>Common is actually a lingua franca conlang like Esperanto
>Most travellers would know it, but almost nobody (except maybe kids who grew up in trade caravans or something) speaks it natively
Yea or nay?
I can dig it.
lolwut
That's very realistic. Some fishermen developed such languages because they frequently ran into fishers from other countries.
>Common is actually English
>Everyone learns to use because Western culture dominated the fuck out of their shitty tribal mudhut setting and it's the language of business
Yea or yea
Nobody speaks Esperanto except fags and hipsters.
I always liked the idea of Common being more of a trade language than anything else.
>>43982478
My old GM used actual esperanto just like this, so yea.
>>43982601
That's how I've always used it.
Hence why, considering that humans are typically shown as native common speakers, I've always displayed human society as heavily trade-based when compared to other cultures
>>43982601
That might work, but you'd have to build the world around that fact. What empire made this language common, and why called common instead of Foo-ish?
>>43982478
>Some of the larger trade hubs have adopted this language as their native tongue. Instead of learning Common as a second language like other nations do, they learn bits and pieces of the other languages and cultures so as to be better able to wheel and deal with foreign traders.
>>43982478
Then what do humans speak natively? Human?
That's exactly what the word Chinook originally referred to - a trading jargon developed so that tribes could communicate with one another during trading negotiations on the North Pacific Coast of North America.
>>43982812
Depends where they're from, just like real life.
>English, Mandarin, French, etc
Honestly, the notion that an entire race shares the same language is absurd. Regional > racial.
>>43982734
"Common" as the name for the language could come around in a variety of ways.
For example, the people who first spoke it could have called their language "common" and themselves "commoners", but as the language grew the words took on new meanings.
Or, the word could be a borrowed word, used by another language to describe the prevalent trade language, that got passed around and used so often that it became the normal term even within the trade language itself
>>43982812
>>43982842 was what I had in mind. I got this idea when I was trying to think up a synthesis between D&D-style "racial languages + common + specialized things like thieves' cant + planar tongues if you're in Planescape" language system and a more realistic regional/cultural language system.
>>43982478
I've done it since 2e. Everyone gets a second language prof for their native language; common is the equivalent of mediterranean sebir.
>>43982601
Nobody spoke your bastardized german before the US became a superpower either.
>>43982478
That's a nice idea. Will steal it for my next fantasy campaign. Thanks Anon!
>>43982985
>bastardized german
That's like saying humans evolved from apes.
No seriously, I'm not calling Germans apes, I'm saying that A and B divergently evolving from the same root =/= B evolving from A.
>>43982985
...Yes they did
England became a superpower a long time before America did
Also it's bastardised flemish, not bastardised german
>>43983035
Actually, it's bastardised scandinavian.
>>43982985
>>43983024
Not that English isn't a total bastard of a language, I agree with you on that part.
>>43983104
It's bastardised norman, and latin, and celtic, and gothic and scandinavian
english is a silly, silly language
>>43982734
An easy way to do it is to do it how Tolkien did; the language isn't actually called "Common" at all technically, but is referred to as such in slang by most of the cultures that speak it frequently.
I believe Forgotten Realm's Common language is technically called "Chondathan" for similar reasons and outside of the core area of the setting it's not spoken that much except in trade.
>>43983035
>Also it's bastardised flemish, not bastardised german
Please, modern English has so many roots that it could be on the Maury Povich Show.
>>43983149
english robs other languages of spare words in a dark alley.
>>43983162
And then every other language on Earth borrows them back.
English is the communist language.
This is actually pretty handy from a narrative perspective since it justifies the use of a limited cast of NPCs.
The NPCs are all people who can speak the language of traders and adventurers, and the common man just speaks his own regional dialect, so you don't need to concern yourself with him. Lower ranking nobles and soldiers will speak it since they also have to deal with tradespeople and kings and popes will have interpreters to speak it for them.
>>43983184
Does that mean that english is equivalent to russian?
>>43983162
More like old English was gangraped in a dark alley by half of the medieval european languages and the resulting child grew up stealing shit from everyone.
Modern English was also raped a few times, looking at Ebonics.
>>43983222
No. Russia actually underwent a linguistic purge during the Soviet era. Many foreign loanwords (mostly from French) were banned and replaced with neologisms coined from Slavic roots.
>>43983149
And French, don't forget French
So much French in English
Because languages are kind of cool but also full of shit, I've been thinking more and more of just cutting out spoken languages skills entirely.
Instead- The only languages people need to worry about skill points are written languages. Dead written languages abound, you can make a career decoding the runes around a magical doorway before the fighter steps through, since he wants to make sure it doesn't make his cock come to life and attack him or something stupid and wizardly like that.
>>43983294
most of the french in english is in fact norman that is present in english and french
>>43983268
Bixnood is basically just American Cockney.
>>43983277
An actual linguistic purge or was it like that time the USA went full Murika and tried to replace all references to France in American English with "Freedom"?
