Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Scrinoverlord Nov 07, 2010 16:00:06	I've toyed with this idea for a while. What if Common is merely a trade language instead of a universal one? People in Tyr speak Tyran as their first langauge, Urik inhabitans speak Urikite, Nibenese speak Nibenese, etc. I think, given the fact that they've been established for at least a few thousand years should lead to each city having their own unique language. All of them would probably be based on Common script, but they're different enough to where Tyran and Raamish are different from each other. Thoughts?
#2 nightchill Nov 07, 2010 16:31:08	Thousands of years, yes, but how many of those were isolated? The Sorcerer Kings worked - at least with some sort of cooperation - for millenia beforehand.
#3 claytoniantomb Nov 07, 2010 16:40:55	I'd go with dialects and accents.
#4 fromost_the_grimm_02 Nov 07, 2010 17:14:25	There was a thread alluding to local languages around these here parts a few weeks ago now.  Try here. Myself, I'm planning on local dialects and accents instead of disparate languages, much like your average Urikite will look slightly different to your average Balican or Tyrian.  I don't think a few thousand years is long enough to develop wholly separate languages, especially given the interdependency even isolated city-states have on the others via trading etc. I guess it comes down to what degree of 'foreign-ness' you want from one city-state to another.  If you want native Tyrians to really feel like they're in an alien land when they visit Urik, think about making Tyrian a different language to Uri ... Uriki ... Urikite?  This will necessitate a greater dependency on magics or means of translation, or make the Tyrians stand out as they have to resort to the Trade Tongue, but it will also add a fair degree of flavour to your world.
#5 Ozmodious Nov 07, 2010 17:19:07	I'd go with dialects and accents.
#6 DocSun Nov 14, 2010 15:43:34	Just going from Rereading the Prism Pentad It would seem that they are different languages as Rikus mentions no one understanding K'Krik in The Crimson Legion but that since he was originaly from Urik slave pits he knew the langauge and could talk to him in his tounge as well as the common tounge.
#7 greyorm Nov 14, 2010 17:14:59	Keep in mind the scale of the region and the degree of local interaction when considering potential lingustic differences. The whole Tyr region isn't much bigger than the American Southwest--so maybe the size of an average European country--generally not a large enough area for highly divergent languages to develop when coupled to the interdependency of the cities, with trade, slaves, and warriors going back and forth for thousands of years. (As another historical point, the case could easily be made that by the time the Cleansing Wars ended, differences in language had long ago been erased by the needs of the armies for clear communication in a single tongue. So when the armies settled and populated the cities, they were all speaking the same tongue.) Given all those factors, even if the various peoples who populated the cities had started with seperate languages, over the centuries the trend would have been towards a greater commonality of language rather than away from such. Other languages would more likely be found among outsiders to the culture of the city-states, in wandering tribes who don't rely on trade and such from the cities to survive, particularly elven raiders and gith bandits and such.
#8 Bly2729 Nov 14, 2010 19:59:47	But to what end? Is it fun?
#9 Pennarin Nov 14, 2010 22:49:28	Well laid out argument, Rev. Wasn't it you, though, who proposed the opposite argument not so long ago? ;) The Cleansing Wars armies came from wildly different geographical areas, each raised from the populace of the region from whence a Champion once hailed as a mortal, all speaking different languages, bringing those same languages to the city-states when they laid down arms?
#10 Bera Nov 14, 2010 23:34:39	I think your European country analogy is inaccurate. Consider the example of Latin. Over 1500 years since the fall of Rome, Latin diverged into a large number of local dialects: French, Spanish, Castillian, Portuguese, Romanian, Italian, alongside the lesser known Corsican, Sicilian, Occitan, etc. It really took the rise of the nation-state and the abandonment of Latin for these national and local languages to develope and become standardized. Despite travel from Draj to Kalidney, no ammount of contact will maintain language over such a lengthy period of time (assuming languages in DS have the properties of natural human languages in our world). So in spite of the possibility that the people of the Tyr-region may have had a unified language and culture immediately after the cleansing wars, there is plenty of time and isolation for dialects to drift into distinct languages. I think the major social identities in DS are tribal and city-state, not Tyr-region vs the rest, so languages and dialects are most likely to reflect city-state identities, rather than be a unified civilized identity. I didn't bother with this (or many other house rules/setting elements) when I started my DS game, but if I had it to do over I'd probably make common the interstate Trade Tongue and give each city its own language. Only the trade tongue would commonly be written.
