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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yair" data-source="post: 2701241" data-attributes="member: 10913">On Understanding LanguagesYou can't understand langauges with Hermetic magic. At least, not directly.Articulated language, whether written or spoken, is manifested in some Form in the world - Imaginem for sounds, Aquam for ink, and so on. These material representations, however, bear no meaning in of themselves. The meaning is constructed in the hearer's or reader's mind.To understand a foreign language, then, you need an Intellego Mentem spell (or Intellego Animal to understand an animal). The problem is, that such a spell requires a target - and when you only hear the sound, you cannot use a range such as Voice or Touch, or even Sight. A possible solution is to make avail of the senses allowed for Intellego spells (ArM5 p. 114). In this case, Hearing is required which is a +3 target. The spell Valeria is after is hence,Ear of the Beast, InAn 25R: Personal, D: Momentary (a brief sentence), T: HearingYou understanad the speech of animals. Most animals have very crude thoughts and, hence, speech, but some can be very intelligent.This spell does not allow you to speak back to the animal in its own langauge. Each animal kind has a different lanaguge, and while you can understand all you can speak none.(Base 10 (roughly "speak with an animal"), +3 Hearing)I do believe this is beyond your ability to spontnously cast, especially without braking a sweat. As an aside, there is another way to understand language: you can change your mind into that of a beast, thus understanding it. This isHarnessed Mind of the Beast, MuMe (req: An) 25R: Personal, D: Concentration, T: PartYou change your understanding of language to that of an animal of your choice. You can understand the speech of this animal, but human languages sound like animalistic, meaningless, grunts.(Base 15, +1 Concentration, +1 Part)Anyways, that's my thougts on the matter. Feel free to prove me wrong. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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