>>43983312
and yet through is still spelt with "ough" in american english
Because the u in colour is too complex, but "ough" isn't common or confusing enough
>>43982478
In my setting a Latin analogue takes the place of Common for most of the known world.
>>43983307
The way I do it, for every language, there are two proficiencies: one for literacy and one for fluency. Literacy is intelligence-based; fluency is charisma-based. If you learn a language through study, either through a course or being self-taught, you gain literacy but not fluency. If you learn a language through immersion, you gain fluency but not literacy.
You can try to converse, read or write in a language you aren't fluent or literate in, albeit at a large penalty, the magnitude of which depending on the circumstance, to a roll at disadvantage. This represents using gestures, very basic vocabulary knowledge to try to convey a general message on about the level of complexity of "where is the bathroom".
If you are fluent or literate in a language, you don't have to roll at all unless there are further linguistic barriers like thick dialects, technical terminology, figurative or poetic language, or high-level academic or literary vocabulary.
Yeah, I'm that kind of GM.
>>43983035
>England became a superpower
England was never a superpower and had trouble even keeping its own colonies down at the best of times.
>Bastardised flemish
I don't really care which west germanic dialect it is
>>43983294
A small fraction of the overall vocabulary. It's just obvious because it's a prestigious part of it (since it covers law, academia, and the military)
>>43983702
Regardless of how bad it was at handling it's own colonies, it was still the most powerful country in the world for more than a century.
And, more importantly, England was the undispputed center of trade. The foundations of english being the lingua franca of trade started back when America was an English colony
>>43982478
Not a bad idea.
The various peoples in most of maritime South East Asia also developed a similar language, but organically (which was adopted as the official language when Indonesia became independent). So there is certainly real world historical precedent for such a thing.
>>43983702
The person who initial came up with 'superpowers' as a designation considered the late British empire to be one.
>>43982478
Wh-what the fuck? Why has this never dawned on me, before?
Common isn't "fantasy-english", it's like Esperanto!
>>43982985
>>43983024
It's saxon, jute and frisian dialects, influenced by danish and norwegian dialects then influenced so hard by french that they are unable to pronunce latin or even their own germanic cousin languages correctly anymore.
>>43983371
Drive-thru
>>43983466
So rather than developing a language for communication, everyone also learns a dead language the majority of their languages derived from?
Eh that works too.
>>43982478
>>Common is actually a lingua franca conlang like Esperanto
This is canon in my games.
>>43983771
>started back when America was an English colony
That's pretty much whig bullshit. There's a reason it's lingua franca and not lingua anglica. The entire 150 years after the 30 yw are England trying to take the crown France took from Spain.
>>43983687
Why does this girl have four arms? I mean the literal reason, not some smart ass answer like "She needs the extra pair to flip the page without putting her cocoa down" like I know one of you will say when I ask.
It might seem silly for a trade to have its own language, but in medieval society it's totally realistic.
I mean people didn't really have mass communication back then. Pretty much every kingdom had its own dialect (compare English English to Scottish English, for example), and a lot of the time priests and nobles didn't even speak the same language as the people they ruled.
>>43985414
She's apparently some kind of bug-human hybrid. Note the antennae.
>>43984765
That's how real life worked until they stayed giving poor people rights, remember?
>>43985414
>>43985470
She's a bookworm, a creature that literally lives on intellectual stimulation as nourishment.
For a very long time Latin and Greek were the languages of academia and the educated. I like the idea of Common as a conlong.
>>43982478
it doesn't actually have to be a conlang, it could be a naturally forming creole.
>>43982478
>There are three levels of common
>Esperanto is the language of traders and travelers
>Lojban is the language of scholars and merchants
>Ithkuil is the language of politicians and wizened wizards
Tî akt’asalb abjatļud.
>>43985823
coi doi la'o gy. Ithkuilist .gy. do'u .i mi do zo'e la .lojban. tavla
>>43985903
I fucking wish I knew what that said, I'm still working my way through the guide for the 3rd time. I guess I'm not autistic enough to learn the most autistic of conlangs.
>>43985823
I'm not familiar with the last one, and only passably with the second. Could someone please enlighten me as to what it's known for? Conlangs are cool, but I've never really studied them.
>>43982601
>be massive faggot
>best friend is native Spanish speaker
>gf and her family speak Spanish
>only learn the bare minimum
>now contemplating trolling them all by learning Gaelic, Esperanto or some other bullshit language
>>43985958
>Could someone please enlighten me as to what it's known for?
Being the single most autistic conlang ever devised, forged by a single man over the course of 30 years; I'll let the guide speak for itself.
http://www.ithkuil.net/
>>43982478
Nay.
Common is a lingua franca like English on 4chan. If you speak it, great you can speak with other people who speak it. If you can't, you're probably not from one of the places where it's considered a lingua franca.
