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Old 07-17-2017, 03:07 AM   #11
smurf
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Default Re: How many languages?

My idea would be Language by Groups?

Indo European Tree:
  • Indian
  • Armenian*
  • Iranian
  • Germanic
  • Balto-Slavic
  • Albanian*
  • Celtic
  • Hellenic*
  • Italic/Latin

*not so much a branch but single language.

Not sure if you could price them like 'weapons' master. x for a small group and x+1 for additional groups.
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Old 07-17-2017, 07:57 AM   #12
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Default Re: How many languages?

In my current fantasy campaign, where ethnographic issues are a big theme there are

7 humanoid races capable of speech
an average of 4 culture areas per race
maybe 500 languages per culture area

However, the number of languages varies a great deal! For example, the Urbes Septemplex culture area, inhabited by nixies who are active merchants, has only one language with a few dialects. On the other hand, the Litus Occasus culture area, inhabited by selkies in little fishing villages, probably has a hundred or more.

In practice, though, I find it convenient to assume that players will encounter only one or two languages per culture area, either because there is one language that is widespread through trade and/or conquest, or because they visit one specific village and encounter only its language. That way I don't have to make up names for dozens of elven or dwarven tongues, many unrelated.
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Old 07-17-2017, 10:27 AM   #13
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Default Re: How many languages?

In modern-day games, I tend to look at the following as rather indispensable for the globe-trotting adventurer: English, Spanish (the top two Western Hemisphere languages), German, Russian (top two European languages), Mandarin (official language of China), Hindi (top language in India), Swahili (official language in most of northern Sub-Saharan Africa), and Arabic.

(Language selections based not on total population speakers but on how I perceive their relative importance.)

Other languages - Portuguese, French, Italian, Mongolian, Cantonese, Farsi, Urdu, etc. - are also available, and I'd permit someone with Omnilingual to know any of them unless they're spoken by a very select group of people (say, less than a thousand native speakers) - and even then I might permit an Omnilingualist to speak it at Broken if it's close to some other language with a larger population.

In space opera games I tend to give my aliens a single universal language, but will occasionally give the aliens other languages as well. I also establish "new" languages that have appeared since the establishment of regular contact - Trade Pidgin, for example, which is able to be spoken by nearly everyone, and lacks "explosive lip" sounds like "b" and "p" since one alien's physiology cannot produce said sounds, and is used as a "universal" language in the spaceways.

In fantasy games, I tend to create regional languages. These may share names (and possibly be descended) from racial languages - e.g. Elven for a culture that exists in tropical and sub-tropical rain forests on an island region, Dwarven for a very mountainous region, Draconic for an area with a large lizard-man population, etc. - but aren't automatically spoken by members of that race. A Dwarf raised in the island rain forests may speak Elven fluently but not a lick of Dwarven. I also look to place fantasy languages in RL language groups - Dwarven is related to the Teutonic/Norse languages, a European-expy region's language could be grouped in the Romance language group, etc.
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Old 07-17-2017, 10:45 AM   #14
evileeyore
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Default Re: How many languages?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashtagon View Post
Based on the points cost of buying up languages individually vs. any "universal fluency" advantages analogous to Cultural Familiarity vs. Cultural Adaptability, is there an "ideal" number of languages that might be involved in a game? This of course assumes that it is a game in which languages may play an important role (just as CF is either meaningful or meaningless depending on whether culture is an important part of the setting as used by the GM).
Depends on whether you want monolithic culture blocks (like the US) or diverse culture blocks (like Europe) per region.
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Old 07-17-2017, 03:47 PM   #15
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Default Re: How many languages?

Quote:
Originally Posted by smurf View Post
My idea would be Language by Groups?
Your idea has already been done. See the previously cited "Speaking in Tongues".
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Old 07-17-2017, 08:00 PM   #16
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Default Re: How many languages?

Answer based on playability, not realism: A dozen to a score main languages. That's enough that two guys getting a bargain from language talent might not have much overlap. All other languages (except those meant to be indecipherable as a plot device) default to the main ones at -1 level of fluency. In real-world terms, this is extremely generous, equivalent to allowing all Scandinavian languages to default to German, all Romance languages to French, etc.
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Old 07-18-2017, 10:09 AM   #17
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Default Re: How many languages?

Quote:
Originally Posted by jacobmuller View Post
(to me that'd be dialect but he said they each spoke a different Language).:/
It is completely possible for neighboring villages to have nigh on unintelligible languages. Your most extreme case scenario might be Papua New Guinea, which is blessed with a multitude of languages, meaning you'd have to know your villages language, probably five or six other languages in order to speak to your neighbors, and probably the Patois and perhaps English. The languages feature some radical diversity of features.

The situation may have come about because of self-imposed isolation, rather than isolation by natural land barriers; at the time of European contact many villages were either in a state of all-out warfare with their neighbors, or in a tense cease-fire state. Some of the natives actually expressed mixed relief at being conquered, because the European forces suppressed inter-village violence.

Other places the diversity can come from warfare in other ways (the "border" between two or more tribal groups or nations can move back and forth enough that settlements get pretty entangled).
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Old 07-18-2017, 03:04 PM   #18
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Default Re: How many languages?

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Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
It is completely possible for neighboring villages to have nigh on unintelligible languages. Your most extreme case scenario might be Papua New Guinea, which is blessed with a multitude of languages, meaning you'd have to know your villages language, probably five or six other languages in order to speak to your neighbors, and probably the Patois and perhaps English. The languages feature some radical diversity of features.

The situation may have come about because of self-imposed isolation, rather than isolation by natural land barriers;
A mix of both I think. The valleys are separated by mountains that make travel slow and difficult. This is why Papua New Guinea has almost as many language families as the rest of the world. So the difference between valleys isn't French vs Italian but French vs Turkish.
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Old 07-18-2017, 05:29 PM   #19
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Default Re: How many languages?

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A mix of both I think. The valleys are separated by mountains that make travel slow and difficult. This is why Papua New Guinea has almost as many language families as the rest of the world. So the difference between valleys isn't French vs Italian but French vs Turkish.
Wikipedia says 852 languages in a country with 7 million inhabitants. That's about 8200 speakers per language.
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Old 07-18-2017, 05:36 PM   #20
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Default Re: How many languages?

There are about 105 language families in the world, about 60 of those are those 852 languages.
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