Character Literacy

[HappyDaze]

I have played in many games other than D&D where universal literacy was not the norm. I am looking at a way to do that in a D&D game, and I'm considering the following:

Characters that have Proficiency in one (or more) of Arcana, History, Nature, or Religion are literate. They can read and write in any language they know.

I realize it's just a ribbon, but I like that it might make the "knowledge skills" just a bit more attractive.

Has anyone else tried something like this? How did you do it? How did it work out?

[Particle_Man]

Technically I am doing that now. My dm let me play a skeleton and they cannot read. Shocked one of my fellow players! :smallbiggrin:

But a 13th warrior campaign where only one pc in the party can read would be cool. Wizards would be seen as even more special than usual!

[BarneyBent]

I’ve done it based on background. A character class that spent time studying at a college, monastery or temple (Wizards, Monks, most Clerics, most Bards, some Paladins) will be able to read. Other backgrounds (like a high ranking soldier that achieved Officer status, Acolytes, Nobles, etc) will he able to read. Others might not to to the functional background but otherwise be covered (a Rogue might be taken in by the local Thieves guild and taught to read there, etc).

Adventurers tend to be exceptional, and players want to have fun without worrying about minor details, so as long as the general background has room for a justifiable opportunity to learn to read, it’s fine by me. But a Barbarian with 8 INT that just stepped off the Reghed glacier? You’ll have to give me a very good reason.

[Laserlight]

What I actually do is let my players decide. They're pretty good about it, and it has led to a few hilarious moments like the illiterate soldier being the one sent to search an noble's office for clues.

If I wanted to make a rule, I'd say clerics, bards, wizards, INT-casting warlocks, and some backgrounds such as sage.

[Greywander]

What you could do is treat literacy as it's own separate proficiency, on par with languages and tool proficiencies. Each race or background by default gives literacy, but you could swap it out for another language or tool. And yes, the irony of giving up the ability to read and write in order to speak an additional language is not lost on me, but it's not as strange as you may think.

An illiterate character would be able to learn to read and write using the same rules as learning a new language or tool proficiency. I prefer the rules from XGtE rather than the PHB, as it takes much less downtime but costs the same amount of gold (also, high INT makes it faster/less expensive). There's not really any rules on one PC teaching another PC, but I assume this would merely exchange the gold cost for downtime for both PCs, rather than just the one learning. The teaching PC could also decide to ask for payment.

One last thing I should mention is that literacy should probably apply universally to all languages you know. You do not learn to read and write for each individual language; once you can read, you can read in any language you know. Now, you might have to learn the specific script or writing system for a language (e.g. despite being literate, I can't read Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, etc. scripts, only Latin script), but one could assume that learning a language also includes learning the script for that language (e.g. I can read Spanish, even though I don't speak Spanish, because it's written in Latin script. I don't understand much of what I read, though IRL since I speak French I can muddle through understanding some Spanish). It might be useful for a literate character to learn several languages that each use a different script, so that they can at least recognize (and read without understanding, if necessary) a wider amount of writing.

Edit: As an addendum, it might be interesting to run "Common" as a lingua franca for much of the world. Generally only educated people would be able to speak Common then, which would include most merchants. Lots of villages might not even have one person who speaks Common, instead speaking whatever the local dialect is. Imagine a medieval Europe where most educated people speak Latin, but most commoners speak French, Spanish, Italian, etc., which are different enough that communication via Latin is very difficult.

This does require some worldbuilding on the part of the DM (or players?) to define the different regions of the world and what the local dialects are. Other languages, like Elvish and Dwarvish, might work similarly, being used more as a lingua franca for those races, with specific regions having their own dialects.

If you do this, I'd give each player an extra language, allowing them to pick up one local dialect in addition to Common + their racial language.

[Lunali]

I don't think tying them to the knowledge skills is a particularly good method. If you're going to have some characters be illiterate, I don't see any reason it wouldn't be the druid that has never been to the city or the sorcerer that intuitively understands magic. I'd suggest either just letting players decide for themselves, or give everyone one additional tool proficiency that they can use for literacy instead.