![Kreelo[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/L6DLrl7.jpg "Kreelo[1].jpg")
>>43982478
>Yea or nay?
Here is how I've been doing it since it's applicable to the thread's discussion:
>Changelings are the most common race: When you're referring to "people" you're statistically referring to Changelings.
>There are though at least a handful of civilization building species with faces that vary in three archetypes: "Flat" (Human-like), "Tusked" (Orc-like) & "Muzzled" (Animal-like).
>The differences in facial structures cause language barriers to be at times physical ones as the various species find it difficult or uncomfortable to replicate the proper pronunciation and phonetics of other races languages.
>"Common" was a language invented by Changelings interacting with the various species and developing a language that could be universally spoken and pronounced by all species.
>>43985432
And there were two major groups of people that traveled, merchants and pilgrims
>>43986033
So who are the native Common peoples, Mr. Naysayer?
>>43985823
And then beyond Ikthuil there is tlhIngan Hol
>>43985968
Just learn Jap, they won't understand you and you can read comic books or watch Chinese tentacle porn and understand what's happening.
>>43985903
>>43985941
I said, "Hello O Ithkuilist. I talk to you in Lojban."
>>43985992
>>43985958
reddit.com/r/ithkuil
>>43986469
Hey, I'm a faggot hipster but I'm no godless gook worshipping weeb.
>>43985283
I like the idea, and kind of want to borrow it. What do you call the primary human language, then? Just call it Human, Humish, or something like that?
>>43986437
>Klingon
Nah son, Klingon is Esperanto tier.
>>43982842
Honestly, the notion that an entire race would have the same pantheon of gods, same two genders, same clothing styles, same names for their race, is absurd
>>43986555
The primary human language is Common/Esperanto. The other races are mostly secluded from humanity and they exist in small numbers.
>>43986624
>same race
>having different genders
Then they aren't the same race you idiot.
>>43986215
Neat
I have enough experience of frustratingly trying to communicate with people who don't speak the fucking language, I don't need it in my roleplaying games as well, so a common language suits me just fine.
>>43986544
Weeaboos have blessed us trolls with yet another guise to put on to infuriate those around us. Cherish this opportunity.
>>43986658
I think the point they was trying to make is that there are more than two genders.
>>43988370
But that's wrong, you absolute faggot.
>>43982601
I'm pretty sure you don't actually know English since you only managed to read about one in every third word of the OP, faglord.
>>43988393
Well, if you understand gender as the purely cultural abstraction that stemmed from biological sex, it's true that some societies recognized three or more genders.
Yeah, it just makes the most sense that way. This is also how I use alignment languages.
>>43988577
I mean, people can identify as whatever they want, I don't care, but there's only two sex chromosomes, meaning there's only two possible genders.
Esperanto is for morons. Common is a trade language because a strong empire spread it like English
>>43988627
You could at least read the post you're replying to, man.
>>43988710
I REFUSE.
>>43982478
I just use English as "Common" because that's what everyone at the table speaks. Otherwise it ruins immersion.
French for Elves. German for Dwarves. Russian for Orcs. Afrikaans for generic beast races. Cantonese for the "Eastern Empires". Persian for the Nomads.
But yeah, English for the trade language. And hey, by lucky coincidence that happens to have some reference in reality! But I recommend people just use their native language for it since I prefer to have a fun game as opposed to an autistic level of realism.
Otherwise I would probably choose Latin.
>>43988370
>that image
Holy shit liberals are insane.
Are they equating the quantifiable discovery of physical elements, celestial bodies and evolution with their made up fairy tale shit?
THIS WORLD IS DONE. END IT, GOD.
>>43988785
>there's no god here, only me.jpg
>>43982478
I doubt it would be a constructed language. Probably something either spread by a strong trade empire like English, or a pidgin from the main regional players like in Nepal.
Constructed languages are bullshit.
>>43985643
>that sounds sweet, I wonder what show she's...
>original character
FFFFFFFFUCK
>>43988785
Logically, there are at least 4 genders.
Male, Female, Both, Neither
>>43988785
not only that, but
>'two non-negotiable standards for beauty and proper behaviour'
i mean, it's not like the standards for beauty and proper behaviour have changed over time or anything, right? or vary from region to region, person to person.
it's also pretty funny that one of the only other examples they could come up with was the fucking four elements theory versus the periodic table
as far as i can see the periodic table is pretty fuckin' static now that we know what makes up the universe
not gonna see hydrogen change places anytime soon
>>43988943
Those crazy ass scientists are still trying to make element 119 yo.
>>43982478
Nay.
Roll randomly on your list of languages for the setting, and make that language 'common' to all the player characters and 50% of all NPC's.
