Help me design my medieval/Renaissance, alternate earth campaign world
Turjan said:1.1 Germanic Languages
Norwegian (this consists actually of two languages, but nevermind)
Swedish
Danish
Icelandic
English
Dutch
German
Jiddish
You forgot the following:
Frisian
Sachsenisch
Franconian
Bayerner
Swabische
Faro
Scots (not Gaelic--Scots)
etc.
Most of these survive as distinct languages to the present day.
Also, surviving material from the 14th century makes it plain that people from different parts of England had distinct trouble understanding each other. (I posted a quote from Caxton relating one incident).
1.4. Greek
Well, Greek
Again wrong. There would be at least three spoken Attic Greek languages, one Liturgical Greek language, so-called "ancient" Greek, and one Doric Greek language. In the present day, we have one Attic Greek language, liturgical Greek, "ancient" Greek, and a rapidly dying-out Doric Greek language. A century ago, the other Attic Greek language could still be found.
In a situation like this I would suggest moving away from the standard approach to languages used in D&D. It was quite common for people to have knewledge of a smattering of different languages, with such a myriad mixing of cultures. Instead of worrying about fluency, I would suggest modeling language use as an actual skill, rather than making use of its current psuedo-skill status. You could assign each character a native-tongue and use skill checks for understanding and speaking other languages. Keep It Simple.
Last edited:
Turjan
Explorer
I explicitly stated that the list is far from complete, and I had left Frisian out. As far as the three Frisian dialects are concerned, East Frisian is extinct, but West Frisian (in the Netherlands) and North Frisian (in Schleswig-Holstein) are still spoken.Dogbrain said:
Saxon (do you mean Standard Low Saxon belonging to the Low German language family as in "Anglo-Saxon" or Upper Saxon belonging to the Middle German group of the High German language family?), Franconian (Middle German), Bavarian (Upper German), and Swabian (Upper German) are all German dialects. If you meant Upper Saxon, you could group all of them into the High German family. Lower Saxon is linguistically a group of languages spoken in Northern Germany and the Netherlands.
The term "Franconian" is also a bit ambiguous. I referred to modern Franconian spoken in Northern Bavaria, parts of Württemberg, Hessen and Thuringia. You could also use it linguistically (Low Franconian) as name for Dutch (including Flemish), West Flemish and Africaans.
Anyway, I wrote explicitly that I didn't want to go into German language families just above the list you quoted.
Right. Even nowadays it's nearly impossible for a North German to understand someone speaking Swabian. Swiss German is always subtitled on German TV, although it belongs to the High German language group.
Sigh. Right. I left out more languages than I included. You can make it as complicated as you want. You know, that even 100 years ago, Greece had a sizable minority speaking a Romanic language called Aromunian? Today about 100,000 people in Greece still speak that language, although correct numbers are hard to achieve. We can play this game ad infinitum
.
Does this in any way contradict what I said?
Last edited:
Calico_Jack73
First Post
Green Ronin has already done the work for you. They are coming out with a Medieval Player's Guide in their Mythic Vistas line. I read the write up on Green Ronin's website and it looks pretty cool. If you've never heard of the Mythic Vistas line basically it takes a period in history and recreates it with just a little bit of magic thrown in. Skull & Bones is a great one for Role-Playing a pirate on the Spanish Main. There are no fantasy races to play, only human and there are only the two new voodoo based spellcasting classes, the bokor and the hougan. The magic system has been changed around a bit to make it fit the low magic part of the setting better. Obviously there is no "Raise Dead" spell but Green Ronin put a system in the book to deal with that.
Turjan said:
Was it extinct in the 14th century?
You have completely contradicted yourself. I'd LOVE to see how you define "dialect" vs. "language". Near-complete unintelligibility sounds to me (from my non-political linguistic background) to say that Swabian and Hochdeutsch are far more likely to be languages than the politically dominated Swabian is a mere "dialect" of Hochdeutsch.
At about the same time Dalmation could still be found on the east Adriatic coast.
[/QUOTE]
Lingua Franca
Now that the language question has thoroughly confused everyone, the historical reality is that a traveler did not have to be fluent in hundreds of tongues to get by. Part of this is due to the Lingua Franca. This language was developed during the Crusades, when a lot of Ferengi from all over Western Europe ended up in one spot.
An example:
You will note that it resembles French to some degree. This is because French was a major foundation for it. Generally, anybody who was anybody in Western Europe during the medieval period would have a smattering of Lingua Franca, as would many merchants.
