Languages in Chivalry & Sorcery 1e [Updated]

   As I discussed previously, languages in Chivalry & Sorcery need a little additional definition.   (OK, a LOT more detail.)

    Chivalry & Sorcery 1e falls in the middle of the first generation as far as rules concerning languages. Dungeons & Dragons posited a Common tongue, very influenced by the concept of the Westron tongue of Lord of the Rings, along with a number of racial languages as well as the Alignment languages that never seemed to be useful. On the other end of the scale, Runequest provided a number of human and racial languages with rules for learning, and Empire of the Petal Throne provided not only the names of the languages, but included syllabaries and multiple alphabets for Tekumel.

     By contrast C&S only provides rules and hints for languages. In the basic rules, you get the character’s ability to learn languages, expressed as the total number of languages in a lifetime or language points per level based solely on the character’s Intelligence. Under the Power Word magician we learn that there are 21 modern languages and 7 Ancient or Magick languages. Modern languages cost 1 language point to speak and 2 to read; Ancient languages cost 3 to learn to read.
The Swords and Sorcery expansion covers Nordics, Mongols and Celts - but provides no information on languages. It’s only the Saurian expansion that includes an excerpt from the Complete Roleplayer’s Guide expanding on languages. Saurians does leave the number of languages (other than Elvish and Dwarvish) up to the Game Master.

     Languages are broken down into Human, Elven, Dwarf, Goblin (includes Kobolds, Orcs, Goblins, Hobgoblins and Trolls [who may speak ‘Nordic’ instead]), Animal languages for Felines, Canine, Hooven, Rodent, Avian and Saurians (normally only available to Foresters, Shamen and Enchanters), Intelligent Saurian (Hss’Taathi and Dragonish [nice shout out to Runequest by referring to the latter as “or Auld Wormish”]) and Ancient languages.

    The cost of learning the languages now changes based on how well you can speak them - Minimal, Fluent or LIke a Native. The costs vary by language and Saurians have different costs than humanoids. Reading costs 3 points on top of the cost of knowing a language at a Fluent level. The time to learn to Speak a language is a function of Intelligence and Bardic Voice, while learning to Read is a function of Intelligence and Wisdom.  Magick Users now earn experience for learning languages.

     This still doesn’t give much information on the identities of the 21 modern and 7 ancient languages, for that we have one more clue and then a whole bunch of guessing. The clue is a note under Barons in the section on Designing the Feudal Nation, where the authors reveal that their campaign was set in France.

     I’ll start with the languages listed in Saurians. The animal languages are immediately eliminated as they are conveyed through behavior and body language more than words and lack a written form. Similarly, the goblin tongues are eliminated, while they have strong oral traditions; the goblin races are creatures outside of polite society. Ignored, defended against and victims of pogroms depending on the needs of the local regime. The Hss’taathi, intelligent saurians, if they were present in the campaign at all, were relative interlopers into human society, brought forward in time. And finally, I will eliminate Dwarvish (Khuzdul), as it is “virtually never taught to non Dwarves; Dwarves normally speak in Nordic languages….”

     That leaves me with three canonical languages: Elvish, Dragonish and Nordic. Three down, twenty five real world languages to go - and there are a lot more than twenty five languages available to choose from in medieval Europe.

Guesswork Follows

Rather than jumping straight into languages, let’s look at the language families in and around Europe in the Middle Ages. Romance, Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, Semetic, Turkic and Greek.

Romance - languages descended from Latin
Langue d’oil - predecessor of modern French, this term includes Norman and Picard as well as the dialect of Paris.
Langue d’oc - the languages of Gascony, the Pyrenees and the south of France
Galacian - a predecessor of Portuguese, spoken in the western Iberian peninsula
Catalan - the main predecessor of modern Spanish
Tuscan - an Italian dialect
Sicilian - an Italian dialect
Romanian - language of the old province of Dacia north of the Danube to the Black Sea coast.

Germanic
Nordic (Canonical) - the language of Denmark, Norway and Sweden
High German - dialects found south of the North German Plain
Low German - dialects of the North German Plain, east of the Rhine and east into Prussia
Old Dutch - dialects of the Rhine delta
Old English - Anglo-Saxon heavily modified by the imports from Norman French

Celtic
Brythonic - the western insular celtic languages of Wales, Cornwall, Cumbria and Brittany
Goidelic - the Gaelic languages of Scotland and Ireland

Slavic
Keivan Rus - eastern Slavic dialects dominating the river systems between the Baltic and Black Seas
Polish - western Slavic dialects of the Bug and Vistula basins and the south Baltic Coast.
South Slavic - Bulgarian, Serbian etc, languages of earlier migrants now isolated from the East and West Slavic root stock by Romainian and Germanic language users.