Example language table (roll 1d30):
1. Elfin
2. Dwarven
3. Northern (Human Dialect)
4. Southern (Human Dialect)
5. Western (Human Dialect)
6. Eastern (Human Dialect)
7. Orcish
8. Draconic
9. Sign Language
10. Giant
11. Goblin
12. Gargoyle
13. Kinesics
14. Swordspeak (Flag semaphore using dual-wielded weapons instead of flags)
15. Vampiric
16. Aquan
17. Terran
18. Ignan
19. Sylvan
20. Flower arrangement
21. Thieves Cant
22. Raptoran
23. Astral
24. Infernal
25. Abyssal
26. Fan-Speak (subtle gestures using folding fans)
27. Serpentine
28. Feline
29. Canine
30. Roll again twice, and combine the two languages into a single, bastardized language.
>>43988370
>an infinite number of species
You could catalog them if you wanted, they physically exist.
Some will go extinct before you're done, and one more might evolve but they're actually real unlike tumblr bullshit about genders, which is simply a mental illness resulting from humankinds heightened levels of self-consciousness. How many demi-sexual pizzakin tigers do you observe within nature?
>>43988762
I hope you speak all those languages
>>43989304
I wish as well. But that's okay, Google Translate exists. It's really just for flavor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_auxiliary_language
>>43982478
seems like a fine way to handle it.
>>43982601
Latin in my setting, but the same idea. The language of the dominant culture, which everyone who wants to be anything in the empire or on its borders is expected to speak. People who do not speak it are automatically assumed to be uneducated barbarians. There are a number of languages, like Dwarven and Elven (which are also the dominant languages associated with those races, rather than a monolithic racial language) that can also count on a certain amount of respect. Someone might be forgiven for only speaking such a language.
>>43983035
Flemish is just a dialect of Dutch, Anon. It's not its own language.
Just looked up Esperanto. No shit, I was building a similar language when I was in middle school, with the same principles of minimizing vocabulary.
Linguistics fags:
If I wanted to have autistic levels of "realism" in my game when it came to a variety of languages, how do I determine when humans go from speaking A on the coast, to when they mostly speak B a little inland, which shares roots with A?
>>43989271
>he thinks nature always corresponds to his gender binary fantasy
What, you haven't browsed /tg/ enough to hear about hyena dickgirls? How fucking retarded are you, Anon? There's shit in nature that doesn't even exist in tumblr's wildest dreams, and you have to known absolutely nothing about nature if you're going to do something as monumentally stupid as say that nature conforms to your political views.
I mean, I've seen some stupid shit on 4chan, but this takes the fucking cake. Try selling this crap on /pol/. They might actually buy it.
>>43988943
Literally everything in that image is based on Greco-Roman science and culture, Anon. Try not to burst artery.
>>43982478
You mean like Low German?
Or French?
Or Swahili?
Or Cantonese?
I mean, I don't play games with "common" as a language, but that's generally the idea behind the most commonly used languages (of which there are generally two, locked in a culture war).
For sure. I'm using that.
>>43983035
>Also it's bastardised flemish, not bastardised german
Why?
English is Saxonian with two less conjugate forms; Saxonian was and remains a dialect of High German. Saxonian shared the singsonginess we think of in Scandinavian languages, which is absent in Low German, Flemish, and Dutch. English is thus an outlier in the linguistic development, clearly corrupted by distance and the influence of other local languages like Gaelic, Cornish, and French.
English is a cognate language, but it does have clear origins thanks to preserved old and middle English texts.
>>43988905
Despite the fact that, biologically, it's impossible for a human to be both or neither gender
>>43991039
And yet the Hyena females with dicks are still females. They have XX chromosomes, they produce egg cells and they give birth
>>43991665
Except that's false. Intersex conditions exist.
>>43991750
intersexuals:hermaphrodites::pirates:cyclopes
>>43991848
That analogy is false.
http://capone.mtsu.edu/phollowa/5sexes.html
>>43983815
Malaysian here. Actually, the Malay and polynesian languages evolved somewhat Tolkienesquely. The ancestors of Malays and Polynesians, Maoris included originated from what is now Taiwan. Each major language grouping came from a distinct area of the island. For unknown reasons, my ancestors left the home island and sailed eventually all the way south to New Zealand, east to Madagascar and west to Hawaii. All of these people still share common words for fish, death, cooties, the number 2 etc.
>>43992289
>East to madasgar and west to Hawaii
Somethin aint right here anon
>>43992419
Never underestimate Polynesian islanders
>>43982601
I want Cipher to go.
>>43984765
What if the setting was Roman times?
>>43983702
>England was never a superpower
You must have a narrow definition of superpower.
>everyone speaks English except in the rare cases when a language barrier would make a session more fun instead of just being annoying
>>43982478
Yea
>>43990909
not a linguist but trade routes and natural resources / barriers would make sense.
So if the coast to little inland was 1 mile and they regularly traded (key: what was the point of little inland settlement? Sheltered from elements? Near resources? On trade route between existing towns? Sea-town is obviously sea commerce and fish, who else do they trade with inland?)