#11 greyorm Nov 15, 2010 11:18:36	Hrm, Penn, did I? Bera, that is an excellent and defensible counter-argument, though the child languages you refer to are spread out over a much wider geographical area than encompassed by the Tyr region, and their cultures much less interdependent than the Tyrian cultures. I think the main issue is, as you note, the isolation of the culture. The Dark Ages provided a rather high isolation factor for Europe, but I don't see the cities of the Tyr region as being far enough from or isolated enough from one another for natural linguistic shifts to cause divergence of one city-state's speech from another. Instead, the language would tend to self-correct across the region, with changes carried from one locale to another. That is, of course, assuming the city-states all began with a particular language. If instead they started with seperate languages, the lack of isolation and interdependency of the city-states--even given the cultural differences of each--would certainly drive the languages together over that time (I'm thinking of ancient Greece as a model, here -- city-states with wildly divergent cultures that all share the same language -- or even ancient India). The key, I think, is whether or not the isolation factor is high enough that lingustic changes would propagate only in local instances, rather than regionally, and splinter the language. Or if the isolation factor is low enough that local linguistic changes would propagate regionally. (And factoring in the size of the territory in question.) With the merchant houses, the veiled alliance, inter-city slave trade, and similar, I suspect the region's isolation factor is low. (One might also consider the Sorcerer-Kings and their adherence to maintaining the status quo--we are told in the original boxed set that nothing has changed for thousands of years--which may indeed extend to the language. Where linguistic deviance is a punishable offense: the Templars maintain the spoken language of the region as they do everything else, much as with Latin, Rome, and the Church.)
#12 Alphastream Nov 15, 2010 14:57:07	I've hit a bit of an issue in that most of the PCs have low Int. They speak few languages. However, I have nonetheless implemented a homebrew language system and used different languages in different city-states. It has been largely an RP device, with some issues for them (the gate guards abuse them more easily since they don't speak the language, hustling a larger fee from them). Overall, I am pleased with the effect on the game and will keep using language as an element.
#13 renteria Nov 15, 2010 16:20:40	I just want to put in my two cents, since I have a bit of a linguistics background. Common language, i.e. a lingua franca, has always been an idealization in DnD used for playing convenience. Languages change and splinter at a remarkable rate. The Tyr region is ancient and one with cities equally ancient that are culturally distinct. Even if a founding population 10K years before had only one language, the racial diversity would make it incredibly difficult to not have these different cities develop their own language. And the sheer age makes it incredibly unlikely that we wouldnt have at least a language per city. I think slavery is an interesting thing to throw in, because slaves are a highly mobile uneducated population (perfectly capable of learning new languages), so in all likelihood, Common would be a creole like we've never seen, with grammatical structures, sound patterns, and especially word borrowings from every language spoken in the area, with different languages being word stocks for different areas (you can imagine elvish having a lot of cognates to common tongue words involving trade, transit, crime, and bad words.) But the fact that trade is so prevelant suggests that their would be a great amount of linguistic influence horizontally between the local languages. At the same time, as you can see all over the world with languages very close to one another, the cultural differences and individualistic character of the city-states would ensure that they would remain linguistically distinct enough to be mutually unintelligible. If this were a real world, the idea of there being only one language would be, simply put, preposterous. I think that a good compromise would be to assume that a common speaker will recognize bits and pieces of different languages de facto, give everyone a free local tongue (Drajan Tyrian Tribal Elvish, etc) on top of common (remember, there are parts of the world where even the idiots speak 3-5 languages), and be albe to 'get around' in the closest city's language. Makes it richer and why are situations where you can't understand the natives so bad for a role playing game anyway?
