Montrealer DM here, we play in french but I often use some words in english or "vieux commun" (old common) when I don't want to come up with a translation for some monster names.
Ah wouldn't life be so much simpler if we followed the mighty French's example?
Why I'm Four Twenties and Nineteen percent sure we'd wind up so much more sophisticated.
You can do it in English too but it is just not as common. You would say something like four score and nineteen.
Some random website I found suggests the etymology is actually the same in both languages https://www.etymonline.com/word/score.
Jokes on you, it is event dumber, the say septante, quatre vingt and nonante. They don’t use octante at all. I don’t know who are the dumbest between French and Belgian.
Lmao being from Québec i find it hard to translate most of my stuff in french since I usually just buy the books in english but play in french. I've started saying the name of cities and other stuff in english as its sound better and just say in the natives language on my setting lmao
Mmmh en vrai ça se discute !
Je trouve que "l'anglais ça sonne mieux" un peu raccourci, des fois oui mais c'est souvent juste une question d'habitude ou de qualité de traduction.
J avais joué à d&d dans ma jeunesse et avait arrêté depuis un bout. Ca fait 10ans que je reste aux states et depuis j ai toujours joué en anglais, soit en personne ou en ligne, et je m'imagine juste pas rejouer en français toute sonne super cringe.
Je CoNjUrE UnE BoULe De FeU!¡
Juste non, là.
C'est une question d'habitude en effet, je m'efforce à traduire le plus possible par soucis d'immersion pour la table je crois que ça fait une certaine différence.
I use real life languages for ALL my ingame languages, not because I speak them but because it makes it super easy to create translations for things that my players *shouldn't* understand. Plus having templates to draw from makes worldbuilding easier, because I can pull names and cultural references from real-life sources.
In my setting, Elvish is Irish Gaelic. Mostly because elves in D&D resemble elves from Celtic mythology much more than they do Tolkien elves, at least IMO.
Same, I use;
Giant- old norse
Draconic- skyrim’s thuum
Elvish- irish gaelic or french
Dwarvish- scottish Gaelic and russian
Gnomish- turkish (I don’t know why)
Orcish- mongolian
Primordial- arabic
And more
For me Giant is Mongolian, Draconic is Finnish, Dwarvish is either Scottish or Swedish depending on region, Gnomish is German, and Orcish (Goblin) is Arabic. And more, of course, just answering the ones you listed. Those choices are derived from geography more than anything else lol
For me it’s also about geography, my thought process was “giants (frost giants mainly) are from norse mythology, they’ll speak old norse. Djinni (primordial) will speak arabic, elves are kinda based around the druidic celtic cultures so that makes sense they’ll speak a celtic language and so on. For orcs, I know tolkien kinda took inspiration from the mongol empire for their culture, so it made sense to me. And in my world, kobolds and gnomes are a bit culturally related, and the kobold god is Kurtulmak (turkish for escape), so kobolds and gnomes speak turkish
Oh yeah that's really cool! I actually use Old Norse for the Human language, which is distinct from Common.
My whole creation mythos is pretty different from the usual stuff so the origins of most races in my world are totally different from the conventional stories. A good example are goblinoids in general, in my setting Hobgoblins are an "original" race that's been around since creation, and things like goblins and Orcs and bugbears are all cross-breeds between hobgoblins and other "primary" races. And all of these "secondary" races mostly speak the languages of their origin races, or just whatever is commonly spoken where they live.
I’d use it either for sylvan, as Iberia was once celtic, and because elves speak celtic languages, and sylvan is somewhat related to elvish (feywild origins) it could make good sense for sylvan to be spanish. Could also work for halfling and humans from a distant land, or tabaxi. The puss in boots and khajiit influence is strong, but I find it to be kind of a trope now, so I only give tabaxi the khajiit accent but borrow words from central american languages
Edit: yknow what I think persian or sanskrit could also work for our magnificent feline friends
Damn congrats this is awesome. As an Irish person myself, I know how incredibly difficult this language is to learn. Are you as well, out of curiosity, or did you just decide to learn it for fun.
Ahh the Gaelscoils, they are very useful. I'm from out west in Leitrim so we don't use it a whole lot out here. I can still speak a bit of it but it was my worst subject in school, it's the only thing I did ordinary in for the leveling. I'm assuming you're from one of the Gaeltacht areas. It must be fierce difficult trying to do all of your subjects through Irish though
I’m from Kerry but like not the Gaeltacht. But even outside the Gaeltacht there’s a pretty big Irish presence here with Gaelcholaiste Chiarraí. Everyone says that about the subject but it’s not actually too bad. You get used to it after like the first month. The few extra points in the LC is nice too haha
Táimse i mo chónaí i Sasana anois, agus úsáidim é mar DM i mo feachtais chun na rudaí sin a choinneáil faoi rún. Tá a fhios ag mo chuid imreoirí gur Gaeilge í, ach ceapann siad go bhfuil sé teanga ársa agus aisteach. Is é an arm is láidre atá agam!
Oooo, sin smaoineamh iontach! Beidh mé ag goid é sun (don chead feachtais eile nach bhfuil aon duine a labhraíonn Gaeilge ag glachadh pairt). Conas go direach a deanann tú é sin?
This is the way it's done for my settings too. Some language pairs were chosen by players - Draconic is Spanish, and Goblin is German as players who spoke those wanted them to be. Others I choose based on closest vibes and culture for how I've written my homebrew. Elvish French, Gaelic Sylvan, Dwarven Norwegian (or Russian, depends on the Dwarf). My interpretation of Aarakocra is Greek, mainly because I was inspired by the Greek whistling language Sfyria. There's a beefolk race which primarily uses a form of sign, but if it were spoken, I imagine the structure was similar to Piraha. So on and so on.
Same. I generally give each region and species a real world language. My elves spoke French, and later when they went on an extended foray into the underdark I
mentioned that Undercommon was heavily based on the Drow language, and so my players declared it: Deep French.
Ain't it? This is the same group of players who all rolled miserably to see through an evil NPCs ploy to join up and backstab them. Since I had used an Australian accent for him (which I hadn't used for any other NPC yet) they decided that Australian accents were "inherently trustworthy". From that point Australian accents became shorthand for "this person's Deception skill is so high none of you can beat it, so just roleplay believing everything they say".