>>43982478
I have serious doubt that would work, I mean I could see it as a pidgin of like Elvish and Dwarvish, but not as a deliberately constructed language.
Conlangs are really better for keeping things secret than facilitating communication with outsiders.
For example practically the only thing anyone uses Esperanto for these days is when Pig Latin just doesn't cut it.
>>43983687
I like this idea.
>>43986582
>>43988785
>>using prayer
>>0.0012 success rate
good luck with that
>>43982478
No, it's not gonna be a conlang, it's going to be like the actual historical lingua franca, Originally mostly based on northern italian and occitan/catalan, with a whole bunch of greek and arabic influence, and then later got more spanish and portugues influences. Absolutely not a conlang, absolutely a pidgin.
![1430495361904[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/S2Xn2FX.jpg "1430495361904[1].jpg")
>>43982478
>Esperanto
An interesting idea, but you'd have to provide a reason for this artificial language to exist. Someone just making it up with good intentions doesn't work. As far as foreign languages go English, French, Spanish, Mandarin and the like are still leagues more popular than Esperanto or the less known Interglot.
What would actually work is more or less what (Western) Europe had during the Middle Ages: the Roman Empire had just collapsed, everyone spoke their own languages but everyone worth speaking to also knew Latin. This situation more or less persisted until Francis I made French the administrative language of France and, later, the new lingua franca. That's one thousand years for those keepin track (even longer if you consider the West Roman Empire per se).
So just introduce an old, collapsed empire and make their language "common". Also introduce one or more variants of "human" and voila: Esperanto except with an actual history and reason to exist.
>>43985958
An incredibly, absurdly complex, precise, and information-dense conlang.
I'm probably going to use this in my next campaign.
>>43985968
Learn Finnish or Hungarian. Both are Urallic, so it shouldn't be easy. But Finnish is fairly popular among language enthusiasts (and rightly so, to be quite honest), and Hungarian has something like 17 declensions, so outside of Hungary and Slovakia it's basically a meme language. I've been meaning to get started on it myself.
>>43988577
This is only true if you redefine "gender". To most people, it is a perfect synonym for "biological sex", or it was until recently.
The main issue is that people argue that gender is a cultural construct can't even define what it is effectively.
If a male can behave in a feminine way, a female can behave in a feminine way, a male can choose to be a "man" and still behave in a feminine way, a male can be a "man" and a "woman" at different times depending on how they feel, and all four of these people can act however, dress however, and sleep with whoever they want, how does this mystical and aetheric concept of "gender" even factor?
Is the argument that gender is the stereotypes a society places on a biological sex. Well, no, because now you can choose your gender and still not behave in a way "expected" of the corresponding sex. It certainly isn't some ritual, festival, or commonly held belief, as other, non-expectation-related cultural constructs would be. So what is it? Well, the answer would appear to be "nothing". There is literally no definition of gender that qualifies as a cultural construct unless you abandon the idea that transgenderism is a legitimate thing, and they won't ever do that, I don't think.
Sorry, I know this isn't on topic and is dragging in a debate on feminism nobody really wants, but this gets brought up a lot and it annoys me when people believe blatantly poorly-thought-out ideas.
I never liked the idea of one "Common" language. And plus, with how big even the known part of my setting is, it wouldn't really make sense.
No, I tend to have a mix of trade tongues and code switching for various regions, and various trades. Sometimes even individual cities will have their own conlang, built spontaneously off of the native languages of it's residents and visitors.
Language can also define a character, because I try to tie language heavily into the core worldbuilding process. Like, your average PC will speak their native language and the regional conlang/trade tongue. An educated character like a Knight or Paladin might also speak some semi-dead ancestral language (like how GRRM has most highborn know at least a little High Valyrian in ASoIaF). A spellcaster might know some ancient, totally dead language, plus a prestigious foreign language. A ranger might know more practical foreign language, like some Orcish or Goblin language. You get the picture. With language less universal, it makes having some ability like Gift of Tongues exceedingly useful, as well as giving a more practical benefit to education.
Also, having one language for a decently sized race is stupid, and you really shouldn't do it ever.
>>43990909
I almost missed this, but let me try (I'm not sure I completely understood your question).
Languages form out of accumulation of different "waves" of influence and it's very plausible that you are not going to have a clear border between two area but a gradual change determined by elements that are similar or differing. You have to consider that in general the more remote a place is, the more conservative the local language will be, and that means conserving forms (lexical, grammatical, whatever) that in othet places have been superceded by others. Conversely, if you have an area with a lot of circulation, you are going to get an increasing degree of mixing between languages, to the point of seeing the birth of hybrid languages (pidgins).
The thing that enforces some sort of border is a greater (national) power - something that is probably not feasible in a standard fantasy setting - and even then you are going to have pockets of linguistic minorities, bilingual speakers and so on.
