TRP2 Languages

[Reigen]

I've actully seen quite a few orcs use the [Orcish] tag in their speaking to indicate they are in fact speaking Orcish and not common. Considering none of my characters speak Orcish beyond my Orc, I just tone them out because I can't ICly understand them.

Sadly, everyone and their mother knows common, so humans are a bit S.O.L. Sadly for the humans, they sorta taught almost everyone their language to communicate with them, and they in turn taught others. Ect.

I know for a while I had a character who had issues with common - Still does, she's constantly speaking Thalassian whenever she has the excuse to, filthy human gibberish - and only speaks words she's heard before. She's rather simply spoken on common and tends to screw up with fancy words when she doesn't know the proper context.

Common just happens to be the chosen language that every race breaks their language barriers at.

lrn2linguistics.

Rather unnecessary there, Cappn. Not everyone studies linguistics in their spare time so you really can't expect people to know it and understand it.

The rules are. To prevent metagaming and to give people a chance to have IC private conversations with those of their race without having to worry about being forced to share it with others.

Exactly why I do it. I've never really supported multi-languages and I've tried to keep what my characters know to a minimum. My main character can only fluently speak Thalassian with common as a middle ground [aka, she speaks it, she can understand it, but if you go above 7 letters in a word expect her to look at you like you just started to speak in tongues]. I think I annoy people with how often she reverts to speaking Thalassian in public spaces, but ah well!

[CappnRob]

Common is called common for a reason.

Just saying.

Anyways, as everyone else has said: all you gotta do is ask OOC if someone can use brackets so you can understand them OOC and IC, and 9 times out of 10, if you aren't an annoying person about it, they'll be more than happy to oblige, and sometimes even change the direction of a RP depending if you speak back to them.

If you want an addon that helps with languages, TRP2 allows characters to learn languages of the opposite faction (ie humans can understand thalassian and zandali and orcs can understand dwarvish and draenei), but only for other characters using TRP2 to speak, and only if you set those languages as "learned". Sadly, there is no addon to allow understanding of same faction languages.

[Rosencrat]

Well! I'll keep this brief, but I will try to settle this little issue before we devolve into argument for argument's sake.

As others have said above, CotH's lore places Common as the universal language amongst the 'playable' (And often non-playable) races. Thus if you see a conversation that doesn't have indications of being in another language you can safely assume it to be in Common.

You are allowed to play your character as having a 'basic' level of conversational ability in another language beyond their own and Common. However this 'basic' level does not mean you would be able to hold a conversation or understand one of any higher complexity than that of a child. What this basic level means is that you know a few rudimentary words ('Boat,' 'Apple,' 'Say,' 'Brain.') and maybe a few phrases ('Where is the bathroom?' and 'Thank you!').

You would not be able to do much more in the same way that a student with only two years of high school Spanish would be able to survive in Mexico.

That is the rules on language and conversation as they were explained to me.

[Sol]

With mind to what Rosen's just said, here's a memorable example from the most recent Kidnapped event of what I'd called Doin It Rite when it comes to speaking languages outside your racial norm.

Quote of the day:

03:55:48 [Clovis]: [Thalassian] Kitchen gopher rioting through the lake with grenades.
03:56:11 Clovis is not good at speaking Thalassian.

[Aadora]

I also think it isn't just about IC application of languages.

Often I would be in a group during an event or something, and people in their own little circle "Usually Forsaken I might add" would be talking in their own races language. They didn't say [Gutterspeak] <Insert conversation here>, they literally switched over to Gutterspeak.

So no one but forsaken could see what they were saying IC or OOC.

I just think it ruins one aspect of the RP environment, as if you are being completely left out of that part of the story.

I'm just saying that people please just put [Language] in front of normal talk so others can know what you are saying. Otherwise it feels like you are worrying too much about metagaming to let anyone else in on your part of the story.

[Reigen]

Well...did you ever think that maybe they don't want others involved with them at that moment and just wanted to RP among themselves? Not all characters like and want to interact with other characters. Normally when Reigen speaks Thalassian it's because she -doesn't want- any other race to hear what she has to say and she doesn't really want to get involved with the others enough to speak for them to understand her. If someone outside of who she was speaking to tried to be nosy, she'd get annoyed and send them away as is well within her right.

If you're a human and there's a group of Forsaken speaking their language, it could just be that they don't want the human to get involved and what they have to say should only be said to each other.

React ICly to it, not OOCly. If you wanted to go up and try to get involved with the Forsaken ICly, have a character go up to them and start speaking common to them. Remember that they don't have to have their characters RP with another or include anyone outside of X race or class if they don't want to.

I know that I'll keep using the in-game language because it's more convenient for me and yes, I do fear meta-gaming. If you want to get involved in the RP with me and my character is speaking another language, come up to her ICly and complain about. Could lead to some fun reactions. The same can be said for others speaking another language.

[Harmonic]

If they do that, it's their own choice. Coming from personal experience, there's always reason to be mindful of metagaming, mostly because people aren't aware when they are doing it.

I mean, to me it just seems natural to RP not understanding what people are saying, when you and your character.... don't understand what they are saying.

