Each of the Five Nations have their own language - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Each of the Five Nations have their own language

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
Scrinoverlord
Nov 25, 2010 22:10:57 Bringing up a similar question in Dark Sun, this idea has always been something I've wanted to try out.

My idea is basically that Common is still a widely understood language, since it was the common language of Galifar. But how did each of the Five Nations get their own language? Well, in this alternate scenario, their existance as independant nations stretched out much longer than they originally have, to the point where each developed their own unique languages and script. Although Common was a widely understood and spoken language, it really did not become as widespread as it had until Galifar united each of the kingdoms. Hence to this day Common is basically the "English" of Khorvaire; almost everyone can speak it, yet it is a second language for many humans.

Now why do I want to do this in the first place? Aside from giving each of the nations a more unique flavor, interesting situations can pop up that include the use of languages. Not enough to where it becomes a nuisance or annoying, but enough to where it can lead to some interesting scenarios or challenges.

Thoughts?
#2
m4kitsu
Nov 26, 2010 2:33:04 I had a GM try this. In effect, it amounted to nothing more than a feat tax when all the PCs took Linguist and that was basically the end of it -someone in the party always spoke the relevant language to the situation, and nothing was gained or lost in terms of gameplay and entertainment.

I'm not trying to discourage you, just relating what happened when I saw it done.

I think Eberron has enough languages anyway, and I like being able to play on the regional dialects being a giveaway to a person's origin within the Five Nations -my PCs once discovered a mole in their organization by realizing that his accent was wrong (he claimed to be Aundairian, but his accent was Karrn).

Really, in addition to Common spoken throughout the Five Nations, you have Darguun, Zilargo, the Holds, Valenar, the Plains and the Shadow Marches each with their own "official" language, plus the more cosmopolitan outlying areas -Q'barra, Droaam, the Wastes and the Reaches- where I'd wager you're more likely to encounter pidgins or creole languages than you are "pure" ones. Beyond that you have Riedran and Quor as major languages on Sarlona, plus a dozen or so less common, more exotic variants (those of the Qiku shifters, the Eneko, etc) and the Adaran tongue of the Kalashtar, Draconic, the variants of Giant spoken on Xen'drik along with the languages of the Umbragen and Sulatar and whoever else happens to be out there.

There is also, of course, the question of regional dialects themselves and the occasionally stark differences between them. To use an English example, put a Glaswegian and a Louisianan in the same room -see if either of them has any idea what the other is saying.
#3
Madfox11
Nov 26, 2010 4:05:35
I had a GM try this. In effect, it amounted to nothing more than a feat tax when all the PCs took Linguist and that was basically the end of it -someone in the party always spoke the relevant language to the situation, and nothing was gained or lost in terms of gameplay and entertainment.

In my current non-Eberron campaign I am running it more or less as proposed. The big cultures have their own language, but most speak the language of the now-collapsed empire. As M4kitsu says it is mostly for fluff reasons, but I wouldn't say nothing is gained or lost. For one thing, on occassion it has limited the usefulness and ability of PCs to overhear and understand conversations between locals. For another it adds roleplay flavor. Not every character likes to speak Common due to its association with the old empire, and more importantly, not everybody can actually speak it (although the PCs have not yet been in a backyard region were this is likely to happen). I also at times give PCs who speak the local language a small bonus on the social skill checks.

Mind you, I do take care that the language differences remain mostly fluff. Learning different languages is relatively difficult in 4E, and while the occassional language issues creates fun RP, it can become stale and irritating real quickly.

Having said that, for Eberron I prefer M4kitsu's approach. It fits our discussion we had yesterday during a home game session. Our group is in the Shadow Marches, and the locals tend to speak a dialect of goblin (in 4E there is no orcish language, and Giant makes no sense). One PC was a halfling, and speaks the halfling dialect of Goblin, another learned it at the streets of Sharn and my PC owns an ancient magic item, likely from the Dhaakaan empire (a gem of collique - curtesy of carelessness of Morgraive University). We had some fun talking about it, and the potential confusion the various dialects could cause. Still, the locals appreciated we at least tried to speak their language as opposed to the Common language from the so-called civilized folk ;)
#4
Gurv
Nov 27, 2010 13:15:54 Personally, I always thought that the Five Nations ought to have their own languages. It doesn't take that long for languages to begin to drift. Accents differ even in regions of the same country in the real world. And we have a degree of high-speed communication and travel which the Five Nations does not possess.