If you want to make knowledge skills more useful, use them to let the characters know (or not know) about their enemies.

[Amechra]

I'd personally make Spoken and Written [Blank] separate languages. If anything lists a language in the rules, it's the Spoken variant. The one exception would be Wizards, who I'd give Written Draconic (or whatever language you use as the "magic" language in your setting) as a bonus language at 1st level (so they can read their damn spellbooks).

If I felt really frisky, I'd also keep track of where you picked up a language. If you got it from your race or your class, it's a native language (or one that you can speak well enough that no-one can tell the difference). If you got it from your background, you learned it through schooling, so your delivery is somewhat stilted and formal. If I did this, I'd probably lump Common into the latter category, regardless of where you pick it up. You might get advantage for talking to someone in their native language without magical aid, or disadvantage if you're using your slangy Elvish in the royal court.

[B]EDIT: Note that in my above post you don't actually need to speak a language to be literate in it, and vice versa. That's intentional.

For Sages and the like, it could be interesting to group your languages into families, and let people buy semi-literacy in a language family. Semi-literacy meaning that you can read it if you have a dictionary or other aid on hand.

[Greywander]

I'd personally make Spoken [Blank] and Written [Blank] separate languages.
I disagree. Learning to read is hard, very hard. It's hard for us to understand today since almost everyone is literate and learned as a child. Try teaching an adult to read who has no idea how. But, once you learn to read, you know how to read. Period. It's not a separate skill for each language. I don't have to learn how to read the Cyrillic alphabet; I already know how to read, so all I need to do is learn the alphabet itself, which is much easier. Similarly, I can already read Spanish, despite not being able to speak it. I never learned to read Spanish, but it's the same writing system that English uses.

I could see an argument for making each kind of script a separate skill. This isn't the same as making it separate for each language, since many languages share a script.

However, I'd do it the way I said in my post above: have a literacy skill on par with languages and tools. If you're proficient in literacy, then you can read any script associated with a language you can speak. This can allow you to read, but not understand, writing in a script you know but a language you don't know. It's very unlikely that someone who is literate would learn to speak a language without also learning the writing system associated with that language.

[Amechra]

I disagree. Learning to read is hard, very hard. It's hard for us to understand today since almost everyone is literate and learned as a child. Try teaching an adult to read who has no idea how. But, once you learn to read, you know how to read. Period. It's not a separate skill for each language. I don't have to learn how to read the Cyrillic alphabet; I already know how to read, so all I need to do is learn the alphabet itself, which is much easier. Similarly, I can already read Spanish, despite not being able to speak it. I never learned to read Spanish, but it's the same writing system that English uses.

I could see an argument for making each kind of script a separate skill. This isn't the same as making it separate for each language, since many languages share a script.

However, I'd do it the way I said in my post above: have a literacy skill on par with languages and tools. If you're proficient in literacy, then you can read any script associated with a language you can speak. This can allow you to read, but not understand, writing in a script you know but a language you don't know. It's very unlikely that someone who is literate would learn to speak a language without also learning the writing system associated with that language.

I disagree with your assertion that you can read any language that you speak (assuming familiarity with the script). Take English for example - we map 44 different phonemes to 26 characters in a slapdash manner that makes it impossible to know how to spell a word by just hearing it (and vice versa).. Spanish, on the other hand, maps its phonemes to the Latin symbols with almost a 1-to-1 correspondence.

More to the point, I set up the rules the way I did because you should be able to make a Sage that's literate in a language that they can't speak (like dead languages). Hell, we're in fantasy territory - it's not unreasonable to come up with a language that humans can learn how to read without physically being capable to become fully proficient in the "verbal" form (maybe Draconic has "phonemic" wing positioning).

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But yeah, literacy as a tool proficiency makes sense if you aren't going crazy with it.

