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Language on the Planes -- The Primetongues?

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Tue, 2011-10-18 13:48
#1
Anetra
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Language on the Planes -- The Primetongues?

When we say "Planar languages," languages like Ignan, Celestial, Rhebus and Abyssal are the first ones to come to mind, the languages of the Planar Outsiders. But are those really the languages that are spoken by humans or other non-exemplar races?

If I go into Arvandor, are the natives of that divine realm speaking Celestial, or are they speaking Elven? Likewise, if I go into Olympus, are they speaking Celestial, or are they speaking Greek? Do the people in Heliopolis speak Celestial or Formian, or do they speak ... like, Coptic?

I've been giving this a lot of thought, and uh, while it may seem like introducing new languages for each pantheon may just confuse matters, it also seems a little unrealistic to suppose they don't exist, and are human prime languages really any less realistic or any more of a hassle than demihuman languages? I don't know that they are.

Thoughts?

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Tue, 2011-10-18 16:26
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Hyena of Ice
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Re: Language on the Planes -- The Primetongues?

My interpretation is that there are different dialects. Also, I DMed that Axiomatic and Anarchic are languages.

With the Inner Planes, I created special house rules involving creole languages, with the base languages being Ignan, Auran, Aquan, Terran, Vivacian, and Entropian. A character needs to know both languages in order to understand and speak a creole.
For instance, paraelemental languages are creoles between two elemental languages, while the lingua-franca on the Quasielemental Planes is a creole between and elemental and positive-negative language. Even among these groups, there are different dialects depending on region (for instance, the Glacian dialect on the Precipice is closer to Auran than it is to Aquan, while the dialect in the Sea of Frozen Souls is the opposite.) The dialect stuff has no effect on mechanics and is simply a roleplayting and fluff issue.

As for realism, in 1 and 2E, just about every race had its own language, so Comprehend Languages and Tongues were far more essential. 3E simplified the whole thing. For example, in 1 and 2E each giant spoke its own language, same with each type of genie, each type of elemental/paraelemental/quasielemental, and each species of dragon. The only common language was sylvan, which was the language of forest-dwelling fey, centauri, satyroi, and similar creatures. Each outsider race likewise had its own language (for instance, the Yugoloths had their own language, as did hags and hordlings. Baatezu and Tanar'ri had languages unique to their race.) In addition to making Tongues and Comprehend Languages so necessary, it was rather difficult to keep track of all the different languages.

Tue, 2011-10-18 22:56
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Kobold Avenger
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Re: Language on the Planes -- The Primetongues?

You could treat those languages in the limited selection of languages in 3e to 4e as a root language to a bunch of other ones spoken by some not so major races. In much the way there's Latin, and then there's Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. Ignan could have derived languages like Efreet, Salamander and Thoqqua, and to some extent they sort of may make sense with each other, even if they are different.

Incidentally 1e had an entirely different concept of alignment languages that anyone of a given alignment could understand each other. To me that never made sense... As how would all beings of my alignment communicate anyways? By screaming at each other, ranting madly, going on tangents and doing contradictory things? Not likely to work no matter how they explained it back in 1e.

Wed, 2011-10-19 20:47
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Hyena of Ice
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Re: Language on the Planes -- The Primetongues?

Probably something between 2E and 3E's system is the best way to go-- that is, have thousands of different languages, but each race generally knows some type of lingua-franca like Giant, Sylvan, or Celestial. For instance, maybe Qorrashi genies have their own language, but for purposes of trade and communication with other races, they speak Glacian.
Likewise, the elven languages may differ as much as Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, but they also speak a common dialect known as just plain "Elven".
Thus for gaming purposes, it's only important to know the main 3E-style languages.

Sun, 2011-10-23 10:12
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Jem
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Re: Language on the Planes -- The Primetongues?

My general thought is that, much as the Bible and the Koran have served to spread Latin and Arabic as the basis of many other families of languages, the presence of active transplanar deities gives rise to closely related language families revolving around a pantheon, and their speakers on the planes constitute a restorative force that keeps those families relatively close to the root stock.

Thus, you have a "Heliopolitan," which is basically Egyptian; Greek; Norse; Ugaritic; Elven, Dwarven, and other racial languages for species with racial pantheons. Celestial, Infernal, and Abyssal are anchored by their exemplar speakers (though Abyssal changes rapidly; a thousand-year-old text in Infernal is still readable, while a thousand-year-old text in Abyssal has skill penalties or may even give a legitimate reason for the Decipher Text skill to exist.) Draconic is mysteriously stable, even allowing for its long-lived speakers. Auran's dialects of Djinnish, Vaati, and "core" Auran as spoken by elementals are mutually understandable, at a slight penalty, and several worlds still speak tongues derived from Vaati.

Rip suggests that there have been many "Common" tongues over the years, and the current one is the language of Ortho, home of the Harmonium, which makes sense to me.

I personally like the idea of prime languages different enough to require some work to understand them. Makes a use for the tongues spell and gives value to points put into multiple languages skills, which would be historically accurate for travelers.

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