Languages of Anuire

[Bearcat]

We've been chewing over the question about the reading/writing in
high/low brect and it came to my attention that Cerilia, for all its realism
falls short on the number of languages that it contains.
Think of it, after the Roman Empire collapsed we saw the birth of
several languages based on Latin: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese,
Romanian and Provencal.
It has already been 500 years since the Anuirean Empire collapsed
and I would think that we would already be seeing the same thing here.
Therefore I have created a list of the languages that I think would exist in
Anuire, and where they are located.

Anuirean- This is the language that most resembles the language of the
fallen Empire. It is spoken near the center of the old Empire, the Countries
that speak it are: Avanil, Endier, Ghoere, Medeore, Roesone and Ilien.

Alam- This language developed in the vast nation of Alamie over a period of
several centuries. Although similar to traditional Anuirean there is still
sufficient variation to make it an independent language. It is now spoken
only in Alamie and Tuornen, which broke away from that country.

Peninsular- This language developed on the western coast of Anuire as a
result of the isolation provided by the Seamist Mountains. The countries
that speak it are Brosengae and Taeghas.

Talin- Language spoken on the northwestern coast of Anuire. It has some
influence from the goblin languages of Thurazor and the Five Peaks. It is
spoken in Talinie and Boeruine.

Dhoesonean/Cariele- These two languages are extremely similar. So much so
that they are generaly put together as one language. Due to their isolation
from the rest of Anuire the language has developed to a point where it can
hardly be recognized. It has heavy Rjurik, as well as some Sidhelien and
Goblin influence. It is spoken in Dhoesone and Cariele.

Mhor- This language develpoed in the Mhoried as a mixture of the Anuirean,
Cariele, Alam and Eastern languages. It is unique to that country.

Eastern- This language has Brect and Khinasi influences and is spoken in the
countries of Aerenwe, Osoerde, Coeranys, and Elinie.

Well, that is a list of the languages that have developed in the
Anuirean empire. If this post gets enough responses to encourage me, I'll do
the same thing for the other regions of Cerilia and maybe a chart like the
one that came in the Time of the Dragon boxed set...

Bearcat
lcgm@elogica.com.br
Come visit Bearcat's Birthright Homepage at:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/6204

[Bearcat]

>Time of Dragons boxed set? Is that a non-Birthright product? It doesn't
>sound familiar. :|

Oops, sorry, I should have realized that not everyone would not know
about this boxed set. It was for Dragonlance and came out about the same
time as AD&D second edition...

Bearcat
lcgm@elogica.com.br
Come visit Bearcat's Birthright Homepage at:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/6204

[Bearcat]

>Your basic thought isn't that bad, but Anuire isn't that large (If you too
>have missed it, that scale on the map isn't metric miles, so anuire isn't much
>larger than maybe France and we do know that there isn't many languages) and
>many of those languages had a history before Roman empire.

You have a point, but if one takes a look at the map of Europe it is
apparent that many of the romance languages developed as a reaction to
geographical isolation. An example of this is the Pyrenees range that
separates France from Spain. This is what I use to justify the Peninsular
and Talin languages.
As for the Dhoesonean language I envision a situation similar to
that of the Normans after they invaded England. After a while the language
of the original inhabitants (Rjurik) mixed together with that of the
Anuirean invaders.
As for Alam and Eastern I chose to say that a natural dialect
developed over several centuries. In Spain for example, there are several
dialects, in fact some are so different that their speakers can't understand
each other (its true, I looked it up in the Illustrated World Encyclopedia
pg.1406). I justified Alamie as developing it's own language because of its
size. After all, when it was united to Tuornen it was one of the largest
kingdoms in Anuire, which would make it self sufficient and with a lesser
need for communication with the outside world (what can I say, it also
justifies the Alam view for a united Alamie, throwing in some conflict to
spice up a campaign;). Eastern (I gotta find a better name for it) developed
as a result of extensive contact between the countries of Eastern Empire
with their holdings in Brectur and Khinasi during and after the Empire.
After all, this is one of the most cosmopolitan regions of Anuire.
Finally, Anuirean remained the dominant language at the heart of the
empire and in the countries along the southern coast. This was for the
single reason that Diemed, until recently, controlled that area and in doing
so used as the official language the Anuirean tounge.

