I really like the idea of redefining the common language everyone shares, so I thought I'd shift over to the ideas forum with it.

Imagine an event whereby the common speech by which everyone communicates starts to unravel. First occasional slurs and mispronouncements begin to manifest, then it becomes impossible to speak certain words, and eventually it disappears entirely.

It turns out the three original communes had developed a magic curse that they had planned to use against the cities should they ever need to disrupt the diverse armies of the empire - making their common speech impossible to speak. Little did they know that common speech would eventually become the default for both communes and cities, and the forgotten curse would somehow be activated by modern-day curiousity.

The leaders of organizations scramble to find a way to restore proper communication, and scribes are in demand as efforts are co-ordinated to deal with the disaster. Eventually, the communes discover the means to the elder language of the time of Ellindel (Faespeech?), and this knowledge is passed quickly through their ranks. The cities are a little slower, but the Lucidian researchers offer an archaic language first spoken by the celestial beings encountered by the cities (Cosmia?).

Now all new characters have two default 'common' languages (and old characters can learn both) - a commune-based language and a city-based language. Both are tied to the essence of a commune and city, and so a character will have more trouble speaking the foreign language, but not enough to seriously hinder communication. A mispronounced word here or there, maybe an incorrect one (You say, "Whit are you saysing?" - only need be occasional vowel substitution and certain syllable replacements), and maybe a very slight willpower drain. Everyone is still as perfectly able to work with each other as before, there is just a noticeable accent involved and sometimes this can cause confusion.

Not only will this reinforce the city/commune divide (and emphasise the common ground each shares), it will give organizations more of a sense of identity. Additionally, if city/commune interaction is occuring there is more incentive to use racial speech (if appropriate) giving these tools far more meaning and usefulness.

Scribes might be able to speak foreign with fewer mispronouncements (or accents), but their ease with racial languages means they can take advantage of most situations in that form. There could probably also be scrolls/enchantments that allow someone to temporarily speak in perfect foreign accents, but I wouldn't make them too cheap.

Original comment:


Edit: Hmm, and there would need to be some sort of hearing difficulty involved with foreign languages too. Otherwise Citydude just speaks city and Communer speaks commune and both communicate perfectly. Shouldn't have overlooked that.

I like the idea!

We had this exact same idea posted like four times by Desdemona back in the day. Estarra's words: "No, we will never remove common, ever. At all."

There's still a common language shared by all characters. Two in fact.

It just means there's a benefit to speaking one of them.

Anyway, people really need to stop trying to tie cities and communes together into groups so much.

EDIT: I see what you mean about making it two common languages, actually. Even so, just speak Elfen/Merian. Magnagora gets shafted, but whatever.

Heh, posting a plot you made up will end up with it not used. The admin don't want the meat of their plots known until the end.

That's the start of the event I suggested. I'm referring to the common speech as in SPEAK COMMON. After the event, you can speak in either of two substitute 'common' languages, but only one will be perfect in interacting with your culture.

And I detest most of the suggestions for making Glomdoring/Serenwilde or Magnagora/Celest buddy-buddy. They aren't. They never will (or should) be. But one way of encouraging players to focus on existing similarities (not friendships, just similarities to be used or not) is to highlight the cultural and not just architectural divide between them. Language is important there.

Think of it as not so much forcing the communes and cities together, as putting distance between commune with city alliances.

And no, this is not what Desdemona was suggesting.

Oops, 'd my last post.

But why would I speak Elfen/Merian when I can speak Common?

It's the Tower of Babel, all over again.

Magnagora: Dudes! Tower! We'll pwn the havens!
Celest, Glom, Seren: Yes!
*They build*
Estarra: wtf how about no?
*Smites the common tongue*


(Biblical references much?)

Yeah, I didn't read your idea carefully enough, sorry about that. Now all I can say is that it's kinda unnecessary to have a language divide just to highlight commune/city similarities since the ones they do have are already pretty apparent (certain krokani will not shut up about how Serenwilde should ally with Glomdoring and hate the cities) and there are a lot of differences which indicate that trying to tie the two closer together than they already are is probably a bad idea anyway. I guess you have a point, but meh. :/

And you'd speak Elfen/Merian because only people of your city can see it. (Uh, in theory. Actually the home-race population kinda dropped considerably after some of the other races were made to suck less, so it doesn't work as well in practice now, but you still have the idea.)

