Say what? On languages

"Hey, I'm thinking of playing a knowledge cleric with the linguist feat. What is the language used in libraries and so on?"

...is an excellent question from one of my players that I was not prepped for by Jeff's 20. Short answer: High Xarsic. Long answer: read on.


Your campaign world needs to make languages do more work. Build a language tree, attach stereotypes, find which language is for the peasants and which for the nobles. And for the sake of all that's holy, rethink your Common.

I have language on the brain. Last week I had the pleasure of going on Flemish radio to talk about a new research project in our lab. Did I speak Flemish? Of course not - my native tongue is Dutch and the two are close enough that speakers understand each other 99% of the time.

It's the 1% that gets you.

There definitely are differences in accent and vocabulary, which I discovered a few years back when using "foefje" in a presentation to 600 Belgian high school teens. It's old-fashioned for "trick" in Dutch, quite something else in Flemish. That sure broke the ice [*].

[*] My wife reminds me that while I might have felt slightly embarassed at the time, I was definitely not embarazada (Spanish for pregnant).

The curled symbol in this Aztec drawing stands for speech. Fitting, for an Aztec drummer (‘singer’) of the teponaztli; Codex Mendoza fol. 63r. In other words, a bard.

WHAT IS THIS COMMON YOU SPEAK OF?

Languages don't end at borders, but there is a barrier. Cross the border to Belgium and some words and sentence ordering change. A German colleague once told me (in English) that he could understand Dutch if he squinted and thought back to his grandmother's border dialect. Travel to South Africa and hear Afrikaans, a more removed variation of Dutch that began to diverge in the 18th Century.

Similarly, you can try to cheat at French vocabulary by starting from formal, stuffy English. No surprise, because the British nobility took up old French as a court language after the Norman Conquest of 1066. Know modern French, Italian or Spanish? Odds are you can make your way through a newspaper in the other two. Stretch yourself and try to read Romanian, which like the others goes back to vulgar Latin. A common root doesn't get you seamless understanding everywhere.

Old World language families. Dutch and Flemish and Afrikaans are on the little low franconian branch below English. Found here.

TIME AND THE ICELAND EXCEPTION

Try and read a 1000 year old text in your mother tongue. Hard? Yes. That's why it costs another language slot if you want to be fluent in the language of the original Beowulf. For an easier challenge, open a newspaper from 100 years ago and discover how the spelling, the structure of sentences and even the way stories were told was noticeably different. Icelandic is an exception - it has been so well preserved that people can easily read the 13th Century sagas! (If you get lost in there and want to gamify, why not try this blood-feud generator?)

Now imagine a medieval fantasy setting where your character can speak Common with people the world over, where you can't distinguish between the speech of a city slicker and a mountain hermit, and the nobles speak the same language as the riff-raff. Too simple for my taste, and so my Belswick setting has language families and border dialects and a court tongue and church speech. Learn to speak a proper language if you want to escape the muck.

LANGUAGES OF BELSWICK

Head to Port Trellis if you want to hear the languages of the world. Flowery Arraynian hides the meager quality of their wares - are they spies perhaps? Stoic Waldic merchants haggle with dour Vaeringjar whalers, a haughty Asturian galley is wafted by the incense from a Xarsic caravel. At the end of the dock, a darkened Varnic river boat that braved the seas. Perhaps you will even get a taste of Far Away - a sailor from far Almad. Ask them for fables of the lands at the end of the world, such as the Surya Satrapies, the horsemen of the Endless Steppe, the fabulous empire of Qi'dan.

The easy way to show you how these languages are related would be through a world map. You're not getting it! I like distant lands to be mysterious, the literal Far Away of fairy tales. How the Authority shaped the World is a philosopher's question. Even the local charts are imperfect. You navigate by road and landmark, not satellite view.

Unconvinced? Here's a world map from our own past.Good luck finding your home on it.

Not that a mappa mundi would help you a lot in finding your way around. If you want to decypher this one, start by recognizing that the East is at the top. Ebstorf map

These language families function as a limited Common - speak Asturian and you can make yourself understood in Arrayne and Xarsos, but not to a Pembroke commoner.

PEMBRISH AND THE WALDIC SPEECH

Regimented and ordered speech with few and structured exceptions to the core grammar. Has a smaller vocabulary than Xarsic, imparts nuance a highly detailed grammar of 40 cases. Easy to learn to speak badly, hard to master.

