House Rule: Dialects

[sfedi]

I'm assuming that a dialect represents a large difference in accent and vocabulary, not just a funny twang in the voice. Kind of like the difference between Spanish and Portuguese.

That seems like different languages, not dialects.

 

[bardolph]

That seems like different languages, not dialects.

It is. However, adding more languages to the "original ten" throws off the game balance a bit. Under 4e core rules, you can speak 80% of the known languages for the cost of 2 feats, and at 3 feats, you can speak to any intelligent being in the multiverse.

If you add a bunch of languages to your campaign, it drastically reduces the benefit gained from your starting languages and from taking the Linguist feat, and makes it virtually impossible to be able to speak to most intelligent beings.

If you take my dialects rule then lump these new languages under existing languages by calling them "dialects," you can greatly expand the number of languages in your world without impacting game balance in any major way.

Also: I totally agree that the "8 hour" rule for learning a new dialect is unrealistic. However, it fits within the spirit of the 4e rules. I could argue that learning the Raise Dead ritual should take more than 8 hours too, but whatever, it works. A more realistic approach would be to increase the "8 hour" rule to something more to your taste. Make it a week, a month, or a year if you want. The point is to not force the player to burn more feats to branch out from Elven to Eladrin (for example).

 

[sfedi]

Oh, I see.

Then, what do you want to do (ultimately) with this rule?
Add more languages without penalizing PCs?

Maybe what you are trying to do is better done with another rule that doesn't involve dialects.

 

[bardolph]

Oh, I see.

Then, what do you want to do (ultimately) with this rule?
Add more languages without penalizing PCs?

Maybe what you are trying to do is better done with another rule that doesn't involve dialects.

Would you prefer it if I called them "sub-languages"? The effect would be the same.

 

[Starfox]

Some languages in 1Ed could be interpreted to work this way. There were root languages and dialects. Elvis and Giant are root languages. Drow, Wood Elf, Grey Elf etc were dialects of elvish. Fire Giant, Ogre, Hill Giant etc were dialects of giant.

Historically speaking, this is actually fairly correct, at least in Europe (that I know a bit about). It is said that a language is a dialect with an army, and that rings true to me. The modern monolithic languages like English, French, Italian, Spanish, and German started as a collection of dialects melding into each other. Depending on how many languages you want in your world, all these could be divided into two (Germanic and Roman), you could use the modern languages I named, or you could have maybe 25 major dialects, all with their own names and vocabularies.

On top of these, of course, we have the small languages that belong to their own families, like Welsh, Räto-Romanish, Basque, and Breton. I heard someone say that the Amazonas contains more language families than any other part of the world - two tribes living as neighbors can have languages as different as English and Chinese.

Just an example: Allemaniac is a mix of German and French spoken in Alsace-Lorraine (Or Elsass-Lothringen in German). It is neither German nor French, but sufficiently similar to each that both French and German nationalists have claimed the area (it changed hands a couple of times over the centuries). I quoted it to show that there will always be border cases; just as this is neither French or German, it is neither Germanic nor Roman.

Another example: Scandinavia was never politically unified, and now has 5 different languages that are slowly drifting apart, dialects merging into languages that are being unified each in their own mold, very much thanks to TV.

A third example: Back in school, there used to be students receiving education in Serbocroatian because ti was their parents' language of origin. Today, this is two languages, Serb and Croat. As far as I know, the major difference is that there is now a border between the speakers of each.

Conclusion? Basically, you can handle languages any way you want, and no-one can really fault you. Just select your own level of abstraction.

 

[Minigiant]

I like the idea. 8 hour is short though. Personally I'd make it at least a week if the character actively tries to learn or a month passively.

8 hours is more like a heavy accent.

 

[bardolph]

It is said that a language is a dialect with an army.

I agree.

The modern monolithic languages like English, French, Italian, Spanish, and German started as a collection of dialects melding into each other. Depending on how many languages you want in your world, all these could be divided into two (Germanic and Roman), you could use the modern languages I named, or you could have maybe 25 major dialects, all with their own names and vocabularies.

[...lots of examples...]

Conclusion? Basically, you can handle languages any way you want, and no-one can really fault you. Just select your own level of abstraction.

And as an added bonus, no matter how many languages you throw into the pot, it always adds up to ten! How's that for creative math?

 

[bardolph]

I like the idea. 8 hour is short though. Personally I'd make it at least a week if the character actively tries to learn or a month passively.

8 hours is more like a heavy accent.

Yes, of course. I just made it 8 hours because it seems like anything in 4e can be accomplished in 8 hours or less.