What language is the Common of our world?

[Banshee16]

Considering there's more than twice as many Mandarin chinese speakers than english speakers, I find it a bit hard to vote for English as the "Common of our world".

Within the typical D&D setting, consisting of a central well-explored and settled region surrounded by wilderlands and "lands beyond the edges of the map", I guess English definitely does fit that definition - at least for the majority of D&D players. Because then it's just a subjective decision, relative to the definition of "our world" within a limited medieval-like perspective. Chinese roleplayers (if any) would likewise consider Chinese the Common of "their world".

This is what I'm getting at. English is only the "common" language in part of the world. The importance of Chinese and Indian is growing, and will continue to do so, as those areas of the world gain increasing economic dominance.

Many people around the world can't speak English outside of Britain, Australia, Canada, and the U.S. Travel to most other countries, and you'll often find English spoken in the tourist areas, but outside of those areas, the local languages are, by far, dominant. And the importance of English will continue to decrease as western cultures eventually get surpassed by India and China in the coming decades....it'll become more important for us to speak *their* languages.

Banshee

 

[Barak]

Alright, here's the only way I see of explaining it.

Take a homebrew world in which Elves are the major race. Remove common from the automatic languages for elves.

English is to Elven what our world is to that homebrew.

English is in no way the same as common in RAW D&D.

 

[Harmon]

English and French I think are required for international pilots, and both are considered to be the open sea languages.

Anyone out there know for certain?

 

[Nyeshet]

Technically there is no such language, since such a language would be a universal language - which needless to say does not exist. However, there are languages which are common enough that one can travel most (not all) places and find someone who understands them (so long as they stay in the cities, ayway).

At present that language is English and - to a somewhat lesser extent - Spanish and perhaps Arabic. Neither of the latter are popular in terms of primary speakers, but so many countries have one or the other as a first or second language that I feel they must be mentioned. Especially as English's call to fame is not its number of countries where it is the first language, but instead the number of countries where it is the second language - or is commonly taught due to that country's common interactions with other counties that use it (such as in China and Japan).

In terms of number of speakers, the 'common' language would be Chinese, but it is limited to one country and few others use it as a second language or even teach it commonly unless they are near to china (such as Korea, Japan, and some countries in the Indochina region).

It used to be French (during the late 1700s - mid / late 1800's, I think). During much of the 1800s, if I recall correctly, French was known as the Language of Diplomacy because of its commonality. It was followed by English in part because of the British Empire and in part because after the Empire's dissolution America (another English speaker) happened to be on the rise.

Before that it was either Latin, Arabic, or Chinese - dependent on whether you were in (most of) Europe, the Islamic World (from Morocco and southern Spain along North Africa, through the Middle East and Persia right up to parts of India), or the Far East (China, Korea, Japan, and some parts of Indochina and Tibet). India had two or three major languages at this time and several minor languages. Of course, it was also several dozen countries at this time - much like modern Germany and Italy used to be - but over more land and not sharing a common language.

Most other parts of the world (prior to the 1500s - 1700s) had an amazingly high language density (North and South America, Africa south of the Islamic World, most islands in the various oceans). I'm not too sure about how many were in Australia during the Middle Ages, but I presume it was as dense - or nearly so - as in the Americas.

There is also Eastern Europe to consider - at least during the mid to late middle ages. It was mostly under the influence of the Orthodox church, and I don't know if they had a proscribed language for their religious services or not. Perhaps southern europe - mostly under the influence of the Greek Orthodox church - required Greek, while northern europe - mostly under the Russian Orthodox church - required Russian. Either way, it would have been a bit of a sqeeze in the south, as the Islamic World, towards the end of the middle ages, managed to take a notable chunck of southeastern Europe for itself. So Greek may not have been common enough at that time to be considered a 'common' language in the sense it is often used in D&D.

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Having said all that, Chinese is important in the far east to this day but elsewhere in the world it will avail you not. Spanish is king in terms of countries where it is first or second language, but most of them are in Americas. In the rest of the world - outside of Spain and a few islands - it will avail you not. French is common in most islands in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans due to early explorations and its commonality (as the language of diplomacy) at the times of the explorations, but outside of France and those islands (and a few other places, like French Guina in S. America and Quebec in Canada) it will avail you not. English is the first language of America, Britain, Australia, and co-first language in Canada (with French). Its claim to fame and fortune is - no pun intended - as a trade language.