#14 awaken_D_M_golem Nov 15, 2010 17:26:23	What if Common is merely a trade language instead of a universal one? From a game mechanics stand point, this is totally do-able. Common still functions the exact same, but doesn't uncover much of real interest. That's the realm of Streetwise, and the various other social skill checks. Example: Many people in India or on the internet, utilize English language = "Common" Brett Favre might be pulling a soap-opera again. That could be Streetwise expert check, or perhaps a local Religion check (wink).
#15 Bera Nov 15, 2010 17:50:12	I'm not convinced that travel between city-states is somehow easy or commonplace. Particularly with the expansion of the map in 4e, it takes days of travel through very difficult monster-filled terrain. Getting passage with a desert tribe or a caravan isn't likely to be easy or cheap. Going it alone is rather suicidal, even if you can somehow afford a kank, supplies, and entrance to a new city. Even those desert tribes and merchant houses that do travel often have little reason to consort with outsiders in a foreign city when they travel in large numbers. But maybe my Athas is just different that way. As an aside on the Intelligence=more languages note, its perfectly reasonable to assign languages based on Intelligence or Wisdom, or to give a bonus language to certain races, classes, or themes. Dune Traders, Minstrels, Noble Adepts, and Templars seem reasonably likely to merit a bonus language (perhaps a bonus language or literacy). There's always the background system that could grant a vital language too, rather than a skill bonus. Telepathic psions, regrettably, have very little in terms of added communication abilities when and if there are language barriers still though.
#16 doctorproctor Nov 19, 2010 16:59:37	But to what end? Is it fun? I think you hit the nail on the head there.  What are you really gaining here from this change?  The example that one poster gave with the guards harassing the PC's because they were obviously foreign and then charging them more?  That can just as easily be accomplished with more world building and in depth culture (if everyone dresses the same and eats the same food, but speaks different languages, you haven't created separate "cultures"), combined with heavy regional accents and slang. For example, I live in the US.  If someone says "When I'm standing patiently in the checkout queue at Tesco I like to chivvy along the old ladies in front of me. If only they would stop fannying around" I know two things. 1) He's probably British 2) He's doing something to some old ladies at what I assume is a store and wishes they would stop doing something else. In that example, I would assume that "fannying around" is similar to "horsing around" or just wasting time.  So I would guess he was waiting in line and he's maybe trying to tell them to hurry up? The point is, it's British slang and it's sufficiently different that I don't know exactly what he's saying.  However, for 90% of interchanges I'd be able to understand him perfectly due to a lot of common words since we're basically just speaking the same language here.  It's easy to distinguish that this person is "foreign", even if I might get it confused sometimes with related accents/dialects (see: Australia), but with more experience I would be able to tell them apart.  With time, I could probably pick up most of the commonly used slang and colloquialisms (ie- loo, cheerio, bollocks, etc..), although some things would require a lot more study (the intricacies of cockney slang, for example). To me, this still gives each city-state a different "feel" and "culture" without creating a lot of needless frustration for the players.  I would want my players to experience everything that Athas has to offer, not be saying "Well, we're all from Tyr, so we probably shouldn't even both going to Nibenay since we don't speak the language".  Or even worse, spending time tracking down magical ways to get around it, which kinda defeats the purpose having it be a low magic world.  (If you did implement it, I would houserule the telepathy talent to communicate with anyone speaking a derivative of the common tongue...makes the power a lot more useful and eases some of the frustration). Either way though, to me it just seems more likely to lead to player frustration in the vein of these: "God, we have to find a translator again!  Why is a Tyrian Veiled Alliance member in Urik anyway?  Wouldn't they use a local specifically to avoid this issue???" or "Let's see, so now I have to choose between a feat I really want, or the language feat since now I'm the only person in the party from Urik, and none of them speak Urikian."
