Correspondence between real and fantasy languages

[MonkeyDragon]

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

Pretty much all of the monsters in my world are pokebeasts. Minotaurs, for example, speak Giant, but if no one speaks Giant in the party, what they hear is "Minotaur, minotaur minotaur."

I've recently started assigning real world languages to different regions of my homebrew for varying human languages. Not much rhyme or reason has been applied, other than the way the words sound. The only non-human race to have its own language is the elves, since they have a country. Elves speak latin.

 

[SkidAce]

Ahh, the beauty of independant yet congruent invention....I love RPGers.

Elvish = French
Dwarvish = German
Titan = Greek
Celestial or Draconic = Latin (in 15 years never got around to deciding which, or both?)
Human = English, for the main kingdoms, Spanish and Japanese for countries across the wilderness.

 

[AbeTheGnome]

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?

half-elves speak french because they've basically been romanized... think Gaulish Celts. Orcs borrow from Dwarven because they've been conquered by the dwarves (until recently) in one part of the world. They also use the Dwarven alphabet (the ones that can actually write), having none of their own.

 

[Jesus_marley]

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

Word of advice... don't do this with the Province of Newfoundland. Somehow a fantasy world should not have villages and towns with names like Dildo, Dark Hole, Conception Bay, Joe Bat's Arm, Virgin Arm, Cow's Head, Come by Chance, Blow me Down, and Nick's Nose. I kid you not... these are real places.

As for the language of orcs? Pig latin!!

 

[Delta]

Great thread. For me, it's important that the languages used are available in Babelfish for quick translations by the DM. What I use:

Humans - English (Common)
Halflings - Dutch
Dwarves - German
Elves - Italian
Orcs - Russian (even though I can't pronounce it)

For magic script I've always been fond of dense mathematical writing.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

Draconic = Akkadian

 

[Nifft]

IMC, there is no Common. There are Mortal Tongues and Languages of Power.

2000 years ago, the First Empire fell. They spoke Latin. Latin is still the language of education (or pretension, depending on whom you ask).

The default kingdom is Luxoria, which is a LG Monarchy where the humans speak French.
Nearby are the Free Islands where people speak Spanish.
Farther to the south there is a mountainous region where people speak Italian.

Draconic is Greek. Thus, the names for many arcane spells are Greek and/or Latin.

There is a human vampire who seems to speak Russian. He's old.

Celestial is Hebrew or Aramaic (I steal names from both), while Infernal is pretty much the same, with some Sumerian thrown in.

Dwarven is just a Scottish accent. Everybody knows that!

For Elven I use one of the Drow dictionaries. Makes things creepy.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Roman]

Great posts everyone!

I must say that I had not thought of using the relationships between real world languages to highlight the relationships between the fantasy races/peoples. It is a good idea though and I will definitely ponder on it.

Side Note: It does seem that there is overwhelming consensus on Dwarven = German, which I agree with due to the sounds. Also, very old proto-germanic language apparently used runes for writing and that is what I would imagine the dwarves to use too.


To Kae'Yoss:

Was soll das heißen????

Das bedeutet nichts besonders! Das heisst nur, dass die deutsche Sprache aenlich wie 'Dwarven' hallte, weil es ziemlich stark ist. Es sieht aus, dass die meisten Leute hier etwas desgleichen denken. Es spricht aber nichts gegen Deutsch. Das finde ich interessant und angenehmen zu lernen.

Entschuldigung fuer mein schlechtes Deutsch und tschuess,

Roman

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Side Note: It does seem that there is overwhelming consensus on Dwarven = German, which I agree with due to the sounds. Also, very old proto-germanic language apparently used runes for writing and that is what I would imagine the dwarves to use too.

Eich sahn dir, ich kann Zwerje nedd leide, onn fenns e Frechhäd, gesahd ze grehn dadd mir uhs wie die Kieslutscher anheere!

Dadd ess alles annare als Bodda off da Schmier!

 

[hong]

Eich sahn dir, ich kann Zwerje nedd leide, onn fenns e Frechhäd, gesahd ze grehn dadd mir uhs wie die Kieslutscher anheere!

Dadd ess alles annare als Bodda off da Schmier!

WHAT DID YOU SAY ABOUT MY FATHER?