languages of Ytarria

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Does Megalos even speak Anglish? I think of them as strongly influenced by the Byzantine Empire, and more remotely by the original Roman Empire. I would think their native language would be Greek, probably with an archaic upper class form (never having been conquered by the Turks, they wouldn't have seen Greek reduced to a peasant language) and a slangier working class form that still wouldn't be as worn down as Modern Greek. And the people in Caithness who do speak English probably have fewer French and Latin loanwords and many more Greek ones, including most of their legal and technical vocabulary.

I've always thought of them as speaking Latin, given that most of their ancestors came from NW Europe, it was the language of educated people there, and the church had a lot of influence early on. There would be little pockets of all sorts of languages scattered over the empire too, of course.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by draxdeveloper

Another thing, How i should put the cost of Tedroy Patrois?
It's says it that "Native Anglish or Yrth Arabic speakers can learn this without a teacher just as easily" so it's fair that who have native anglish or Arabic have less cost on this. But they not say how.

This section is not referring to the language default that Patois has with Anglish or Yrth Arabic, it's referring to the process of learning the language. See Improvement Through Study, p. B292. In short, learning a language is usually about twice as fast if you have a teacher. In the case of someone who knows either Anglish or Arabic, they can learn Tedroy Patois twice as fast even without a teacher.

Originally Posted by draxdeveloper

They say that Anglish And Aralaise have familiarity on accented and anglish and Northland on Broken... But what about Patrois?

Personally, I'd give someone with either Native Anglish or Yrth Arabic Broken comprehension of Tedroy Patois. On the other hand, the whole section being referenced here gives other language defaults to a variety of languages, but notably doesn't do so for Patois, so I think it's possible the author didn't intend there to be one - i.e., it's different enough from either parent language that the only bonus knowing either parent gives you when it comes to Tedroy Patois is that you can learn it easier.

[Polydamas]

The setting has room for odd mixings, like our world's Romani: a village of Malay speakers who landed among Occitanian-speakers in Araterre and came to dominate the bay by virtue of being better adapted to the climate and ecology, a valley where they debate Christian theology in Sanskrit ...

Originally Posted by whswhs

Really, though, there's not much point in trying to convey the sound of non-Anglish languages. Even if you're enough of a philological scholar to work them out, your players have very little chance of appreciating them. You could get just as much or little effect by playing a bit of Arabic at them, or Modern Greek, or Icelandic.

Also, my understanding is that the authors wanted to leave room for a setting where everyone speaks renaissance fair/SCA War English with a bit of an accent. That is why the dominant language is derived from English and has a generous default to 21st century English.

Yrth was not written as a rational setting, although any given Yrth can lean in that direction.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Also, my understanding is that the authors wanted to leave room for a setting where everyone speaks renaissance fair/SCA War English with a bit of an accent. That is why the dominant language is derived from English and has a generous default to 21st century English.

Yrth was not written as a rational setting, although any given Yrth can lean in that direction.

That. Anglish is originally there so you can play yourself dropped into a fantasy world without a major language barrier. It never made sense for the dominant language of Yttarian Christendom to be derived from English, nor for anything on Yrth derived from English to be intelligible to modern Earth English speakers.

The latest rewrite mysteriously opted for the worst of both worlds by keeping the unlikely ancestry but ditching the plot convenience by cutting the default.

Incidentally Tredroyan patois having some intelligibility with both Anglish and Arabic is probably equally nonsensical - pidgins don't work like that. "Hybrid" languages are a popular delusion among English speakers because whatever weird thing happened between Old English and Norman French is sort of similar, and English speakers assume its a normal process that could go just a little further to allow mutual comprehension. It's not, it's a weird outlier with almost no parallels. English is somewhat strange in a lot of ways really, and it gives Americans odd ideas of what languages and language change are like, which the relative scarcity of second language fluency doesn't help.

[draxdeveloper]

I need to bring another thing to this topic.
If a character with Native Anglish (and a lot of accented Yrth languages, almost all of then) goes to another dimension, he will have any language at broken level?
At least, he will have english at broken level?

The thing is, my character is really good with languages, and i want that he don't take 200 hours to learn a language in a way that he can help the group in this new dimension.

Language Talent don't help with this first contact. And even Linguistics can't help to reduce the 200 hours time.

So what can I do to my character learn faster? Let's says, in a week or two?

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by draxdeveloper

I need to bring another thing to this topic.
If a character with Native Anglish (and a lot of accented Yrth languages, almost all of then) goes to another dimension, he will have any language at broken level?
At least, he will have english at broken level?

