Human languages and their Earth equivalents

[Kregor]

This was a nice little piece I came across in the WotC discussion board archives by Forgotten Realms writer Thomas M. Costa, dealing with the various languages in Faerun and the accents he attributed to them. Interesting read, and might be good inspiration for players who wish to accent their common in RP. It also gives an idea of what the regionality, culture of an area in Faerun is in regard to their Earth equivalent.

Faerunian Languages:
ILLUSKI (à la Germanic: Old Norse, Danish, Norwegian) -- language family of the Northmen and northern Barbarians.

WAELAN (à la Celtic: Cornish, Manx, Welsh) --language family of the Ffolk of the Moonshaes and the various druidic secret tongues.

ULOU (à la Baltic: Old Prussian, Lettish, Lithuanian) -- language family of
the ancient Netherese, Halruans, Ruathym, the Great Blacier, Anauroch, the barbarians of the Ride, Vaasa, Damara, and the Vast

THORASS (à la Italic: Latin, Italian, French) -- the language of Tethyr,
Amn, The Western Heartlands, the Eastern Heartlands, the civilized North, the Dragon Coast, the western and southern Moonsea, Turmish, and Aglarond

CHESSAN (à la Greek: Æolic, Cyprian, Modern Greek) -- the language family of Chessenta, the Shaar, the Tashalar peninsula, and Sespech.

RAUMTHERAN (à la Slavic: Russian, Bulgarian, Albanian) -- the language of Rashemen, Sossal, Thesk.


Imaskari Languages:
IMASKARI (à la Altaic: Azerbaijani, Turkish, Mongol)-- the language family of the Tuigan, Durpar, Raurin, Ulgarth, and Lantan


Rauric Languages:
MULANI (à la Hamitic: Ancient Egyptian, Coptic, Berber) -- the language
family of Mulhorand, Thay, Murghom, and Semphar

UNTHERIC (à la Semitic: Assyrian, Babylonian, Modern Arabic) -- the language family of Unther, the Utter East, Zakhara, and Calimshan


Chultan Languages:
CHULTAN (à la Niger: Ashanti, Banda, Zulu) -- the language of Chult

[Argentia]

Are there ever any intances of actual human languages being spoken on Faerun? Aside from the obvious English as common, and I believe Japanese and perhaps Chinese are spoken in the east. For example, would French in its actuality be spoken anywhere?

[Kregor]

Based on Costa's writings, the Ferunian names for those cultural tongues and dialects is what applies. IE, Someone who speaks a specific culture of Thorassic would be speaking the earth equivalent of French, someone speaking Rashemi would be speaking the earth equivalent of Russian, etc.

So when McAnnin speaks his shanty Irishman accent on the MUD, he is basically speaking a Waelan-flavored common, not "Irish," as we know it.

"Common" is relative. It is only English to us because we can understand it when we read and RP. In the same Forgotten Realms book translated for the French market, common would be french, get it?

By the way... Costa has a lot of postings in the WotC archives, and it makes for some interesting research, especially with the answers he gives people dealing with the anthropology of Faerun. Just go to http://oracle.wizards.com/scripts/wa.exe and do an author search for "tomcosta".

[Kregor]

Oh, and to answer your question on Kara Tur languages, Costa only addressed the languages in Faerun, but the two main languages in Kara Tur are Kozakuran (Japanese), and High Shou (The equivalent of Madarin Chinese, there are other Shou dialects, much like there are in Chinese. Don't ask me them, I dunno that much about Kara Tur)

[Argentia]

So, using that logic, it would be perfectly fine to have a character who speaks "common"(English) but inserts the random the French word to hint at their nationality?

[Glim]

My opinion would be no. As while the languages may sound the same to their earth counterparts, the words wouldnt necessarily be the same in Faerun.

[Argentia]

Gotcha, thanks for clearing that up. I really only had in mind using words that would be more common, ie "oui" or "cher", but I'll forget the whole thing. To be honest, I asked because I was concerned about the very explination Mystra gave! I figured it would be the same as using elven on the Mud, which had been previously discussed. Thanks!

[Kregor]

For the record, let it be noted I posted this for those who might wish to *accent* their common. (ie, speak wi'a Irish ac'cnt, or speak as a Reshemi might, with "V" in place of "W" and "B" in place of "V", etc.) and also to give people an idea of what sort of Earth equivalent culture Costa was invisioning with the Faerunian nationalities.

It was never my intent to advocate actually using words from those other languages or speaking them.

[Andreas]

On the same tangent... I'd LOVE to see some of the regional dialects coded as additional languages

[Solaghar]

Maybe something more interesting would be to provide accents ala the dwarven accent that people could switch on, one that, like it was said, would replace say, w with v for Slavic tongues, some obvious words like Ja or Nein for the Germanic tongues of barbarians, other such things, they have done that in the books to show accents. But yeah, using a specific word like cher or Wunderbar or something doesn't seem reasonable because those words would just be nonsense to these people.

Of course, since English is such an amalgamation of other languages this can be argued; if almost everyone who speaks English knows what oui means, it is technically just as much a part of our language as it would be of French. Because that's all language is, a word we all recognize as sharing a meaning. The best thing you can probably do is to just try to mimic the accent without utilizing the words you might be tempted to throw in.

One thing I'd be more interested in seeing is for everyone, even half-elves and the like, to recognize their human culture and show it both physically and in terms of their RP. Maybe part of the new character creation system could allow people to set things like skin, hair and eye color as actual character features from a list of possibilities based on where a race is from, and this would go for all races. Or maybe at least a room where people can look at descriptions of people from various places and see how they might describe them differently... just so that people can get a feeling for the true variation that exists among humans and even half-elves. Maybe Elves seeing a Chultan for the first time might think they were part Drow. Little things like that add extra factors of interest into RP...