Greetings from Magrathea

I was going to go all meta-witty and do an alphabetical listing for linguistic questions, but frankly that's really difficult. I'm in awe of people who do this, like Kenneth Hite's Conspiracy Alphabet. At the same time, forcing yourself into a framework helps with the creativity process. It helps you to look at things in a new way. And ultimately, "looking at things in a new way" is the meaning of this column. At the same time, sometimes the best thing is to follow your instincts. And my instincts say to give you a top ten list in language. Or, a "linguistlist." Yes, I'm here all week, try the roast beast. Hopefully, this will propel your game past the "everyone speaks common" mentality.

1. Translations

"'Where is Leovinus?' demanded the Gat of Blerontis, Chief Quantity Surveyor of the entire North Eastern Gas District of the planet of Blerontin. ... No! I do not want another bloody fish-paste sandwich!'

"He did not exactly use the word ... bloody,' because it did not exist in the Blerontin language. The word he used could be more literally translated as ... similar in size to the left earlobe,' but the meaning was much closer to ... bloody.' Nor did he actually use the phrase ... fish-paste,' since fish do not exist on Blerontin in the form in which we would understand them to be fish. But when one is translating from a language used by a civilization of which we know nothing, located as far away as the center of the Galaxy, one has to approximate.

"Similarly, the Gat of Blerontis was not exactly a ... Quantity Surveyor,' and certainly the term ... North Eastern Gas District' gives no idea at all about the magnificence and grandeur of his position. Look, perhaps I'd better start again."
—Douglas Adam's Starship Titanic, Terry Jones

A whole campaign may be based around a translation. Either there's an ancient language that no one speaks (and look at Linear A to see a real-life example), or a current language that a few people speak and the adventurers are tasked with finding those people. And after you find those people, getting them to cooperate. Having a player character be the only one of the group who speaks the language is a nice way to vary the "face" of the party. Yes, the person with the 18 Charisma usually speaks for the group, but if the only one who speaks Orcish is the 8 Charisma half-orc barbarian, then guess who is speaking for the party.

And translations aren't cut and dried, either, even with magic spells. Spells in different languages may be given totally new names, like "red flower" or "yellow line." And if something doesn't exist in a language, then what is a magical translation going to do? Does it fill in the native name? Does it do some type of transliteration but still keep the same native structure? Or does it try to fill in the nearest terms (horseless carriage, adding machine). Are there default settings on a magical translation? How about language conventions ("stitch in time saves nine" means nothing to a language that doesn't have a concept of clothes or mending). And it's not just language. If you take Dante's Inferno and translate it to English, not only do you need to take in account the language, but the stylistic flourishes surrounding poetry, not to mention Dante's specific tricks of language. There's a ton of textual filters that goes into a translation.

2. Borrowing words

When two languages meet and cultures interact, then there's some degree of borrowing. Some languages, like French (or I imagine Elvish) would probably be "pure," not borrowing words. Others are more lax (if you recall the famous quote paraphrased from James Nicoll, "English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over, and rummages through their pockets for loose grammar." It's interesting to see what borrows from what — often, you'll see the weaker nation borrowing from the stronger nation, or the invading nation borrowing words from the native. Or both. And remember, language and cultural identity run hand in hand — just ask the Welsh and their drive to keep the language alive.

Lets look at magic as an example. Say that the Elvish are the ones who introduced magic to the humans. Because the concept of a spell wouldn't really make sense, a lot of magic terms would probably be borrowed from the Elvish. You'd have human magic users studying Elvish, similar to monks and professors studying Latin because that's what all the learned books were written in. It's a subtle hint, but it adds flavor to your world.

3. Written language and spelling

Ah, the whole literacy argument. "Hey, I can take a disadvantage of illiteracy to increase my stats / combat skills / ability to hit stuff," says the munchkin player. But other than that, literacy is both assumed. Except real life is a little more complicated than that. For example, you can have a single language be written in multiple ways; Chinese can be written in traditional Hanzi or Western alphabet. Are the characters literate in all the different types of written languages? And different dialects can be written in the same language, so it may be the only way two characters can communicate is through pen and paper.

And even if there is one alphabet and one written language, how consistent is that across the nation? Before Mr. Webster and Mr. Johnson gave us their dictionaries, spelling varied greatly from village to village, to the point where some words were truly unintelligible. Even after dictionaries were published, various "spelling reforms" changed how the language worked. A written language is no guarantee of actual communication. Not to mention that some languages don't have written versions, or their written version were pictographs only.

4. Language Shift

"In oeosse abbudissan mynstre was sum brooor syndriglice mid godcundre gife geraered ond eweoroad, for thon he gewunade gerisenlice leoo wyrcan, tha oe to aefaestnisse ond to arfaestnisse belumpen." Translated: "In this abbess' monastery was a certain brother especially with heavenly gift famed and blessed, for he accustomed (was) apporpriate songs (to) make, which to piety and to virtue pertained." This was from The Venerable Bede's story of Cademon, some 1300 years ago. I'm pulling this from Joseph William's wonderful book, "Origins of the English Language: A Social & Linguistic History". Old English, the English spoken by our ancestors, is very, very different from the language we know. So, the next time you have the lich come back from the dead, he's going to speak essentially a different language.

