Apologies in advance for the kind of funky formatting - this is copy/pasted from the wiki I use to manage games.
Athasian Languages
Athas is a harsh place with two thousand years of chaos and separation between the city-states of the Tyr Region; with illiteracy the norm, Athasian languages have spread out.
Starting Languages & Literacy
Because Athas has more languages than the default D&D setting, characters in Dark Sun receive extra languages at character creation. Each language, dialect and alphabet requires the investment of a language slot.
Starting characters receive the trade tongue, the language of their race (or a bonus language if they are human), and the language of their city or tribe. They additional receive a bonus language based on their theme, representing either the benefit of their travels, studies, or special contacts.
- Athasian Minstrel: Well traveled; gain the language of another city (Well-Traveled)
- Dune Trader: Must keep records and accounts; gain literacy in the Tyrian Alphabet
- Elemental Priest: Contact with the spirit world; gain Primordial
- Gladiator: The slave pits are a melting pot; gain the language of another city or tribe
- Noble Adept: Nobles are well educated; gain literacy in the alphabet of your native city
- Primal Guardian: Contact with the spirit world; gain Primordial
- Templar: Templars are well-educated; gain literacy in the alphabet of your native city
- Veiled Alliance: Mages are scholars; gain literacy in one alphabet
- Wasteland Nomad: Nomads meet other desert tribes; gain Elven, Kreen, Giantish or Ssurran
- Wilder: Wilders have latent telepathy; gain quick fluency in first unknown language encountered
- Escaped Slave: The slave pits are a melting pot; gain the language of another city or tribe
Dialects and Related Languages
Denizens of Athas speak a wide variety of tongues, many related to each other. Related tongues are usually mutually intelligible, but using a related language will earn characters a -2 penalty to social rolls in addition to any penalty that may be earned from the listener's prejudice. Some related languages are further broken down into dialects, which have no mechanical impact on understanding but identify a character's origin. Completely different languages are not intelligible.
The following groups contain related languages. Some languages appear in multiple groups, and are related to each of those groups.
- Tyrian: Trade Tongue, Tyrian, Balican, Raamish, Nibenese, High Tyrian, Ancient Giustenal
- Giustenal: Dray, Ancient Giustenal
- Halfling: Ogo dialects, Kol-Tokulg dialects, Rhul-Thaun, Ancient Rhulisti
- Gulg: Gulg, High Gulg, Crescent dialects
- Giantish: Giant, other monstrous tongues
- Kreen: Kreen, Imperial Kreen
- Ssurran: Sssurran, Silt Runner, other lizardfolk tongues
- Primordial: Primordial, Abyssal
The Trade Tongue
- Trade Tongue: Related to Tyrian, the trade tongue is used as a common language by most people in the Tyr Region. Characters speaking the trade tongue may suffer a penalty on social rolls, ranging from no penalty when dealing with dune traders to -4 or more when dealing with linguistic nationalists. (Tyrian Alphabet)
Tongues of the Seven Cities
- Tyrian: The language of Tyr, Tyrian is partially understandable to most denizens of the Tyr Region because of its close relation to the trade tongue - a relationship solidifed by Tyr's role as the primary producer of metal in Athas, cementing its importance. (Tyrian Alphabet)
- Balican: The language of Balic is common in the Tablelands because Balican traders ply the shores of the Silt Sea. Like Tyrian, Balican still resembles High Tyrian and bears a closer resemblance to the trade tongue than many other city-state's languages. Balican speakers from Altaruk have a notable "provincial" accent. (Tyrian Alphabet)
- Urikite: Urik's language has harsher, clipped tones than most of the other city-states, and many of its words are descended from military terms in High Tyrian. Literacy in Urik is particularly controlled, with the templars actively investigating rumors of non-nobles being taught to read and write. (Hamanu's Alphabet)
- Raamish: The language of Raam, Raamish is a lyrical language full of allusion and metaphor. Its vocabulary varies slightly by the caste of the speaker; outsiders almost always learn the idiom of the Caste of the Merchant, sometimes sprinkled with metaphors from the Caste of the Warrior. Though it possesses a hieroglyphic alphabet of its own, it is almost always written using Tyrian transliterations. (Tyrian Alphabet, Hieroglyphics of Badna)
