Dear friends, I read the different languages of human peoples but nothing is said about writing. I embarked on the "History of writing" but before continuing, I wonder if some of you have developed a writing system by people.
In the same way, little information for the languages and the writing of the demi-humans: Elvish, Dwarvish, Orcish...
Thanking you
My approach to languages in the Flanaess is rather different than others. For instance, there is no Common language in my setting, as think that homogenizes things too much. Rather there are language families, (Oeridian, Flan, Baklunish, and Suel), some of whose dialects have a written language.
Baklunish Only ancient Baklunish in this family has a written form, as all record-keeping, poetry, and prose is written in Ancient Baklunish, even though the masses speak Low Baklunish.
Flan Ancient Flan gained and lost written forms several times over the pre-migration period, and so the various written forms need to be learned separately. These include the writing systems of Sulm, Ahlissa, and Tostencha. Modern Tenha is written using Oeridian characters.
Oeridian Ferral is written in a distinct alphabet, almost a code. Old Oeridian is the language of the upper classes throughout the former Aerdy domains still, and is written in standard Oerdidian characters. Keoish is also written with Oeridian characters.
Ordai The language of the Tiger and Wolf Nomads uses Bakluish characters for a distinctly un-Baklunish language.
Olman: Ancient Olman, Tlamen, and Xolasa use the ancient Olman script, while Etlani uses the Touv phonetic alphabet.
Ancient Suel Uses its own script, but the dialect "legalese" spoken in Greyhawk courts appears to have its own unique writing system that is about as clear as Linear A.
Touv Uses a phonetic alphabet.
Ralat This written "language" is limited in scope, and uses a combination of Olman pictographs, Touv letters, and Rasol warning marks.
I have not delved much into demi-human or humanoid languages, leaving them as relatively pure among the races. There are a lot of other human languages in use, but they are merely vernacular, and no one reads or writes in them. I also look at speaking, reading, and writing as three distinct skills, which is how they were treated in the middle ages... someone may learn to read, but not to write, as he could simply hire a scribe to do that.
I love this question, and thanks for the detailed reply tarelton.
First, a brief comment about a few demi-human languages. For dwarves and gnomes, I've assumed something akin to Norse runes provide a common alphabet but also that the ancient dwur kingdoms used something like hieroglyphs.
For elves, I've imagined something like the myriad glyphs of written Chinese but also featuring a traditional palette of colors with a lexicon of meanings, emphases, and tones that are used in "high" literature and texts of religion, rhetoric, poetry, etc.
Before I shift to human languages, I note that I've been puzzling over the AD&D 1e spell, Write, Player's Handbook, at 69, for my current campaign. I either misremembered its name, or perhaps another edition features a Copy spell for mundane writings? Either way, I have wondered if magic might provide an alternative to handwritten scribing, for my campaign, like others I assume, features more books and literacy than Earth's medieval-to-Renaissance "European" analogues, and in general, I've been puzzling over how Keoland's foundation in the great Suel houses of Neheli and Rhola make it more like a Byzantium continuation of "the Roman Empire" than the medieval Western European kingdoms of say 1200 – 1400 A.D.
With those caveats, in my current campaign, I found the Wikipedia entry for Vulgar Latin interesting and generative. It contends that the common language of the (Western) Roman Empire "had probably become more uniform by the time the Western Empire fell in 476 than they had been before it" and continues, "from approximately the seventh century onward that regional differences [in the lands of the former Western Empire] proliferate in the language of Latin documents, indicating the fragmentation of Latin into the incipient Romance languages."
When I read this, and related, entries, a few years ago, I felt like I understood better Gygax's assertion of a Common language: beyond simplifying game play, I wondered about his brief mid-twentieth education at the University of Chicago and related studies of European history and thought that the notion of Common might derive from his understanding of the Roman Empire and Vulgar Latin.
Taking it to the Flanaess, I have pondered two basic ideas. First, keep Common but with regional dialects like the "incipient Romance languages" mentioned above. This keeps closest to the published setting canon, and iirc, one of the Team Greyhawk publications, The Adventure Begins or Player's Guide to Greyhawk, even explains how/why Common became ascendant in the early consolidation of the Great Kingdom of Aerdy. (My current campaign assumes this idea with my PCs being Native speakers of languages like Common (Seolder) and some NPCs, Suel (Shar). (Although the Brotherhood teaches that they speak Ancient Suel, if a native speaker of the Suloise Imperium time-space traveled into the "Kingdom of Shar" in the late Sixth Century, C.Y., the traveler would perceive a derivative language, comprehensible but far from the same language.)