Well, I guess I just rambled enough, if you have had the patience to
get this far: Thank You for listening to my humble opinions.

Bearcat
lcgm@elogica.com.br
Come visit Bearcat's Birthright Homepage at:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/6204

[Jaime T. Matthew]

> Demihuman languages:
>
> Sidhelien (alpahbet 4): You will understand all evlen dialects with your
> normal profs, while you understand Low-Sidhelien (Woodland Rjuven) only to
> your ((half prefs) - 2), never lower than 2.
>
> Karamhul (alphabet 2): You understand all dwarven dialects to your normal
> profs, High Brecht you understand to ((half prefs) - 2), never less than 2.

And of course, the great mystery remains: What language do the
halflings speak? Are we truly to believe they had NO language of
their own before they came to Cerilia? Have they assimilated to the
point of truly having no language of their own?

Jaime
__________________________________________________ ____
Jaime T. Matthew
mrjamela@writeme.com
http://www.geocities.com/~mrjamela

[Mark A Vandermeulen]

On Mon, 10 Nov 1997, Bearcat wrote:

> We've been chewing over the question about the reading/writing in
> high/low brect and it came to my attention that Cerilia, for all its realism
> falls short on the number of languages that it contains.
> Think of it, after the Roman Empire collapsed we saw the birth of
> several languages based on Latin: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese,
> Romanian and Provencal.
> It has already been 500 years since the Anuirean Empire collapsed
> and I would think that we would already be seeing the same thing here.
> Therefore I have created a list of the languages that I think would exist in
> Anuire, and where they are located.
>

This is a very interesting idea. It also brings up some interesting
possibilities in role-playing. For example: the country of Aerenwe. It is
right on the border between Anuirean-speaking people and Eastern-speaking
people, and in this country there was a reltively recent change in
dynasty: Liliene Swordwraith, an adventurer, comes in, defeats the
previous evil ruler, and takes over. It is very possible that the "old
nobility" in the country still takes Anuirean as its "native tongue" and
looks down at the Eastern-speaking "newcomers" (or vice versa). It also
makes having Lieutennant Ambassadors a much more important thing.

>
> Well, that is a list of the languages that have developed in the
> Anuirean empire. If this post gets enough responses to encourage me, I'll do
> the same thing for the other regions of Cerilia and maybe a chart like the
> one that came in the Time of the Dragon boxed set...
>

Time of Dragons boxed set? Is that a non-Birthright product? It doesn't
sound familiar. :|


Mark VanderMeulen
vander+@pitt.edu

[James Ruhland]

> It has already been 500 years since the Anuirean Empire collapsed
> and I would think that we would already be seeing the same thing here.
> Therefore I have created a list of the languages that I think would exist
in
> Anuire, and where they are located.
>
That's a good idea; but remember that Anuire is barely bigger than France,
so I'm not sure that this many lingos are necessary (of course, in the
Middle Ages, isolation meant the proliferation of all kinds of dialects,
and only the rise of the modern nation state and improved commo aleviated
that trend). I guess it comes down to how significant you want
communications dificulties to be in your campaigns, and how many skill
slots you want your players to "waste" on language slots, rather than, say,
Administration, Siegecraft, etc.

[Daniel McSorley]

From: Mark A Vandermeulen


>Time of Dragons boxed set? Is that a non-Birthright product? It doesn't
>sound familiar. :|
>
Time of the Dragon is an old boxed set for Dragonlance, detailing the
continent of Taladas. The chart he referred to is a big flow-chart type
device, showing how closely related all the languages of Taladas are.
Basically, two languages would be connected by a line. Each line between
them decreases their similarity by 10%; so the closest two languages can be
to each other is 90%. But, there could be these dots in between,
representing a more distant connection. Each dot reduced the similarity by
an additional 10%. So, if you spoke, say, Taladan Minotaur (I'm making this
up because the book's at home, and I'm not), which was related to Dwarven
with 2 dots, then a minotaur speaker would understand about 70% of what a
Dwarven speaker was saying. If Dwarven was related to Gnomish, with an
additional dot, then a minotaur speaker would understand 50% of what the
Gnome was saying, and a Dwarf would understand 80% of what the Gnome said.
The chart could get confusing if you took it too literally, because there
could be multiple paths from one language to another., but it was generally
pretty useful.
Of course, there aren't near as many languages on Cerilia as on Taladas.
I could probably come up with something similar for Cerilia, and send it to
anybody who wanted it. It would probably be a bitmap, as a text "drawing"
would get confusing. If nobody asks for it, I won't even bother.
Daniel McSorley
mcsorley.1@osu.edu

