What race has Sorcerers' Tongue as their native tongue?

[hcobb]

And how successful would the party wizard be at translating the magical terms they speak of into mundane terms the rest of the party can understand?

[Shadekeep]

No race would speak that as their default language, unless you consider wizards a distinct race a la Tolkien. It's a fit-to-purpose language designed to describe magical concepts, not a full blown language with syntax, grammar, and a complete lexicon. It's useful to think of it more like a programming language or a technical diagram - a system of symbols used to express very specific notions within a narrow domain (in this case magical workings).

Other tailored languages include Thieves' Argot, which is in many ways more of a cipher, and Old Hieratic, which is a language I added in The Book of Unlife that serves the same purpose as Sorceror's Tongue except for religious rites. None of these are languages in the conventional sense that English, Japanese, or Latin are.

[hcobb]

I think I might freak out some players someday by having an NPC wish in ST, because it's the demons' native tongue.

[Skarg]

No race, but there might be some places where that is the local language and/or some children are raised with it as a native language.

[Shadekeep]

On further consideration, Sorceror's Tongue does have a syntax. It's just a very rigid syntax, again like a computer programming language. For example, there are dozens of ways in English to invite someone to join your party, but only one way in Sorceror's Tongue to invoke a column of flame.

Naturally this is just my take and not canon. If GMs want to make it a full-blown language, that's certainly in the realm of the possible. Perhaps an isolated magic school started out using it as the pidgin common tongue amongst themselves, and over the generations it became their core language.

[hcobb]

My take on SoTg is that spells are described as the multiplication of sparse arrays with subjects, verbs and modifiers inserted in the proper places. Hence you have to start over on the slightest error.