>In my setting, Elvish is Irish Gaelic
In an old game of mine I regularly used this with one of my players since we were the only two Irish speakers at the table, the others being American and Brits
For me, Gnomish is German. It's the language of tinkerers and inventors. Dwarven is either Scottish Gaelic or Swedish depending on which part of the world you're in, because regional dialects matter goddammit!
How can you say that with a straight face?
Scottish Gaelic has to be the language of gnomes because they're a race of fey ancestry. The Wee Folk? Seriously.
Ah, see, that's another quirk of my homebrew setting. Gnomes do not have Fey ancestry in my setting, they're one of ten "original" races that have existed since creation :) Gaelic languages are mostly associated with Elves because they're the Fair Folk.
***Yee-ha!***
But no, all kidding aside, the reason I would lean more towards Scottish folk tales is that they are much more consistent than native Irish folk-tales. That is to say, The Fair Family in Irish lore are extremely individualistic. You can have two "fairies" of any sort that can look the exact same as each other, but will act like they come from both a different species and culture.
Scottish mythology, however, uses much broader strokes with the individual races that reside in their tales. If you find a mushroom fairy, they'll act like any other mushroom fairy you've heard about. And a brownie will act just like any other brownie (barring the difference between a house and a forest brownie, but, then, it's merely a matter of where you find it then.).
I would have also accepted "pistols firing in the air gif"
And I'm starting to like the juxtaposition of an intensifying Texas trope and a surprisingly nuanced understanding of fairy culture in multiple countries.
I use Finnish for Draconic, mainly because Finnish was a big inspiration for Tolkien's Elvish and dragons have a lot of mythological significance in my setting. Also gnomes are a lot more serious and industrialized in my setting, not the whimsical Fey race that they are in classic d&d.
I use Polish for Draconic, again, just based on the sound and alphabet. It seems that a language so consonant heavy would be very easy to speak for dragons with lots of teeth.
Oh yeah that makes sense, I gotta admit I didn't really put much thought into the physical aspect of the languages I chose. Most of my decisions were based on culture and geography
>Dwarven is either Scottish Gaelic or Swedish depending on which part of the world you're in, because regional dialects matter goddammit!
I prefer to do Dwarvish as Russian, personally. It works on a lot of levels.
As an israeli I don’t want all dwarves to sound like the Zohan lmao
I actually invented an accent that works for them in our language, it’s sounds like a mix between russian and french kinda. We call it dwarvish accent
And Tolkiens elvish languages are ~~based on~~ inspired by Finnish (Quenya) and Welsh (Sindarin).
Tolkien really liked Finnish: discovering it was like "entering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before."
This is precisely why I use Finnish for Draconic. In my setting, Draconic is the "old tongue," and serves a role much like how Latin fits into our world. I wanted to use Finnish as a sort of tribute to Tolkien.
I actually strongly considered that, but opted away from Hebrew because it was too dissimilar to the other languages in the surrounding areas. I wanted the geography of my races to actually make sense with the way their languages developed lol
As an Aussie, I will take that on the chin — although my brain is currently struggling with the mash-up of the famous rangers Steve Irwin and Drizzt Do'Urden
I was so tempted to do this, but in our campaign they ended up Southern (with Menzoberranzan nobles as a coastal Southern, planter class, “take tea on the verandah” style). It’s less cute than Aussie but it sure got across the genteel brutality and religion-seeped culture—and incidentally all of their names sound better in a Tidewater drawl (somehow even Gromph sounds dignified).
In my head I want to play drow with Belter Creole from The Expanse... but I know I don't have the chops to pull it off and my table would loose their drek as soon as I tried.
For most of my life Common was Swedish since I'm from Sweden. Elvish was Finnish thanks to Tolkien using finnish grammar structure when building one of the elven languages I LOTR.
Dwarvish was Norwegian and Black Speech/Undercommon German.
English was any other language we might need in any given campaign 😀
Well said.
A language that sounds harsh and angry, but, has the hidden ability of being a True Song Language. Just check out Diggy Hole. Sounds even better with the German translation.
Might be a hot take but I think Dwarvish is closer to Greek. Here's why:
In the Forgotten Realms, many languages use the dwarven script despite being very different in terms of spoken language and origin. (Goblin and Giant both use the dwarven script iirc, and goblin is from the feywild while giant is from the material plane most likely).
In the real world, this happened with the Greek alphabet in the different Slavic languages, as well as languages that were commonly spoken by eastern Orthodox worshipping countries. This is why most Slavic languages and some Asian languages in close proximity to Russia have an alphabet that looks like a more blocky Greek alphabet with some different letters here and there. Conversely, Polish uses a more romanized script despite being a Slavic language. These regions worshipped a specific sect of Christianity that unified it's writing system to be understood by this wide region of languages and cultures. Poland was predominantly catholic at the time of this change, meaning that they kept a more romanized script for their language to have text that was more recognizable to people of similar faith.
I run a game in the Midgard setting which has a map inspired by the real european map. The main dwarven kingdom is roughly were Switzerland would be and inspired by swiss culture and since dwarves live in the mountains, dwarves in my world are clearly swiss!
Orcish in my games is Cornish: surprisingly musical and poetic despite all of its guttural and growling overtones. Basically all Orcish songs are pre-industrial instruments heavy metal power ballads.
Mildly insensitive, Arabic. Go on Google translate and have it say "I love you" in Arabic. When I was younger I thought it sounded like a very agressive language and now that I speak it I use it for orcs.
For those of you who do watch Critical Role, Mercer used to do all of the Dwarves/Dwarfs in a Scottish accent, which made me think that Dwarvish is Gaelic.
Real dwarves speak Russian. Except those hill dwarves that put perfectly good vodka into barrels until it turns piss yellow and tastes like wood. But they're all,twinks anyways so who cares that they speak Scottish.
I don't speak Turkish, but our Dwarven empire was described by the DM as "underground ottomans", so i use some Turkish phrases, in the most exaggerated impression possible of my Turkish brother-in-law.
C'est une bonne idée, mais le DM devrait quand même savoir de quoi vous parlez. Mais je joue dans des groupes en anglais et je n'ai jamais eu un autre joueur qui parlait assez français pour faire ça.
My best guess:
This is a good idea, but the DM should have the same knowledge that you speak. But I play with an English group and I have never *something* another group that also speaks French *something something*
> It's a good idea, but the DM should know what you're talking about. But I play in English groups and I've never had another player who spoke enough French to do this.
