D&D General Languages suck in D&D.

[Minigiant]

My games assume the old long lived races have literacy programs of learning the language of their younger races.

I mean an elf can be young at age 200. They have time to learn Common.

 

[pemerton]

In the modern world English is only the 3rd most spoken language, but it's more of a "common" language because for the 2 more spoken languages: one of them is mostly exclusive to just one country, and the other while spoken in many countries is mostly confined to one continent and the one country it originated from.

I think that measure of 3rd most spoken is based on native speakers, not total speakers.

 

[pemerton]

High literacy rates presume a mass education system

Does it? Or does it just assume a god of runes and writing with a democratic bent?

We're talking FRPGing, not scientific sociology.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Of course it depends on the campaign world which is precisely why treating real life Earth as prime example is wrong, most campaign worlds are so vastly different then what happened in real life that it's a bad basis. A rural farmer in a fantasy world has a much bigger incentive to give their kids an education then a real world medieval peasant had.

Why? Because magic exists? Real world rural farmers also believed magic existed.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Does it? Or does it just assume a god of runes and writing with a democratic bent?

We're talking FRPGing, not scientific sociology.

If you want to make your world that way to support the Common tongue, of course you can do that. Should what you described be assumed?

 

[Sorinth]

Why? Because magic exists? Real world rural farmers also believed magic existed.

Debateable, and wouldn't be at the same level of belief since even rural farmers will have seen actual magic with their own eyes rather then simply believing in stories, or not knowing how something happened and assuming it's magic. On top of which the magic that people believed was stuff like consorting with the devil giving you magic powers but making you evil and not a learn from a book and becoming a super hero.

High literacy rates presume a mass education system that even in a magic-based setting likely wouldn't exist. Education, including literacy, would still be largely restricted to the elite societal class and by no means do all adventurers have that in their background.

A quick google search suggests something like an 80% literacy rate in the Roman Empire. And given some of the grafiti that's uncovered from the time it definetly supports going beyond elite societal class, there's even a funny Monty Python joke about it in Life of Brian. So I'm not sure where the idea that a fantasy world couldn't/wouldn't support high levels.

And I'd also point out that in our world there is an actual god of knowledge granting miracles/magic with a goal of promoting knowledge. That's going to change some very basic premises about how things are going to work.

 

[Lanefan]

Does it? Or does it just assume a god of runes and writing with a democratic bent?

Could be both. Not everyone's going to worship that deity of runes and writing or even listen to what its followers might have to say, meaning you still don't necessarily have a modern fully-literate society.

We're talking FRPGing, not scientific sociology.

FRPGing that is usually at least vaguely based on Medieval times, or maybe Renaissance; in those eras literacy was quite uncommon other than within ecclesiatical circles (a small minority) or nobility (a much smaller minority).

 

[pemerton]

If you want to make your world that way to support the Common tongue, of course you can do that. Should what you described be assumed?

Why not? Or, rather, why should the opposite be assumed?

FRPGing that is usually at least vaguely based on Medieval times, or maybe Renaissance; in those eras literacy was quite uncommon other than within ecclesiatical circles (a small minority) or nobility (a much smaller minority).

The imagined social worlds of FRPGing depart from reality and from realism at nearly every point, except some aspects of their material technology. I don't really see why, among all those departures, literacy would loom large as a line in the sand.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why not? Or, rather, why should the opposite be assumed?

Because I've never heard of a God of magic literacy in any setting info I've read, so assuming they exist so that Common works is a bit of a stretch to me.

 

[Sorinth]

Because I've never heard of a God of magic literacy in any setting info I've read, so assuming they exist so that Common works is a bit of a stretch to me.

Ogma is a Celtic deity of writing.