Just to give you an example, pic related is a map of italian dialects. Naturally there is a degree of mutual understanding thanks to scholarization and similarly colored areas present strong linguistic similarities, but you can see how messy the things can get even in a smallish country. Note also that there are areas that are part of the italian state but lack color because the native dialect is not italian-derived.
>>43985470
What antennae? There are no antennae, she's a perfectly normal girl.
>>43996271
I have dined on honeydew and drunk the milk of paradise.
>>43999862
With four arms.
>>44000209
She has perfectly normal arms.
>>43982594
Call 'em trade languages.
>>44000223
Twice the number of perfectly normal arms.
Ergo, her arms are twice as normal.
>>44000252
No. Each arm is exactly the normal amount of normal.
>>43982812
Not all dwarves or elves will speak the same elven or dwarven since they are from different tribes.
>>43982601
Remember kids, we all speak English for the same reasons all these ancient relics and historic pieces are in our museums.
Gun beats spear.
>>43996020
I like it because it's complex in theory but simple in practice. It sounds like it would just be twice as much bookkeeping, but I play 5e, where proficiency is binary and the bonus you get from proficiency is determined by other factors. That's how you come up with effective house rules -- you pay attention to the way the rest of the system interacts with those house rules and adjust them accordingly.
>>44000267
No, no. Each individual arm is has a normal amount of normality, but she has twice as many normal arms as normal, and therefore the total normality of her arms is twice as normal, even if the average normality of her arms is the same. Her arms, considered together, are far more normal than normal. She and her arms perfectly normal.
>>43982629
That sounds annoying as fuck to play
>>43999465
The problem with your logic is that you assume that gender is a synonym for sex when that's always been a reductive usage of the term. Sex is the binary (and even this isn't exactly true, when we look at chromosomes, but I digress) and Gender's the range in between the concepts of "male" and "female". This range is determined by social mores, personal identity, and yes, biological sex and physical identifiers.
This gets reduced to "gender is a social construct", which isn't exactly true either, but close enough to make sense of it. Transgenderism is still a valid concept in this scenario because even a culture with a more fluid gender identity has to acknowledge that fluidity.
>>43982842
honestly racial fantasy pisses me off for that reason, it's way too generalized and underenphasizes interesting cultures that could spring from different beings developing alongside each other
its the one thing i hate about TES. only made sense with the argonians there
>>43982478
It's basically how I ran my setting. Every large country had it's own language. People on the border can speak both, travellers can speak Trade, which takes a -2 to all checks to convince due to the inherent flaws in the language inhibiting communication. The only problem was the party was too stupid to make sure they all shared a language when we started.
>>44000599
My orcs all have the same culture because humans are too racist to notice the differences. They all speak the same language because they're controlled by a theological elite, and all legal documents must be in old orcish, so the most divergence you'll get is a dialect.
My elves all have the same culture because they're genociding, xenophobic, rapists who would sooner murder all their serfs than sully their favorite sword.
>>43986544
Tfw I learned Japanese in uni. Tfw I sat next to weebs everyday until they all drop the course eventually. Tfw I tell people I speak Japanese and they just assume Im a weeaboo who loves anime and manga.
>>43988627
Also, there are people with different (fucked up) ways of arranging their sex chromosomes, with some people having as many as 49 chromosomes rather than the normal 46.
>>43982478
Trade languages are nothing new, its the reason why all western languages derived their alphabet from the Phoenicians.
>>44001310
I know that trade languages are nothing new IRL. But somehow I've never seen a trade language used in an RPG setting before, though, at least never explicitly acknowledged as such. I guess Planescape kinda sorta maybe treated Common this way as the language of interplanar trade, which makes sense especially since there is a physical/metaphysical location (Sigil) that serves as a trade hub, where that language could have developed.
>>44001636
What makes RPGs work as a entertainment medium is the gameplay and plot, (t you don't have to agree with me). A typically players' experience with languages is either a interesting pieces of trivial that aids their immersion with the setting or a minor game play/plot element or obstacle that they need to decipher or solve before moving on with their objectives.
>>44000453
You still didn't define gender. You just said that it wasn't binary. You say it's the "range between 'male' and 'female'", but that does very little, since you already said that biological sex was in some ways a spectrum.
My argument is just that calling yourself a "man" when you aren't actually "male" is just obsessing over semantics, as you can literally do everything traditionally associated with being a "man" as a "woman". I can literally get sex reasignment surgery to become practically female, dress in traditionally female attire, act in a feminine way, fuck men, and still call myself a "man". This should go to show you that whether you call yourself "man" or "woman" has very little bearing on anything at all. The only reason I call myself a "man" is because I'm biologically male. There's never been an instance where I thought, "gee, should would like to do this thing but, alas, I identify as a man, too bad". That's literally retarded.
Gender is just a word. It means nothing and can't be defined on it's own.
