means that there's been quite a bit of borrowing, especially from the academic/intellectual sector, from Draconic into English, which is quite likely if Draconic is used as a magical language.

Having the gnomes speak Yiddish seems like a bad choice for most people, though. Yiddish is written in the Hebrew alphabet, which isn't easy to pick up. (The Russian and Greek alphabets are a lot easier to casually pick up.) Yiddish isn't that far from German, which makes sense if the dwarves or someone else speaks German, but if no one does, and you don't speak Yiddish, you might as well go with German.

Gnomish: Spanish
Draconic: Latin

Is there are a connection between Gnomish and Draconic?

Elven: Gaelic
Dwarven: German
Gnomish: Hebrew
Halfling: usually, they use the regional language, but they have a cant of their own
Half-Elves: French
Orcish: Slavic with a heavy smattering of German (Sorban); also Russian

Giving the Half-Elves their own language definitely says things about the setting. Especially one completely unrelated to Elvish. How did the Orcs end up with a language with heavy smatterings of Dwarvish?

Gutenberg is a nice source for some stuff. There's books on Chinook jargon, Lau (a Polynesian language), Gypsie, Australian languages, Heve (an Indian language), Chippewa, Mutsun (in Spanish), Latin, and a number of other things, many of which are good for really alien languages.