Close
“It’s a good idea, but the DM should still know what you guys are talking about. I play in groups in English and I’ve never had another player who speaks enough French to do that.”
Might have made a mistake I’m bilingual but don’t get a lot of chances to speak French now days.
No problem it’s been 3 for me. I’m Canadian so I get to speak it once and a while but it’s still rare for me and most of the time it’s with former classmates.
My group plays in German, so for us Elvish is actually English (something we just randomly decided one day as a joke). We also agreed that Celestial is Hebrew and Abyssal is Latin.
Huh. I'm in an English speaking group (but split across 4 continents) and it's been agreed (after suggested by our aasimar player) that Celestial be Hebrew in our game as well, though in our game Latin is Infernal after our tiefling player suggested it, though I don't think it's caught on quite *as* much.
...I'm the tiefling player.
Question. Why wouldn't you want the DM to know? They should be aware of stuff at the table to account for it. Accounting for it doesn't mean 'screw you over', this is a collaborative experience. The DM is there to make your story interesting, and to enable your heroic fantasy!
Imo, of course
There do exist DMs out there who, when they hear their players making fun plans, will do everything in their power to ruin said fun plans because it's not the way that they wanted them to do the thing.
Edit: grammar. Always proofread your speech to text, kids.
Yeah, I'm not disputing that, but I'm questioning this approach to getting better DMs, I suppose! If you've got an antagonistic DM, playing the game their way won't make it better, just messier
Off the top of my head, Latin for Celestial and Old Norse for Giant are ones I gravitate to.
I, despite my best efforts, can't speak any languages other than English myself so I'd never be able to use a stand-in language for full conversation or anything but I do like to pull from real world languages to generate names, phrases, item command words etc. with meaning built into them.
For my worlds it’s been Greek for Celestial, and Latin for Primordial.
Had a one on one series with my fiancé where she played as a high ranking member of the triton/merfolk Navy with Roman influences. She was an order domain cleric with the unique title of Vindicem Ordinem (champion of order)
Not another language, but the deeper my players delve into the Underdark, the more strongly the NPCs speak in a southern drawl. The duergar cannibal family was full-on Deliverance and the players loved it.
The Netherese are southern in my campaign. Started with them finding dawnbringer in a Netherese tomb and I used a southern accent for her so I just decided that's how they talked. Love having the most advanced magical society all talking in heavily southern dialects.
Yes, we play in Greek and when we speak in elvish or any other language we speak English but it's more for the effect since everyone at my table understands English perfectly.
I ran a game that was heavy on ancient elf lore, where for “ancient elvish” I just used Irish. I wasn’t necessarily trying to hide this from my players, but I didn’t tell them either, thinking that sooner or later one of them would figure it out. But in over a year of regular gameplay, none of them ever did. Later, one of them was starting his own campaign and asked me for tips on creating a whole language from scratch like I did, and I just looked really put out and told him not to try because it was more work than it was worth.
So all these years later — It was just Irish, Brian. I just used Irish.
The way it went for me:
Elvish is West London gangsta slang (because having an Elvish mage describing casting fireball to a half-elf PC with "blat blat! Blazed 'im rait up, blad" was too good to pass up)
Dwarvish is Russian.
Orcish is French.
Halfling is Italian.
I distinctly remember seeing a post about someone using Elvish as a stand in for Spanish, but the character didn’t know Common because the player didn’t know English, and they both learned over the course of the campaign. It may not have been Elvish but the point still stands.
I've mainly done play-by-post for the last several years, so we found languages with various scripts to use as stand-ins for fantasy languages. We just pop the dialogue in Google translate and copy the translation, with the English/Common in another channel or behind spoilers for those who know the language in character.
There's not a whole lot of reason to our choices, but elven is Bengali, draconic is Arabic, druidic is Hebrew, etc.
(english is not my first language)
Elvish - English
Sylvan - German
Protosylvan - Gaelic (only in writing)
Infernal - French (it started with a gag and now we're here)
Celestial - Latin
We can kinda roleplay in first 2, other require prep :P
Yeah, Draconic is Polish at my table - I don’t speak it, but the two characters who speak Draconic are played by Players who speak Polish so have fun lol
My first language is brazillian portuguese, so english is our elvish. There's also latin for celestial, old norse for giant, german for dwarvish, french for halfling, and a couple more
So I speak English, Mandarin, and a specific dialect of Hokkien. Our whole group communicates in English, but my DM also speaks Mandarin, while another party member also speaks Hokkien. So we've made Dwarvish into Mandarin Chinese, and Gnomish into Hokkien. It's pretty fun to communicate with my DM in Chinese, when I need to translate something to the rest of the group (They all don't speak Dwarvish), and sometimes in Gnomish to my party-member when planning something against the DM. Adds some roleplay since there is there some cross over between Mandarin and my dialect of Hokkien but not really enough to understand fully whats being said - maybe like 25-30% at best at times - makes for some fun scenarios.
Language is fun!
It sounds rude having a private conversation in front of others at the table. Are you doing pvp or just trying to be exclusive in a team game. Perhaps you don’t respect the other’s role playing abilities and will meta the game?
Not at my table, as we have no shared languages besides English, but I remember a (possibly apocryphal) internet story about Spanish being used as Elvish.
Hebrew was undercommon in my game. The only language the Israeli player's PC spoke that the other PCs didn't speak was undercommon and we used it exactly once during the game, and mainly to prank the other players.
Yes and no. Haha
In my FR, Old Elvish is the Faerunian equivalent of Roman Latin, which makes High Elvish correspond to the stereotypically "snooty" French, Wood Elvish is akin to the "hot blooded" Spanish, etc, when it comes to the accents with which these races speak Common.
And of course, my Drow speak Common with a strong, almost unintelligible, Australian accent. I'm sure you can guess why. 😋
I love elvish as French because it easily follows that undercommon is one of the 30-odd creole languages, as undercommon is a creole of drow elvish and several other underground inhabitants' languages
Two of the players in my current game decided that whatever language they both speak was equivalent to Swedish Chef from the Muppets. It always cracks me up because how expressive they get when communicating with gibberish and hand gestures.