[Greywander]

I disagree with your assertion that you can read any language that you speak (assuming familiarity with the script). Take English for example - we map 44 different phonemes to 26 characters in a slapdash manner that makes it impossible to know how to spell a word by just hearing it (and vice versa).. Spanish, on the other hand, maps its phonemes to the Latin symbols with almost a 1-to-1 correspondence.
Sure, it's not quite as simple as knowing one language with the same script. I can read Spanish, but not perfectly. In addition to not understanding what I'm reading, I'll probably mangle the pronunciation if I try to read it out loud. But there is still a certain level of comprehension that just isn't going to exist if I'm trying to read, say, Chinese. I can recognize when a particular word is repeated multiple times, or variations of the same word, whereas with Chinese I might not be able to tell for sure if it's the same symbol, or if that symbol even means the same thing or is pronounced the same way when in a different context.

Again, this is something that could be paired up with knowing the language. If you don't know the language, but know another language with the same script, you'll have some difficulty with pronunciation, but will otherwise be able to recognize words, even if you don't know what they mean. You can still "read" it. But once you learn the language, you also learn how to properly read and write that language, assuming you were already literate.


More to the point, I set up the rules the way I did because you should be able to make a Sage that's literate in a language that they can't speak (like dead languages).
Are you implying that people in real life who still learn dead languages, like Latin, are incapable of speaking them? A language being dead has no impact on whether a person can speak it or not, it just means it isn't spoken natively and thus is no longer undergoing linguistic evolution. If you learn to read and write Latin, you're fully capable of speaking it, albeit if you haven't practiced you might not be fully fluent.


Hell, we're in fantasy territory - it's not unreasonable to come up with a language that humans can learn how to read without physically being capable to become fully proficient in the "verbal" form (maybe Draconic has "phonemic" wing positioning).
Kind of like how certain creature stat blocks include things like "understands [language], but cannot speak it"? Even if they're incapable of "speaking" the language, they should still be able to understand it (assuming it doesn't require senses the character doesn't have, like telepathy), and can read and write it. A dialect of draconic, for example, that used wings as a form of sign language would still be fully comprehensible to a human, even if they aren't physically capable of performing those signs themselves. This would be a specific feature for a specific language, not a general rule for all languages, and all it requires is to specify how the language is "spoken" and/or what types of creatures are capable of "speaking" or "hearing" this speech.

Heck, you could do this with writing, too. Imagine a color-based script that included wavelengths of light that aren't visible to the human eye.

But unless otherwise noted, it is assumed that all creatures can speak and understand all languages, if they know them, unless otherwise specified. Even animals can be awakened with magic and learn to speak. If your language works differently, you have to specifically note what those restrictions are, e.g. "only creatures with wings can form the signs for this language".


But yeah, literacy as a tool proficiency makes sense if you aren't going crazy with it.
If the spoken and written forms of a language are so vastly different from what is normal, to the point that one would expect it to be common for either (a) a literate person to be able to speak, but not read or write the language, or (b) for someone to be able to read and write the language, but not speak or understand it when spoken, then it might make sense to split the spoken and written forms into two separate languages.

For example, I could see doing this to Chinese. Have one written Chinese language, then several dialects of spoken Chinese that each count as a separate language. This is pretty much how written Chinese worked historically, too; China was so big that it wasn't uncommon for government officials in different regions to speak different dialects that were incomprehensible to one another, but they all used the same written language and could understand each other just fine through writing. Given the difficulty of learning Chinese for foreigners, this might make sense, too. It's probably easier for me to learn Russian or Hebrew than Chinese, even though in all cases I have to learn a new writing system.

For example, you could do this with Primordial. Primordial could have one written form, but there are four spoken dialects, one for each element. The spoken forms are about as similar as the Romance languages, so like speaking French to someone who only speaks Italian. There's a bit of mutual intelligibility, but you'll have trouble getting anything more than simple ideas across. Moreover, you could have a scholar who learned to read and write primordial, and can kind of speak it, but their pronunciation doesn't match with any of the existing dialects, so it's like they're always speaking the wrong dialect.