Add to that the fact that expanding humans encountered other humanoids with their own languages and spent generations dealing with them. Even united under Galifar, language would be different throughout the 5N.

In 3e, I represented it like this:

Speak Language was a normal rankable skill. All characters recieve 3 free ranks in their native tongue.

A single rank represented a passing knowledge of a language. You needed to make a skill check if a speaker was not making a special effort to be understood, or complex concepts were involved. Your speech is broken and you likewise need to make a skill check to convey complex concepts. Your accent is horrendous and there is little you can do about it. Reading and writing is difficult.

Two ranks in a language is a much more respectable mastery. You do not need to make checks to understand or be understood in most cases. Only obscure idioms still escape you. You still have an accent, but can mask it by making an effort.

Three ranks is native-level mastery. You speak fluently and can read and write without difficulty.

Five ranks in a language grants a synergy bonus to skills that rely on that language. This includes most interaction skills, such as Diplomacy.
#5
Blarghy
Nov 28, 2010 4:06:34 I have nothing against new language systems, but I'm not sure the Khorvaire as presented in the setting would benefit from making each nation more foreign to one another. The idea is that the entire continent could relapse into war at any time precisely because the notion of reuniting them all under a new Galifar is not so far-fetched. Dialects should certainly exist, but I think there should be a strong amount of cultural overlap between the surviving four nations that is recognizably Galifarian.
#6
Madfox11
Nov 29, 2010 4:11:24
Personally, I always thought that the Five Nations ought to have their own languages. It doesn't take that long for languages to begin to drift. Accents differ even in regions of the same country in the real world. And we have a degree of high-speed communication and travel which the Five Nations does not possess.

While you are correct from a "realism"* perspective, the downside of such an approach is that in my experience language barriers are only fun up to a point and quickly become irritating to the players. Since PCs do travel around a lot in most campaigns, that point of irritation is quickly reached. Learning languages in D&D is expensive both in 3E (where skill points are not exactly the most common resource for most PCs) and 4E (where it actually costs a feat). Granted, a gem of collique (sp?) is cheap in 4E, and comprehand languages is easy in 3E, but there is a reason why the number of languages was so drastically reduced in 4E. Few players like to be bothered with it ;)

* Note that I use the word realism with care. For one thing, after 500 years of Roman rule most people spoke Latin to an extend that people in southern Europe still speak Roman based languages. The kingdom of Gallifar actually has much better communication and travel methods then the Romans had and it existed considerably longer. For another, much of Eberron's history differs significantly from RL. Galifar existed for 1000 years. There are virtually no empires in RL Earth (Eastern Roman Empire, depending on your definition maybe China and Egypt) that lasted 1000 years, let alone with the same royal family at the throne. Not to mention that unless something really odd is happening behind scene in RL, there are no demon princes and dragons manipulating things behind scenes on Earth ;)
#7
Juums
Nov 29, 2010 16:00:34 I always thought that the evolution of Korean in the Twentieth Century was a rather example of what happened to Common during and after the Last War. For those who are unaware of such, in a nutshell, prior to the end of WW2 there was a single Korean language: The Korean War and its aftermath have created a linguistic schism, with the languages spoken by those north and south of the 38th Parallel being put on divergent trajectories by the Cold War. While the language is still recognizable as Korean in both the DPRK and RoK, a refugee from the DPRK usually has a hard time making himself understood at first, due to half-a-century of divergent lingual evolution. At any rate, if you want to run with the concept in Eberron, it'd mean that while everyone still nominally speaks Common, what "Common" is in each nation has probably changed a fair bit in the intervening century of warfare and relative isolation of each nation's hinterland.

If you're feeling ambitious, it's fun trying to figure out how various national incarnations of Common might diverge from Galifarian Common. Brelish Common might draw more vocabulary from Giant and colloquialisms from the Zils; Aundairian Common might be infiltrated by a smattering of Draconic or Sylvan adjectives or expressions; and Karrnathi Common could well be riddled with Dwarven euphemisms. I'd imagine Thrane Common would be distinguishable by the proliferation of the theological into the vernacular. And as for Cyre...I could never decide whether they, as the great cultured people of Khorvaire, whether they'd steadfastly cling to Galifarian Common out of reverence for the classics or whether they'd embrace the avante-garde, with Cyran Common becoming analogous to modern-day English and its propensity for borrowing words and phrases from every other language imagineable.