Semetic
Hebrew - language of the Jews. Considered a Magick language by this time, as local Jewish creole languages, such as Yiddish are already springing up across Europe.
Arabic - the language of the Islamic conquest. Still present in Andalusia and parts of Sicily as well as the North African coast and Levant.

Turkic
Common Turkic - covers a number of dialects spreading from Anatolia through the Central Asian steppes. I’m also lumping the unrelated Mongolian language here, as it adopted the Turkic script and I’m almost out of modern language slots.

Greek
Byzantine Greek - the language of the Eastern Empire, tottering though it may be.

Language	Alphabet	Cost of Minimal Fluency	Cost of Fluency	Cost of Native Speaking	Cost to Read
Langue d’oil	Latin	1	3	5	3
Langue d’oc	Latin	1	3	5	3
Galacian	Latin	1	3	5	3
Catalan	Latin	1	3	5	3
Tuscan	Latin	1	3	5	3
Sicilian	Latin	1	3	5	3
Romanian	Cyrillic	1	3	5	5
Nordic	Futhark Runes	1	3	5	5
High German	Latin	1	3	5	3
Low German	Latin	1	3	5	3
Old Dutch	Latin	1	3	5	3
Old English	Latin	1	3	5	3
Brythonic	Latin	1	3	5	3
Goidelic	Latin	1	3	5	3
Keivan Rus	Cyrillic	1	3	5	5
Polish	Latin	1	3	5	3
South Slavic	Cyrillic	1	3	5	5
Arabic	Arabic	3	5	8	5
Turkic	Uyghur	3	5	8	5
Mongolian	Uyghur	3	5	8	5
Byzantine Greek	Greek	1	3	5	5
Elvish (Sindaran)	Caeras Dareon	3	5	8	5

     For the most part I have followed the point guidelines from Saurians, where I have differed is primarily in the Cost to Learn to Read, when the language doesn’t use the Latin alphabet. In those cases, I have increased the cost to Read from 3 to 5 language points. I’ve also used the canonical cost of learning Elvish for the non Indo-European languages as well. This all assumes that the character is from a country with a Romance, Germanic or Celtic language that uses the Latin alphabet, in a campaign centered in Poland, for example, the cost of learning to read languages would be swapped between languages using Cyrillic and Latin alphabets.

Magick Languages

Good news, we only need seven and we already have two identified. Dragonish and Hebrew. Others quickly come to mind - Latin, the language of the dead empire and Ionic or Attic Greek, the language of Athens at its glory. Old Persian harks back to the Magi and Demotic Egyptian, post-hieroglyphics but containing the knowledge of that most ancient land. And finally, given that all Elves are Primitive Talent magicians, and the extensive influence of Tolkien’s work on Chivalry & Sorcery, it seems fitting that we reuse Tolkien’s languages here too.

Language	Alphabet	Cost of   Minimal Fluency	Cost of  Fluency	Cost of  Native  Speaking	Cost  to  Read
Dragonish or Auld Wormish	Draconic	9	15	25	3/6/12
Hebrew	Hebrew	3	5	8	3/6/12
Latin	Latin	1	3	5	3/6/12
Ionic/Attic Greek	Greek	1	3	5	3/6/12
Elvish (Quenya)	Tengwar	3	5	8	3/6/12
Old Persian	Pahlavi Scripts	3	5	8	3/6/12
Demotic Egyptian	Demotic Script	3	5	8	3/6/12

On a final note, Saurians lists three costs to read Ancient or Magick languages, corresponding to the spoken fluency levels. At the first level of reading 2d20% is subtracted from the character’s chance to read; at the second level 1d20% is subtracted. The costs are sufficiently steep that I left them as is..

What did I leave out - vast numbers of languages and dialects, such as Basque, Frisian, Finnish and Hungarian. Trying to work out a plausible set for their original campaign - or any medieval European campaign means that choices have to be made.

What did I get wrong, besides lumping Mongolian in with Common Turkic and leaving out all the Indian, Chinese and African languages? Take your pick, let me know, write your own.

{Update]  It came to me as I woke up this morning, that Polish is written in the Latin alphabet rather than Cyrillic. A quick search also determined that Romanian was written in Cyrillic rather than Latin up until the 1800's.  These have been changed and reading costs updated.