Language Question

[Corven_Ren]

How do you buy a language that does not have a spoken form such as Egyptian Heiroglyphics or Sanskrit? Do you still need to buy it as completely fluent?

[Corven_Ren]

Re: Language Question

 

Another double post ignore this on please! God I hate my computer!

[paigeoliver]

Re: Language Question

 

Probably just one point for literacy?

[levi]

Re: Language Question

 

Firstly, both of those languages did indeed have a spoken form. What I think you are asking though is if you should purchase a Language Skill to be able to read them. In a modern setting I would say that KS: Egyptian Heiroglyphics or KS: Sandskrit would be more appropriate. Often times in popular fiction (as well as in academics) you will have conflicting interpretations of the same set of writings. Making a Skill Roll would better represent the accuracy of one interpretation over another IMHO.

[Corven_Ren]

Re: Language Question

 

Mayhap I will buy them as KS as the character I am updating has both the scolar and linguist abilites

[keithcurtis]

Re: Language Question

 

Here's a toughie: Should written Chinese be bought separately from Canonese/Mandarin? Different languages, same writing. Or would literacy in one just automatically give literacy in the other.

 

Trivia fact: Chinese television is often subtitled in Chinese! So Mandarin speakers can understand Canotnese programming and vice versa.

 

Keith "Wou yao tien chen pi chi" Curtis

[OddHat]

Re: Language Question

 

Here's a toughie: Should written Chinese be bought separately from Canonese/Mandarin? Different languages, same writing. Or would literacy in one just automatically give literacy in the other.

 

Trivia fact: Chinese television is often subtitled in Chinese! So Mandarin speakers can understand Canotnese programming and vice versa.

 

Keith "Wou yao tien chen pi chi" Curtis

 

Wau da pu tong hua bu hen how, ku shr wau huay iidiar.

 

I'd say that literacy in either Cantonese or Mandarin should carry literacy in the other language for free. It should also give some free literacy in Japanese (which uses Kanji/Chinese characters along with Hiragana and Katakana), but the system isn't fine-grained enough to worry about that. There are some minor grammatical differences between written Cantonese and Mandarin, but nothing that would confuse someone fully literate for long.

[Vondy]

Re: Language Question

 

Here's a toughie: Should written Chinese be bought separately from Canonese/Mandarin? Different languages, same writing. Or would literacy in one just automatically give literacy in the other.

 

Trivia fact: Chinese television is often subtitled in Chinese! So Mandarin speakers can understand Canotnese programming and vice versa.

 

Keith "Wou yao tien chen pi chi" Curtis

 

I would go with literacy in one gives literacy in the other as cantonese and mandarin use the same character set. Now for the confusing part: there are in fact two different forms of written Chinese commonly used today. They are Traditional Chinese, which is used in Taiwan, and Simplified Chinese, which is used in Hong Kong and the mainland. People still read Traditional Chinese on the mainland, but its not used for most publications purposes. I worked on cross language platforms a lot when I was at MS. Its interesting what you learn.

[BNakagawa]

Re: Language Question

 

Japanese kanji and Chinese are different.

 

The core meanings of most of the characters are similar, in some cases identical. However, there has been considerable drift in some of the derivative and composite characters...

[OddHat]

Re: Language Question

 

Japanese kanji and Chinese are different.

 

The core meanings of most of the characters are similar, in some cases identical. However, there has been considerable drift in some of the derivative and composite characters...

 

True, but the crossover value is still there. The Chinese students I studied with in Japan learned to read far faster than the Europeans or Americans, and it wasn't (just) because they were smarter than we were. They got a lot of mileage out of those shared and similar characters. Similarly, when I study Mandarin, my work on the Kanji comes in darn handy.

[OddHat]

Re: Language Question

 

I would go with literacy in one gives literacy in the other as cantonese and mandarin use the same character set. Now for the confusing part: there are in fact two different forms of written Chinese commonly used today. They are Traditional Chinese' date=' which is used in Taiwan, and Simplified Chinese, which is used in Hong Kong and the mainland. People still read Traditional Chinese on the mainland, but its not used for most publications purposes. I worked on cross language platforms a lot when I was at MS. Its interesting what you learn.[/quote']

 

Yup. Real literacy in Chinese requires learning both. Full Japanese literacy is actually much easier, and it's still a pain in the arse.

[JmOz]

Re: Language Question

 

As a side note: in areas where reading is standard it is suppose to be free...

[Legendsmiths]

Re: Language Question

 

The alphabets should be separate. Do we have to relearn the Roman alphabet to learn German? No, we have to learn a couple of special characters but not a whole alphabet. Learning Russian is a different story.

 

My recommendation is to separate literacy from language completely. Characters learn an alphabet and a language. The language costs are normal. The alphabet costs 1 point.

 

In the case of Cantonese and Mandarin then since they have a shared alphabet only 1 point would need to be learned. Same as with English and German.

 

However, understanding an alphabet does not confer understanding of the language. In the case of a dead language, you would still have to pay for both the alphabet and the spoken part as normal, but perhaps a -1 limitation could be applied to the language to represent that it cannot be spoken. Often however enough is understood that there is a defacto spoken version which may or may not be close to the true dead form and that could be represented by complimentary INT rolls by both speakers (say, a traveller from the past and a modern scholar) to communicate.

 

If using the language table also remember that most dead languages should qualify for a -1 or -2 difficulty. Arbitrarily, a GM could say that for 1 point of fluency the character has a level 1 understanding (unmodified by language table). Then if he makes an appropriate KS roll, he can have a level 2 understanding, level 3 if he makes it by 3 or more, level 4 if he crits. That is the most that he can know because the language is, well, dead. So, for 2 points a character could be as fluent as possible with the dead language and know its alphabet, and would need a KS roll to enhance his knowledge on a case by case basis.

[keithcurtis]

Re: Language Question

 

My recommendation is to separate literacy from language completely. Characters learn an alphabet and a language. The language costs are normal. The alphabet costs 1 point.

 

In the case of Cantonese and Mandarin then since they have a shared alphabet only 1 point would need to be learned. Same as with English and German.

 

However, understanding an alphabet does not confer understanding of the language.

 

There's a fundamental difference here, though. Alphabet is a misnomer for Cantonese/Mandarin. It is a collection of ideographs. In a sense, the written characters are a language. Since each symbol represents a word or idea (a simplification, I know), If you can read it, it really doesn't matter what language you speak. (Again a simplification, but close enough). I can learn all of the German special characters, but it won't allow me to understand a single word of German.

 

Another geeky trivia bit. In Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars series, the entire planet shared a common language, but every city/state had an entirely different form of writing. Exactly the opposite case. For that world, Barsoomian language would be an everman skill, while each written language would be a separate skill, unrelated.

 

Keith "Ni Hao and Kaor" Curtis

[Legendsmiths]

Re: Language Question

 

Agreed, but in an abstract sense that model still works, especially when the ideagraphs are used in a quasi orthographic manner (kanji - correct?).

 

The trick is to balance realism with points and requiring extensive points for things like language is often frustrating for players. I would simplify and state that ideagraphic writing systems cost 2 points for literacy with the caveat that any language using that writing system can be gisted, in written form, with an INT or Cultural Familiarity roll. I think this still captures the complexity of such a writing system without requiring characters to spend to many points.