My Correspondent article in Warpstone 19 concerned languages. It is a theme that I have returned to a few times in my games and has caused considerable problems and contradictions, although probably only to me as a perfectionist. I outlined a number or theoretical problems with languages in Warpstone, but I continually hit pragmatic ones in my games. This is, in part, due to my expanding my campaign into the Wheatland Colonies and peopling it with a host of different racial groups and similar groups that originated from a common people approximately 2500 years ago. What languages would these people speak, and how do I fit them into the existing framework? Since the Gospodars did not originate in the Old World, how can they speak it as their mother tongue?

Read and Write

This is the simplest part of the language issue to resolve, at least in part. To my mind, it makes the greatest sense that the skill only covers one language, be that Dwarf, Old Worlder or Slavic. This contradicts the rules, which seem to me to imply that if you have the Read/Write skill and can speak a particular language then you can read and write that language too. I much prefer players to spend extra experience to do this. This limits the widespread use of the skill, which I think better fits the milieu. It can also help higher level campaigns by reining in characters, who will now have to spend additional experience, time and money upon learning these additional languages. To this effect, I would probably add the skill Read/Write Additional language, such that the basic Read/ Write skill applies only to one's indigenous language. By this, I would refer to Old Worlder and dialect (but see below). However, in the case of elves and dwarfs, I would limit this further such that they cannot get Read/Write - Old Worlder as a default. They would have Read/Write Khazalid and Eltharin respectively. I would, however, make it relatively easy to learn subject to the experience cost due to their familiarity with the culture and language.

The key problem that I have is whether the written language resides in only the dialect (as WFRP describes them) or also in the generic Old Worlder. This then calls into doubt the entire rational of this common tongue, what it is and how it came about.

Language and Dialect

The problem with WFRP is its use of the term "Dialect" to describe the national tongues of the Old World, and their origin in the common Old World language.

Pragmatically, I would have written forms of the dialects in WFRP plus the main language Old Worlder. My feeling is that the more realistic is that there is no written form of Old Worlder (which is a lingua franca) but I think that would cause too many in-play issues, and I have never actually played it that way. There is no doubt that the Old World would have a lingua franca, a language that everyone understands as the language of doing business and generally living alongside one's neighbours. Where one has an empire, then the empire language does this
(Latin, Greek, English etc) but otherwise it becomes a patois of many languages (such as in the Middle East during the Middle Ages). In WFRP, this probably should have been Classical but they took the (understandable) route of making it a dead language. I think that I'd have used it to fudge the 'common' tongue instead of creating a second artificial language (Old Worlder). The former (as I discussed in Warpstone 19) still relies on an empire, whilst the latter can get a fudge due to good transport and interaction amongst the various peoples - the Valentinas and the implied immigration en masse was something never since developed.

I am thinking of formally developing a better language system that I could adopt myself. My intention is to use lots of languages but also have characters speaks lot too, many dialects but some actually different languages. This would add regional flavour without leading to communication issues to ruin the game - unless I wanted to make that a part of the adventure. In other words, Ostland and northern Ostland (Kislevan influence) would each have their own dialect, but firmly within the Reikspiel language. These people would also speak Old Worlder (if I decide to keep it). Similarly, the League of Ostermark would speak Ostermark, northern Ostermark (Kislevan influenced), eastern Ostermark (dwarf influenced) and Ostland (in western Ostermark, partly due to the political closeness of the two). Any Reikspiel speaker would understand the Ostland dialect, but could lose certain meaning due to some idiosyncratic words, pronunciation etc. An Ostland PC would then speak two dialects, one language and perhaps a second language. The question is would such an evolution be worthwhile? It adds further depth to the particular regions, gives colour and (if Old Worlder is retained) keeps the fudge allowing universal communication. However, it also extends (useless?) skills and has extra paperwork.

I would appreciate thoughts before I embark upon such a mammoth project.