Much like 'common' in D&D games, English is commonly known in many lands not due to being the first or even a secondary language of the land, but instead due to being a common trade language that most involved in international business can be expected to know (or readily be able to find someone that knows it). Even those not involved in international business, but large enough to have a major national business likely have staff that speak English - if only for speaking with suppliers of parts from outside the country or should they consider expanding internationally later.

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Now, here's a new question for you:

How many actually treat languages as skills, requiring more than one rank to fully learn? I typically treat them as normal skills, but I grant a +8 bonus for homeland languages - treating racial languages as such if more than one language is known. Thus anyone from the homeland region - even with no ranks in languages - can speak it and understand it with ease (albiet with a strong accent if they have not put a rank or two into it). Being able to speak a language grants one a +4 bonus to attempts to read the language. Languages with common alphabets grant synergy bonuses to each other - at least in the case of reading or writing them.

To balance this, I grant a couple extra skill ranks per level that can only be placed in languages or knowledges (and everyone has Knowledge (local) as a class skill, albeit needing to place ranks for each region, of course, and Know (this region) will grant a synergy bonus to understanding the main language of said region).

 

[shadow]

I failed my saving throw, now as a linguist I have to chime in...

In the real world we don't have anything quite like the common tongue found in most D&D fantasy settings. English has become, in many ways, the international language, but it is far from the universal default language that is common in D&D. Having been abroad on several occasions, I feel safe to say that although English is widely spoken, not everyone speaks it (or speaks it well enough to communicate with a monolingual English speaker). Even within the United States there is a sizable population of people who have limited English proficiency. So although English is very widespread, it isn't quite a lingua franca.

PS - The choice of Chinese in the poll is somewhat misleading. "Chinese" can refer to a variety of related, but mutually unitelligeble languages spoken in China. What is meant is Mandarin Chinese (which is interestingly known as 普通話 pŭtōnghùa or common speech in China). Mandarin is the language that is taught and promoted in China and Taiwan as the standard language.

 

[Hussar]

This is what I'm getting at. English is only the "common" language in part of the world. The importance of Chinese and Indian is growing, and will continue to do so, as those areas of the world gain increasing economic dominance.

Many people around the world can't speak English outside of Britain, Australia, Canada, and the U.S. Travel to most other countries, and you'll often find English spoken in the tourist areas, but outside of those areas, the local languages are, by far, dominant. And the importance of English will continue to decrease as western cultures eventually get surpassed by India and China in the coming decades....it'll become more important for us to speak *their* languages.

Banshee

With the internet and the dominance of English in IT circles, you would be very hard pressed to see either Chinese (of which could be either Cantonese or Mandarin (never minding the bazillion mutually exclusive dialects)) or any of the many languages spoken in India becoming dominant. One of the primary reasons against Chinese is writing. It's unbelievably difficult to design computer keyboards to spell using Chinese characters.

In addition, English is one of the most precise languages in terms of time. Japanese, for example, has only 5 verb tenses as does Korean. English has about 19 which is also more than pretty much any other language. English is the business language, partially because of American and British wealth, but also because it's incredibly exact when drafting ideas.

OTOH, the language skill in DnD bugs the heck out of me, but, without forcing players to spend all their limited skill points on learning new languages, I'm not sure what could be done to fix it.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

You know, when I was a student there were classes, required for a degree in engineering or chemistry, for Technical German. This was the 'seventies, not ancient history, many of the best texts available were in German, so you were required to learn it.

The Auld Grump

 

[Xyanthon]

You know, the whole fantasy language thing has really been getting to me lately. It seems that there is some awesome potential for roleplaying here but it is frequently glossed over (I know for the sake of expediency). I think in the future, I'd like to have languages play a little more prominent role. Meaning, I don't expect players would have to learn Quenya or Klingon or anything of that nature, but if the character didn't know the language of the populace of the area they were in, it may be a little more difficult for them to get around.

 

[Hussar]

The seventies isn't ancient history?

I kid, I kid.

 

[kingmagic]

Hi, I am from China so I think I can say something about this. For an "international" language you can use almost all over the world it's definitely the English. Here in China students(all the country) learn English as a main second language from high school and all the way to college, that's about 3+3+4=10 years. The reason why we do this is there's a lot of information and material is written in English, no matter in common life or in academic field. But in Aisa, Chinese is more powerful than English in area communication for the history reason.