My Deathknight, for example, who is a Tauren. He's in a guild FILLED with Forsaken. He gets ticked at them when they start talking like, that, and even paranoid.

To me, it seems so fruitless that people aren't rolling with things when they are presented ICly, and instead are trying to come up with methods to create "Rules" that make it so that you can do things like speak certain non-standard languages, or other examples that don't quite fit this thread.

I honestly think that lately people are taking the apples and oranges given to them and throwing them aside because of the lack of bananas. I understand that we all want to see some things happen... but these threads are popping up like bunnies on Easter lately.

[CappnRob]

If you're just curious about what they're saying OOCly, then you can always ask them in party chat or whispers. I do that sometimes, especially when its the likes of the Black Harvest plotting something.

But it doesn't ruin the RP environment. All it takes is a quick OOC request. If you can't even muster to do that, then that's your problem.

And I say this as a guy who has like 4 multilingual characters.

[Delta]

If you're just curious about what they're saying OOCly, then you can always ask them in party chat or whispers. I do that sometimes, especially when its the likes of the Black Harvest plotting something.

And we were actually doing that to mess with him. Poor fella.

[Sol]

If you're just curious about what they're saying OOCly, then you can always ask them in party chat or whispers. I do that sometimes, especially when its the likes of the Black Harvest plotting something.

And we were actually doing that to mess with him. Poor fella.

Pssh. Harvest doesn't scheme. They just exclude you pathetic breathers from their chats.

(Much love for Hoofrot, though.)

[Wuvvums]

I personally think the language barrier and not knowing what they are talking about can actually enhance or immerse the rp environment. Think of it like this; you don't know what's going on, so you don't have any expectations or bias that could leak over into IC. And I think it does happen sometimes; we take what we know OOC and have it effect us.

I usually tag my languages but if it's something like Thallassian or Darnassian writing the tags out can get tedious. Most of my orcs don't know orcish because from what I understood humans discouraged teaching and learning it heavily in internment. I'd really only expect older orcs to know it, as well as draenei, but it is possible the language is being taught again to the younger Horde.

Overall there are some instances where it makes sense for the character to be bilingual but the game mechanic won't support it. It's like how it may make sense for a death knight to carry a shield, but the game won't allow. It's up to you to work with the game and explain why your character can't rather than try to change the game or server rules to fit whatever inclinations you have.

[Kirabo]

Well...did you ever think that maybe they don't want others involved with them at that moment and just wanted to RP among themselves? Not all characters like and want to interact with other characters.

...

React ICly to it, not OOCly.

Big hearts for Reigen~!

Keep the IC immersion IC. One of the point-blank goals of roleplaying is for the environment to make you feel like your interaction with the world (and the people in it) causes certain changes. Play your role. Your characters need to have -some- weaknesses, right - so why not make those lingual? You won't be procrastinated if you don't know a language, no way! Worst case scenario, you can begin learning a different language IC, as a little plot for your character. It'd grant you roleplay, and the ultimate goal of turning your character into a (hyper)polyglot.

About Gutterspeak - I've actually come across, and this from a few different sources, the fact that it's actually a language which was adapted to the lingual organ defects that the Forsaken acquired by their forthcoming. More specifically, it's less based on crafting speech via vocal cord vibration, and more biased around humming, growling, moaning, clicking, tsk-ing et cetera. That'd make it -extremely- difficult to learn and master, perhaps even impossible without the before-mentioned defects. This all only if I am correct with my conclusion.

And as for actual language learning process, it'd all be one large variable. Some characters are wittier than others, right? Some are faster with their minds, some are faster with their pens! Some will imprint an insane amount of words to their memory, while others will easily find the links and rules to grammatical constructions and such. It depends on the character.

Exampli gratia: A gnome would be much faster to find a logical pattern of a language than an Orc, but that does not mean that the Draenei (whom somebody mentioned that have been here for but a few years) will learn a language more slowly than a Tauren.

[Xigo]

If you guys want 'common' to be unique, create dialects.

I for one know I'm going to have my Gilneans use words that no one who isn't a Gilnean would understand. Likewise, they would be confused by Stormwind or Kul Tiran slang.

Create dialects!

[Caravan]

If you guys want 'common' to be unique, create dialects.

Create dialects!

Woo, Tanari~!

[SachikoMaeda]

With mind to what Rosen's just said, here's a memorable example from the most recent Kidnapped event of what I'd called Doin It Rite when it comes to speaking languages outside your racial norm.

Quote of the day:

03:55:48 [Clovis]: [Thalassian] Kitchen gopher rioting through the lake with grenades.
03:56:11 Clovis is not good at speaking Thalassian.

Oooh, I loved that. When Doran was talking smack about Clovis in Thalassian to Faelara.

But switching dialects is a way to prevent metagaming. If (in my case) a group of Blood Elves were talking in Thalassian in front of lets say... A Gnome. They obviously don't want the Gnome to know what they're saying. But if you were the Gnome and was curious about what they were saying OOCly, then go ask! I know if I'm plotting with my many elves ICly, I can always share a discussion OOCly as long as there's no sort of metagaming.

But if I were plotting to kill said Gnome, I'd warn OOCly since I have an obligation to. I'm not gonna backstab someone OOCly like that.