Truly "secret" languages?

[ephemeron]

Never had that supplement so I don't know what was in it. I derived my usage of Aleph from the following source.

In a section of an older greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures it states that when the renegade angels rebelled against the Throne of Heaven in response God respoke the "First Utterance" which was of such power it cast them from Heaven and created what Christianity calls Hell in a single instant of power. The character used to represent this "First Utterance" was the first letter of the Greek alphabet which was known as Aleph for translation and transliteration purposes.

Hm. FWIW, aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet; the Greek alphabet starts with alpha. (They're so similar because the two scripts come from a common ancestor, Phoenician.)

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Hm. FWIW, aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet; the Greek alphabet starts with alpha. (They're so similar because the two scripts come from a common ancestor, Phoenician.)

Thanks for the correction, I tend to mix those up for pretty much that reason.

 

[ephemeron]

Umberto Eco's _The Search for the Perfect Language_ is good reading for anyone who is interested in this kind of thing; it talks about the whole idea of a language that perfectly describes reality, and particularly Renaissance-era attempts to find such a thing (which was usually equated with the language God used to create the world).

 

[ephemeron]

Thanks for the correction, I tend to mix those up for pretty much that reason.

No problem. It happens that a big chunk of my undergrad senior thesis was about the origins of Greek literacy, and one of the reasons I'm in grad school now is my tendency to lecture.

 

[Nifft]

IMC, some languages have drawbacks.

Knowing Draconic gives you a +2 on Spellcraft checks, but a -2 to resist a dragon's fearful presence, and a -2 to resist any dragon's spell-like abilities.

Knowing Abyssal gives you a +2 to Intimidate checks (made in Abyssal), but a -2 on saves vs. any supernatural or spell-like ability of a demon.

Mortals cannot lie in Celestial.

Oaths made in Infernal are eternally binding, and if you try to circumvent the letter of the oath, it will be made manifest in a most horribly literal way. (Circumventing the spirit is fine.)

Secrets spoken in the Elemental tongues are said to be heard in the dreams of the princes of elemental evil. So be careful with them.

It's impossible to make an Intimidate check in Sylvan, but you get a +2 bonus on Bluff checks.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Thieve's cant.

Yes, they can.

 

[Aries_Omega]

The language of magic...at least it's written form is more like a VERY high level of mathematical notations. It looks like a bunch of symbols and gibberish to non-casters. If a caster looked at the same magical formula they know it's thaumaturgical theory notation...problem is each caster has it's own shorthand for things. From there roll to decipher it (spellcraft) or cast a spell to understand it.

If you have ever seen the CBS tv show "Numbers"...the episode "Sacrifice" in which they talked about how to measure baseball stats with a thing called "sabermetrics". In the episode they had to figure out what some of the abbreviations and shorthand meant. They knew what it was...just not what it measured. If you seen the episode you know what I am talking about.

The spoken version...well it is a known fact that the written version was created to record it by the modern races. The ancient races used something else to record the language of magic. The spoken language is so complicated that no normal written language could capture the nuances of the language and the ancient language is a TRULY dead language.

 

[Jesus_marley]

Thieve's cant.

Thieves most certainly can.

 

[RFisher]

For what it's worth, I've come to the conclusion that every language (with the possible exception of some constructed languages like Esperanto) are roughly equally difficult to learn. Because no matter how simple the grammar, it's the vocabulary & idiom that are the true difficulty. Likewise, the best tool for learning languages is immersion, which tends to make them all roughly equally easy.

(Though learning a language that's related to one you already know or that uses the same script can be a big factor as well.)

None of which needs to apply to the game, though. So, back to the fantasy world...

I try to give the players a list of languages they can choose. Languages that I want to be rarely known, I don't include & separately offer to any players whose PC would have had the opportunity to acquire them.

 

[rom90125]

In a section of an older greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures it states that when the renegade angels rebelled against the Throne of Heaven in response God respoke the "First Utterance" which was of such power it cast them from Heaven and created what Christianity calls Hell in a single instant of power. The character used to represent this "First Utterance" was the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet which was known as Aleph for translation and transliteration purposes.

Wow...this is cool! I'm going to gank this and use it in my upcoming Echoes of Heaven campaign.