#8
Alas
Nov 30, 2010 3:53:19
Sometimes I really, really miss Darth Syntax. (For those who don't know, DS was the Eberron boards' resident linguist and philologist for ages. He provided some excellent homebrew stuff on Talentan and goblin languages.)

Anywho...

The way I've approached Common in my campaigns breaks down something like this:

Common is the language of the Kingdom of Galifar. Galifar has dominated Khorvaire for centuries, so Common has disseminated broadly thanks to commerce, education, art, and law.

Thanks to the mobility of the Dragonhouses and upper classes, Common is very standardized across the top-- they all went to the same universities and read the same Korranberg Chronicle, after all.

While Galifar's influence was continent-wide, it was not complete. Even within the Five Nations, there are rural or extremely inaccessible regions. Common still penetrated there, but once it arrived, it didn't "keep up with the times."

The Last War disrupted international communication, but it also disturbed and redistributed populations. Even if your village was ignored for the previous ten centuries, chances are high that at some point during the 100 years of the Last War you had to start interacting with (and learning from) "furr'ners." People get conscripted and sent abroad, and refugees settle down next door. When that happens, the variations get recombined.

So, Common is still Common, but it's easy to identify someone as not belonging to your in-group.
#9
Dargurd
Dec 01, 2010 14:05:40 I believe each nation would have dialects, accents and word pronunciation that in general are different to each other but i also think the fact that originally they were one nation would still mean the common tongue was the driver.

A good real life example would be English.

Spoken in England as the mother tongue and exported around the world during the height of the colonial period. American English and Australian English, just two examples, although the same language have hundreds, if not thousand of differing accents, word spellings and pronunciation differences.