And language doesn't necessarily take a long time to change. The English language shifted pronunciation in three centuries, with different generations speaking differently. We still have this; some people pronounce route to rhyme with out, others with boot. Same with either and neither. If you have a centralized academy controlling the language, this shift may be even sooner. I'm reminded of a Joe Haldeman (maybe, or Greg Egan?) short story, where a mage changed the physiology of people so they couldn't speak the magic language; this may have been the real reason of the Great Vowel Shift. We changed our language to prevent accidentally summoning the old ones. And I would so use this in my campaign if my players didn't tell me they'd throw dice at me if I brought Cthulthu in another campaign.

5. Classes and formalities

"Quidquid latine dictum, altum videtur." Translation: "Everything in Latin sounds more profound." English doesn't have this as much, but other languages have multiple formalities. You can be an tu to your family, or an usted to your boss. Switching formalities may explain the "roll a 1" on that Diplomacy roll. But, that's only the tip of the linguistic iceberg. Some areas have multiple languages, or multiple varieties of the same language. For example, Latin had the Classical Latin (spoken by educated folk) and Vulgar Latin (spoken by everyone else). Both had a nucleus of commonality, but some words were used differently (for example, captio in Classical Latin meant to deceive someone, while in Vulgar Latin, it meant to take by force (this is from An Introduction to Vulgar Latin, by C. H. Grandgent). It's these small changes that can change a letter's meaning drastically, but in this case, you don't know there's a translation going on. At the same time, Vulgar and Classical Latin are different enough were if you have a large sample, you can tell a person's class just by which language he or she is speaking.

6. Why was 6 afraid? Because 7 8 9

Humor is so ingrained with language.

7. Pidgins and creoles

"Electricity no get leg. Na Kabelmetal cable de carry am." Translation: "Electricity has no legs; it's Kabelmetal cable that carries it." This is from a street poster from Freetown, Sierra Leone, written in Krio. Pidgin is defined as "a system of communication which has grown up among people who do not share a common language, but who want to talk to each other, for trading or other reasons." Traditionally, pidgins disappear as soon as the cultures no longer interact (Vietnam had a history of pidgin languages in the 20th century depending on who was occupying their country) or one culture dominates, but if neither of these occur, a pidgin can last a long time and be given an official status. Pidgins, as the example above shows, are more than "Me Tarzan You Jane" — they have a rich spoken and written vocabulary. It is also a nice bridge to have player characters from different communities able to communicate with each other. In my Megapolis campaign, I modelled Trailspeak after the Mediterranean Lingua Franca, the pidgin that allowed different nations around the Mediterranean to speak with each other. The important thing is it allows people who don't speak the pidgin to somewhat understand the language. You can get words and phrases. That's what it's there for.

If a pidgin stays around a while in a community, it turns into a creole and eventually takes over the existing language. You may have a range of creole, from decreolization (where the creole is deemphasized) to hypercreolization (where the creole is accentuated). Again, someone who speaks the language based off the creole can pick up words and phrases. And again, this plays into national identity.

8. Accents and Speech Communities

I remember a story from one of my professors about his travels in Scotland. Turns out that two English speakers were talking, but their accents were so thick that they needed a translator. From My Fair Lady on, accent marks social class and local area. As a GM, I'm horrible with creating accents, and I tend to make rolls to see if the characters recognize the accents. Finer actors may feel free to improvise accents. But accents aren't only used for Perception rolls, finding out where someone is from. If you have the same speech patterns, you'll be more trustworthy and more likable. People trust those in the same speech communities. And it was a lot worse before radio and television brought standard Midwest to our nation.

9. Senses

We assume language is transmitted through sound. It usually is. But, it doesn't have to be. Picture an ASL style language through hand movements. Shades of Belgariad's Silk and his thieves cant. You can also talk about whistled speech, like the State of Oaxaca, Mexico, and drum signaling of Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific. And then there's the proxemics and the physical communication of touching — handshakes, nudging, patting, etc. Each culture has a different way of handling this, and one person's approach may be treated as another's attack. One person's smile is another's insult.

10. Language as Metaphors

Ah, this is fun. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that language dictates thought; if you cannot put something into words, you cannot think it. There's two versions of this: a strong version that says that language determines how we see the world, and a weaker version that says that language merely influences how we see the world. While the strong version has been mostly proven false, there's a lot of fun to be had here. Picture trying to deal with an intelligent race that doesn't have a concept of other's sentience. Picture having a player character race that doesn't have a concept of color (some think the Greeks were that way, based on Homer's writing). There's the story of the 100 words for snow, but is that really that outlandish, thinking of the number of words we have for hamburgers? People create words for things that matter.

So, you don't have to go all Tolkien on the languages of your game, but there's a lot of subtle things to think about here. Next month, I'll talk about another subtle aspect — famous things in your world. And for my example, I'll be focusing on one specific, sweet, carbonated famous thing. Until next month.