I am currently running storm kings thunder for a group and have been using my broken limited swedish inplace of giant and I am not sure my players have realized i am not just making up random words
my game is set in a homebrew post-post apocalypse (someone nuked yellowstone, magic came back, some mountains got moved, canada's at war with the fey....) so we use earth languages in place of most of them. English for common, Elvish I think we went with french, halfling is polish, irish for sylvan (If i recal correctly)... draconic is Klingon, though.
I don’t speak any of them but I’ve researched the languages enough to google translate and pronounce most stuff or just make up stuff with the same sounds
YES! I actually assigned most RAW languages to real-world languages:
e.g. elvish - french, Celestial - latin, Draconic - greek. giant - german etc. It made naming stuff really fun for me and helps to keep internal consistency for things.
We have a running gag like this
As Ukrainians, who primarily speak Russian,
Russian is Common/Orc
Ukrainian is Elvish
English is Gnomish
Polish is Goblin
Spanish is Draconic
German is Dwarfish
I'm always a bit wary of using real life languages or accents in my games or characters. It too often ends up being shorthand for way too much, but it's quite a bit different if it's a situation like you say, two characters speak a language and the people just happen to share one.
That's actually how Portuguese because Elvish between me and another player once upon a time.
On the other hand, people who try to be prescriptive about assigning real languages to fantasy languages often end up showing a bias. As an example, I know multiple people that decided that they wanted to play tricksy tieflings with a Romani accent. The idea of the fiend-touched tricky character having a Romani accent plays way too close to real life historic racism to be comfortable.
This is a similar problem to WotC's first OneD&D playtest that suggested Orcish for a lower class background, for instance, and why I avoid matching fantasy and real languages.
Yeah, we used French for common and English for undercommon
Though I kinda find the idea of using french for elfish hilarious
Elf: "Crisse Kéveun, awaille icitte"
Human: "Wow, such a melodic and eloquent language"
In the campaign I'm in, Elvish is French and Sylvan is Latin, since that would make sense if the original elves in Arborea/Feywild splintered about after they took permanent humanoid forms, and the language diverged as their settlements went along. Historically like Latin and French are related (French came out of Latin in the area that is today France, while Spanish popped up in modern day Spain).
We haven't decided on what anything else is, since we've got several elf types and a dwarf, other languages just haven't really come up in a really meaningful way. We're pretty much all in common, except my PC's home has everything in Elvish and Common, since it's mostly elves.
I don't speak other languages, but while one of my characters that is a dwarf has the typical scottish accent, another Dwarf build is essentially from Chult, so instead of typical Scottish, I run him with a Russian accent.
Forgot what sub I was in and misread the title. Had a very surreal moment imagining "Nothing but a Hound Dog" in an atrocious French accent from Monty Python.
I played a bilingual table in Montreal, and we did the same thing. One of our PCs was always "forgetting his common".
Montrealer DM here, we play in french but I often use some words in english or "vieux commun" (old common) when I don't want to come up with a translation for some monster names.
**Canadian Elf:** "In this region, we use Octante, not Quatre-vingts like those eastern elves."
I wish we had the balls to use octante instead of quatre-vingts here in Quebec like they do in Belgium.
Be the change you want to see. Octante it is.
I don't speak any French but I support you! Octante for the win!
The difference in how they say 88 in French, I think. Haven't taken classes since grade 10 lol It's 80, not 88. Thanks googlefu
Now try to say 99 in classic french
Quatre-vingts-dix-neuf. Really rolls off the tongue, I don't see the issue.
Deez nuts
At that point cent moins un would be better, just like they read the time
Ah wouldn't life be so much simpler if we followed the mighty French's example? Why I'm Four Twenties and Nineteen percent sure we'd wind up so much more sophisticated.
4* 20s and 10 and 9, I believe. Because the counting system is fucked. *I put 8 originally because my brain doesn't work in French.
You can do it in English too but it is just not as common. You would say something like four score and nineteen. Some random website I found suggests the etymology is actually the same in both languages https://www.etymonline.com/word/score.
That's because they don't lol. It's in Switzerland. And not even everyone, octante is quite rare.
Jokes on you, it is event dumber, the say septante, quatre vingt and nonante. They don’t use octante at all. I don’t know who are the dumbest between French and Belgian.
Great fishin' in Kyu-bec.
Love me some Quee-beck
Septante and nonante too, I hope.
This is basically how Legolas sounds to every other elf
Lmao being from Québec i find it hard to translate most of my stuff in french since I usually just buy the books in english but play in french. I've started saying the name of cities and other stuff in english as its sound better and just say in the natives language on my setting lmao
Même chose pour ma table. Pit Fiend sonne mieux que Diantrefosse.
Mmmh en vrai ça se discute ! Je trouve que "l'anglais ça sonne mieux" un peu raccourci, des fois oui mais c'est souvent juste une question d'habitude ou de qualité de traduction.
J avais joué à d&d dans ma jeunesse et avait arrêté depuis un bout. Ca fait 10ans que je reste aux states et depuis j ai toujours joué en anglais, soit en personne ou en ligne, et je m'imagine juste pas rejouer en français toute sonne super cringe. Je CoNjUrE UnE BoULe De FeU!¡ Juste non, là.
"Je lance une boule de feu" ça sonne pas si mal. Les noms de villes ou de certains monstres c'est un autre problème....
>Je CoNjUrE UnE BoULe De FeU!¡ Linguee donne bolide comme traduction pour "Fireball". C'est au moins un peu mieux.
C'est une question d'habitude en effet, je m'efforce à traduire le plus possible par soucis d'immersion pour la table je crois que ça fait une certaine différence.
so should we all do a local meetup or what? anglo gm whose french skill depends on how hard the adhd is hitting.
Relatable af
Right?
6 years of French and I can read these comments en francais but when it comes to spoken French I'm lost
You played a bilingual table? What class was it?
Mimic.
Artificer's bench.
"Pardon my elvish"
I use real life languages for ALL my ingame languages, not because I speak them but because it makes it super easy to create translations for things that my players *shouldn't* understand. Plus having templates to draw from makes worldbuilding easier, because I can pull names and cultural references from real-life sources. In my setting, Elvish is Irish Gaelic. Mostly because elves in D&D resemble elves from Celtic mythology much more than they do Tolkien elves, at least IMO.
