Foreign languages for DMing

[Anthtriel]

Has anyone of you ever used foreign languages for effect in RPGs? Recently, I thought of the possibility, and I am interested if anyone has experience to share.

I am German, so everyone in my group is fluent in German and English. We usually play in German, with some rare English sessions, but we never considered using both languages at once, to model two different game languages.
For example, making German the equivalent of Common, and English the equivalent of Elvish, or seperating the game world, or the game society into two languages, with the PC as some of the few who can speak both of them.

In addition I speak Japanese, and none of my players do, so I thought of having an alien nation, possibly even another race, such as Hobgoblins, who communicate in Japanese, so that the players don't understand it, but realize that it is really another language and not just some random syllables strung together.

All of us also know some Latin, but nowhere near enough to communicate in it. I considered using it as the language of some ancient empire, but some of them are significantly more proficient in Latin than I am, so I'm afraid I will make stupid mistakes.

 

[Gez]

It reminds me of a few satirical gaming stories in French where English was used "archaic Enochian" and was the language used for magic items.

Like "I found a Runestaff of Curse and a Scroll of Stupidity!"
"What do they do?"
"I don't know, we'd need a scholar to identify them."

 

[kensanata]

In a group I recently joined the players all speak Swiss German. Whenever they speak in character, they switch to High German. It's strange but it seems to work because it gives your mind a little jolt and officially declares things as in-game.

 

[shilsen]

I'm multilingual, with a couple of the languages (Bengali and Hindi) being ones none of my players speak, so when I need to have an NPC using a language that nobody in the PC group understands, I'll often switch to one of those.

 

[Jack7]

We use English for most game communications, but since our game milieu is set in the Byzantine empire, circa 800 AD we also use Latin and Greek, mainly for military communications or governmental communications and for codes.

Most of the written communications are in Greek, a very few in Latin.

Coded communications from the government or military are also in Greek or Latin and have to be decoded and then translated.

Occasionally they will encounter things written in Farsi or in some African language, Frankish, Syriac, etc. which they will need to translate for themselves, but these are usually very simple written communications or engravings, unless I want to confuse or mislead them purposely.

Once they discovered part of a manuscript which appeared to be a Syriac/Aramaic copy of part of a gospel text, but written underneath it in faint letters which had been overtraced and running obliquely to the script was a coded communications in Greek about a movement of Persian troops who were threatening to invade Egypt (similar to the palimpsest of Archimedes). It was fun watching them figure out what it was and then try to recover the coded communications from the part of the underlying text they could scan and read.

As for modern games my players often have to translate things they intercept which are in German, French, Arabic, etc. depending on scenario oir mission.

 

[Snapdragyn]

I played in a game (English-speaking) where one player started speaking German when were fighting some kobolds and his character was trying to negotiate with them in Draconic. When my character (typical 'dumb brute' barbarian) started copying his, I played it out by repeating what I could manage (& mangle) of what he'd said at the table. The DM then had the German-speaking player translate whatever I'd just said (if anything) & had the kobolds react accordingly - good fun!

 

[Gulla]

We play in Norwegian, but use English as "Common". This makes it obvious when we speak a crude trade language, but after a year or so we dropped it since the characters all used quite a bit of skill points in languages so it was very uncommon to resort to Common

Håkon

 

[kenobi65]

In the Arcanis game world, the Coryani Empire is roughly analogous to the Roman Empire. For my Living Arcanis cleric, I use (admittedly pidgin) Latin as verbal components for spells.

 

[Urbannen]

I will sometimes use bits of languages I know for color, such as to mimic the sound of an unfamiliar language or for the casting of spells. It didn't work well when I played with a Spaniard and a German, but now everyone's American. One kind of gets my Spanish...

The party sorcerer cast charm monster on a drow priestess who subsequently escaped. She currently has a slay living spell prepared with his name on it: "Kiaransalee, os ruego a vuestra merced que le peguéis a mi enemigo Mélico el hechizero y arranquéis la vida de su cuerpo desgraciado."

I don't know if Spanish is properly the language of profane clerical spells, but it's what I've got.

 

[wingsandsword]

I've seen Latin used for Celestial, German used for Dwarven, Japanese used for Drow, Klingon used for Orc, and French used for Elven.