- Draji: Draj's mad sorcerer-king gave the Draji language to his subjects whole-cloth, declaring it the tongue of the Two Moons. Scholars, however, can detect in it the strains of High Tyrian - it is more as if Tectuktitlay wished to create a new language but lacked the creativity, choosing instead to just alter High Tyrian to create a mad pig-latin mongrel tongue. (Moon Script)
- Nibenese: Nibenay's ancient city holds itself apart from Athas, considering itself civilized in a world of savages - and its language reflects its ancient lineage and elitist image, hewing most closely of any tongue to High Tyrian. (Tyrian Alphabet)
- Gulg: Like Draji, Gulg is a created language, the divine language of the Oba - but it is truly unique, bearing no resemblance to High Tyrian or any of the other city-state's languages, though some scholars suggest a relationship with the tongue of some halfling tribes. It is characterized by its many modifying prefixes and suffixes, attached to a relatively small number of core words. (Oba Script)
- High Gulg: While common Gulg has adapted over thousands of years of use, the Oba still demands that those entreat her personally speak Gulg as she first delivered it to her people. Consequently, only the nganga and the most senior scribes speak the tongue, though no few juganda warriors have had to hastily study it when called before the Forest Goddess. (Oba Script)
Other Tongues
- Elven: The elven tribes of the desert share a common tongue, though tribal dialects are so strong that one tribe may be able to barely understand the words spoken by another. The Elven language remains united only because of elves' relatively long lifespan and the elven tradition of raiding other tribes for mates. Elven dialects are deeply ingrained in their speakers, however: an Elven character cannot shed his dialect unless he purchases a separate language for the other dialect he seeks. (Rellanic)
- Giantish: The giants who walk the Sea of Silt have their own language, though many of the tribes in the Estuary of the Forked Tongue or the mudflats around the Sea of Silt have adopted Giant dialects as their own. It is a slow, sonorous speech that retains some of its gravity even when spoken by smaller-voiced races. Some monstrous species in the desert speak related languages. (Barazhad)
- Kreen: The Thri-Kreen language can only be fluently spoken by the mantis warriors, as it includes clicks and whistles that humans cannot accurately replicate. Other creatures can learn to understand Kreen, however, and approximate it sounds well enough to be understood in turn. A related language is Imperial Kreen, spoken by the Tohr-Kreen khanates of the Crimson Savannah. (No script/Chachik*)
- Dray: The dray, the sorcerous race born out of long-dead Giustenal, speak a modern descendant of Giustenal's ancient tongue, adapted and changed by the Dray's reptilian physiology. It is rarely learned by anyone not of the Dray's insular clans. (Tyrian Alphabet, Iokharic*)
- Dwarven: The Dwarven language is dying: while traditional dwarven families still teach their children their racial tongue, it is not really spoken outside of Kled or the largest dwarven ghettos, and the dwarves have lost the Dwarven script entirely. Dwarven is also spoken by certain desert monsters, such as the mutated hejkins. (No script/Davek*)
- Crescent Tribal dialects: The jungle tribes of the Crescent Forest speak a debased version of Gulg, as many of them were founded by escapees from Gulg who turned to the worship of primal spirits. (Oba Script)
- Ssurran: The language of the Athasian lizard-men, Ssurran is sibilant, full of hisses and growls. Characters without forked tongues can never speak the language perfectly. Silt Runners speak a related language, as do several other repitilian creatures. (Barazhad)
Halfling Tribal Tongues
Unlike Elven, the halfling language has fragmented: the insular halfling tribes do not trade often enough with each other for their language to survive thousands of years of isolation. Halflings tribal languages fall into three groups: Ogo dialects, Kol-Tokulg dialects, and the Rul-Thaun language spoken by the windriders of the Jagged Cliffs. Each group contains a multitude of tribal dialects, mutually intelligible within the group but with strong tribal identifiers like Elven. Characters with a tribal tongue from one group cannot understand speakers from another group, however - a speaker of the Ogo dialect cannot understand a halfling from the Jagged Cliffs.