As an Englishman working with Americans, meetings often break down with moments of hilarity as one nations phrases or words are taken to mean something completely different by the other. I see this being something that would happen across the Five Nations.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Scrinoverlord Nov 25, 2010 22:10:57	Bringing up a similar question in Dark Sun, this idea has always been something I've wanted to try out. My idea is basically that Common is still a widely understood language, since it was the common language of Galifar. But how did each of the Five Nations get their own language? Well, in this alternate scenario, their existance as independant nations stretched out much longer than they originally have, to the point where each developed their own unique languages and script. Although Common was a widely understood and spoken language, it really did not become as widespread as it had until Galifar united each of the kingdoms. Hence to this day Common is basically the "English" of Khorvaire; almost everyone can speak it, yet it is a second language for many humans. Now why do I want to do this in the first place? Aside from giving each of the nations a more unique flavor, interesting situations can pop up that include the use of languages. Not enough to where it becomes a nuisance or annoying, but enough to where it can lead to some interesting scenarios or challenges. Thoughts?
#2 m4kitsu Nov 26, 2010 2:33:04	I had a GM try this. In effect, it amounted to nothing more than a feat tax when all the PCs took Linguist and that was basically the end of it -someone in the party always spoke the relevant language to the situation, and nothing was gained or lost in terms of gameplay and entertainment. I'm not trying to discourage you, just relating what happened when I saw it done. I think Eberron has enough languages anyway, and I like being able to play on the regional dialects being a giveaway to a person's origin within the Five Nations -my PCs once discovered a mole in their organization by realizing that his accent was wrong (he claimed to be Aundairian, but his accent was Karrn). Really, in addition to Common spoken throughout the Five Nations, you have Darguun, Zilargo, the Holds, Valenar, the Plains and the Shadow Marches each with their own "official" language, plus the more cosmopolitan outlying areas -Q'barra, Droaam, the Wastes and the Reaches- where I'd wager you're more likely to encounter pidgins or creole languages than you are "pure" ones. Beyond that you have Riedran and Quor as major languages on Sarlona, plus a dozen or so less common, more exotic variants (those of the Qiku shifters, the Eneko, etc) and the Adaran tongue of the Kalashtar, Draconic, the variants of Giant spoken on Xen'drik along with the languages of the Umbragen and Sulatar and whoever else happens to be out there. There is also, of course, the question of regional dialects themselves and the occasionally stark differences between them. To use an English example, put a Glaswegian and a Louisianan in the same room -see if either of them has any idea what the other is saying.
#3 Madfox11 Nov 26, 2010 4:05:35	I had a GM try this. In effect, it amounted to nothing more than a feat tax when all the PCs took Linguist and that was basically the end of it -someone in the party always spoke the relevant language to the situation, and nothing was gained or lost in terms of gameplay and entertainment. In my current non-Eberron campaign I am running it more or less as proposed. The big cultures have their own language, but most speak the language of the now-collapsed empire. As M4kitsu says it is mostly for fluff reasons, but I wouldn't say nothing is gained or lost. For one thing, on occassion it has limited the usefulness and ability of PCs to overhear and understand conversations between locals. For another it adds roleplay flavor. Not every character likes to speak Common due to its association with the old empire, and more importantly, not everybody can actually speak it (although the PCs have not yet been in a backyard region were this is likely to happen). I also at times give PCs who speak the local language a small bonus on the social skill checks. Mind you, I do take care that the language differences remain mostly fluff. Learning different languages is relatively difficult in 4E, and while the occassional language issues creates fun RP, it can become stale and irritating real quickly. Having said that, for Eberron I prefer M4kitsu's approach. It fits our discussion we had yesterday during a home game session. Our group is in the Shadow Marches, and the locals tend to speak a dialect of goblin (in 4E there is no orcish language, and Giant makes no sense). One PC was a halfling, and speaks the halfling dialect of Goblin, another learned it at the streets of Sharn and my PC owns an ancient magic item, likely from the Dhaakaan empire (a gem of collique - curtesy of carelessness of Morgraive University). We had some fun talking about it, and the potential confusion the various dialects could cause. Still, the locals appreciated we at least tried to speak their language as opposed to the Common language from the so-called civilized folk ;)
#4 Gurv Nov 27, 2010 13:15:54	Personally, I always thought that the Five Nations ought to have their own languages. It doesn't take that long for languages to begin to drift. Accents differ even in regions of the same country in the real world. And we have a degree of high-speed communication and travel which the Five Nations does not possess. Add to that the fact that expanding humans encountered other humanoids with their own languages and spent generations dealing with them. Even united under Galifar, language would be different throughout the 5N. In 3e, I represented it like this: Speak Language was a normal rankable skill. All characters recieve 3 free ranks in their native tongue. A single rank represented a passing knowledge of a language. You needed to make a skill check if a speaker was not making a special effort to be understood, or complex concepts were involved. Your speech is broken and you likewise need to make a skill check to convey complex concepts. Your accent is horrendous and there is little you can do about it. Reading and writing is difficult. Two ranks in a language is a much more respectable mastery. You do not need to make checks to understand or be understood in most cases. Only obscure idioms still escape you. You still have an accent, but can mask it by making an effort. Three ranks is native-level mastery. You speak fluently and can read and write without difficulty. Five ranks in a language grants a synergy bonus to skills that rely on that language. This includes most interaction skills, such as Diplomacy.