If the timeline's English is the same as 20th/21st century English, he should have it at Broken from his default from Anglish, yes. If the timeline's English is closer to the point of divergence (roughly 1000 AD, IIRC), then the default might be better, though probably not much better.

Originally Posted by draxdeveloper

Language Talent don't help with this first contact.

Actually, Language Talent does help with this. After 200 hours, everyone without Language Talent will be speaking brokenly, struggling to get their meaning across, while the character with Language Talent will be far more fluent - perhaps using odd idioms or occasionally mistaking some meanings, but still much better than the people without. Of course, the training rules are rather abrupt, going from essentially "you can't speak the language at all" at 199 hours to "you're fluent" at 200. As a GM, I'd probably allow a character with Language Talent to function at Broken after 100 hours of study, to smooth out that transition a bit.

Originally Posted by draxdeveloper

And even Linguistics can't help to reduce the 200 hours time.

I'd allow a Linguistics roll to improve your learning speed. Call it 5% for every point of success, up to 50% reduction on a critical.

Originally Posted by draxdeveloper

So what can I do to my character learn faster? Let's says, in a week or two?

Learning a language in a week or two is pretty cinematic. I don't think many people can achieve that. That said, if you implement my suggestions above, you could get kind of close. If you have Language Talent and have them get Broken comprehension at 100 hours, you could spend 8 hours a day being taught a language by a local teacher, and just being in a foreign culture counts as another 4 hours a day (see "Cultural Familiarity and Languages" under "Learnable Advantages", p. B294). So, that's 12 hours a day, meaning it would take about 9 days of that to get to Broken comprehension. If you could make a Linguistics roll and get a margin of success of 5, you could chip another 25% off that, taking it down to only 6-and-a-bit days.

Faster or better than that, and you'll probably want something outright cinematic or supernatural. Modular Abilities is a good one for this, or you could buy the Omnilingual trait presented in GURPS Supers, which is an Unusual Background that means you just happen to be fluent in every common or reasonably well-documented language in the campaign setting you come across.

[a humble lich]

There are a few more you should be able to speak:

• Latin
• Classical Arabic
• Spoken Arabic (at one level less than Ytarrian Arabic)
• Biblical Hebrew

In addition, you should be able the speak modern Israeli Hebrew, possibly at a reduced level than your Biblical Hebrew. You could probably argue default of broken Spanish from knowledge of Ladino and Latin. You could probably also argue that you could learn modern French faster if you know Old Aralaise. Also, you might be able to learn any Romance language faster based on knowledge of Latin.

And that is assuming that the other dimension is 2017 Earth. If the other dimension is Earth at a earlier time, you would be doing even better and defaults to Medieval French, Spanish, and Italian are reasonable. Plus, in many times a lot of educated people knew Latin. If the other dimension is Gabrook, Loren’dil, or Olokun, then you could probably converse with some people: I have no idea how different Ytarrian Goblin is compared to Modern Mabrook Goblin, but I assume there is some default.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Incidentally Tredroyan patois having some intelligibility with both Anglish and Arabic is probably equally nonsensical - pidgins don't work like that. "Hybrid" languages are a popular delusion among English speakers because whatever weird thing happened between Old English and Norman French is sort of similar, and English speakers assume its a normal process that could go just a little further to allow mutual comprehension. It's not, it's a weird outlier with almost no parallels. English is somewhat strange in a lot of ways really, and it gives Americans odd ideas of what languages and language change are like, which the relative scarcity of second language fluency doesn't help.

It takes only one Black Swan Event to prove that something is possible. If something is both possible and cool, it's normal for people to include instances of it in their settings.

[Phantasm]

For the cyberpunk character, I'd toss out "Omnilingual (Temporary Disadvantage (Shutdown): Electrical, -20%) [32]" as a kind of "universal translator implant".

For a permanent enchantment on/by the mages, I'd use "Omnilingual (Magical, -10%) [36]". Again, I'd encourage the mages to put points in the various Language spells, assuming you're using Magic-magic: Borrow Language, Lend Language, Gift of Tongues, and Gift of Letters. The latter two are especially useful for translating languages you don't know.



FYI, Omnilingual is a "you know the majority of major languages at Accented proficiency" Unusual Background, found in Supers. Although the flavor text is "you have studied the languages", I find it useful for universal translators.

[AlexanderHowl]

Anglish is the language of Megalos so that Americans can go to Yrth and be understood. I think that a more plausible Banestorm would have resulted in a Megalos formed from refugees from the Byzantine Empire, with areas like Caithness being settled by people from the British Isles. Of course, you would have had less Crusades against the Muslim nations since the Crusades were more of a Catholic thing than a Greek Orthodox thing. The Crusaders were as much an enemy of Byzantine as they were the enemy of Jews and Muslims.