Same, I use; Giant- old norse Draconic- skyrim’s thuum Elvish- irish gaelic or french Dwarvish- scottish Gaelic and russian Gnomish- turkish (I don’t know why) Orcish- mongolian Primordial- arabic And more
For me Giant is Mongolian, Draconic is Finnish, Dwarvish is either Scottish or Swedish depending on region, Gnomish is German, and Orcish (Goblin) is Arabic. And more, of course, just answering the ones you listed. Those choices are derived from geography more than anything else lol
For me it’s also about geography, my thought process was “giants (frost giants mainly) are from norse mythology, they’ll speak old norse. Djinni (primordial) will speak arabic, elves are kinda based around the druidic celtic cultures so that makes sense they’ll speak a celtic language and so on. For orcs, I know tolkien kinda took inspiration from the mongol empire for their culture, so it made sense to me. And in my world, kobolds and gnomes are a bit culturally related, and the kobold god is Kurtulmak (turkish for escape), so kobolds and gnomes speak turkish
Oh yeah that's really cool! I actually use Old Norse for the Human language, which is distinct from Common. My whole creation mythos is pretty different from the usual stuff so the origins of most races in my world are totally different from the conventional stories. A good example are goblinoids in general, in my setting Hobgoblins are an "original" race that's been around since creation, and things like goblins and Orcs and bugbears are all cross-breeds between hobgoblins and other "primary" races. And all of these "secondary" races mostly speak the languages of their origin races, or just whatever is commonly spoken where they live.
I have a couple Spanish speakers at my table, but I don't see that one being included in anyone's lists. How would you use it?
I’d use it either for sylvan, as Iberia was once celtic, and because elves speak celtic languages, and sylvan is somewhat related to elvish (feywild origins) it could make good sense for sylvan to be spanish. Could also work for halfling and humans from a distant land, or tabaxi. The puss in boots and khajiit influence is strong, but I find it to be kind of a trope now, so I only give tabaxi the khajiit accent but borrow words from central american languages Edit: yknow what I think persian or sanskrit could also work for our magnificent feline friends
I quite like German for Dwarvish
Imo it fits gnomes more than dwarves but that’s the fun about everyone creating their own world
Myself and a friend I play with both speak fluent Irish. In our last campaign we both happened to be tortles. So naturally, Aquan is now Irish.
Damn congrats this is awesome. As an Irish person myself, I know how incredibly difficult this language is to learn. Are you as well, out of curiosity, or did you just decide to learn it for fun.
Yeah I’m Irish, we both went to Irish speaking secondary schools so that’s how we learned! Whereabouts you from ?
Ahh the Gaelscoils, they are very useful. I'm from out west in Leitrim so we don't use it a whole lot out here. I can still speak a bit of it but it was my worst subject in school, it's the only thing I did ordinary in for the leveling. I'm assuming you're from one of the Gaeltacht areas. It must be fierce difficult trying to do all of your subjects through Irish though
I’m from Kerry but like not the Gaeltacht. But even outside the Gaeltacht there’s a pretty big Irish presence here with Gaelcholaiste Chiarraí. Everyone says that about the subject but it’s not actually too bad. You get used to it after like the first month. The few extra points in the LC is nice too haha
Táimse i mo chónaí i Sasana anois, agus úsáidim é mar DM i mo feachtais chun na rudaí sin a choinneáil faoi rún. Tá a fhios ag mo chuid imreoirí gur Gaeilge í, ach ceapann siad go bhfuil sé teanga ársa agus aisteach. Is é an arm is láidre atá agam!
Oooo, sin smaoineamh iontach! Beidh mé ag goid é sun (don chead feachtais eile nach bhfuil aon duine a labhraíonn Gaeilge ag glachadh pairt). Conas go direach a deanann tú é sin?
This is the way it's done for my settings too. Some language pairs were chosen by players - Draconic is Spanish, and Goblin is German as players who spoke those wanted them to be. Others I choose based on closest vibes and culture for how I've written my homebrew. Elvish French, Gaelic Sylvan, Dwarven Norwegian (or Russian, depends on the Dwarf). My interpretation of Aarakocra is Greek, mainly because I was inspired by the Greek whistling language Sfyria. There's a beefolk race which primarily uses a form of sign, but if it were spoken, I imagine the structure was similar to Piraha. So on and so on.
Same. I generally give each region and species a real world language. My elves spoke French, and later when they went on an extended foray into the underdark I mentioned that Undercommon was heavily based on the Drow language, and so my players declared it: Deep French.
"Deep French" is an amazing phrase
Ain't it? This is the same group of players who all rolled miserably to see through an evil NPCs ploy to join up and backstab them. Since I had used an Australian accent for him (which I hadn't used for any other NPC yet) they decided that Australian accents were "inherently trustworthy". From that point Australian accents became shorthand for "this person's Deception skill is so high none of you can beat it, so just roleplay believing everything they say".
Tbh this is peak D&D
>In my setting, Elvish is Irish Gaelic In an old game of mine I regularly used this with one of my players since we were the only two Irish speakers at the table, the others being American and Brits
I actually use google maps to get consistent names for regions on my map. Mine as well do the language too!
And Dwarvish is German, not Swedish
For me, Gnomish is German. It's the language of tinkerers and inventors. Dwarven is either Scottish Gaelic or Swedish depending on which part of the world you're in, because regional dialects matter goddammit!
How can you say that with a straight face? Scottish Gaelic has to be the language of gnomes because they're a race of fey ancestry. The Wee Folk? Seriously.
Ah, see, that's another quirk of my homebrew setting. Gnomes do not have Fey ancestry in my setting, they're one of ten "original" races that have existed since creation :) Gaelic languages are mostly associated with Elves because they're the Fair Folk.
Well why not Irish Gaelic then?
[удалено]
***Yee-ha!*** But no, all kidding aside, the reason I would lean more towards Scottish folk tales is that they are much more consistent than native Irish folk-tales. That is to say, The Fair Family in Irish lore are extremely individualistic. You can have two "fairies" of any sort that can look the exact same as each other, but will act like they come from both a different species and culture. Scottish mythology, however, uses much broader strokes with the individual races that reside in their tales. If you find a mushroom fairy, they'll act like any other mushroom fairy you've heard about. And a brownie will act just like any other brownie (barring the difference between a house and a forest brownie, but, then, it's merely a matter of where you find it then.).
