RPGnet Columns
10-04-2005, 03:37 PM
Post originally by magic-rhyme at 2005-10-04 14:37:24
Converted from Phorums BB System
Most of your essay on monolingualism was entertaining and relatively accurate. You did mess up a bit with one segment, however: "The big thing we run into in D&D style games is that arch enemy of linguistic realism: Common. How do all these diverse cultures in a non-internet connected world actually speak the same tongue?"
My Ph.D. includes linguistics, so I hope you won't mind if I disagree with you a tad on that one segment.
The general notion of a common tongue is not at all unrealistic. Almost always, the common tongue is the result of dominance; it comes from an old empire (as in your example of the British empire), or it comes from a commercial hegemony (as in the example of the modern United States), or it comes from a higher authority (as in the pre-eminence of Latin among the learned for so many centuries, which remained relatively unchanged due to its being a dead language).
I have no difficulty with people using the fact of real world common tongues as a neat rationalization for waving their hands at the communications difficulties. If I did, not only could I never play your average fantasy roleplaying game, I could never watch most television or film SF! I also have no problem with people's ignoring the fact that common tongues tend to be limited in their applicability and tend to form their own dialectical variations, which is why people speaking the British English of India may have some problems talking with people speaking the American English of Mexico. I won't even go into variations of connotation and slang!
My one frustration is that too many game masters ignore the opportunities provided by a common language. For example, is the common language the native tongue for a precursor empire? Is the common language also the native tongue of one of the civilizations? Is the common tongue the degraded remnant of a former theocracy? I will always remember one clever game master in a fantasy RPG who told us that the lowly halfling could read the ancient script of a mighty precursor race because it was also his native tongue, opening up an entire bit of campaign in which we discovered that the elves and dwarves and humans had once been subjects of a mighty halfling empire! Similarly, in another campaign, part of the prestige of being an elf was that the common tongue was derived from an imperial elvish tongue -- and the frustration for it was that elves could therefore speak only common as their free tongues!
Overall, though, a good article even when I look at it as a linguist and not as a gamer. ^_^
Converted from Phorums BB System
Most of your essay on monolingualism was entertaining and relatively accurate. You did mess up a bit with one segment, however: "The big thing we run into in D&D style games is that arch enemy of linguistic realism: Common. How do all these diverse cultures in a non-internet connected world actually speak the same tongue?"
My Ph.D. includes linguistics, so I hope you won't mind if I disagree with you a tad on that one segment.
The general notion of a common tongue is not at all unrealistic. Almost always, the common tongue is the result of dominance; it comes from an old empire (as in your example of the British empire), or it comes from a commercial hegemony (as in the example of the modern United States), or it comes from a higher authority (as in the pre-eminence of Latin among the learned for so many centuries, which remained relatively unchanged due to its being a dead language).
I have no difficulty with people using the fact of real world common tongues as a neat rationalization for waving their hands at the communications difficulties. If I did, not only could I never play your average fantasy roleplaying game, I could never watch most television or film SF! I also have no problem with people's ignoring the fact that common tongues tend to be limited in their applicability and tend to form their own dialectical variations, which is why people speaking the British English of India may have some problems talking with people speaking the American English of Mexico. I won't even go into variations of connotation and slang!
My one frustration is that too many game masters ignore the opportunities provided by a common language. For example, is the common language the native tongue for a precursor empire? Is the common language also the native tongue of one of the civilizations? Is the common tongue the degraded remnant of a former theocracy? I will always remember one clever game master in a fantasy RPG who told us that the lowly halfling could read the ancient script of a mighty precursor race because it was also his native tongue, opening up an entire bit of campaign in which we discovered that the elves and dwarves and humans had once been subjects of a mighty halfling empire! Similarly, in another campaign, part of the prestige of being an elf was that the common tongue was derived from an imperial elvish tongue -- and the frustration for it was that elves could therefore speak only common as their free tongues!
Overall, though, a good article even when I look at it as a linguist and not as a gamer. ^_^