Gloranthan languages and RW analogues

From: steve <styopa_at_iname.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 10:47:32 -0500


>>Is my
>>27% English supposed to give me 9% Dutch and Afrikaans, 5% German
>>and 3% in anything even vaguely Indo-European, or what? Since I
>>don't think it'd _quite_ work that way in practice...
>
>Personally I think the idea of adding the communication bonus onto
>the reduced language skill is a load of crap.

Actually, in my experience I think it WOULD do exactly the above. Communication is based *lot* on shared cultural assumptions, gestures, inflection, body language, etc. A lot of this is implied in the "Speak XXX" skill.
Someone who has a high skill speaking english is very likely to be able to communicate basic ideas to a native Dutch or German speaker, although I'd say Afrikaans is at least another step away. There are many cognates, as well as near-cognates and loan-words. In a generally non-literate society I would venture to guess that this would even be more so (at least amongst the mobile classes).

I'm a fairly literate native english speaker; I also speak German and Russian. I've never studied latin, but I can puzzle my way through a number of (short) latin texts. I'm sure I'm not getting every nuance, but I can get the gist.

Of course, this may have more to do with the fact that American English has SO MANY loan words and is of such polyglot origins.


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