What is your approach to languages?

Responding to the OP here:
Language is huge IMTU, but here's the thing: No program or robot is going to know the changing trends in a language unless the programmer is a native speaker. You can learn 'King's English' version of language but idiomatic accented language must be taught by a sophont.
What's more, the best teacher for any language is immersion... where errors can have certain consequences. For example, you'll always remember the difference between a lavatory and coat locker if you ask someone where the closet is but what you really need is the WATER closet...
In short, whether man or machine, you need exposure to a language from native speakers if you ever hope to speak conversationally, with idioms, popular media references and slang.
 
So how does that actually affect gameplay? Do your characters have lots of skill points invested in Languages (which is hard to get out of chargen)? Do they regularly have to hire NPCs as translators? How much does the language away from the starport vary from the Imperial lingua franca of Galanglic and Vilani?
 
In my Sword Worlder campaign, none of the characters had language skills.
They opened with Flatlined, moved to Imperial space, escaped the Death Station, and then had to remember how they got there via several months of flashback playing. It wasn't until they un-flashed-back to the future, were back in Sword Worlder space, and surrounded by the Nordic derived native tongue that I had them make an education roll, which three of them passed, at which time I pointed out that they were all fluent in Galanglic and had no idea why.
They all wasted 10K credits a piece verifying that they had no chips or foreign bodies in them down to a nano-level.
They still haven't figured out HOW they know, but they suspect it was some form of sleep induced learning.
 
Vormaerin said:
So how does that actually affect gameplay? Do your characters have lots of skill points invested in Languages (which is hard to get out of chargen)? Do they regularly have to hire NPCs as translators? How much does the language away from the starport vary from the Imperial lingua franca of Galanglic and Vilani?
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I just give them all a second language. But really, it should come up more in character gen, especially for Scouts and Agents, probably also merchants. For a lot of careers actually.

No, they just need to buy software. Hiring someone would make sense in some contexts.

I don't have that much variation unless there is a plot reason for it.

It affects gameplay in ways dictated by the situation.
 
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I was specifically asking how Ottarus made language "huge" in his campaign. I agree that the situation is the way you described it. That seems to be the consensus. But I am curious how people who say it is important actually make it important while still being playable. I've never figured out a way to do it and I've never encountered a game that did it particularly well, either.
 
Spirit of 1977 said:
I found only one prior thread about using languages. MgT has Language Skill, and by TL 9 we have decent translation, and practical by TL 10. I want to discuss some potential complications and solutions.

In my setting, completely error-free translation does not happen until TL 12, when we innovate autonomous robots. There is the additional problem of comprehension: some sophonts cannot hear/interpret the speech of others, and some sophonts cannot reproduce the speech of others. These are physical limitations which can be overcome with computers at TL 12+. So by TL 12 the translation problem is solved if computers and software are available.

But in my setting there is a physical solution. There is one prominent sophont for whom language is trivial: their own language is content dense, they can hear a wide range of tones and interpret many intonations, and their voices are like synthesizers. As such, they are widely sought out as translators, though they are hard to employ. But instead, this sophont used their language skills to construct a physical universal translator: Sign Language. Sign Language may be used by any sophont with vision, 2 arms, and 4+ digits per arm. Sign Language has been carefully constructed to map equivalent concepts to the same sign, regardless of the source language. Sign Language is mostly used by anyone who travels between the stars. Official organizations like the military have added their own signs for clandestine purposes to allow silent orders. If my setting were ever filmed, I'd use ASL for Sign Language, because why not?

Is language important to your setting, and if so how?
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I haven't tried it before, but was pondering dropping specific languages completely.
So, instead of having Language(Trokh), and Language(Fuzzball), your skill level in Language, would give you a DM to the chance of being able to communicate. So you could set the base chance, to however likely it is that the traveller has been exposed to the language. Since it tends to get treated as abstract in game (unless it's a plot hook), may as well abstract it more.
This way Language-3 means you are skilled (+3DM) at communicating with others, not that you are skilled in any one language.
Depending on the travellers origin, you'd set vilani\galanglic or whatever, as 'easy', some dialect from several sectors away, as 'difficult', and some unknown alien language as 'formidable'.
If you need to add sub-skills, you can go regional, or racial.
 
Ol'Weedy said:
I haven't tried it before, but was pondering dropping specific languages completely.
So, instead of having Language(Trokh), and Language(Fuzzball), your skill level in Language, would give you a DM to the chance of being able to communicate. So you could set the base chance, to however likely it is that the traveller has been exposed to the language. Since it tends to get treated as abstract in game (unless it's a plot hook), may as well abstract it more.
This way Language-3 means you are skilled (+3DM) at communicating with others, not that you are skilled in any one language.
Depending on the travellers origin, you'd set vilani\galanglic or whatever, as 'easy', some dialect from several sectors away, as 'difficult', and some unknown alien language as 'formidable'.
If you need to add sub-skills, you can go regional, or racial.
Click to expand...
For my money, that's too far from how language skills actually work IRL to allow suspension of disbelief; I'd go the everybody speaks Galangic route, or even introduce translator microbes before doing that if you don't want to deal with the issue. If it works in Star Trek and Star Wars, it must be legit. Someone who is massively multilingual will be able to pick up a language in months instead of years - but that won't get you through a even a basic conversation if you haven't had study time. It is sometimes possible to make out some words, and even piece together the meaning of written texts if the languages are similar - which some Traveller languages will be, but most not.
 
Big disclaimer: I am not a linguist (and even though in theory I 'know' or have 'studied' six languages, I am only fluent in two of them and horrible in the rest - and am really trying hard to not make jokes about Swedish and Danish right now...). I've also tried to create 'alien' languages.