- Ogo dialects: The Ogo dialects are spoken by halfling tribes in the northern part of the Forest Ridge, including Ogo itself. Because Ogo sends a mercenary contingent to Urik each year, the Ogo tribal languages tend to have the most loan-words from other languages and the Ogo dialect itself is the halfling language most commonly learned by outsiders. Halflings have an oral culture, but when Ogo is written down it is usually in the Tyrian Alphabet. (No script/Tyrian Alphabet)
- Kol-Tokulg dialects: The Kol-Tokulg dialects are spoken by halfling tribes in the southern part of the Forest Ridge around the great volcano of Kol-Tokulg, where the halfling priesthood who tends the volcano help keep the local tribes' langauges somewhat homogenous. Like all halfling languages, the Kol-Tokulg dialects have no written form, though the volcano priesthood preserves some documents in Rellanic. (No script/Rellanic)
- Rul-Thaun: The halflings who live in the vertical cliffside jungles of the Jagged Cliffs have a unified language that bears little resemblance to the tribal languages of Ogo or Kol-Tokulg, as the feral halflings of the Forest Ridge have had almost no commerce with the Rul-Thaun for thousands of years. Unlike feral halflings, the Rul-Thaun have preserved written language, using their own script. (Ghesh-Sach)
Outsider Tongues
- Gith: The language of the desert-dwelling Gith has no connection to any Athasian language, though certain beings summoned from the Astral Sea speak a related language. (Barazhad)
- Primordial: The language of the elementals, Primordial is spoken primarily by summoned creatures; it has a guttural quality reminiscent of Giantish, with whom it may share some distant connection.
- Abyssal: A debased form of Primordial, Abyssal is the language of demons and certain other evil creatures. It is rarely seen on Athas, as demons largely leave the dying world to its own end: they are interested in speeding the death of realms more in their prime.
Dead Languages
- High Tyrian: Scholars hypothesize that High Tyrian was the common tongue of Athas during the Red Age; today, it is a dead language, spoken only in certain Templar liturgies and by pretentious students of history. Characters cannot learn High Tyrian unless they are already literate in one of its scripts, as it is not a spoken language. (Tyrian Alphabet, Iokharic*)
- Ancient Giustenal: The language of destroyed Giustenal, this ancestor-language of Dray is sometimes seen in magical texts looted after the sorcerer-king Dregoth was killed. Characters cannot learn Ancient Giustenal unless they are already literate in one of its scripts. (Tyrian Alphabet, Iokharic*)
- Ancient Rhulisti: This extremely ancient language is found only in the most distant relics of the Green Age. Characters cannot learn Ancient Rhulisti unless they are already literate in the halfling script. (Ghesh-Sach)
Scripts & Alphabets
- Tyrian Alphabet: The most common alphabet in the Tyr Region, Tyrian is a true alphabet with twenty-nine phonetic symbols resembling Ancient Phoenician. Even those languages that do not use the Tyrian Alphabet are sometimes transliterated into its letters. The origin of a writer can be determined by his script; proper, High Tyrian letters are more common in Tyr and Nibenay, while the flowing Balican script used in Balic and Raam adds two more letters but omits some strokes from existing letters.
- Hamanu's Alphabet: The Lion God of Urik discourages literacy, but his templars and educated elite use the cuneiform Alphabet of Hamanu, the script which the King of the World used to deliver his Code. It resembles Sumerian cuneiform writing and contains approximately 400 symbols.
- Hieroglyphics of Badna: When Abalach-Re abandoned her crown and declared the supremacy of the omnipotent four-armed deity Badna, the new god's priesthood crafted a new pictographic alphabet to accompany the city's religious transformation. Resembling Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Hieroglyphics of Badna - much like the worship of the four-armed god - have never really caught on, and are largely relegated to use by Badna's dedicates.
- Moon Script: A pictographic language like the Hieroglyphics of Badna, Draj's Moon Script is heavy on images of blood and animals. It is rarely used outside of Draj, and even among Draji merchants prefer the Tyrian Alphabet.
- Oba Script: Another ideographic script, the Oba Script of Gulg sees wider use - even the Forest Goddess' spirit-worshipping enemies in the Crescent Forest have adopted the Oba Script for their tribal languages.
- Rellanic: The Elven script, Rellanic has graceful, flowing curves like the dunes of its writers. Its internal structure bears phonetic similarity to the Tyrian Alphabet, though with more letters and sounds. Some scholars believe Rellanic may have been the original model for the Tyrian script.
- Chachik: The Thri-Kreen script sees no use among the Kreen of the Tyr Region, who are universally illiterate. It is used only by the Tohr-Kreen khanates of the Crimson Savanna.
- Barazhad: The alphabet of the giants, Barazhad is a crude, heavy-stroked script suitable for scratching into mud and stone. Consequently, it is often used by desert tribes to transcribe the trade tongue where the Tyrian Alphabet would be difficult to inscribe, as well as by desert races with no script of their own. Barazhad was almost certainly adopted by the giants from the script of the Elemental Chaos, who also use it for their rare writings.
- Ghesh-Sach: The Halfling alphabet of the Jagged Cliffs - literally called "wisdom teaching" - is a phonetic alphabet that bears a strong resemblance to Rellanic, the elven script.
