Language Proficiencies

[Jason13]

Hey all Fatemasters,

 

As I've found no language system existing in terms of the number of languages spoken etc. in the books at present, and wanted to flavor my campaign with the different languages that fated might encounter when say walking through the little kingdom, I thought I'd share what I've come up with, and perhaps other's might improve it:

 

1) All characters start with 1 spoken language. Additional spoken languages are granted for every +1 Intelligence aspect a character has. Thus a character with a +3 Int. aspect speaks 4 languages fluently. This is free and costs nothing, though should be explained in the character sketch.

 

2) A character's written languages is based on his or her "Literacy" skill rank. Every rank provides knowledge of 1 alphabet. Thus, as an example, a character with 3 ranks in literacy could potentially read English, Chinese, & Arabic. Many languages utilize the same alphabet, e.g. French, English, and Italian. A literacy check is not required to read a text if you speak the language, but if you are attempting to read a language which you do not speak but happen to know the same alphabet a check must be made.  The fatemaster determines the difficulty of the check. Reading a street sign in Italy is likely a relatively easy task to figuring out the meaning, where as reading Dante's Inferno in Italian if you only speak French & English will likely prove extremely challenging to near impossible.

 

The later point might seem complex but it saves PCs  spending  some ranks to learn to read  what they can already speak. Particularly with many of the European languages this makes sense as the alphabets are all based on the same system. PCs can then use the system to delve more into what at least I feel the literacy skill was intended for, such as reading ancient hieroglyphics etc.

 

Thoughts?

[Shadowopal]

For those adding flavor and want it to have some correctness (is that a word?):

 

Japanese

Kanji alphabets are a little advanced. I do not have ANY training. But, my brother has some and he told me there are more than just a simple alphabet. A quick search tells me there are between 5000-10,000 symbols. And there is something called a KANA here is a page with some Kanas. I am not sure if it is all of them. http://www.linguanaut.com/japanese_alphabet.htm

 

Again, I am not a linguist. Nor do I know Japanese. This is a little of what my brother told me and what a five minute search dragged up. So, any Japanese speaking people, please do not take offence. I look forward to seeing where this thread goes.

[Kadeton]

Certainly real-world languages are more complicated - Japanese has two phonemic alphabets and a huge set of pictograms, Ancient Egyptian used hieroglyphs for religious inscriptions and a separate alphabet for everyday writing, and so on.

I think it's probably best in game terms to abstract that level of detail out - if you learn to speak and read Japanese, you will know the hiragana and katakana, and be able to recognise common kanji. If you're a scholar of Ancient Egypt, you will read the common script as well as hieroglyphics. I don't think it's worth discriminating between the subtleties of related writing systems.

[Jimbobovalsocks]

I like it, except I personally wouldn't play it so if you know an alphabet (or any other writing system), you can read languages written in the same writing system. How about going by language familly? So if a character knows a Romance language, then they can have a crack at reading another Romance language, or if a character knows an Austronesian language, they can take a skill test to guess the meaning of another related language. After all, in the real world knowing the Latin alphabet isn't going to help a French speaker read Finnish or Hungarian but they might be able to have a stab at understanding Portuguese or Romanian!

[Jason13]

Regarding Jimbobovalsocks comment regarding language family, that was essentially what I was going for in terms of ranks in literacy, I just wasn't clear enough with my wording. 1 Rank would give you one language family. I am also not a linguist,  but having the family system would cover the problem of having 3 Japanese alphabets. Jimbobovalsocks, do you happen to have a master list of the different language families that exist? Any other conflicts foreseen in this kind of a system people can think of?

[Jimbobovalsocks]

Here you go: http://www.ethnologue.com/browse/families

 

You can see that there are a whole stack of different families though and some are more obscure than others. Romance, Germanic, Indo-iranian and Sino-Tibetan would cover almost all the major World languages though.

[Jimbobovalsocks]

You'd probably want to pick a few languages your characters might be able to speak (say ten) nd then group them into your own in-game taxonomy as real life languge taxonomy is a large and complex area and might be too dominant within a game where it is only one aspect of a wider game and it needs to be simple enough for players to pick up without investing too much time in it. So you could have say 'Germanic' (English, Dutch German), Latin (French, Italian, Spanish), Oriental (Japanese, Chinese Korean) and Native American (Navajo, Quechua, Cree) and African (Swaheli, Yoruba, Zulu) for instance. Would that work?

[Kadeton]

It's a deep rabbit hole - the interactions between language groups are sufficiently complex to strongly resist any straightforward abstraction. I've seen games with very elaborate language rules that still fall down under any kind of scrutiny.

Honestly, I think the best approach is simply to use languages to the extent that your group needs them, rather than trying to write a system that's all things to all people. The game currently leaves this very open - if you want your character to be able to speak a different language, it's probably fine to just say they can.

[osoi]

It's a deep rabbit hole - the interactions between language groups are sufficiently complex to strongly resist any straightforward abstraction. I've seen games with very elaborate language rules that still fall down under any kind of scrutiny.

Honestly, I think the best approach is simply to use languages to the extent that your group needs them, rather than trying to write a system that's all things to all people. The game currently leaves this very open - if you want your character to be able to speak a different language, it's probably fine to just say they can.

Agree if it fits with the story and background of the character Fated or NPC then just play it that way. If someone is learning a new language from either another party member or schooling of some sort just use their intellect as a modifier to see how easily they pick up on things. I know I could understand enough German to get me by after a couple of months.

[Jason13]

You'd probably want to pick a few languages your characters might be able to speak (say ten) nd then group them into your own in-game taxonomy as real life languge taxonomy is a large and complex area and might be too dominant within a game where it is only one aspect of a wider game and it needs to be simple enough for players to pick up without investing too much time in it. So you could have say 'Germanic' (English, Dutch German), Latin (French, Italian, Spanish), Oriental (Japanese, Chinese Korean) and Native American (Navajo, Quechua, Cree) and African (Swaheli, Yoruba, Zulu) for instance. Would that work?

 

 

Jimbovalsocks I think that is a perfect solution as the website you provided is insanely detailed. 10 common language family "packs" like Latin, Germanic etc. is probably the best idea. The rabbit hole is indeed a deep one.

[Brian_2d6]

 

 

Jimbovalsocks I think that is a perfect solution as the website you provided is insanely detailed. 10 common language family "packs" like Latin, Germanic etc. is probably the best idea. The rabbit hole is indeed a deep one.

 

There's a few language family pictures floating around - I'll see what I can come up with - from over the years. I recall Hero's Danger International had one; I'm sure there's OGL / Creative Commons ones that aren't quite as insanely, wonderfully detailed as that website (which I'm sure I didn't just bookmark for future reference).

 

In play, for folks who prefer as such, I could see providing for one native spoken language for a starting Fated, and an additional spoken language for each positive point of Intellect. One could add an Academic Skill of Linguistics, and allow perhaps a larger language families / choices to be spoken. 

 

I'd also considering adding a (non-cannonical) trade tongue. The Guild controls an awful lot - some kind of Esperanto they enforce through Guild publications, key papers, language of Malfaux. Everyone in Malfaux winds up speaking it, and It has bits and pieces from all other languages.