The second basic idea, discussed before many times in these fora, is to reject the Common-vocca of the Great Kingdom of Aerdy as the "native" language of the Sheldomar Valley and elevate Keolandish into a competing common tongue. As noted in prior discussions, this would likely involve also changing the canon definition of Keolandish, which privileges Old High Oeridian, in order to foreground Suloise. To use the racial admixtures for languages, perhaps a non-canon Keolandish would be comprised of the following linguistic influences, SOf?
Alternatively, one could keep the canon definition and explain that the Suloise influence on Keolandish was almost nonexistent, or at least substantially less than that of the Keogh tribe of Oeridians, perhaps because the Neheli, Rhola, and other Suel Houses were so few in number compared to the Oeridians, or perhaps because they reserved their language for themselves or specialized uses?
I'm going to wrap up this post by referring to Byzantium: A Very Short Introduction, which I recently read, which informed / reminded me that Latin was the language of the Western Roman Empire, and Greek the language of the Eastern Roman Empire (a.k.a., Byzantium), and note that this history inspires me to, at a design level, want to create a substantial difference between the Common-vocca of the Great Kingdom of Aerdy and the common language of the Sheldomar Valley, Keolandish.
Hello and thank you both for your very interesting thoughts.
I read a little History of Scripture and did a writing essay by people. For the demi-humans, I recall Tolkien's work, the dwarf cirth comes from the elven cirth.
Unfortunately, I do not know how to pass the images of examples of writings which allow an easier reading of the article.
Writing languages in the Flanaess
One cannot speak of Semitic languages without adding a note on the alphabets allowing them to be transcribed. The Phoenician alphabet is the direct ancestor of the Hebrew, Arabic, Greek and Latin alphabets.
Baklunis: Neighbor of the Arabic alphabet descending from the Phoenician.
Suel: the Suel script is a script close to Summerian. It is a cuneiform writing, composed of nearly 2,000 signs each representing a word (logogram) or an idea (ideogram). It is a writing system written primarily on clay tablets.
Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language around the 20th century BC. AD Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language. Akkadian partly includes ideographic signs, which represent an entire word, and phonetic signs, which represent syllables. Akkadian was later supplanted by Aramaic.
This dead language has since been spoken only by the Scarlet Brotherhood.
Cuneiform writing was primarily practiced by scribes and scholars, even if its use was not confined to this environment since palace dignitaries, merchants and businessmen often had knowledge of writing. In fact, we can distinguish different levels of knowledge: a "functional" stage used to draw up simple management texts, letters and contracts (level required for heads of institutions' offices, merchants, "notaries" for example) ; a “technical” level involving mastery of specialized jargon in a discipline; a "higher" level, that of scholars with a thorough knowledge of writing.
Oeridians: Neighbor of the Greek alphabet descending from the Phoenician.
Flana: initially a language spoken without writing, it evolved into a script close to the Cherokee syllabary. A "syllabary" is a set of symbols used by syllabic writing to represent the vocalized or grouped sounds of a language. The symbols represent syllables, unlike alphabetic writings where the symbols represent sounds or phonemes individually. Sacred language and almost extinct today (only spoken among the Nomads of the Steppes), it has become closer to Oeridian and Common.
Olman:
From the Egyptian hieroglyphic script. It is a figurative writing system: the characters that make it up indeed represent various objects - natural or produced by man - such as plants,
figures of gods, humans and animals, etc.
Common: universal language, neighbor of the Latin alphabet
The term universal language often refers to a hypothetical or historical language spoken and understood by almost all of the world's population. In some contexts, it refers to a means of communication believed to be understandable by all living human beings.
In the first sense, according to certain mythological or religious traditions, there once existed a unique and universal language spoken by all, or shared by humans and supernatural beings; however, there is no historical evidence for this.
Elfique
Quenya (High Elvish) and Sindarin (Grey Elvish), the two most comprehensive languages they invented. They also developed other languages, more fragmented, related to these two. The Elves are also credited with the invention of the two main writing systems: the tengwar of Fëanor and the cirth of Daeron.