Again, I'm not really trying to force anyone together - Glomdoring and Serenwilde already share the Elfen language mostly between them, but that doesn't mean they have to work together because of it. I -would- however like to have some slight obvious difference when a city person is interacting with commune people, and vice versa.

At the moment, language is basically just a flawed channel. You might once have chosen to show you were speaking with someone, and not be able to be understood if other races were present (in other realms it might be a WHISPER with a chance of being overheard). Now, however, race is no longer a restriction. The only reason to speak in another language is just to show you can. Denizens don't speak in their native tongues (which is thankful because otherwise half the quests would be undoable), and the fact everyone can speak in common means there is no need whatsoever to ever change your language in order to be perfectly understood.

This change would hopefully give more meaning to languages, and both organizational and racial identities. I'm open to alternate suggestions for how languages might be made meaningful or useful, and the event I suggested is certainly not going to be as good as what these amazing admin can come up with - I just wanted to show it is possible.

I have a related suggestion especially for bookbinding: Could we have some additional RP languages aside from the racial ones?

Such as:
- a language of the trees (taking druidry might grant you this)
- the Supernals/Demon Lords language (taking celestialism/nihilism)
- the Fae language (taking wicca, of course)
- an arcane ritual language (taking Geomancy/Aquamancy?)
- the language of the Soulless (quest based acquisition?)
- a merchant's secret trading language (quest based acquisition), or
- a battlefield shorthand language (taking knighthood specializations?)

Oh, and a Viscanti language should of course develop.

There are so many more, and it would mean all Bookbinders don't just learn the 5 staple languages, as well as give humans a chance to speak something different.

It's a nice idea, and the last thing it would actually do is tie the cities or communes together. There'd be hell over sharing the languages. But I don't think Estarra is going to oblige, unfortunately.

I still see enough diversity in my commune that if I speak elfen (why can't faelings have their own language?) many people will not understand me. And sometimes I just change, feel like it. Not showing off, after all, the commune or city channel (and clans) are always 'interpreted' as common.

Actually, another interesting outcome to this event might be that aetherwave broadcasts are no longer purely in common. There are two ways this could be handled:

1) Channels are set to a certain language. For instance, a new clan verb could be CLAN SET CHANNEL ELFEN (for elfen-only clubs), with commune channels in the new commune-speak and city channels in the new city-speak. Market and Newbie of course have to remain common for everyone. This approach has problems, as well as really only being useful in excluding people from clans. Rejected.

2) Individuals can speak in different languages on their channels. This is far better, and more realistic as well. This would entail setting your personal language (SPEAK ELFEN) and then using the channel like normal, but only those who can speak your language will understand you. In this case, it is easy to leave Newbie and Market as they currently are, so language is irrelevent. Suddenly the silly Elfen who joins the Aslari clan really feels like the outsider when most of the conversation is unintelligible. There should be some syntax to speak once in another language on a channel too, ie

CTSP ELFEN Hey, what's up with the poxy squirrels?

It would be fascinating and fun, I think. Otherwise channels are always a way around languages - why not make them part of the experience? Eh, just a thought.


Thinking some more about how the two common languages work, I would suggest 3 (more or less?) discrete levels of comprehension for any language be introduced, replacing whether or not you can speak it:
- Unintelligible
- Mostly understandable
- Perfectly fluent
A Glomdoring Faeling would be perfectly fluent in understanding Elfen, perfectly fluent in understanding commune-speak, and mostly understand city-speak. They would find all other languages unintelligible unless they are a scribe.

Perfectly fluent/unintelligible are like languages are implemented currently. Mostly understandable would be occasionally mishearing words (probably best exemplified by gaps '....') and occassionally misspeaking words (probably best exemplified by slurring 'hey thire'). Keeping the incidence of both relatively rare means that together they should be plenty to highlight communicative differences.

This scale would mean that it -may- be possible to temporarily or permanently boost & decrease comprehension without just toggling a language on and off.

And I really like the thought of RP languages, keep the ideas coming!