And here's the thing. Even among human language there is both a great deal of structure (language families, etc. that could work as DMs) and a hole bunch of things (sounds, concepts, structure) that people used to speaking one group of languages, say Indo-European would not even consider in more 'obscure' and isolated tongues (like tones, which applies to probably the most common spoken primary language of all, but is alien to said mentioned family. Mostly - like I said, not a linguist, so if you quibble on points, I will fold).

But look at how 'alphabets' or more accurately 'sounds' are characterized in IPA - they're basically build off of properties of the human mouth, tongue, throat, whatever. We can't even fully agree if dolphin sounds or whale (or bird) sounds constitute a 'language' - though they definitely convey information (and I can attest that crows not only count, they conspire - a group of them are not called 'murders' for nothing. For some unknown reason, they are not fans of my cats - I mean, just because I've had to recover hummingbirds, pigeons, and a host of unidentifiable wings and beaks (and whole heads) from my home, I mean, really, what's the problem? The hummingbird hunting really impressed me, though).

So image alien mouthparts, alien gestures, alien atmospheres with differing acoustic and transparency properties. I mean the tables for generating alien languages are clever and based on supportable principles, but for actual alien speech, nah. Devices and computers for sure. Even a human speaking Vargr would not get close - or even be able to hear in the same range. I put a few DM-inducing factors for Universal Translator software in the updated CSC to sort of deal with various divergent factors.
 
Geir said:
Big disclaimer: I am not a linguist (and even though in theory I 'know' or have 'studied' six languages, I am only fluent in two of them and horrible in the rest - and am really trying hard to not make jokes about Swedish and Danish right now...). I've also tried to create 'alien' languages.

And here's the thing. Even among human language there is both a great deal of structure (language families, etc. that could work as DMs) and a hole bunch of things (sounds, concepts, structure) that people used to speaking one group of languages, say Indo-European would not even consider in more 'obscure' and isolated tongues (like tones, which applies to probably the most common spoken primary language of all, but is alien to said mentioned family. Mostly - like I said, not a linguist, so if you quibble on points, I will fold).

But look at how 'alphabets' or more accurately 'sounds' are characterized in IPA - they're basically build off of properties of the human mouth, tongue, throat, whatever. We can't even fully agree if dolphin sounds or whale (or bird) sounds constitute a 'language' - though they definitely convey information (and I can attest that crows not only count, they conspire - a group of them are not called 'murders' for nothing. For some unknown reason, they are not fans of my cats - I mean, just because I've had to recover hummingbirds, pigeons, and a host of unidentifiable wings and beaks (and whole heads) from my home, I mean, really, what's the problem? The hummingbird hunting really impressed me, though).

So image alien mouthparts, alien gestures, alien atmospheres with differing acoustic and transparency properties. I mean the tables for generating alien languages are clever and based on supportable principles, but for actual alien speech, nah. Devices and computers for sure. Even a human speaking Vargr would not get close - or even be able to hear in the same range. I put a few DM-inducing factors for Universal Translator software in the updated CSC to sort of deal with various divergent factors.
Click to expand...
To this point, the Sophont Generation and Sense systems in T5 are explicit about this, particularly that aliens might not be able to hear sounds others makes, or make sounds others can hear or understand. I fully embrace this approach in my setting, which is why I settled on a Sign Language as the lingua franca of travellers, requiring only 2 limbs and 4+ digits per limb. Still a fictional conceit, but one that does not require sounds.
 
Geir said:
But look at how 'alphabets' or more accurately 'sounds' are characterized in IPA - they're basically build off of properties of the human mouth, tongue, throat, whatever. We can't even fully agree if dolphin sounds or whale (or bird) sounds constitute a 'language' - though they definitely convey information (and I can attest that crows not only count, they conspire . . .

So image alien mouthparts, alien gestures, alien atmospheres with differing acoustic and transparency properties. I mean the tables for generating alien languages are clever and based on supportable principles, but for actual alien speech, nah. Devices and computers for sure. Even a human speaking Vargr would not get close - or even be able to hear in the same range. I put a few DM-inducing factors for Universal Translator software in the updated CSC to sort of deal with various divergent factors.
Click to expand...
Spirit of 1977 said:
To this point, the Sophont Generation and Sense systems in T5 are explicit about this, particularly that aliens might not be able to hear sounds others makes, or make sounds others can hear or understand. I fully embrace this approach in my setting, which is why I settled on a Sign Language as the lingua franca of travellers, requiring only 2 limbs and 4+ digits per limb. Still a fictional conceit, but one that does not require sounds.
Click to expand...

Ironically, this is in fact one of the areas where Star Wars actually may come close to what the reality might be like, in that the sounds made by the "aliens" are totally weird and unproduceable by human mouths. As to whether the human brain would be hardwired to be able to actually make meaningful distinctions of those sounds (let alone the human ear be able to perceive the full acoustic range of said sounds) is another matter entirely. In the odd event that the answer was yes to the two former issues, then you might have the Star Wars situation where people speak in their native language and are "understood" by the hearer, who in turn respond in their own native language and are likewise understood in turn.

And this of course all presumes that for an alien species communication developed via a sound-vibrational interface method in the first place.
 
IanBruntlett said:
Interesting. Scheme or Emacs LISP? I'm interested in learning either and was wondering if you could recommend website(s)/book(s)
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Common Lisp. IMHO Practical Common Lisp is a darn good place to start, and the price can't be beat.

Toolwise I use SBCL for a Lisp, and Emacs+SLIME as an environment. (I don't remotely use the full power of SLIME, but it's worth it even if all you use it for is to augment the read-eval-print loop a bit.)
 
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