Elven Language

[atemu1234]

I'm having an ancient Silvanesti ghost show up in one of my campaigns and was wondering how I should proceed for having him speak in elven. Any tips?

[Extra Anchovies]

I'm having an ancient Silvanesti ghost show up in one of my campaigns and was wondering how I should proceed for having him speak in elven. Any tips?

Just use Tolkien's Elvish language. It's an oldie, but a goodie.

[Jeff the Green]

How ancient? Remember that elf lifespans are much longer than ours, so their language will change slower. An elf from the Renaissance would be no harder to understand than someone from the '50s—some vernacular might have changed, but it's otherwise entirely intelligible.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

I'm having an ancient Silvanesti ghost show up in one of my campaigns and was wondering how I should proceed for having him speak in elven. Any tips?

Does he have a set speech that he's supposed to give? Or will people be chatting with him and getting answers to questions?

If it's the former, pick a real-world language that your participants won't know; Gaelic, Javanese and Romanian, for instance. Write something out, plug it into a translator and memorize the results.

If people are gonna have a freeform conversation with this ghost, then ask people who don't speak Elven to keep quiet during the conversation. Keep your speech patterns a little bit archaic and avoid contractions completely.

[Jeff the Green]

If it's the former, pick a real-world language that your participants won't know; Gaelic, Javanese and Romanian, for instance. Write something out, plug it into a translator and memorize the results.

I like Welsh for this. It has a couple sounds not in English (CH is pronounced like the Scottish loch and LL is pronounced like an L crossed with SH) so it sounds more alien. It also seems appropriate for elves and fey.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by QuickLyRaiNbow
If it's the former, pick a real-world language that your participants won't know….

I've used Icelandic for this. I wanted a language that had an ancestral yet thoroughly foreign feel, and Icelandic fit the bill. I wrote out a series of phrases and commands, and had an online translator in case I needed a word on the fly.

Apparently I was convincing, because it was very well-received at the gaming table. I loved that session, ton of fun.


Originally Posted by Jeff the Green
An elf from the Renaissance would be no harder to understand than someone from the '50s—some vernacular might have changed, but it's otherwise entirely intelligible.

Now I have the image of an elf in a bowtie and horn-rimmed glasses.

[Blackhawk748]

Flower Flower Flower, Tree Tree, Shrub In all seriousness though i second using Tolkiens Elven Language

[atemu1234]

How ancient? Remember that elf lifespans are much longer than ours, so their language will change slower. An elf from the Renaissance would be no harder to understand than someone from the '50s—some vernacular might have changed, but it's otherwise entirely intelligible.

Somewhere in the range of 500,000 years. My campaigns have very slow development, not quite medieval stasis but fairly close.

[Jeff the Green]

Somewhere in the range of 500,000 years. My campaigns have very slow development, not quite medieval stasis but fairly close.

Okay, scratch what I said about Welsh. It's too similar to English for this—that's roughly the equivalent of 70,000 years, longer than there's been human civilization. Something from an entirely different language family is in order.

[BWR]

Eh, it's magic. For all we know the elven language was created whole-cloth and given to the elves by the gods and hasn't changed at all in 500 000 years. That will save you a lot of trouble.
If you want him to be unintelligble to the players, just say they can't understand him. This is by far the simplest approach. Not to mention that things like Comprehend Language or Tongues will quilckly make communication possible, thus negating the 'need' for an incomprehensible language .

In general, I've never understood the need to push real world languages into fantasy worlds. Randomly choosing some real language to be some fantasy language is generally pointless. In geneneral one is either giving real world languages to a culture based on a RL culture, or one is randomly throwing some language at an invented culture based on nothing but vague feelings of 'I think X sounds a bit Y, based on probably wrong assumptions about Y'. Assuming a Viking-inspired culture speaks some form of Northern Germanic is fine (though how many people will you find who will say '10th century Norse' rather than 'modern Scandinavian/Icelandic'?). Assuming that dwarves sound Scottish or Hebrew or German or whatever puzzles me.

Either way, I don't really see the need to do this. Chances are you don't speak or read said language, and anything you would produce from it would either be wrong or too much hassle to make it worth your while (finding grammars and dictionaries and trying to write stuff then badly mispronouncing it). Unless you wish to spend a lot of time learning it or have very patient friends and family that would bother to do the translating for you, you won't have anything to show for assigning RL languages to game languages. Written bits are bad enough, but even worse is if you are going to try to have real-time conversation with players - it's impossible if you don't know the language and if you do, it still doesn't do anything that couldn't be accomplished with "you guys can't understand him".

