Author: Sérgio Mascarenhas (---.74.193)
Date: 06-28-2002 03:42
I loved the article but the conclusion (point five, the one on American as being the language of etc.) is there for nothing.
The language of RPGs in general and fantasy RPGs for the case is the one the players are speaking. If it is English, so it is. If it is Konkani or Portuguese or Kimbundu, its Konkani or Portuguese or Kimbundu.
American English is no more universal than any other language, neither more adaptative. The idiotic attitude of the Académie Française is just that: an idiocy that even French people at large ignore.
All the languages I know show no less ability to incorporate and create new concepts and new words than American English.
The interesting fact happens when people speak more than one language and use cultural products from different languages. For instance, suppose a group of RPG players in Portugal playing D&D3. Since this game was not translated into Portuguese, they will learn the game from the American edition (most likely scenario). They end playing in Portuguese with an American jargoon (is this the word?).
What you don't touch is what exactly Common is if we judge by historical examples. Think about the Roman Empire outside of Italy (and discouting the educated few); the Mediterranean world in the 12 to 16th centuries; the Asian Seas in the 11th to the 15th centuries first, and the 16th and the 17th centuries afterwards. In all this cases there was a Common:
- In the Roman Empire it was a form of Latin highly bastardized by the contact with local languages and a poor domain of language by the masses.
- In the case of the Medieval and Renaissance Mediterranean seas there were creoule versions of Catalan/Castillan, Venetian and Arabic.
- In the case of the Asia seas up to the 12th century it was Arabic to a great extent but, once more, a bastardized version.
- In the case of the Asian Seas by the 16th and 17th centuries it was a creoule of Portuguese.
The same reasoning can be extended into Spanish America and English America before the advent of universal formal language learning.
Common means, in fantasy terms, the creoule of the main trade and political language. The implications for RPG settings is that there is to be different languages but everybody speaks more or less the common creoule or the language on which it is based.
Sérgio
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