• Waldic - Waldau, Dwarfs
• Pembrish - Pembroke
• Vaering - Vaeringjar, northern seafarers, eastern Pembroke
• Varnic - feuding princedoms of the bitter Voivodes to the east

Pembroke is a land of rolling hills with the ocean to the north, east and west. Its summers are balmy, its winters bring cold storms from the north. A Waldic lord won the Pembrish crown after receiving a spear from the heart of an ancient oak and so our Pembrish tongue is one of the Waldic languages. The border duchies to the south know some Arraynian, in the north and east you will hear Vaering words. The high nobility place honour in learning some Xarsic as the language of civilization.
Neighbouring countries: Arrayne, Waldau across the Sea of Wings.

Waldau is a confusing place. The country is conservative, ordered and structured like Waldic, its mode of speech. And there are many familiar things here: dedicated farmers, superb craftsmen, stout warriors, a strong dedication to the Church of the Authority. Still, Xarsics and Pembrish visitors are struck by a deep unease when traveling to Waldau. It is the "egality" that gets under their skin. Waldic nobles are a ceremonial caste that formally open the country's Tagen, where all may speak and the community decides on the course to be taken. In Waldau, all men are free and promotion is based on performance, not heredity. And so a peasant can become a noble or administer an abbey. Best not to get too familiar with these revolutionaries.
Neighbouring countries: Vaeringjar, Varnic Princedoms, Pembroke and Arrayne across the Sea of Wings

The Vaeringjar or Bondsmen name many things differently than we do. Their flowing Vaering speech sounds whimsical until you uncover the steel and unyielding structure beneath. Vaeringjar farmers obey their local nobles well, until a noble shows weakness. When black sand bay freezes over and Nightland horrors come, the flawed will break. Best that blood flow until the ruler is once again strong enough to lead the pack. Vaering uses the same words, inflected imperceptibly to outlanders, for trade and raid; for pillage and tax; for bloodfeud and festivity.
Neighbours: Waldau, Varnic Kingdoms, Nightlands to the east.

The Varnic Princedoms beyond Waldau are a mass of minor but proud domains that speak Varnic, a harsh variation of Waldic. Popular image has the Princedoms as bleak forests with self-important Voivodes ruling miserable serfs. This is an untruth - the Varnic Princedoms also boast beautiful hills with castles for said Voivodes, who rank somewhere between a Duke and a Prince and feud incessantly. Neighbours: Waldau to the west, Vaeringjar to the North, a strip of the Almad to the south, the Endless Steppe and the Nightlands to the east.

THE XARSIC TONGUES

(With a -ch- as in architect, not as in xenophobia.)

• Xarsic - Xarsos, nobility in Asturia and Arrayne, high nobility in Pembroke, Waldau
• Arraynian - Arrayne, lower duchy Belswick in Pembroke
• Asturian - Asturia, enclaves on the northern Almad coast
• High Xarsic - formal tongue in the Church of the Authority, angels and devils, Elves. Many priests and clerics of the Authority only know their masses and prayers by rote. To speak and read High Xarsic fluently without reading it from a page is a sign of intelligence and potential; this is the language of libraries.

Xarsic is the tongue of piety and lore throughout the Near World. The country Xarsos itself is small, to the south of Arrayne on the sea of 1000 isles and uninviting with its many mountains. But it is the undisputed center of civilization. All because here the Authority first spoke Law to men and founded his Church when the world had become overrun with sin. Civilization started here after madness and debauchery: to speak Xarsic is to have the world listen.
Neighbouring countries: Asturia to the west, Arrayne to the North, Waldau across the Sea of Wings, the Almad across the Bay of Domes and Sea of Almad

The Kingdom of Arrayne is Pembroke's southern rival. The Duchy Belswick has been traded back and forth between them and now holds several Arraynian baronies. The weather grows softer and warmer here, which lends itself to indolence not found in Pembroke folk. The tongue is Arraynian, a variation of Xarsic. Arraynians are the northernmost Xarsics and are inordinately proud of the fact. Visitors to Pembroke will offer to correct one's grammatical foibles in a Xarsic language with a superior smirk.
Neighbouring countries: Pembroke to the north, Xarsos to the south-east and Asturia stretching into the Western Ocean to the south-south-west.