#17 Scrinoverlord Nov 19, 2010 22:31:34	But to what end? Is it fun? I think you hit the nail on the head there.  What are you really gaining here from this change?  The example that one poster gave with the guards harassing the PC's because they were obviously foreign and then charging them more?  That can just as easily be accomplished with more world building and in depth culture (if everyone dresses the same and eats the same food, but speaks different languages, you haven't created separate "cultures"), combined with heavy regional accents and slang. For example, I live in the US.  If someone says "When I'm standing patiently in the checkout queue at Tesco I like to chivvy along the old ladies in front of me. If only they would stop fannying around" I know two things. 1) He's probably British 2) He's doing something to some old ladies at what I assume is a store and wishes they would stop doing something else. In that example, I would assume that "fannying around" is similar to "horsing around" or just wasting time.  So I would guess he was waiting in line and he's maybe trying to tell them to hurry up? The point is, it's British slang and it's sufficiently different that I don't know exactly what he's saying.  However, for 90% of interchanges I'd be able to understand him perfectly due to a lot of common words since we're basically just speaking the same language here.  It's easy to distinguish that this person is "foreign", even if I might get it confused sometimes with related accents/dialects (see: Australia), but with more experience I would be able to tell them apart.  With time, I could probably pick up most of the commonly used slang and colloquialisms (ie- loo, cheerio, bollocks, etc..), although some things would require a lot more study (the intricacies of cockney slang, for example). To me, this still gives each city-state a different "feel" and "culture" without creating a lot of needless frustration for the players.  I would want my players to experience everything that Athas has to offer, not be saying "Well, we're all from Tyr, so we probably shouldn't even both going to Nibenay since we don't speak the language".  Or even worse, spending time tracking down magical ways to get around it, which kinda defeats the purpose having it be a low magic world.  (If you did implement it, I would houserule the telepathy talent to communicate with anyone speaking a derivative of the common tongue...makes the power a lot more useful and eases some of the frustration). Either way though, to me it just seems more likely to lead to player frustration in the vein of these: "God, we have to find a translator again!  Why is a Tyrian Veiled Alliance member in Urik anyway?  Wouldn't they use a local specifically to avoid this issue???" or "Let's see, so now I have to choose between a feat I really want, or the language feat since now I'm the only person in the party from Urik, and none of them speak Urikian." I would have it to where everyone speaks at least a little Common as a second language. You present it as an unavoidable obstacle, but that's not how I will have it; merely have it to a point where each of the city-states seem much more culturally diverse and different from each other. The only times I think language will be a hinderance is with other races, or perhaps with slaves.
#18 doctorproctor Nov 20, 2010 8:32:33	I would have it to where everyone speaks at least a little Common as a second language. You present it as an unavoidable obstacle, but that's not how I will have it; merely have it to a point where each of the city-states seem much more culturally diverse and different from each other. The only times I think language will be a hinderance is with other races, or perhaps with slaves. Yeah, I can speak a little Spanish too, doesn't mean I could get around Spain or Mexico City very easily though.  Plus, I don't know about your group, but in my game we don't have a single human.  We have a Half-Elf, Dragonborn, Kobold, Halfling, Tiefling and a Half-Orc.  Granted, the Half-Elf and the Half-Orc would probably be able to communicate fine, as would the Dragonborn and the Kobold (not sure about the Halfling, since in 2e Dark Sun they were feral and outside of the cities, but I don't know about the 4e version).  The Tiefling would probably just be on her own though.  So even just within the party this could create significant language barriers unless you handwave it to say they all speak common fluently.  Which, at that point, is breaking the vermisilitude that you're trying to create with the multiple languages anyway! To be clear though, I'm not saying that this is an impossible barier to overcome...merely that it's a barrier.  But you have to ask yourself, what am I gaining, and what is it costing?  In terms of cost it could make communication difficult and frustrating for players.  In terms of gain, what is there to gain that can't be gained from just painting a clear picture of different accents, dialects (mostly through slang) and cultural customs for each city-state?  To me, you're just not gaining enough to really justify the cost.
