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Old 02-12-2016, 04:17 PM   #1
johndallman
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Default [Basic] Skill of the week: Linguistics

Linguistics is the IQ/Hard study of the principles of languages. It has no default; Mimicry (speech) defaults to Linguistics-4. On a successful roll, you can identify the language of a snatch of speech or writing. When learning a language without a teacher, you can roll once per month, and on a success, learn at full speed rather than one-quarter rate. You can also roll against Linguistics, instead of IQ, to learn a new accent for a language you speak. Linguistics dates from GURPS 1e.

Linguistics appears on templates or lenses for interpreters and scholars, and people who travel to lots of countries -- or worlds. Fantasy has the (Animal) specialisation, optionally required for dealing with animal languages, and requiring a suitable Mimicry specialisation. Madness Dossier makes it an important skill for Neurolinguist face-men, and Locations: Worminghall defines its place in the trivium of classical education. PU3 has talents that include Linguistics, but PU7 has no wildcard skills that cover it. Enhanced Senses has an ability to boost the skill, and Social Engineering has rules for using it in place of Mimicry, and Psychology modifiers, which work like the ones for Physiology. Spaceships 5 has brief rules for decoding alien languages with computer assistance. Thaumatology touches on Linguistics in its discussion of the magical properties of languages, and Ritual Path Magic makes it valuable for grimoires written in dead languages.

Space has rules for the Linguistics of aliens: each species has its own specialisation of the skill and Linguistics (Comparative) is used to study all species' languages. The defaults need to be set according to the campaign's realism level; there may well be no default at all between different species' Linguistics, and substantial penalties for defaults to (Comparative). A very different communications medium may impose more penalties. If this is a major interest of a campaign, the techniques for learning alien languages in Suzette Haden Elgin's Native Tongue novels are the best serious SF treatment of the problem that I know of, although they're unethical by current standards. A GM who's paying attention to this will also have to decide how much truth is in Chomsky's theory of Universal Grammar for their setting; personally, I'm suspicious that human languages all have things in common because of their descent from the earliest human languages.

Have you made use of Linguistics in a game?
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Old 02-12-2016, 04:58 PM   #2
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Linguistics

One of the PCs in my current campaign, Tapestry, is obsessed with languages and is trying to learn as many as possible. He has a magical artifact inherited from his grandfather: a scroll that grants him partial spoken use of any language that's part of his culture's trading area, and can add new languages if he writes down a list of handy words and phrases for them. He'd like to have it be good for all the languages in the world, but hasn't realized how many there are.
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Old 02-12-2016, 05:56 PM   #3
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Linguistics

One of the PCs in mlangsdorfs Castle Crowspire campaign has Linguistics. The locals speak a sort of divergent-history English (like Anglish in Banestorm) and there are divergent-history Romance Language inscriptions, so she's been making good use out if it to try and puzzle things together. She's been picking up the local Accent as per RAW, but she's also used it to actually extract content out of the inscriptions, which are more distant from eg Latin or Italian than the "Anglish"
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Old 02-13-2016, 06:04 AM   #4
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Linguistics

I've had Linguistics on a character sheet as flavour for a character who has designed and spoken secret/code languages — though I took that a bit far as I designed a fair portion of an actual conlang for him, too.
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Old 02-13-2016, 07:15 AM   #5
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Linguistics

The primary purpose I can find for Linguistics is identifying langauges. I have a robot template where the robot can load up any two languages so he can translate. But he has to know which languages to load up... hence, Linguistics! I haven't seen it turn up much in games otherwise.
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Old 02-13-2016, 07:23 AM   #6
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Linguistics

Wait! If I can tell the difference between Swedish, Danish and Norwegian I''m rolling against Linguistics?
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Old 02-13-2016, 07:45 AM   #7
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Linguistics

Presumably with a significant bonus.
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Old 02-13-2016, 07:47 AM   #8
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Linguistics

Quote:
Originally Posted by Žorkell View Post
Wait! If I can tell the difference between Swedish, Danish and Norwegian I''m rolling against Linguistics?
That seems quite plausible, if my understanding of the linguistic relationship between Icelandic and the Scandinavian languages is accurate. I would probably allow a Dane or a Swede to tell them apart with a straight IQ roll, or maybe an Area Knowledge roll, just as I would allow an American to recognize a British accent (at least Received Pronunciation, Cockney, or Scots) or tell apart regional American accents that way. There's a difference between dialects of your own language and dialects of other languages (and my understanding, purely from reading about the matter, is that the Scandinavian languages are as similar as dialects of many other languages)—but isn't Icelandic rather more distinct linguistically, to the point of limited interintelligibility?
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Old 02-13-2016, 08:41 AM   #9
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Linguistics

Quote:
Originally Posted by Žorkell View Post
Wait! If I can tell the difference between Swedish, Danish and Norwegian I''m rolling against Linguistics?
More to the point, I (who speaks precisely one language) can identify if I'm listening to dutch, german, spanish, portuguese, or french. I can tell if a name or word is chinese, japanese, or some sort of polynesian.

I would guess correctly pronouncing names and reading the sounds of other languages properly may also be part of the skill. Przemyśl is apperently pronounced CHEM-ee-SILL.

Just looking at things I do that might be linguistics. Certainly at dabbler at most, probably from default.
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Old 02-13-2016, 08:46 AM   #10
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Linguistics

Are there any case studies for using linguistics in GURPS to decode a dead language, a la the Rosetta Stone, for example, or even more difficult, decoding a dead language in a vacuum without a side by side existing translation?
What kind of complementary rolls would be allowed? Anthropology to understand if artifact x exists in location y, the language is probably familiar in structure to an old version of z? Late late TL8 and probably early TL9 OCR might be able to help with pattern recognition if someone discovered a library of ancient documents. A GM might prescribe bonuses or penalties if the language is especially alien or similar in grammar to the languages a particular researcher knows well.

I'm just curious because it comes up often that Dungeon Fantasy talks about discovering manuals in dead languages, and reading that, I scratch my head and wonder if that means the book is complete trash, or if it means the book is a plot hook, and the reward is extremely valuable information.
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