But Primordial is written with dwarvish script, so you could "read" it without understanding it if you already knew how to read a dwarvish script language. To be able to read it properly requires you to invest in the language, and to be able to speak it properly (one dialect, at least) requires an additional language. If I could speak/read Chinese, I'd probably recognize Japanese Kanji and Korean Hanja, but I couldn't be sure if they were pronounced the same or had the same meaning. So I could "read" Kanji and Hanja, and reproduce those symbols to show someone who did speak that language.

Chinese is an interesting example, though, as it's not a phonetic script. Each symbol has a certain meaning, which I believe is mostly retained, even in other languages like Japanese and Korean, while the pronunciation may be very different (even if it's related to the original pronunciation, like how "Han" became "Kan" in Japanese). For things like Romance languages, it's the other way around; the pronunciation is similar, but the meaning might be very different, even if it's related.

Edit: I guess here's a sort of example of the point I'm trying to make. Imagine you come across writing that you don't know what it means. You want to copy it onto some paper or into a book so you can show it to someone else who might be able to decipher it. If the script is one you're already familiar with, you shouldn't have much trouble writing it down, even without understanding it. But if it's in a script you don't know, then you can't be sure what parts of the symbols are actually important. For example, do you need to copy the serifs, or are those meaningless decorations? Are "g" and "q" different letters, or are they same letter but with a different flourish?

So, for example, if I came across some Spanish writing, I could copy it down just fine and take it to someone else to read it. But if I encountered Chinese or Arabic, I would inevitably make mistakes while copying it down.

[Maelynn]

Arcana and Religion are good sources for literacy.

I wouldn't include Nature. Most of that knowledge will not come from books, but from hands-on experience or tales. This could partly be argued for History as well, since a lot of historical events are in the form of tales or songs, but many great deeds are written down as well so it's debatable.

I think BarneyBent's idea is a good one - someone with a background like Acolyte, Noble, or Sage would most definitely be literate. Even Charlatan with their forgery skills could be argued, although one could say that being able to perfectly reproduce something doesn't mean you can read what it says. The others are situational and depend on what position the character held (like a Soldier only if they were a high rank and not a grunt).

And I would also look into what Amechra said - maybe not entirely separate written vs spoken, but let the characters come up with an argument why they'd be able to write language x.

What might also be an interesting addition, is to distinguish between speaking fluently and 'I can order 2 beers and a sandwich and that's about it' level. I got this idea from what the Human description says about languages known - a few choice Orc swear words, some Dwarvish if they have the Soldier background, etc. Then you could sometimes ask for an Int check to see if they can communicate with a Dwarf, or that they don't meet the DC and accidentally call their mother something they didn't want to hear.

[Amechra]

Are you implying that people in real life who still learn dead languages, like Latin, are incapable of speaking them? A language being dead has no impact on whether a person can speak it or not, it just means it isn't spoken natively and thus is no longer undergoing linguistic evolution. If you learn to read and write Latin, you're fully capable of speaking it, albeit if you haven't practiced you might not be fully fluent.

Funnily enough, I can read¹ Latin but I can't speak² it. Thanks for telling me that I can, though. :smalltongue:

I get the sense that we're talking past each-other at this point, plus I think we have different definitions of what it means to "read" or "speak" a language. So I'm going to stop now before I make a fool of myself defending my crummy abstraction of something really complex.

¹ I know enough vocabulary and grammar that I can make a reasonable read of what a sentence means, and I can use an aid like a dictionary to look up words and grammatical forms that I'm not personally familiar with. I can also produce intelligible written Latin.
² I can't parse the sounds and grammar of Latin quickly enough to be able to hold any kind of conversation. If you handed me a piece of text, I could sound out the words, but it wouldn't aid my comprehension or really be intelligible to a theoretical native speaker.