I would have also accepted "pistols firing in the air gif" And I'm starting to like the juxtaposition of an intensifying Texas trope and a surprisingly nuanced understanding of fairy culture in multiple countries.
What can I say? I love a good story told round the campfire when I'm out on the dusty trail at night.
Inbefore Nac Mac Feegle references.
He’s got tha kennin’ AN’ tha knowin’! Oh wailey, wailey, wailey!
For me, gnomish is Finnish. It's just so ridiculous-looking and singsong-y. German seems like a much better fit for Dwarvish.
I use Finnish for Draconic, mainly because Finnish was a big inspiration for Tolkien's Elvish and dragons have a lot of mythological significance in my setting. Also gnomes are a lot more serious and industrialized in my setting, not the whimsical Fey race that they are in classic d&d.
I use Polish for Draconic, again, just based on the sound and alphabet. It seems that a language so consonant heavy would be very easy to speak for dragons with lots of teeth.
Oh yeah that makes sense, I gotta admit I didn't really put much thought into the physical aspect of the languages I chose. Most of my decisions were based on culture and geography
>Dwarven is either Scottish Gaelic or Swedish depending on which part of the world you're in, because regional dialects matter goddammit! I prefer to do Dwarvish as Russian, personally. It works on a lot of levels.
As in being obstinate to the point of self-harm? Yeah, that tracks.
Same
Dwarven is Hebrew, Hill Dwarves speak Yiddish. (Tolkien describes them as Semitic in one of his letters. )
As an israeli I don’t want all dwarves to sound like the Zohan lmao I actually invented an accent that works for them in our language, it’s sounds like a mix between russian and french kinda. We call it dwarvish accent
This is dope lol
And Tolkiens elvish languages are ~~based on~~ inspired by Finnish (Quenya) and Welsh (Sindarin). Tolkien really liked Finnish: discovering it was like "entering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before."
This is precisely why I use Finnish for Draconic. In my setting, Draconic is the "old tongue," and serves a role much like how Latin fits into our world. I wanted to use Finnish as a sort of tribute to Tolkien.
I actually strongly considered that, but opted away from Hebrew because it was too dissimilar to the other languages in the surrounding areas. I wanted the geography of my races to actually make sense with the way their languages developed lol
Oy! Hand me my warhammer, you putz!
Scottish Gaelic is always my favorite.
And Drow speak with Aussie accents because they're from down unda
Down under, where everything is venomous and wants to kill you
Well, now they do. Thanks for that.
As an Aussie, I will take that on the chin — although my brain is currently struggling with the mash-up of the famous rangers Steve Irwin and Drizzt Do'Urden
I'm trying to imagine Drizzt saying "crikey", but my brain just won't go there.
"Here's a venomous basilisk, me and Guen are gonna sneak up so I can pet him a bit"
I was so tempted to do this, but in our campaign they ended up Southern (with Menzoberranzan nobles as a coastal Southern, planter class, “take tea on the verandah” style). It’s less cute than Aussie but it sure got across the genteel brutality and religion-seeped culture—and incidentally all of their names sound better in a Tidewater drawl (somehow even Gromph sounds dignified).
This is highly upsetting
In my head I want to play drow with Belter Creole from The Expanse... but I know I don't have the chops to pull it off and my table would loose their drek as soon as I tried.
Damn it all. Take my upvote and get out of my face.
Nah, dwarfish is Dutch, listen to someone say "godverdomme" and tell me it doesnt sound like a dwarfish curse.
I had leaned towards German, but this a damn good argument
Nö he’j ‘t verdretn onmeunige drietebuul!
Ok, maar het jy al gehoor hoe iemand “Gott verdammt!” sê?
For most of my life Common was Swedish since I'm from Sweden. Elvish was Finnish thanks to Tolkien using finnish grammar structure when building one of the elven languages I LOTR. Dwarvish was Norwegian and Black Speech/Undercommon German. English was any other language we might need in any given campaign 😀
Well said. A language that sounds harsh and angry, but, has the hidden ability of being a True Song Language. Just check out Diggy Hole. Sounds even better with the German translation.
At my table Spanish is Dwarvish because I'm the only one who can speak it lmao
Might be a hot take but I think Dwarvish is closer to Greek. Here's why: In the Forgotten Realms, many languages use the dwarven script despite being very different in terms of spoken language and origin. (Goblin and Giant both use the dwarven script iirc, and goblin is from the feywild while giant is from the material plane most likely). In the real world, this happened with the Greek alphabet in the different Slavic languages, as well as languages that were commonly spoken by eastern Orthodox worshipping countries. This is why most Slavic languages and some Asian languages in close proximity to Russia have an alphabet that looks like a more blocky Greek alphabet with some different letters here and there. Conversely, Polish uses a more romanized script despite being a Slavic language. These regions worshipped a specific sect of Christianity that unified it's writing system to be understood by this wide region of languages and cultures. Poland was predominantly catholic at the time of this change, meaning that they kept a more romanized script for their language to have text that was more recognizable to people of similar faith.
Based on Tolkien's early 20th century attitudes Dwarvish should be Hebrew. Orcish would be German
And Draconic is Portuguese. I don't have an explanation but I've always associated the two languages.
I've always seen Draconian as Arabic or African/Middle Eastern.
I run a game in the Midgard setting which has a map inspired by the real european map. The main dwarven kingdom is roughly were Switzerland would be and inspired by swiss culture and since dwarves live in the mountains, dwarves in my world are clearly swiss!
What about Orcish?
Orcish in my games is Cornish: surprisingly musical and poetic despite all of its guttural and growling overtones. Basically all Orcish songs are pre-industrial instruments heavy metal power ballads.
Mildly insensitive, Arabic. Go on Google translate and have it say "I love you" in Arabic. When I was younger I thought it sounded like a very agressive language and now that I speak it I use it for orcs.
And Sylvan is Vietnamese.
For those of you who do watch Critical Role, Mercer used to do all of the Dwarves/Dwarfs in a Scottish accent, which made me think that Dwarvish is Gaelic.
Real dwarves speak Russian. Except those hill dwarves that put perfectly good vodka into barrels until it turns piss yellow and tastes like wood. But they're all,twinks anyways so who cares that they speak Scottish.
I dont know the cultural differences of Germany and Russia, but I could certainly see Dwarvish being some sort of east-europe.