>>44001078
In Japanese class, I have sat next to:
-A guy wearing a fox tail, who said he was a furry, but "don't worry, I'm the good kind of furry"
-Several guys and girls talking about various animu
-Two girls who just would not shut the fuck up about yaoi
-A businessman in his mid-to-late 30s who had been to Osaka and taught me a few short phrases in Kansai-ben
Most of the weebs (including the furry and the yaoi sisters) ended up dropping the class halfway through, because learning a language actually takes work. Maybe half the class ended up staying 'til the end, including Mr. Osaka.
>>43988762
Is hebrew draconic?
>>44002182
Well it's spoken by things that hoard gold.
>>43982478
I like it, and plan to use it in my next setting
>>44002116
I'm in 3 years deep and still have 1 to go. Most people in the upper division courses are normal human beings.
>>43986624
One of these things is not like the others
One of these things just doesn't belong.
>>44002182
>Hebrew
>Not Dwarven
>Dwarven society is literally centered around tribes and hoarding gold
>>43983122
A mongrel of a language.
>>44002116
My beginners Japanese course consisted of
>3 closet weebs (2 girls, one boy)
>2 old guys, one with a Japanese wife that he'd like to understand
>a couple of young women (not sure exactly what they were doing, because they dropped it on week 3)
>me
Doing a night class weeds out the trash
>>43994595
That's stupid. You're stupid.
>>43996466
>actual historical lingua franca
Ah, so like Volapuk?
>>43985968
>Gaelic
You mean Irish.
>>43988627
There are two biological sexes. Sex is biological category, relating to the 23rd chromosome.
Gender is a cultural category, consisting of behaviors and social roles that are usually, but not always, related to (biological) sex. See various Native American (e.g. Two-Spirit people) and Southeast Asian cultures for examples of ones without a gender binary.
>>43994477
Controlling 1/5 of the world's population and land area apparently isn't good enough.
>>43985968
Define Gaelic, because there's a few of those, and they're all bullshit. But Welsh is the most eldritch of them all.
>>44003952
You know it isn't.
>>43988370
>>43991039
are you even replying to the right person?
>>43989000
rolling
dice+1d30hoping for a bastardizing of Fan-Speak and Flower Arrangement [/spoler]
Rolled 7 (1d30)
>>44006470
fuck
>>44006490
Orcish, cool.
>>43988370
ITT people think they exist outside nature because muh sapience and muh theory of minds, failing to realize we're all just putting pieces of plants on top of our pieces of meat that we store in our hunks of earth, scraping by trying to satisfy our ego. Make yourself happy and comfortable, stop letting other people bother you. I say this to both sides of the argument.
And stop being so booty blasted when you start shit and have it shoved back in your face
>>44006629
>muh third way
Don't you have some troubles of the people to take upon yourself?
>>43982601
>tfw Western history is Humanity Fuck Yeah incarnate
feels so fucking good
>>44006540
Congratulations. All the flower arranger and courtesan NPC's in the kingdom now speak orcish.
>>44006540
All the player characters, and 50% of all NPC's now speak orcish.
What would that setting have to look like for orcish to be the lingua franca?
>>44009471
conquered by orcs, most likely. humans probably try to emulate orc sense of dress and things like hair styles or bling. maybe they get their lower lips pierced to make it look like they got tusks
>>44006629
>ITT people think they exist outside nature
Nature favors variety though. So, it is the binarists who are wrong.
>>43982601
Yea and Yea. Fuck all the inferior faggot languages.
>>44008740
but anon, we're supposed to feel guilty about it because we're privileged pieces of shit and we're responsible for every sin our ancestors committed because those sins put us at an unfair advantage in the modern day :^)
>>44010399
fuck off SJW shit stain, I'm not my fucking ancestors
>>44010423
>:^)
>>44010442
>le meme face
how new are you
>>44010399
>put us at an unfair advantage in the modern day
But that's true...
>>43989000
I now want to make a fighter that speaks in Swordspeak.
>>44009508
Nature doesn't favor anything, it just has rules and tendencies that emerge from those rules. Nature knows no gender. Gender itself is an abstraction of human social structure.
>>44010653
Yeah but that doesn't mean we should feel guilty about it, just that we should recognize that advantage and not take it for granted.
>>44000202
Weeeeeeew
Wheeeeeeeee
Weeeeew
>>43982594
Everyone speaking Common or English is realistic too, because you know its what is actual reality. One culture being so dominant that everyone else ends up speaking their language (or having to for international business/politics/education) is about as real as it gets.
>>43986215
>"Common" was a language invented by Changelings interacting with the various species and developing a language that could be universally spoken and pronounced by all species.
I'm going to do something like this but maybe not with changelings.
Pretty good fluff. Thanks senpai.
>>43983702
>England was never a superpower
What about that time 20% of the planet's land mass was British held territory? Or that time they were dominant in worldwide trade for centuries.
>>44010757
>Nature doesn't favor anything
Sure, which is why variety exists. The gender (and sex) binary is a myth.