[PhantomSoul]

Sure, it's not quite as simple as knowing one language with the same script. I can read Spanish, but not perfectly. In addition to not understanding what I'm reading, I'll probably mangle the pronunciation if I try to read it out loud. But there is still a certain level of comprehension that just isn't going to exist if I'm trying to read, say, Chinese. I can recognize when a particular word is repeated multiple times, or variations of the same word, whereas with Chinese I might not be able to tell for sure if it's the same symbol, or if that symbol even means the same thing or is pronounced the same way when in a different context.

Again, this is something that could be paired up with knowing the language. If you don't know the language, but know another language with the same script, you'll have some difficulty with pronunciation, but will otherwise be able to recognize words, even if you don't know what they mean. You can still "read" it. But once you learn the language, you also learn how to properly read and write that language, assuming you were already literate.


It seems like you're confusing being able to more easily interpret elements of the script (e.g. interpret spacing, recognise which differences in character shapes are important and which aren't) and having cognates or borrowed words (e.g. recognising some words and their [probable] meaning in Spanish) with actually knowing a language. That's a completely different thing. And having a "visual lexicon" from reading tells you Fr. eaux is 'water', but being able to read (parse the meaning from writing) wouldn't help you when you ran into an actual speaker saying [o] because you don't necessarily have a "sound lexicon". You could acquire both and/or learn a mapping (with the ease in part based on the language -- your Spanish case, relatively easy; Mandarin or French or English, degrees of being more difficult), but that's not because reading and writing can be equated. And if you don't know what a word means, you're not meaningfully reading. At best you're just producing the sounds without any understanding, which is more a transliteration (changing encoding schemes). And "assuming you were already literate" is doing a lot of work to either make the last bit circular (you're literate so you're literate) or not true (literate in one language -- or one script of one language -- doesn't mean you are literate in all languages you speak, nor does being capable-in-speech result from being capable-in-reading.

The current state of a large part of the world makes it easy to believe otherwise despite having to teach people to read and write each language they know and people being literate without being fluent (common -- take a look at people who "learned languages" in school), but capable-of-effectively-interpreting-writing, capable-of-effectively-interpreting-speech, capable-of-producing-fluent-speech and capable-of-effectively-writing are different things. They're just also correlated.

[Greywander]

Funnily enough, I can read¹ Latin but I can't speak² it. Thanks for telling me that I can, though. :smalltongue:

I get the sense that we're talking past each-other at this point, plus I think we have different definitions of what it means to "read" or "speak" a language. So I'm going to stop now before I make a fool of myself defending my crummy abstraction of something really complex.

¹ I know enough vocabulary and grammar that I can make a reasonable read of what a sentence means, and I can use an aid like a dictionary to look up words and grammatical forms that I'm not personally familiar with. I can also produce intelligible written Latin.
² I can't parse the sounds and grammar of Latin quickly enough to be able to hold any kind of conversation. If you handed me a piece of text, I could sound out the words, but it wouldn't aid my comprehension or really be intelligible to a theoretical native speaker.
Are you maybe looking for something like partial proficiency? 5e uses a binary approach to proficiencies to make things easier to handle; either you know it, or you do not. If I spent enough downtime in-game to learn a language, I'd expect to not need to consult a dictionary, and to be able to deal with both spoken and written forms. Languages already work this way, my only proposed tweak was for reading/writing to also require a separate literacy proficiency. You could do partial proficiency, but I feel like that's getting into territory that isn't well suited to 5e.

If you wanted to, though, I'd probably just give disadvantage on ability checks for using that language.