Now that the language question has thoroughly confused everyone, the historical reality is that a traveler did not have to be fluent in hundreds of tongues to get by. Part of this is due to the Lingua Franca. This language was developed during the Crusades, when a lot of Ferengi from all over Western Europe ended up in one spot.
An example:
You will note that it resembles French to some degree. This is because French was a major foundation for it. Generally, anybody who was anybody in Western Europe during the medieval period would have a smattering of Lingua Franca, as would many merchants.
Plague
One thing that must be handled if the setting is really to resemble the late 14th century is the aftereffects of The Plague. Plague, as much as any other factor, was responsible for raising wages and improving the status of laborers and the middle class. The reason was simple: Before the Plague, labor was plentiful and the cities had a gross surplus of skilled individuals. After the Plague, labor was scarce and cities were desperate for people who had any skill at all. Status didn't matter--plague struck down poor and rich, base and noble, it didn't care.
In our own history, simple medical and sanitary incompetence was enough to ensure plague's devastating effect. In a D&D world, where every jack-noble can easily get hold of a cleric or fifty who could cast Cure Disease, plague would only devastate the poor. The wealthy and skilled would be certain of protection. Of course, this is because the Cure Disease spell was invented specifically for adventure-only campaigns and not for self-consistent worlds, hence all the extremely obvious ad hoc excuse-making for the spell.
I recommend the spell be outright eliminated. I recommend that all forms of raise dead/resurrect/reincarnate also be eliminated. Furthermore, raise the levels of all the "cure" spells by two or more, or eliminate them.
Eliminate all magical means of getting provisions, too.
One thing that must be handled if the setting is really to resemble the late 14th century is the aftereffects of The Plague. Plague, as much as any other factor, was responsible for raising wages and improving the status of laborers and the middle class. The reason was simple: Before the Plague, labor was plentiful and the cities had a gross surplus of skilled individuals. After the Plague, labor was scarce and cities were desperate for people who had any skill at all. Status didn't matter--plague struck down poor and rich, base and noble, it didn't care.
In our own history, simple medical and sanitary incompetence was enough to ensure plague's devastating effect. In a D&D world, where every jack-noble can easily get hold of a cleric or fifty who could cast Cure Disease, plague would only devastate the poor. The wealthy and skilled would be certain of protection. Of course, this is because the Cure Disease spell was invented specifically for adventure-only campaigns and not for self-consistent worlds, hence all the extremely obvious ad hoc excuse-making for the spell.
I recommend the spell be outright eliminated. I recommend that all forms of raise dead/resurrect/reincarnate also be eliminated. Furthermore, raise the levels of all the "cure" spells by two or more, or eliminate them.
Eliminate all magical means of getting provisions, too.
Turjan
Explorer
No. The language list was a description of the modern state, and I just pointed out the limitations of such a list. But you are right if you want to imply that the Frisians and their chieftains might give a little colour to a campaign.Dogbrain said:
Picking out a single sentence and taking it out of context is bad style. My comment about Swabian was an addition to your comments about English dialects. It's a simple matter of fact that neighbouring dialects are usually intellegible to the respective speakers, whereas for people coming from farther away this holds not true. Swiss German is intellegible for Swabians, but not for speakers of Standard German. Swabian, on the other hand, is intellegible for Bavarians, and so on. The definition of "High German" (not to be confused with "Standard German") as language is linguistically quite simple: these are those Germanic dialects that participated in the second sound shift in the 700s and 800s (only Yiddish is usually taken out of this definition
); Low German dialects did not participate.
Nice prayer, btw
. But, as seen from its background (Latin, Italian, a bit of Arabic), the Lingua Franca was more confined to the mediterranean area, which of course comprised most of the civilisatory centers of Europe. Central, Northern and Eastern Europe used a Low German dialect ("Mittelniederdeutsch") as "Lingua Franca" during that time (with the "Hanse" as driving force).Turjan and Dogbrain: I did not want to get into that kind of historical, linguistical hair-splitting, here. All I wanted was a list of languages for the 13th-15th centuries that would be historical and realistic, while still being generic and simple enough for use with D&D. (We're not playing HarnMaster, here, fellows.)
Still, I appreciate most (if not all) of the input you guys have contributed.
Now, if I can just narrow Turjan's list to about twenty or so clearly distinct and decidedly individual langauges (that is, no dialects whatsoever), even if that list is not entirely historical or realistic. After all, most of this campaign will be taking place in Europe, with occasional excursions to or influences from the Middle East, and maybe (though far less common) the same to and from central Asia.
Last edited:
