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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wik" data-source="post: 5230534" data-attributes="member: 40177">You know, I never really think much about what the languages sound like, except in general terms - dwarvish uses hard consonants and is very multisyllabic (I would say like Sumerian), elvish is designed to be musical with many nuances, halfling is a pidgin of other languages, etc.  Instead, I like to think of the history of the languages, and how they are related to one another - how phrases are adopted by one culture by another, and how names are constructed, etc.  I'm also very interested in how the languages portray thoughts and ideas.  I was an anthropology student, and linguistic anthropology is FASCINATING.  A lot of people think languages are just a way to communicate, but they are actually a way of viewing the world around you.  if your culture does not have a word for something - say, an emotion - it may have a hard time understanding said emotion.  But what about verbs, adverbs, and the like.  Do they come before the noun, or after?  We might say "red chair" but other languages see the object as more important - "Chair red".  A bit more to the point, some languages are vague (Russian - I believe - only has the word "Arm" - "Finger", "Hand", "Wrist" are all covered by the same word in common usage).  Others can get remarkably precise (the oft-repeated but untrue "three hundred words for yellow snow").  Knowing these little bits about the language, to me, is much more interesting than what it sounds like (since the PCs will probably just substitute their own preconceptions anyway).  Languages can also reinforce the history of your setting.  As an example, from my own campaign:When the Imperial Tief nobles ruled over the Kaellian Empire, they spoke "high imperial", which was the language of the nobility, and a "lower imperial" which was the language of the lower classes and the "Common Tongue".  While the languages were very similar (one could understand the other), the high imperial had elongated nouns which changed depending on the usage of the sentence (ie, like modern-day french).  The lower imperial tongue, meanwhile, shortened many of these words, and compounded small words together to widen meanings (as in English).  Meanwhile, the numerous mercenaries in the kingdoms spoke their own languages, and used a pidgen to speak Lower common (which was easier to understand).  This meant that there was a so-called "army language", which was lower imperial mixed with various goblin tongues.  While all this was going on, the High Imperial language began to borrow from Fiendish lexicons, as the Tief nobles made deals with Devils.When the Kaellian empire fell, those who were not cursed into Tiefling form fled the onslaught of devils and daemons, to the Shattered Isles (an island chain).  Most of the survivors were slaves of various races, and Lower Imperial turned into "Slave Speak" - a mixture of "Lower Imperial" and the foreign languages of slave races.Now, the common tongue is "Slave Speak", with a few borrowed phrases from dwarven merchants and Eladrin diplomats.  The mercenary armies of the various Kaellian hold outs speak an updated form of Army Speak.  Tieflings speak High Imperial, that has a very demonic cast to it - but they also know Slavespeak, because it's in common usage.  I generally find, when you start thinking like this, it really helps your campaign take shape in a way that "what does it sound like?" really doesn't.</blockquote>

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