Special Scripts
- Davek: The Dwarven script, Davek, is unknown to Athasians: while inscriptions in Davek have been discovered in certain ancient dwarven ruins, it has been lost to the dwarves of modern Athas.
- Iokharic: Also called the Draconic script because certain tributes sent to the Dragon are inscribed with it, Iokharic is the script of magical runes and writings. Knowing Iokharic automatically places a sage under suspicion of being a mage.
I am totally stealing this for upcoming DS game.
Seriously, this is awesome.
Since DS has a particular ancient feel, you could consider making some (most?) scripts cost double to learn (All early writing systems were so complicated they couldn't be easily mastered until they reached the Phonecians and Greeks). You could also give bonus language/literacy slots for high intelligence and/or wisdom. Bonus languanguages from intelligence could be restricted to literacy and ancient languages (representing study and training), whereas bonuses from wisdom should relate to backgrounds and modern languges (representing a more native-like fluency picked up during youth and intercultural exchanges).
The big question in my mind still is what does this system buy that the simpler system presented in the books doesn't? Clearly there's some linguistic realism involved, but how often will language-related roleplaying be affected? And how do you want to modify other aspects of the game (telepathy and feats/races with it, wild talents and class features related to telepathy, the Language of the Mind from Psionic Power, and rituals like Sending and Comprehend Languages)? I'd probably want to use a system like this in conjunction with a "secret history of the world" sort of campaign, and focus on giving different characters different clues. Alternately, in a game centered on rituals, the different languages and scripts could present interesting ways to provide specific characters with specific rituals. Modern languages could be used to put different characters in the spotlight a few times and telepathy might be somewhat species, if not language, specific.
As for extra languages to counteract the larger set of languages here... That's a question. As written, PCs get two extra languages at character creation, which I think helps. In my own campaign, I'm using a "knack system" - basically, every time PCs get a feat, they also get a 'knack', which they can use to sort of "specialize" in one part of a skill - they might take the Politics knack for Diplomacy, for instance, which gives them a +2 on diplomacy checks involving political debate and also allow them to use Diplomacy to instead of History make Knowledge checks about current politics. One other thing you can spend knack slots on is languages, which I think solves the problem at my table, but it's not useful for the broader game.
As for rituals and telepathy - I think rituals that allow language communication are great and fine. (I'm thinking of segmenting magical rituals and psionic rituals in my game, by the way - have an identical feat called "Devotion Master" for psionic characters that allow 'Psionic Devotions', which are just psionic rituals.) I'm not sure the Language of the Mind is something I would adopt in my campaign as a script regardless, though I suppose it is specialized enough to not upset the language system I've set up here. (Indeed, it's possible that some of the pictographic systems have a resemblance to the Language of the Mind.) The question in my mind is about telepathy: certainly, telepathy will work on the images/feelings level with anyone, but my gut would be to say that the farther the language gap the harder it will be to communicate. If you have related languages, no problem, but the more alien you become the more difficult conversations are by DM fiat. Ultimately, you can always get simple concepts across, but complex ideas require some shared grammar.
The biggest question of all, however, is exactly what Bera posed: what do we gain from this? To my mind, I think we gain flavor at the cost of complexity, particularly in two ways:
1.) A greater sense of place between cities and tribes.
Because most cities' languages are related to Tyrian and the Trade Tongue, practically this just means that characters are at a -2 when trying to understand residents of most other cities - and they're in real trouble dealing with Gulg and Draj, which I've always understood to be rather isolated from the culture of the rest of the Seven Cities.
2.) The ability to have insular tribes no one can speak with.
It also allows people to meet strange desert/jungle tribes they can't communicate with: and while I don't think you want the inability to communicate to be the norm, there are good story reasons to want communication barriers from time to time. The present system doesn't really allow it, because there are so few languages - an open-ended system that allows for the possibility of other languages leaves that possibility in the DM's toolkit, which I think is valuable. (And even with telepathy it may be imperfect communication, particular if they are very alien like the Kreen.)
This material is way cool and I wish I'd thought of it !
But it's also complicated and I may not want to use it at table...
A simplified chart
You are talking to somebody who is from:
-1 Different city - or - merchant House based in a different city
-2 Different racial language - or - both -1 penalties apply
-3 Very different city (SK dictates special language/alphabet)
-5 Isolated race/tribe/village (as in 'hard to reach')
-10 Isolationist race/tribe/village (as in 'wants to be left alone')
-1 Special: Interpreter available; overrides penalties above
Your work makes Linguistics a feat worth taking.