#19 alevar Nov 20, 2010 14:47:39	Here's my solution, Everyone naturally has the common language, which serves as a trade language.  Then based on their background, they gain a regional language, Dajjian, Rammite, Nibenese ect. Backgrounds from a specific city state automatically grant you that language, other regions might give you more of a choice for example: The tablelands will grant you either Tyrian, Balican (Altaruk), or Urikite The Estuary will grant you Balican The Ivory triangle grants you either Nibenese, Gulgan, or Rammite The Road of Kings gives you Urikite, Drajjian, or Rammite ect. This way you can preserve the natural culture of a city state, give you opurtunities from speaking the language (example the french will be more likely to grant a request to a tourist who speaks french) and you don't penalize the players.  Plus it actually gives a use for the translator service, for when you're going to a city state that no one is familiar with
#20 flip Nov 20, 2010 15:22:29	You guys might be interested in an old Athas.org product:  Wisdom of the Drylanders  ( athas.org/products/WotDL )  ... one of the first sections of it discusses the nature of language in the Tyr region.  This is a point-of-view product, so nothing in it is necessarily cannonical, but it does put forth some ruminations that you might find interesting if you want to go the High / Low route for languages.
#21 agi Nov 20, 2010 20:11:51	"In my wandering of the Tablelands and beyond, I have found that the majority of languages differ more in race, than in location. Each race speaks its own tonuge, and all but thri-kreen and halflings use the Common Tongue. Every city-state has its own unique dialect, but there are several locations that have developed their own language altogether. Gulg, as well as Eldaarich, Kurn, Saragar, Thamasku, and Winter's Nest, all have their own language. And while the Sorcerer-Kings would prefer their subjects not to know of such things, it is common knowledge that Draji Templars, Merchants and possibly members of the Veiled Alliance each have their own secret languages. I have come across numerous nomadic people who have also developed their own language, and while the Common Tounge is the most wide-spread language, it is also the one that has the most ambiguous, and often confusing, meanings; leaving it as the most distrusted language used on Athas." ~ Agi, Athasian Wanderer
#22 awaken_D_M_golem Nov 24, 2010 14:18:12	Niice --- very nice. Another possible rules-heavy route, would be to make "tiefling" and "dwarf" languages be available to any specific group. Then separately that "group" can be composed of any number or combo of races. Effectively: Races no longer equals Language, anymore. "Unique dialect" and "secret languages" are then entirely the province of Knowledge and social skill checks, and wholesale Social Skill Challenges. Ditching the Official~unified~language rules, ends up canning Social Skill Challenges, or at least totally re-writing them. Not that that hasn't happened anyway (wink). If you still want to go the "low" route, ala flip above, you'll have to come up with a non-4e social skill set-up. Obviously, previous editions have lots of material here.
#23 Khilkhameth Nov 30, 2010 16:31:03	The old Ivory Triangle boxed set mentioned that nobles of Gulg spoke a High Gulg dialect (which Lalali-Puy insists that anyone speaking to her uses!), based upon "the Gulg tongue as it was spoken in her court thousands of years ago".  It's not too far a stretch to imagine that the nobilities of each city state have a private tongue that they use to communicate above the heads of slaves and low-borns, with a few terms filtering down to the populace to spice up Common with a few local terms (like the different names for templars in each city).
#24 Sarlax Dec 01, 2010 14:03:06	Something I suggested on Gnomestew.com for representation of common as a trade language is to have a penalty to social checks when speaking in Common, but not when speaking in a complete language. Speak in Common, -4 to Diplomacy. Speak in Elven, no change. This has the benefit of great simplicity. It also tends to cut in the right place: PCs getting penalized on social checks are probably those who aren't interested in learning extra languages anyway. For Dark Sun, there are two options for completing the system. The first is that each city has its own language that functions like any complete language. The other is that residents of a city waive this penalty for fellow citizens, and, with enough time in another city, they acquire the dialog and the penalty for that city is also waived. An alternative approach is to make each language produce a positive effect.  Common works normally, but if you learn Tyric (or whatever), you also get a +3 bonus on social checks made against citizens of Tyr. Normally, a citizen wouldn't know his "city language" because such knowledge reflects specialized training in the cultural idiosyncrasies that most people don't bother acquiring.