Language: Costs and Comprehension

[Drone 5]

I m trying to make sure I understand the 'Levels" of Lnaguage especially for the Written portion.
As best as I can tell, and this is NOT how it appears in GCA, this is what I came up with base don RAW.

For your Native Language you would have;
Spoken (Cost)
Native (0)
Accented (-1)
Broken (-2)
None (-3)

Written (Cost)
NNative (0) [Literate]
Accented (0) [Literate]
Broken (-2) [Semi-literate]
None (-3) [Illiterate]
==============================================
Learned Languages
Spoken (Cost) (Language Talent)
Native (3) (2)
Accented (2) (1)
Broken (1) (n/a)
None (0) (n/a)

Written (Cost) (Langaue Talent)
Native (3) (2) [Literate]
Accented (n/a) (1) [Literate]
Broken (1) (n/a) [Semi-literate]
None (0) (0) [Illiterate]

Spoken has 4 levels and Written has 3 levels
RAW: Literacy is a written comprehension of Accented or better.
RAW: Semi-literacy is a written comprehension of Broken.
RAW: Illiteracy is a written comprehension of None.

What is the difference between Written (Accented) and Written (Native)? They do cost the same.
Am I missing this somehow?

[AlexanderHowl]

No, when it comes to languages, native is 6 points, accented is 4 points, and broken is 2 points. Only spoken or only written is half cost, as is one-way fluency. Accented suffers a -1/-2 penalty while Broken suffers a -3/-6 penalty.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Drone 5

What is the difference between Written (Accented) and Written (Native)? They do cost the same.
Am I missing this somehow?

If we are looking at written languages alone, there really is not a separate "Accented" level in RAW. It's either Broken or Native. The only way "Accented" gets in is if you have both spoken and written at the same level, and then it represents (a) being able to read at roughly normal speed, but mispronouncing words and (b) having a limited vocabulary. That's probably reasonable for a language whose writing is alphabetic or syllabic; it might be possible to define a separate Accented level for a logographic language like the Chinese languages, or being able to read Japanese fully (including kanji, not just hiragana and katakana).

All languages have the three nonzero levels of Broken, Accented, and Native. But you get your native language free. And since it would normally cost 6 points, if you are illiterate, which would normally be only 3 points, not being able to read your native language (or its not having a written form) would be a net -3 points. (This comes up in my current fantasy campaign, where a lot of languages have no written form yet.)

[AlexanderHowl]

Literacy is just a descriptor, it has nothing to do with point cost or skill penalties. You are considered literate if you have Native Written or Accented Written (Characters, p. 24). In the former cast, it costs 3 points, gives no skill penalty, and you sound like a native. In the latter case, it costs 2 points, gives a -1 penalty to skill for normal use of the language and -2 penalty for creative use of the language, and you sound like a non-native.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Literacy is just a descriptor, it has nothing to do with point cost or skill penalties. You are considered literate if you have Native Written or Accented Written (Characters, p. 24). In the former cast, it costs 3 points, gives no skill penalty, and you sound like a native. In the latter case, it costs 2 points, gives a -1 penalty to skill for normal use of the language and -2 penalty for creative use of the language, and you sound like a non-native.

If we're talking about "written" language, you don't sound like anything.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If we are looking at written languages alone, there really is not a separate "Accented" level in RAW.

Sure there is. If you have Accented literacy, you get a -1 (-2 for artistic uses) to language dependent skills when you use them in writing if nothing else.

Accented is actually a really terrible name for this level of fluency, even for spoken languages - you can have Accented fluency and speak "without" an accent (by taking the Accent perk for example), and of course even people with Native fluency speak with *some* accent - many native English speakers use something other than Received Pronunciation (or Midland/General American)

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If we're talking about "written" language, you don't sound like anything.

In my games, you do. At least, you don't really "sound" non-native, but it is still immediately obvious to anyone who read you with attention.

Foreign writers often use the wrong preposition in some sentences, feminine instead of masculine for some words and, above all, lacks the idiomatic expressions that natives writers regularly use.

I am sure that most of you know that I am not a native speaker when they read my posts.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Sure there is. If you have Accented literacy, you get a -1 (-2 for artistic uses) to language dependent skills when you use them in writing if nothing else.

We have definitions of what the three terms mean in relation to spoken language. Broken is stumbling through a conversation with simple formulaic phrases, limited vocabulary, poor pronunciation, and minimal grammar. Accented is conversing fairly readily, but with odd pronunciation and phrasing. Native is conversing as well as a native speaker.

But aside from "Accented" being a poor label, we don't really have a separate definition of what it means for written language. If you have Broken, you read slowly and painfully and have a limited written vocabulary. If you have Accented or Native, you read perfectly well; your only limitations come from the limitations on your use of the spoken language.

So I would let a player take Broken/None, Accented/None, Native/None, Accented/Broken, or Native/Broken; but I wouldn't let them take Native/Accented, because there's no real description of what that means. You have full mastery of the language, you can think it it, you pronounce it like a native, and you read and write competently at full speed—and when you read, presumably you know the pronunciation of the words as well as a native does.

Of course, we could try to come up with an intermediate level. This is easier for logographic languages; for example, if you know the thousand-odd kanji that Japanese elementary schools teach, you might count as having Accented written Japanese, though I agree that that's a poor name. But I don't think the RAW define such a thing.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Drone 5

Spoken has 4 levels and Written has 3 levels

Your summary is good except that. Written language also have 4 levels (none, broken, accented and native) but only three names. The difference between accented and native, as very well explained above by others, are the penalties for accented (-1 or -2 for artistic use).

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Gollum

In my games, you do. At least, you don't really "sound" non-native, but it is still immediately obvious to anyone who read you with attention.

Sure. But it's not literal.

And are there cases of people who, for example, speak perfectly grammatical English, but write it with the character French or Japanese or Russian errors? Or do those errors always reflect a lack of spoken fluency manifesting itself in writing?

(I have decades of experience with the typical errors in prose composition of non-native English writers with various native languages. So I know exactly what you're describing with that.)