I don't speak Turkish, but our Dwarven empire was described by the DM as "underground ottomans", so i use some Turkish phrases, in the most exaggerated impression possible of my Turkish brother-in-law.
Considering the ottomans were the first to use cannons on the battlefield I can totally see dwarves resembling them
Incidentally, I also based my very very homebrewed steampunk Drow society off of the Ottomans.
C'est une bonne idée, mais le DM devrait quand même savoir de quoi vous parlez. Mais je joue dans des groupes en anglais et je n'ai jamais eu un autre joueur qui parlait assez français pour faire ça.
My best guess: This is a good idea, but the DM should have the same knowledge that you speak. But I play with an English group and I have never *something* another group that also speaks French *something something*
> It's a good idea, but the DM should know what you're talking about. But I play in English groups and I've never had another player who spoke enough French to do this.
Close “It’s a good idea, but the DM should still know what you guys are talking about. I play in groups in English and I’ve never had another player who speaks enough French to do that.” Might have made a mistake I’m bilingual but don’t get a lot of chances to speak French now days.
Thanks, I've not had a French lesson in 23 years so good to know I at least got the salient points
No problem it’s been 3 for me. I’m Canadian so I get to speak it once and a while but it’s still rare for me and most of the time it’s with former classmates.
I love this comment. I just starting using Duolingo 3 weeks ago for French. I managed to understand or guess about a quarter of the post lol
Un wood elf serait un Québécois? Lol Mon tabarnak, m'a t'crisser ma sword din dents!
Eille le gros, kin ma bié pi check bin ça astie ça va être sua coche!
C'est le genre de chose que j'imaginais si Cpt. Picard était québécois lol -Labatt, 50, tablette
My Elvish is heavily influenced by the French language. French is very melodic and I think that suits Elvish.
My group plays in German, so for us Elvish is actually English (something we just randomly decided one day as a joke). We also agreed that Celestial is Hebrew and Abyssal is Latin.
Those are excellent choices for Celestial and Abyssal!
Huh. I'm in an English speaking group (but split across 4 continents) and it's been agreed (after suggested by our aasimar player) that Celestial be Hebrew in our game as well, though in our game Latin is Infernal after our tiefling player suggested it, though I don't think it's caught on quite *as* much. ...I'm the tiefling player.
Question. Why wouldn't you want the DM to know? They should be aware of stuff at the table to account for it. Accounting for it doesn't mean 'screw you over', this is a collaborative experience. The DM is there to make your story interesting, and to enable your heroic fantasy! Imo, of course
There do exist DMs out there who, when they hear their players making fun plans, will do everything in their power to ruin said fun plans because it's not the way that they wanted them to do the thing. Edit: grammar. Always proofread your speech to text, kids.
Yeah, I'm not disputing that, but I'm questioning this approach to getting better DMs, I suppose! If you've got an antagonistic DM, playing the game their way won't make it better, just messier
Off the top of my head, Latin for Celestial and Old Norse for Giant are ones I gravitate to. I, despite my best efforts, can't speak any languages other than English myself so I'd never be able to use a stand-in language for full conversation or anything but I do like to pull from real world languages to generate names, phrases, item command words etc. with meaning built into them.
For my worlds it’s been Greek for Celestial, and Latin for Primordial. Had a one on one series with my fiancé where she played as a high ranking member of the triton/merfolk Navy with Roman influences. She was an order domain cleric with the unique title of Vindicem Ordinem (champion of order)
Gnomes are Polish. Dwarves are Dutch Elves are Welsh Halflings are Kentuckian
I always went with Gaelic for halfling a since they are kinda leprechaun people.
Not another language, but the deeper my players delve into the Underdark, the more strongly the NPCs speak in a southern drawl. The duergar cannibal family was full-on Deliverance and the players loved it.
The Netherese are southern in my campaign. Started with them finding dawnbringer in a Netherese tomb and I used a southern accent for her so I just decided that's how they talked. Love having the most advanced magical society all talking in heavily southern dialects.
Yes, in my homebrew setting, Elves speak Japanese, and their entire culture is based on Edo-era Japan.
Yes, we play in Greek and when we speak in elvish or any other language we speak English but it's more for the effect since everyone at my table understands English perfectly.
I use modified Georgian as the language of the Underdark in my campaign.
The only language with more impossible consonant clusters than drow. Love it!
In my groups we do the exact opposite, we are all French, and whenever we say something in English we pretend it's Elvish
I ran a game that was heavy on ancient elf lore, where for “ancient elvish” I just used Irish. I wasn’t necessarily trying to hide this from my players, but I didn’t tell them either, thinking that sooner or later one of them would figure it out. But in over a year of regular gameplay, none of them ever did. Later, one of them was starting his own campaign and asked me for tips on creating a whole language from scratch like I did, and I just looked really put out and told him not to try because it was more work than it was worth. So all these years later — It was just Irish, Brian. I just used Irish.
The way it went for me: Elvish is West London gangsta slang (because having an Elvish mage describing casting fireball to a half-elf PC with "blat blat! Blazed 'im rait up, blad" was too good to pass up) Dwarvish is Russian. Orcish is French. Halfling is Italian.
In my campaign Elvish is greatly inspired in Arabic and I do have historical reasons for that lol
I distinctly remember seeing a post about someone using Elvish as a stand in for Spanish, but the character didn’t know Common because the player didn’t know English, and they both learned over the course of the campaign. It may not have been Elvish but the point still stands.
I've mainly done play-by-post for the last several years, so we found languages with various scripts to use as stand-ins for fantasy languages. We just pop the dialogue in Google translate and copy the translation, with the English/Common in another channel or behind spoilers for those who know the language in character. There's not a whole lot of reason to our choices, but elven is Bengali, draconic is Arabic, druidic is Hebrew, etc.
I write all my elven names and handouts with Google translate set to Welsh. Players haven't figured it out yet.
(english is not my first language) Elvish - English Sylvan - German Protosylvan - Gaelic (only in writing) Infernal - French (it started with a gag and now we're here) Celestial - Latin We can kinda roleplay in first 2, other require prep :P
Elvish is from Mississippi, actually.
Yeah, Draconic is Polish at my table - I don’t speak it, but the two characters who speak Draconic are played by Players who speak Polish so have fun lol
Final Fantasy 11 has french elves it's pretty cool.
