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Englisc? Dost þú bespricest hit?
Jan. 27th, 2020 11:45 amThis video exemplifies one of my arguments against "common tongues" in RPGs. There are so many ways for languages to mutate and evolve. Regional dialects, ethnic patois, loan words and the like will mean that crossing every river brings the chance of having to deal with the locals being nearly unintelligible.
Imagine a human settlement near a forest held by several elf tribes. The humans may well speak the dominant local human language but after decades of contact with the elves, there will be changes in pronunciation, adopted words (I'd imagine the humans would have started using elvish words for natural things like tree or river,) and yes, vowel shifts.
It gets worse in SF RPGs. Traveller's Galanagic might be the official language of the Third Imperium, but outside the Imperial armed forces, noble councils, and the starport authority, the only people who are going to be using it are those who regularly deal with the above entities. Sure, they'll speak Galangic at the starport, and most of the places in Startown, but beyond that? There are about 4,500 languages in regular use on this planet, with another 2,000 or so still in existence but having fewer than a thousand speakers. Oh, add in about a hundred different written forms, and you begin to see the problem.
My solution is to ease up on the known languages rule. It wasn't uncommon for our ancestors to learn several tongues out of necessity, even if they couldn't read or write some of them. And kill common. Unless it's a language used by rulers or by the church (Latin fits both cases,) or a trade patois useful for conveying simple information but no real detail.
Imagine a human settlement near a forest held by several elf tribes. The humans may well speak the dominant local human language but after decades of contact with the elves, there will be changes in pronunciation, adopted words (I'd imagine the humans would have started using elvish words for natural things like tree or river,) and yes, vowel shifts.
It gets worse in SF RPGs. Traveller's Galanagic might be the official language of the Third Imperium, but outside the Imperial armed forces, noble councils, and the starport authority, the only people who are going to be using it are those who regularly deal with the above entities. Sure, they'll speak Galangic at the starport, and most of the places in Startown, but beyond that? There are about 4,500 languages in regular use on this planet, with another 2,000 or so still in existence but having fewer than a thousand speakers. Oh, add in about a hundred different written forms, and you begin to see the problem.
My solution is to ease up on the known languages rule. It wasn't uncommon for our ancestors to learn several tongues out of necessity, even if they couldn't read or write some of them. And kill common. Unless it's a language used by rulers or by the church (Latin fits both cases,) or a trade patois useful for conveying simple information but no real detail.
