Racial Languages

I've heard a lot of scepticism about the standard fantasy notion of 'racial languages' - i.e. languages tied to a particular race. But since they're such a useful tool, I'd like to offer a different way to view them, and a different solution.

I have a heavy suspicion that people who think that languages divided across racial lines look ridiculous have fallen afoul of mixing 'fantasy races', and 'human races'. Thinking of human races as having in-built languages would, of course, look ridiculous, since racial divisions are broadly a Victorian myth. And putting that aside, languages never aligned with any of the colour-code systems anyway; people mostly learn whatever language surrounds them. But a 'fantasy races', has about the same relationship to 'human races' as 'gorge' (the depression in the ground) and 'gorge' (meaning to eat too much). The historical relationship is clear, but the meanings have long-ago diverged. A fantasy race is quite real (at least within the fiction of the fantasy world), and this real division entails living separately from the other races.

Consider an anthropologist-gnome who went to live with some elves. According to D&D cannon, elves are not pained by natural temperature deviations, so they can sleep comfortably in snow. There's a good chance they won't light a fire, even during a blizzard! So our half-frozen gnome might try to live with some humans instead; and would find them living with horses and cattle - giant creatures, all of them! The door-handles would be too high for him, and the privies might be wide enough for him to fall inside.

Just as badgers and ravens wouldn't live together comfortably, the various fantasy races have clear reasons to live apart. The barriers aren't insurmountable - if people can live with children, they could probably make provisions for gnomes - but the various problems provide at least a reason to default to living apart.

We have a more cutting objection to the 'racial languages' objection: humans have many languages, so elves should also have many languages. And I have to reject this one, in two different directions. Inside the game-world, I say 'yes, in other lands, far away, elves have other languages, and we only say "Elvish" because this is what the local elves speak'. And outside the game-world, I say 'there's no bloody way I'm expanding this to 100 languages per race, you absolute maniac'.

I'd also say that most people are not prepared to deal with the realistic simulation of multiple languages in a game. People who've never started learning another language have no idea of the oddities, and fuzzy divisions between them, and don't know what they're getting themselves in for.

The Ravenloft Campaign world, by way of example, attempted a realistic language division. The map had many different countries, which the PCs could journey across, and each one had its own language. Of course, when I actually ran my game according to the book, no adventuring of any kind could take place, because the PCs couldn't speak to anyone. A little miming and pointing might get them somewhere to sleep, and something to drink (if they had coin), but plot hooks? No. Nobody could explain a quest beyond miming a monster and doing a 'stabby-stabby' motion.

So, all-in-all, dividing languages according to where people can visit seems sensible enough, and lets the game-world about quest-cancelling changes. But despite all this, as I was penning my own game-bearing world (Fenestra), I couldn't resist playing with the languages, where it might enhance the game. In the earlier example of the anthropologist gnome, I never mentioned dwarves; and gnomes could probably visit dwarves quite happily. So I've written the two as mostly-mutually-intelligible.

And if the gnomish language can infect dwarves, it seemed reasonable to make it a default trading language, so humans speak a variant as well. Fenestra paints Gnomish as intelligible to...Mannish? Humanish?...but their trading language is not mutually intelligible with Dwarvish, because language is weird. Of course, I'm breaking my own rules - this definitely stands a chance of confusing a few readers! But if it feels wrong, then people can just ignore those little notes in the book.

Racial languages provide a great solution to a difficult problem. And any replacement to this system should receive a long, critical look.