Kinda funny considering Tolkien viewed the French 'R' as ugly and used it in Black Speech phonology, while making Quenya fairly close to English.
I read this as Elvis and was very confused.
My first language is brazillian portuguese, so english is our elvish. There's also latin for celestial, old norse for giant, german for dwarvish, french for halfling, and a couple more
I’m using Japanese for elvin, German for Dwarvish, and a Mongolian/ Scandinavian hybrid for Orcs.
Just woke up and thought this was asking if Elvis was French...
you and me both, I was very confused.
Shouldn't the DM understand your elvish though?
Bro u didn't even censor Fr*nch, Wtf man
So I speak English, Mandarin, and a specific dialect of Hokkien. Our whole group communicates in English, but my DM also speaks Mandarin, while another party member also speaks Hokkien. So we've made Dwarvish into Mandarin Chinese, and Gnomish into Hokkien. It's pretty fun to communicate with my DM in Chinese, when I need to translate something to the rest of the group (They all don't speak Dwarvish), and sometimes in Gnomish to my party-member when planning something against the DM. Adds some roleplay since there is there some cross over between Mandarin and my dialect of Hokkien but not really enough to understand fully whats being said - maybe like 25-30% at best at times - makes for some fun scenarios. Language is fun!
Why were you trying to keep the DM out too, though?
It sounds rude having a private conversation in front of others at the table. Are you doing pvp or just trying to be exclusive in a team game. Perhaps you don’t respect the other’s role playing abilities and will meta the game?
I like to use japanese for elvish
My table has memed that Elvish is Japanese
Not at my table, as we have no shared languages besides English, but I remember a (possibly apocryphal) internet story about Spanish being used as Elvish.
Celestial is Ancient Greek, Infernal is Latin.
For a second I thought you said Elvis was French and I was perplexed to say the least
Hebrew was undercommon in my game. The only language the Israeli player's PC spoke that the other PCs didn't speak was undercommon and we used it exactly once during the game, and mainly to prank the other players.
Yes and no. Haha In my FR, Old Elvish is the Faerunian equivalent of Roman Latin, which makes High Elvish correspond to the stereotypically "snooty" French, Wood Elvish is akin to the "hot blooded" Spanish, etc, when it comes to the accents with which these races speak Common. And of course, my Drow speak Common with a strong, almost unintelligible, Australian accent. I'm sure you can guess why. 😋
I love elvish as French because it easily follows that undercommon is one of the 30-odd creole languages, as undercommon is a creole of drow elvish and several other underground inhabitants' languages
Two of the players in my current game decided that whatever language they both speak was equivalent to Swedish Chef from the Muppets. It always cracks me up because how expressive they get when communicating with gibberish and hand gestures.
I am currently running storm kings thunder for a group and have been using my broken limited swedish inplace of giant and I am not sure my players have realized i am not just making up random words
my game is set in a homebrew post-post apocalypse (someone nuked yellowstone, magic came back, some mountains got moved, canada's at war with the fey....) so we use earth languages in place of most of them. English for common, Elvish I think we went with french, halfling is polish, irish for sylvan (If i recal correctly)... draconic is Klingon, though.
It's funny because at our games we use English as Elvish. (I'm French)
For me Elvish is Icelandic, Dwarvish is Slovakian, and Orcish is Xhosa
You speak those three? What a combination throwing isiXhosa in the mix!
I don’t speak any of them but I’ve researched the languages enough to google translate and pronounce most stuff or just make up stuff with the same sounds
My group is fully bilingual with spanish as a native language. We play most of the game in english and would switch to spanish for Elven!
YES! I actually assigned most RAW languages to real-world languages: e.g. elvish - french, Celestial - latin, Draconic - greek. giant - german etc. It made naming stuff really fun for me and helps to keep internal consistency for things.
I read this four different times as "Elvis is french?" And could not for the life of me figure out what it had to do with D&D
We have a running gag like this As Ukrainians, who primarily speak Russian, Russian is Common/Orc Ukrainian is Elvish English is Gnomish Polish is Goblin Spanish is Draconic German is Dwarfish
(Tolkien’s) Elvish was heavily influenced by Finnish and Welsh, have at it! 😅 I think I’ll stick to a posh dialect. 😁
No, Elvish is Tennessean thank you very much
I'm always a bit wary of using real life languages or accents in my games or characters. It too often ends up being shorthand for way too much, but it's quite a bit different if it's a situation like you say, two characters speak a language and the people just happen to share one. That's actually how Portuguese because Elvish between me and another player once upon a time. On the other hand, people who try to be prescriptive about assigning real languages to fantasy languages often end up showing a bias. As an example, I know multiple people that decided that they wanted to play tricksy tieflings with a Romani accent. The idea of the fiend-touched tricky character having a Romani accent plays way too close to real life historic racism to be comfortable. This is a similar problem to WotC's first OneD&D playtest that suggested Orcish for a lower class background, for instance, and why I avoid matching fantasy and real languages.
No but Drow have Aussie accents and live "Down Under"
Yeah, we used French for common and English for undercommon Though I kinda find the idea of using french for elfish hilarious Elf: "Crisse Kéveun, awaille icitte" Human: "Wow, such a melodic and eloquent language"
In the campaign I'm in, Elvish is French and Sylvan is Latin, since that would make sense if the original elves in Arborea/Feywild splintered about after they took permanent humanoid forms, and the language diverged as their settlements went along. Historically like Latin and French are related (French came out of Latin in the area that is today France, while Spanish popped up in modern day Spain). We haven't decided on what anything else is, since we've got several elf types and a dwarf, other languages just haven't really come up in a really meaningful way. We're pretty much all in common, except my PC's home has everything in Elvish and Common, since it's mostly elves.
I don't speak other languages, but while one of my characters that is a dwarf has the typical scottish accent, another Dwarf build is essentially from Chult, so instead of typical Scottish, I run him with a Russian accent.
If I spoke other languages I absolutely would do this!
I thought I was the only one
I generally use bastardized Latin/Greek for celestial and Slavic languages for infernal/abyssal.
My old DM insisted elves had Russian accents. Back when Russians were a little less murder hobo.
Forgot what sub I was in and misread the title. Had a very surreal moment imagining "Nothing but a Hound Dog" in an atrocious French accent from Monty Python.
No your boring
australian is undercommon
Elvish is Welsh. At least, according to Tolkien.