Asturian is a clipped variation on Xarsic. Long-stretched Asturia on the edge of the Western Ocean is known as the Shield of Xarsos. Asturia's mountain ridges break the ocean storms and its principalities send their beast to join the Asturian Guard of the Church's flying Tower of Air in Felopolis. Minor wars break out between the proud principalities all the time. Asturians are long-distance sailors and have even founded some trading enclaves on the northern coast of the Almad.
Neighbouring countries: Arrayne, Xarsos, the Almad

THE HALF-FAE

• Dwarf - Waldic with traces of Elemental. After the Authority broke the Nightlands and punished the wicked, the Dwarfs recovered thought and language in Waldau
• Elf - High (or Ancient) Xarsic with wisps of Elemental. The Elves wandered far until the Authority cleared their minds again when he spoke first in Xarsos. Elves innovate their language by constructing ever more complex expressions of thought within the unchanging matrix of perfect High Xarsic.
• Halflings - speak the tongue of their country, and a secret tongue called Kuduk. Kuduk influences the main tongue as a dialect that can be dialled from a few charmingly different words to a separate speech only understandable by Halflings. Rumors that all Halflings speak Mist (below) are vile slander.
• Animal folk - per their country, with an 'accent' like the corresponding animal. A startled houndling may bark, a Slugling waggles their eyestalks, Frogling teenagers croak. A lot.
• Faeries and elementals can understand the language called Elemental, although they all have different dialects. How a sentient inferno and a living pool both shape words in this tongue is a question for the priests.

ARCANA

• High Xarsic is the spell tongue of the Church of the Authority. Clerics who do not speak High Xarsic -the majority- learn to cast their spells by rote. Bards from the religious orders know songs and speeches in High Xarsic. Angels speak High Xarsic when they form and it is thought that High Xarsic spells are polite request to invisible angels. If the angels have a language of their own, they keep it a secret of Heaven. Devils speak High Xarsic but will speak whatever they need to get their claws in you.
• Watcher clerics literally weave their spells with combined movements of their legs and fingers.
• The Exile's clerics and his Warlocks speak their demands in whatever language they want.
• Most Wizards and Sorcerors speak Elemental - their spells are reminders of the early contracts made between man and spirit, honoured even though the originals are lost to time.
• Illusionists, Enchanters and Conjurors speak Mist with their Patron, the Violet Cloud. Mist is a vaguely defined language also in use as an international Thieves' Cant.
• Necromancers speak a debased version of Du'van, the dead tongue of the Nightlands.
• Druids supplicate nature spirits in Elemental, using less and less words as they strip their minds of sentient thought and become closer to nature.

FAR AWAY

• Almad, spoken in The Almad - across the Sea of Almad, the Sea of 1000 Islands, the Bay of Domes. Revere the Authority but honour no saints, instead calling and binding many elemental spirits.
• Bashkir - language family of the Khanates on the Endless Steppe that run south of the Nightlands. Each city on the Steppe has their own variation, but all understand the Bashkir trading tongue.
• Surya - spices and jewels from the Surya Satrapies! Across the ocean to the far east of the Almad. Also the source of many interesting teas and powders. This.
• Qi'dan - Empire of Qi'dan, reached after thousands of miles across the Endless Steppe. Where palaces are made of golden bricks and even the peasants wear robes of softest silk.

THE FAE - DIALECTS OF ELEMENTAL

• Dark Fey is a harsh, cruel dialect spoken by winter faeries, hags and their warlords and footfolk, the orcs and goblinoids.
• Giant is a debased form of Elemental, broken until only a core of meaning and hunger remains. Giants learn the language of their surrounding country, possibly from the hags who rile them up against the village in the valley.
• Sylvan is the Elemental dialect spoken by the Light and Green fey: dryads, pixies, treants and unicorns for instance.

• Dragons and the greater Beasts of the Apocalypse speak all languages. They collect languages like they collect gold, because every language will offer new ways to describe their own glory.

THE UNSPOKEN TONGUE - DU'VAN

The Nightlands are to the east of the Varnic Princedoms, to the north on the Endless Stappe, south and east of the Vaeringjar, west of Qi'dan - but only because everything is west of Qi'dan.

The land is littered with ruined cities and towers smashed as they fell from a great height. Those who dare explore here are called Gravediggers. When every tomb you open can be full of undead or misshapen horrors, each day is like digging your own. The Nightland vaults contain many treasures of wealth, magic and lore - dark lore in the language of Du'van which has not been spoken since the Authority punished the world for its sins. A dead language for a dead country.

Necromancy spells use Du'van exclusively. Like the Church and High Xarsic, many necromancers only learn to cast the spells by rote. They recognize Du'van on sight, but cannot automatically read or write it.

It is a well-kept secret of Church and trusted nobility that the Nightlanders or Du'vanku left their influence around the world. A tomb can hold burial relics from an old chieftain, or a metal vault that asks your wish in Du'van, then opens to produce whatever the speaker asked for.

Some abominations like Harpies, Chimaera, Manticores and Sphinxes emerge speaking perfect Du'van from wherever they form.