#5 Blarghy Nov 28, 2010 4:06:34	I have nothing against new language systems, but I'm not sure the Khorvaire as presented in the setting would benefit from making each nation more foreign to one another. The idea is that the entire continent could relapse into war at any time precisely because the notion of reuniting them all under a new Galifar is not so far-fetched. Dialects should certainly exist, but I think there should be a strong amount of cultural overlap between the surviving four nations that is recognizably Galifarian.
#6 Madfox11 Nov 29, 2010 4:11:24	Personally, I always thought that the Five Nations ought to have their own languages. It doesn't take that long for languages to begin to drift. Accents differ even in regions of the same country in the real world. And we have a degree of high-speed communication and travel which the Five Nations does not possess. While you are correct from a "realism"* perspective, the downside of such an approach is that in my experience language barriers are only fun up to a point and quickly become irritating to the players. Since PCs do travel around a lot in most campaigns, that point of irritation is quickly reached. Learning languages in D&D is expensive both in 3E (where skill points are not exactly the most common resource for most PCs) and 4E (where it actually costs a feat). Granted, a gem of collique (sp?) is cheap in 4E, and comprehand languages is easy in 3E, but there is a reason why the number of languages was so drastically reduced in 4E. Few players like to be bothered with it ;) * Note that I use the word realism with care. For one thing, after 500 years of Roman rule most people spoke Latin to an extend that people in southern Europe still speak Roman based languages. The kingdom of Gallifar actually has much better communication and travel methods then the Romans had and it existed considerably longer. For another, much of Eberron's history differs significantly from RL. Galifar existed for 1000 years. There are virtually no empires in RL Earth (Eastern Roman Empire, depending on your definition maybe China and Egypt) that lasted 1000 years, let alone with the same royal family at the throne. Not to mention that unless something really odd is happening behind scene in RL, there are no demon princes and dragons manipulating things behind scenes on Earth ;)
#7 Juums Nov 29, 2010 16:00:34	I always thought that the evolution of Korean in the Twentieth Century was a rather example of what happened to Common during and after the Last War. For those who are unaware of such, in a nutshell, prior to the end of WW2 there was a single Korean language: The Korean War and its aftermath have created a linguistic schism, with the languages spoken by those north and south of the 38th Parallel being put on divergent trajectories by the Cold War. While the language is still recognizable as Korean in both the DPRK and RoK, a refugee from the DPRK usually has a hard time making himself understood at first, due to half-a-century of divergent lingual evolution. At any rate, if you want to run with the concept in Eberron, it'd mean that while everyone still nominally speaks Common, what "Common" is in each nation has probably changed a fair bit in the intervening century of warfare and relative isolation of each nation's hinterland. If you're feeling ambitious, it's fun trying to figure out how various national incarnations of Common might diverge from Galifarian Common. Brelish Common might draw more vocabulary from Giant and colloquialisms from the Zils; Aundairian Common might be infiltrated by a smattering of Draconic or Sylvan adjectives or expressions; and Karrnathi Common could well be riddled with Dwarven euphemisms. I'd imagine Thrane Common would be distinguishable by the proliferation of the theological into the vernacular. And as for Cyre...I could never decide whether they, as the great cultured people of Khorvaire, whether they'd steadfastly cling to Galifarian Common out of reverence for the classics or whether they'd embrace the avante-garde, with Cyran Common becoming analogous to modern-day English and its propensity for borrowing words and phrases from every other language imagineable.
#8 Alas Nov 30, 2010 3:53:19	Sometimes I really, really miss Darth Syntax. (For those who don't know, DS was the Eberron boards' resident linguist and philologist for ages. He provided some excellent homebrew stuff on Talentan and goblin languages.) Anywho... The way I've approached Common in my campaigns breaks down something like this: Common is the language of the Kingdom of Galifar. Galifar has dominated Khorvaire for centuries, so Common has disseminated broadly thanks to commerce, education, art, and law. Thanks to the mobility of the Dragonhouses and upper classes, Common is very standardized across the top-- they all went to the same universities and read the same Korranberg Chronicle, after all. While Galifar's influence was continent-wide, it was not complete. Even within the Five Nations, there are rural or extremely inaccessible regions. Common still penetrated there, but once it arrived, it didn't "keep up with the times." The Last War disrupted international communication, but it also disturbed and redistributed populations. Even if your village was ignored for the previous ten centuries, chances are high that at some point during the 100 years of the Last War you had to start interacting with (and learning from) "furr'ners." People get conscripted and sent abroad, and refugees settle down next door. When that happens, the variations get recombined. So, Common is still Common, but it's easy to identify someone as not belonging to your in-group.
#9 Dargurd Dec 01, 2010 14:05:40	I believe each nation would have dialects, accents and word pronunciation that in general are different to each other but i also think the fact that originally they were one nation would still mean the common tongue was the driver. A good real life example would be English. Spoken in England as the mother tongue and exported around the world during the height of the colonial period. American English and Australian English, just two examples, although the same language have hundreds, if not thousand of differing accents, word spellings and pronunciation differences. As an Englishman working with Americans, meetings often break down with moments of hilarity as one nations phrases or words are taken to mean something completely different by the other. I see this being something that would happen across the Five Nations.