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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 7974476" data-attributes="member: 6779310">I loved the chart for real modern languages in Champions/HSR 4e...And the similar one in Dragon Warriors.But when I'm running a typical fantasy game I'm glad that the language handling is usually abridged. I'm fluent in one language (English, comfortable with the Western US, Alaskan, and Western Canadian dialects), conversational in a second (ASL), used to be conversational in a third (Russian), have made efforts to study 3 more (Spanish, Japanese, Church Slavonic), dabbled in study of 3 others as well (Latin, Hebrew and Arabic)... I can order from the menu in Spanish, Russian, or Ukrainian, and have a decent idea of what I'm getting. I've also studied pronunciation but not the language itself (Italian, Haut Deutsch, French, Scots, Irish, Polish, Russian Church Slavonic, Ukrainian)... and pronunciation often renders French or Italian inteligible enough to get the gist.Plus I'm conversant in several dialects of BASIC, was at one point truly fluent in VAX Basic (able to execute code bitwise accurate using only an ascii chart, pencil, and copious graph paper - the final was closed book execution of code...), able to work in C/C++ for console-level to a basic level (sufficient to execute console code manually, never really got functional with GUI interfaces), Comfortable in console python. Dabbled in Logo. Found Hypercard difficult, but doable, and NewtScript wonderfully intelligible.I  am really glad that most games simplify language heavily. Because it's insanely convoluted in the real world.Hero System's 0-5 scale works really well, but it's overly complicated for when I'm playing a fantasy game, and having to remember which language is which, but in a Victorian to modern Earth, or close parallel with the same nations (EG: Champions setting, Space 1889, Deadlands, Castle Falkenstein etc), it's quite good for buy-in and verisimilitude, as modern education already makes us aware of their nations.Likewise, in Dragon Warriors, the human tongues have clear relationships... but not the non-human ones.I'll note also that many languages are essentially referred to by something other than the name the speakers use. Deutsch is normally called German by the English world, Po-Nemjecki in Russian, etc. Japanese is known in Japan as Nihongo (日本語).  So, while labeling the language of the local elves as "elven" may be mildly unrealistic, it's much simpler, and unless they've been dominated by the elves, local humans are unlikely to care what the locals call it..</blockquote>

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