[Craft (Cheese)]

The answer to this question is basically "How much of a language nerd are you?" You could theoretically go all-out and make a full conlang for this character to speak, but the bottom line is unless you show off your notes to the players (who won't appreciate it unless they're also Language Nerds), this is a lot of work for no real benefit. Here's a dirty little secret: Use a word generator like awkwords (http://bprhad.wz.cz/awkwords/) with some settings to give the words the "feel" you want, and so long as you read off the words in a sufficiently natural manner nobody, not even a professional linguist, can tell the difference between that and a real language that they happen to have never heard before, unless they record your speech, sit down, and try to figure out the rules or build a consistent vocabulary list. With sufficient practice you can do this off the top of your head with no need for a word generator; This is basically how glossolalia works.

Eloresta sirithunar, allovores kasavaie? Arvalleste thurinin! Dorvalos gimmuristin! Imarastaia kullona beldanni.

The next step is to decide what you want your "elven" to sound like: Lots of suggestions here to ape tolkien or use welsh. That's fine as far as it goes, but I think we can do a bit better here: It's well-known that Quenya (the more well-attested of the two elvish languages that appear in LotR) is heavily inspired by Finnish, so it might be a good idea to base it off of a distant relative to Finnish, like Kamassian or Tundra Yukaghir (http://anothersumma.net/Publications/TundraYukaghir.pdf) (maybe?).

[Chambers]

Elven Dictionary (http://www.candlekeep.com/library/articles/diction_elf.htm) (Candlekeep)

I don't know what the differences are for Faerun Elves and Dragonlance Elves, but that dictionary should be a good starting place at least.

[VoxRationis]

Make it melodious and focus more on approximants (l, r) and fricatives (s, sh, th, v, etc.) than full stops. Say it quickly in a loud whisper.
I myself avoid actually saying things in an in-universe language, because then I would feel compelled to write out a full grammar for the tongue. I do often write toponyms, names, greetings, and start an etymology, particularly for the elves (I have a soft spot for elves), but I don't speak whole sentences in the languages. I just either speak in English or I tell the players that they can't understand them. I'm with BWR on the desire to avoid using real-world languages; if you don't have a Germany, why have the gnomes speak German? A language is part of a people and a culture; why would it arrive outside of the culture that would invent it? However, I recently ran a campaign where several cultures were very blatant rip-offs of real-world cultures, and at that point I just used, for example, Latin, because the inventing culture was there in-universe.

[Ravens_cry]

Welsh, if you can get a phonetic write out to help.with the reading.
Alternatively, Hebrew.
I'd suggest Latin, but it's a bit too recognizable.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by BWR
Randomly choosing some real language to be some fantasy language is generally pointless.

Au contraire. In my experience it adds tremendously to the feel of an encounter. It's fun. You know, the point of the game.

Since I didn't advertise which language it was, I was the only one who knew it was Icelandic; for everyone else, it was a strange but authentic-sounding tongue. Everyone enjoyed the roleplaying that resulted: there was a real feeling of encountering something strange and new. It made for a really fun session, and no one brought up any philosophical complaints.

[BWR]

Au contraire. In my experience it adds tremendously to the feel of an encounter. It's fun. You know, the point of the game.

Since I didn't advertise which language it was, I was the only one who knew it was Icelandic; for everyone else, it was a strange but authentic-sounding tongue. Everyone enjoyed the roleplaying that resulted: there was a real feeling of encountering something strange and new. It made for a really fun session, and no one brought up any philosophical complaints.

While fun is the most important thing, I wonder:
1. Do you actually speak Icelandic?
2. If not, what exactly did you do? Use Babelfish or some similarly useless translator? Ask people for help? how did this sound 'authentic'?

[Palanan]

You seem to be assuming that I'd be automatically incompetent with the language.

Given that assumption, not sure this is really worth pursuing. It worked in my campaign at my gaming table, period.

[BWR]

You seem to be assuming that I'd be automatically incompetent with the language.

Given that assumption, not sure this is really worth pursuing. It worked in my campaign at my gaming table, period.

Which is why I asked if you actually spoke it. Most people I've come across don't actually speak many, if any of the languages they suggest as equivalents for fantasy languages.

[Palanan]

I studied Icelandic in preparation for a trip that never materialized.

I've also studied Old English, and spoke it well enough to satisfy the crusty old barve who taught the course.