It seems like you're confusing being able to more easily interpret elements of the script (e.g. interpret spacing, recognise which differences in character shapes are important and which aren't)
Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say you can "read" a written language if it's in a script you're familiar with. You know the script well enough to copy it down, and might be able to read it out loud, albeit with bad pronunciation. Reading out loud would only work, though, with scripts that were phonetic (e.g. Latin script, but not Chinese script), but this is a property of the script, not the language. It's also reasonable to assume that a script is phonetic unless it says otherwise.


and having cognates or borrowed words (e.g. recognising some words and their [probable] meaning in Spanish)
Generally, I'd only do this with dialects of the same language, such as the different dialects of Primordial. Otherwise, I assume that languages are different enough that it's unlikely for there to be cognates with a language you already know.


with actually knowing a language. That's a completely different thing. And having a "visual lexicon" from reading tells you Fr. eaux is 'water', but being able to read (parse the meaning from writing) wouldn't help you when you ran into an actual speaker saying [o] because you don't necessarily have a "sound lexicon".
It's true that languages are highly complex things, I just feel like modeling that complexity isn't a good fit for D&D 5e. Something like GURPS? Sure, go nuts. But in 5e, I don't see a problem with assuming someone who has learned a language spent the time to learn both spoken and written forms.


And "assuming you were already literate" is doing a lot of work to either make the last bit circular (you're literate so you're literate) or not true (literate in one language -- or one script of one language -- doesn't mean you are literate in all languages you speak, nor does being capable-in-speech result from being capable-in-reading.
You're literate if you have proficiency with literacy. You have to spend a language/tool proficiency to get it. The default rules already give you the ability to read and write a language for free when you learn the language, so my only tweak was adding literacy proficiency.


I feel like people are making this far more complicated than it needs to be. Currently, all characters are literate and all characters can read and write all the languages they can speak. As per the OP, all I'm looking into is a small tweak that allows a character to be illiterate by making literacy a separate language/tool proficiency. I've discussed a few other linguistic nuances that could also be incorporated, but this is the important part of the discussion, as it relates to the thread. If you get proficiency with literacy, then you're exactly like the vanilla rules say. If you don't, then you can't read or write any language, but can still speak and understand languages you know. Simple as that.

If you need something more complicated, consider if it could be modeled as fluff instead of crunch, or if you can houserule something with your DM.

[PhantomSoul]

Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say you can "read" a written language if it's in a script you're familiar with. You know the script well enough to copy it down, and might be able to read it out loud, albeit with bad pronunciation. Reading out loud would only work, though, with scripts that were phonetic (e.g. Latin script, but not Chinese script), but this is a property of the script, not the language. It's also reasonable to assume that a script is phonetic unless it says otherwise.

Generally, I'd only do this with dialects of the same language, such as the different dialects of Primordial. Otherwise, I assume that languages are different enough that it's unlikely for there to be cognates with a language you already know.


Assuming a script is transparently phonetic in a meaningful way is... a big assumption. There's a massive range of different writing systems, and exactly one of them is alphabetic. There are others that map to pronunciation pretty well too... but even those don't actually necessarily map to pronunciation (grapheme->phoneme or phoneme->grapheme) very well. And most of reading and writing doesn't even use that mapping anyway once you're fluent (in a conventionalised system); you mostly parse larger visual chunks, especially since the mapping is unlikely to be that direct. And mapping that to meaning? Impossible unless you speak the language or it's a cognate... and that's before taking into account that (especially highly conventionalised) writing isn't like normal everyday speech.

Sure, there are likely to be reasonable mappings if you already know it's alphabetic... but figuring out it was alphabetic was already a start. And knowing a script doesn't really mean much when you switch language for actually understanding the content (in other words, the only useful interpretation I here see for "reading" and "writing" such that you and someone fluent in the language understand each other). There's a lot of things written in the "latin script". That's not helping you read any of them -- not even doing that well in seemingly closely related languages.

And that's just going to get worse if you don't make the assumption that the writing is even stably conventionalised. Depending on the state of things, writing will be inconsistent within and across speakers, and the more things are consistent the more likely it's a bit like learning a completely different language or dialect.

Writing for yourself to later interpret is one thing, but that's not useful for interacting with or interpreting others through writing.

From the last bit copied, though, it seems in the end neither the script nor the language is sufficient in itself... (seemingly contra the first copied paragraph) and maybe the conclusion is that we should expect people to need to be independently fluent and literate. (In other words, we seem to fully agree; but the book's assumption that reading/writing and speaking are closely tied is probably a weird one in most settings, and is just based on being intuitive to the people likely to be playing the game.)