Tengwar
Les cirths (runes)
Dwarf or Khuzdul is the language specific to the people of the Dwarves, who received it from their creator Aulë. They transcribed it mainly by a runic writing system called cirth.
The Westron
Western (sometimes Ouistrain, Westron in English) is a fictional language appearing in the work of British writer J.R.R. Tolkien. It is the common language of western Middle-earth during the Third Age, the period in which the story of The Lord of the Rings novel takes place.
The Black Speak
The One Ring inscription.
Ash nazg durbatulűk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulűk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
“One Ring to rule them all, one Ring to find them, one Ring to bring them all and in darkness bind them. »
Hello and thank you both for your very interesting thoughts.
I read a little History of Scripture and did a writing essay by people. For the demi-humans, I recall Tolkien's work, the dwarf cirth comes from the elven cirth.
Unfortunately, I do not know how to pass the images of examples of writings which allow an easier reading of the article.
Writing languages in the Flanaess
One cannot speak of Semitic languages without adding a note on the alphabets allowing them to be transcribed. The Phoenician alphabet is the direct ancestor of the Hebrew, Arabic, Greek and Latin alphabets.
Baklunis: Neighbor of the Arabic alphabet descending from the Phoenician.
Suel: the Suel script is a script close to Summerian. It is a cuneiform writing, composed of nearly 2,000 signs each representing a word (logogram) or an idea (ideogram). It is a writing system written primarily on clay tablets.
Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language around the 20th century BC. AD Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language. Akkadian partly includes ideographic signs, which represent an entire word, and phonetic signs, which represent syllables. Akkadian was later supplanted by Aramaic.
This dead language has since been spoken only by the Scarlet Brotherhood.
Cuneiform writing was primarily practiced by scribes and scholars, even if its use was not confined to this environment since palace dignitaries, merchants and businessmen often had knowledge of writing. In fact, we can distinguish different levels of knowledge: a "functional" stage used to draw up simple management texts, letters and contracts (level required for heads of institutions' offices, merchants, "notaries" for example) ; a “technical” level involving mastery of specialized jargon in a discipline; a "higher" level, that of scholars with a thorough knowledge of writing.
Oeridians: Neighbor of the Greek alphabet descending from the Phoenician.
Flana: initially a language spoken without writing, it evolved into a script close to the Cherokee syllabary. A "syllabary" is a set of symbols used by syllabic writing to represent the vocalized or grouped sounds of a language. The symbols represent syllables, unlike alphabetic writings where the symbols represent sounds or phonemes individually. Sacred language and almost extinct today (only spoken among the Nomads of the Steppes), it has become closer to Oeridian and Common.
Olman:
From the Egyptian hieroglyphic script. It is a figurative writing system: the characters that make it up indeed represent various objects - natural or produced by man - such as plants,
figures of gods, humans and animals, etc.
Common: universal language, neighbor of the Latin alphabet
The term universal language often refers to a hypothetical or historical language spoken and understood by almost all of the world's population. In some contexts, it refers to a means of communication believed to be understandable by all living human beings.
In the first sense, according to certain mythological or religious traditions, there once existed a unique and universal language spoken by all, or shared by humans and supernatural beings; however, there is no historical evidence for this.
Elfique
Quenya (High Elvish) and Sindarin (Grey Elvish), the two most comprehensive languages they invented. They also developed other languages, more fragmented, related to these two. The Elves are also credited with the invention of the two main writing systems: the tengwar of Fëanor and the cirth of Daeron.
Tengwar
Les cirths (runes)
Dwarf or Khuzdul is the language specific to the people of the Dwarves, who received it from their creator Aulë. They transcribed it mainly by a runic writing system called cirth.
For the gnomes, I identify them with fairies of the earth. He therefore speaks a magical language.
For the halflings, they came late, and use the common language with regional variations.
The Westron
Western (sometimes Ouistrain, Westron in English) is a fictional language appearing in the work of British writer J.R.R. Tolkien. It is the common language of western Middle-earth during the Third Age, the period in which the story of The Lord of the Rings novel takes place.
The Black Speak
The One Ring inscription.
Ash nazg durbatulűk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulűk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
“One Ring to rule them all, one Ring to find them, one Ring to bring them all and in darkness bind them. »
Common is a trade tongue, made of Aerdi vocabulary using Ancient Bakluni syntax. As such, it should not be commonly be used outside of trading centers and trading routes. Outside Greyhawk City, the only people speaking Common are traders, nobles, erudites and adventurers. That's a lot of people, but not the majority of them.