>>44010908
The edge cases that naturally emerge have little bearing on human social behaviour because, well, they're edge cases. Society does not easily accommodate such edge cases. "Binarism is wrong" is not a useful statement, because, whether or not any binary exists, society is built on the assumption that that binary exists, because any exceptions to that binary are all edge cases.
>>44011274
>society is built on the assumption that that binary exists
But that's wrong. Even the West acknowledged 3 genders until around the industrial revolution.
You're confusing 21st century America with the world.
>>43992419
The power of imagination and ingenuity.
>>44011333
provide source
>>44009508
Nature favours variety right up until it gets in the way of reproduction
Because that's all nature cares about, whether or not you boink someone of the opposite sex and make more of your species
>>44010423
>>44010442
White male bigots spotted
>>44002116
>-A guy wearing a fox tail, who said he was a furry, but "don't worry, I'm the good kind of furry"
I once had the privilege of throwing this furry out of the Air Force. It felt great.
>-Several guys and girls talking about various animu
This is normal, and also not really that irritating. I learned Japanese from anime and what my dad remembered from school (in Japan, where he went to high school).
>-Two girls who just would not shut the fuck up about yaoi
Unforgivable.
>-A businessman in his mid-to-late 30s who had been to Osaka and taught me a few short phrases in Kansai-ben
Joe Sarariman saves the day.
>Most of the weebs (including the furry and the yaoi sisters) ended up dropping the class halfway through, because learning a language actually takes work.
Very true.
My dad ended up taking Japanese and Japanese II as refreshers and he noted that except for one of my buddies from high school (who was taking the class because his book on C# was published in Japanese and he was getting a lot of questions from Japan) most of the younger folks dropped pretty quick when they realized learning foreign languages is hard.
Meanwhile here I am a decade later and I'm on language number twelve. Once you start learning them it gets easier. I really wish more collegiate-level classes would just give you children's books and teach you as if you couldn't speak any language. That's the method that always works for me.
>>44011504
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender
I LIKE TO YELL AT BLACK PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET
>>44012656
Why?
>>44013092
because it's epic
and it's the only thing that gives any sort of purpose or meaning to my life anymore
it's all I've got left
>>44009508
Wrong, nature favors efficiency, and if a form of reproduction for a species proves to impact negatively on the growth and survival rates if the species, then it is selected against. Further, while many species do display hermaphroditism, the vast majority of them are either fungi, plants (though the more complex angiosperms and gymnosperms do display some binary qualities), Archea, bacteria, protists and the like, mostly non-animals, and the types of animals that do show hermaphroditism are typically Annelids, Nematodes, Porifera, Cnideria, and only some strains of echinoderms (though not all of them). Further these types of animals lack the sapience needed for major courtships and really any form of intelligence other than "eat and shit". Meanwhile the binary exists quite apparently in nearly all forms of Arthropod and Chordate (that's us), and it has been shown that keeping to said binary is among the most efficient means of balancing energy for life and reproduction, and insuring success of both R and K method reproduction growth styles for larger macro animals. The alternatives have all been selected against, and the human genome has made it very clear as to what means of reproduction and species growth we are meant to pursue. Any changes to this formula would have to take place over numerous successive generations, over a span of time roughly around a million years, and would have to be able to not be naturally competed against and be able to find a way to have a common frequency in the population, and unless some massive change in the environment of the earth occurs, this is really highly unlikely to happen.
If you have a Y Chromosome, but like to where dresses, that doesn't automatically make you a woman, it means your a dude who likes to wear dresses, which there's nothing wrong with. Further almost all human cases of hermaphroditism are exceptionally rare, often don't exhibit noticeable genetic expression, and have almost all been sterile.
>>44012518
>third gender
>the term that modern QUILTBAGS use to attempt to derive agenda from Oglala custom despite the fact that in practice the custom was more akin to a dude acting as "honorary Aunti/stand-in for female based rites"
Fuck you stupid ass white faggots, get your grubby mitts off and ruin your own culture instead dammit!
>believing in fake, made-up, tumblr genders
epic
so 2015
>>44013583
>Wrong, nature favors efficiency
Nice teleological fallacy.
>>44013801
Efficiency, from an ecological standpoint, means capable of functioning within a niche at a stable growth/ population level for its trophic range. Koalas and Pandas, despite being stupid in terms of design and adaptation, are still considered at least somewhat efficient since they fulfill niches with little to no competition. Granted, this does diminish thier ecological resilience and very well makes them more prone to extinction due to dependence on a food species, however that's just one of the give and takes of Specialists vs Generalists. Specialists get to take advantage of unique niches and functions, while generalists tend to be more adaptable to change. The problem is that Human interference tends to exacerbate the downsides of specialists due to how we like to elbow in to other specie's niches and compete for thier resources, and as any ecologist will tell you when two species compete for the same resource the result is always either extinction, seperation, or new speciation/niche overhaul.
>>44013994
Yet none of that prevents the existence of more than two genders.