[James Ruhland]

> And of course, the great mystery remains: What language do the
> halflings speak? Are we truly to believe they had NO language of
> their own before they came to Cerilia? Have they assimilated to the
> point of truly having no language of their own?
>
Halflings just communicated with a few beastial grunts (at least I know
Solomon Deephole did) before they arrived in civilized lands.

"But look at all the good coming from the Crusades:
cotton, pepper, cimamon (sp?), ginger, silk. If it weren't for those
stupid
Crusades, then the Europeans would not have such a major change in world
views
and they have new avenues of trade. " --Glenn Robb

1) Silk was known in europe well before the Crusades. In fact, Silk has
been produced in Europe since the time of Justinian (and the 1st known act
of economic espionoge). Plus, trade was expanding well before the
Crusades...what impetus the Crusades gave to trade is hard to measure, but
the major Italian trading cities (Venice, Genoa, Pisa/Florence) were all
strong traders before the Crusades (the Crusades made them good traitors,
as well.) But, again, we're getting too bogged down in *real* world
history, when we should be talking about what this can do for **gaming**
(you know, fantasy and all). IMO, you can have bloodthirtsty crusading
hosts, or heroic ones in gilded armor ridding to the rescue of the
downtroden (or whatever) in Cerilia (or any other campaign world, I.E. the
"Crusade" in the Forgotten Realms, where NPCs saved PCs from having to do
the work of dealing with the Horde...oh, wait, that's my *other* rant.)
Nothing has to be a reflection of the real world...though it should be
plausable (says the person who's 1st instinct is always to reach for a
historical example...consistant I'm not; ok, how about this--using
historical examples is cool; like I said, I love 'em, but one shouldn't
push 'em too hard. This is a game, remember, in a fantasy setting.)

[Trizt]

On 10-Nov-97, Jaime T. Matthew (mrjamela@writeme.com) wrote about Re:
[BIRTHRIGHT] - Languages of Anuire:
- ->> Demihuman languages:

- ->And of course, the great mystery remains: What language do the
- ->halflings speak? Are we truly to believe they had NO language of
- ->their own before they came to Cerilia? Have they assimilated to the
- ->point of truly having no language of their own?

Here is a suggestion to solve that:

When halflings still lived in the shadow world, they used a signlanguge. This
singlanguage was quite limited and when they fleed to Cerilia they adopted the
local language and their alphabet. While some suspect group of humans learned
the halfling signlanguage (thiefs cant). Still many halflings knows their
native language, but in everyday communication it's faster and esier to use a
talked language than the limited signlanguage.

//Trizt of Ward^RITE

-

[Mark A Vandermeulen]

On Tue, 11 Nov 1997, Trizt wrote:

> ->And of course, the great mystery remains: What language do the
> ->halflings speak? Are we truly to believe they had NO language of
> ->their own before they came to Cerilia? Have they assimilated to the
> ->point of truly having no language of their own?
>
> Here is a suggestion to solve that:
>
> When halflings still lived in the shadow world, they used a signlanguge. This
> singlanguage was quite limited and when they fleed to Cerilia they adopted the
> local language and their alphabet. While some suspect group of humans learned
> the halfling signlanguage (thiefs cant). Still many halflings knows their
> native language, but in everyday communication it's faster and esier to use a
> talked language than the limited signlanguage.
>

On a light note, our group decided, one evening when it was late and we
were getting wacky, that Ancient Halfling was in fact a language composed
of a combination of hitsies* and windmill kicks. It gives a whole new
meaning to "getting a lecture in Ancient Halfling."

Mark VanderMeulen
vander+@pitt.edu

*"hitsies" is another word for "hits" only much funnier at 2:00 am.