So, what language do most people speak? That depends on the area they're from.
East
The Thillronian Peninsula people speak Fruz, a Flan-influenced version of Ancient Suloise.
The Spindrift Isles people speak Lendorian, an Ancient Suloise dialect influenced by Common
Most of the eastern Great Kingdom (and successor states) speak Aerdi, a dialect of Old Oeridian.
Nyrond and the Urnst states speak Nyrondese, an hybrid of Aerdi and Common.
The Rovers of the Barrens speak Barrenese, a Flan dialect.
Their neighbours of Tehn speak Tehnish: it's the same Flan dialect using the grammatical structure of Aerdi. They can understand each other, but the sentences sound "wrong".
Center
The old Ferrond (Furyondy and the Velverdyva lower valley) speak Velondi, an Old Oeridian dialect.
Most of the Sheldomar valley speaks Keolandish, yet another Old Oeridian dialect that was heavily influenced by Ancient Suloise, the exceptions being the rural areas of Goeff and Sterich, in which is spoken Geoffish, a local Flan dialect.
West
The Bakluni West uses Ancient Bakluni as its main administrative, legal, religious and erudite language, but it's not a common people's tongue.
Most of the Bakluni basin (including Ket) speaks Low Bakluni, a present-day version of Ancient Bakluni.
The Nomads and Paynims mostly speak Ordaď, which is another present-day version of Ancient Bakluni.
Zeif speaks Osfaradd, another modern version of Ancient Bakluni
The Ull people speak Ulagha, a simplified (some would say corrupted or debased) version of Low Bakluni with humanoid vocabulary included.
South
Most of the Olman speak Olman.
Most of the Touv speak Touv.
There are more languages, but I'm lazy. Check at the end of this post for a screenshot of my languages spreadsheet :p
Writing systems
The most common script is the Oeridian alphabet. There are local variations, but it doesn't prevent reading if you know at least one version of it. It is used to write in Common.
The Suloise script was an abugida. It has mostly been abandoned. Today, even scholars use the Oeridan alphabet to write Ancient Suloise words.
The Bakluni script is an abjad. Low Bakluni and Osfaradd add diacritics to the original script to mark vowels.
The Flan writing system has a core structure but was never truly codified, which means that deciphering local variations can be hard. The only modern version of it is used to write the Druidic language.
Olman is a logography. The current version is syllabic, which means old texts and murals cannot be read anymore.
I dont need more details than that, so I haven't thought about the visual aspect of any of the languages.
List of all the human-based languages in my campaign:
By the way, I was able to take the Great Courses: Language Families of the World" by the famous linguist John McWhorter. A truly fascinating class that gave me some ideas for this.
Hello everyone,
I discovered a very interesting article of DRAGON n°66 on languages. Of course, the author starts from the Elvish language, but it must be possible to start from the human language if necessary.
Good reading.
DRAGON n°66
Language rules leave lots of room for creativity in your campaign.
by A. D. Rogan
It is possible to communicate with animal intelligences; gnomes, for instance, “can speak with burrowing mammals” and couatl speak “most serpent and avian languages,” according to the books.
Non verbal or sub-verbal communication
“Speaking” to animals is a matter of tone, facial expression, and body language.
The communication with and/or between semi- intelligent creatures must be very similar, though these latter types might comprehend a few simple words.
True speech begins among beings of low intelligence. Monsters on this level have their own language, and perhaps a smattering of Common. Creatures of low intelligence don’t have written languages, and individuals of those types never achieve literacy.
Several monsters are defined as low to average (low), or simply average (low) intelligence. Ironically, many of these creatures speak more languages than creature types with higher intelligence.
These languages — Orcish, Goblin, Hobgoblin, Gnollish, Kobold, Ogrish, and Trollish —are obviously related and probably fairly simple. They may have evolved from an early common language as the monsters evolved from a common stock. Or, all these species may have learned language from one source — my choice is the Drow — and developed tongues that are separate but nearly enough related for even sub-average intelligence to learn.
This theory accounts for the otherwise baffling fact that elves know all these languages. Furthermore, Elvish must have influenced modern Gnomish, Halfling, and even Dwarvish, though these languages originated elsewhere. It simplifies the “literacy problem” considerably if one assumes that the written forms of these languages have their bases in the Elvish alphabet. See Chart A for one suggestion of how these languages interrelate.
