>> Of course if you have a world where diplomats
>> usually learn all the
>> languages they encounter then fine.
>
>A sane one, you mean? Just because us British are
>stupid, doesn't mean that's the default.
Not limited to the British. French was the diplomatic language prior to the 20th Century. Diplomats from all European countries would communicate with each other in French. It would be an exceptional diplomat who learnt Russian, German or Spanish. Never mind Italian, Dutch or Swedish. I suspect French diplomats didn't learn another language at all.
While it might be saner to have diplomats learn the language of the country they are posted to the time it takes to learn to a reasonable standard works against that. What diplomat would take a posting to Hungary if they had to learn Hungarian? Especially as within a few years they'll be transfered somewhere else.
The time to learn is one of the things we seem to be forgetting when we add skills to character sheets. The skills obtained from the Homeland, Occupation and Magic keywords represent learning from childhood up to the game start. A minimum of ten, often fifteen or more years. Additional skills are going to take several months of full time study each. A complete new occupation maybe five years. If the argument for allowing skills within keywords gets carried to far the PC would have to be in their 50s to have learnt it all.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
Powered by hypermail