CHART A
OLD ELFIN (Faerie)
Middle Elfin
Drow
MIDDLE ELFIN
Other Elvish languages
Modern Elvish
Influenced
Many human languages Halfming
Common
Gnomish
Modern Dwarvish
DROW
Gnollish
Kobold
Old Goblin
Goblin
Orcish
Hobgoblin
With a strong giant influence
Ogrish
Trollish
When we arrive at average intelligence (8-10), we are dealing with creatures who can learn other languages and can learn to read and write if they are physically equipped to do so. Most
humans, characters or otherwise, have at least an 8 intelligence. Since characters may learn extra languages, up to seven with an intelligence of 18, in addition to whatever alignment tongue they have and the language they might know by virtue of their race, it seems only fair to grant additional languages to monsters with equal intelligence, at least for the humanoid monsters. Extending and expanding upon the Middle Elfin language section of Chart A, we can add two new language families, Aquatic and Sylvan (see Chart B).
Our nymph, then, could speak not only her own tongue and perhaps Com- mon but also Merspeech, Triton, Sea Elvish, and possibly Dolphinese or Hippocampian, if she is a sea nymph. A lake or river nymph’s additional languages might be Common, Nixie, Dryadian, and Wood Elvish.
CHART B
MIDDLE ELFIN
Sea Elvish (Aquatic language family)
Wood Elvish (Sylvan language family)
SEA ELVISH
Merspeech
Locatah
Triton
Hippocampia (greatly influenced by Dolphinese)
Nixie
Nymphish
Sahuagin (influenced by Drowish tongues
WOOD ELVISH
Druidic jargon (influenced)
Dryaian
Satyric
Faunic
Centaurian
Sylvish
Speech of the Little People
Brownie
Leprechaun
Sprite
Pixie
Halfling (influenced)
Gnomish (Middle Elfin and Modern Dwarvish influences
The Players Handbook allows a human character only Common and his/her alignment language. Thieves and druids have a technical jargon, presumably to compensate for their lack of an alignment tongue. To be more realistic, let us assign to each human character up to four base “languages”: birth, alignment, jargon, and.Common.
Non-human and half-human characters are allowed a much greater number of languages by The Rules. These substitute for the human birth language, though a semi-human may add his or her human parent’s birth tongue. These characters also have an alignment language, the jargon of their class, and Common.
Creatures with average intelligence and up may be literate. The growth of trade increased interest in literacy, especially among the mercantile classes. Merchants naturally wanted to keep
track of their own accounts.
In a realistic AD&D scenario, therefore, practically all fighters (and members of the fighter sub-classes) ought to be illiterate. Magic-users and clerics must be literate.
The mention of Bahamut introduces us to the realm of supra-genius and godlike intelligence. Beings on these levels are likely to be beyond speech. Among themselves, they may communicate in a manner incomprehensible to lesser intellects Their communication with lower intelligences may, of course, be by telepathy.
Language, however, originated at the god-like intelligence level and was given by the gods to humankind (or elvenkind or whatever). Thus, Chart B refers to Treant as a Titantic language. Some other languages derived from the titans are shown in Chart C.
CHART C
TITAN
Treant (with Wood Elvish = Sylvan language family)
Giant languages
Ogrish (influenced)
Trollish (influenced)
Old Dwarven
Modern Dwarvish (influenced by Elfin)
Some human languages
Gnomish (influenced)
Halfling (influenced)
Other languages coming directly from the god-like intelligence level are the various dragon tongues and the intelligent animals’ languages.
The most important languages given by the gods are the metalanguages of Magic and Miracle. Each metalanguage exists in two forms — M-U Magic and Illusionist Magic, and Clerical Miracle and Druidical Miracle. Metalanguages are used for spells, and are distinct from the arcane or ritual tongues which are the jargons of these classes.
Doc, that is a very interesting theory. The part I hesitate to apply is the assumption that all the evil humanoid languages derived from Drowish. I don't think that works for my campaign.
Additionally, many of the humanoids listed have average Intelligence, which by the rules and this article's own reasoning means that those races could, and likely would, have invented their own languages.
I will have to finish up my article on language familiaritie on Oerth; how the different languages of the Flanaess relate to one another and how easy it is for a speaker of one language to understand a similar language.
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