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EDIT, to add: And I quite agree with my idealised system not assuming literacy and spoken fluency go together. Some sources would give you both; some sources wouldn't. I think swapping literacy for something else is an interesting option for the players, and might end up encouraging a new feel. I could even see equating literacy with a tool proficiency to be an intuitively nice equivalence; something you have to explicitly learn and that isn't usually the result of simply being around the thing (whereas kids will pick up spoken language quite differently). Maybe for that mechanic you generalise by script (each script is a tool, perhaps, and you ignore reality to make it so having the tool means knowing to read in your languages that use that script [when written in that script]), not because it's that realistic, but because it's close enough for the idea while still giving some verisimilitude and a nice change to the feel of the world (e.g. not expending NPCs can magically all read).

It might also be useful to highlight that I'm making a slight contrast (inconsistently, mainly in my mind) between a writing system (the whole set of rules and transformations to have a written version of a word and to get to or from a mentally stored version of a word, ignoring that even the idea of a "word" is a very broad and fuzzy one) and a script. English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Swedish and Croatian share a script (ish; they have mostly the same written symbols even if not an identical set), a type of writing system (there's some consistency in what types of things letters or groups of letters can mean), but not a writing system (they map those written symbols to the things in the actual language differently). Where all of those terms are fuzzy and get used in a ton of different ways. A lot of things have to be shared before writing in another language can be meaninfully read (as in information can really be understood), but obviously the system would aim to simplify, well, most of that. :P

[Greywander]

Assuming a script is transparently phonetic in a meaningful way is... a big assumption.
This is a game full of assumptions. Practically the entire game is built off of "here's something generic, then we're going to tweak it to make something specific". There are general rules that tell you what you can or can't do and how things work, and then there are more specific rules that overwrite those general rules in specific cases. For example, it is assumed that I can breathe in air unless I have a trait that says otherwise, likewise it is assumed I can't breathe in water, again unless I have a trait that says otherwise.

A big portion of the rules is laying out what our basic assumptions are, followed by defining some exceptions to those assumptions. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that a script is phonetic unless you specifically say it isn't. D&D is based on medieval European fantasy, and most European languages are phonetic, as are many languages in regions surrounding Europe (the Middle East, for example). In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find that most languages across the entire world had a phonetic writing system, if they had one at all.


And mapping that to meaning? Impossible unless you speak the language or it's a cognate... and that's before taking into account that (especially highly conventionalised) writing isn't like normal everyday speech.
It took me a little while to realize that you were talking about how speaking and reading should be separate proficiencies. I thought you were saying that you shouldn't be able to read a language unless you can speak it, which is more or less what I've been saying.


Sure, there are likely to be reasonable mappings if you already know it's alphabetic... but figuring out it was alphabetic was already a start.
This is fair if you don't already speak a language that uses that script. Since I speak English, I can be reasonably confident that Spanish uses an alphabetic script. If I speak Dwarvish, I can be reasonably confident that Gnomish or Giant uses the same system (e.g. alphabetic, abjad, etc., whatever Dwarvish is), even if I don't speak those languages. If I encounter a script I'm not familiar with, then all bets are off and I'm basically illiterate with regard to that script.


And knowing a script doesn't really mean much when you switch language for actually understanding the content (in other words, the only useful interpretation I here see for "reading" and "writing" such that you and someone fluent in the language understand each other). There's a lot of things written in the "latin script". That's not helping you read any of them -- not even doing that well in seemingly closely related languages.
No, there probably won't be any comprehension, but I should be able to copy it down without any difficulty, and if it is written in a phonetic system I should be able to read it out loud, albeit with a somewhat mangled pronunciation.


And that's just going to get worse if you don't make the assumption that the writing is even stably conventionalised. Depending on the state of things, writing will be inconsistent within and across speakers, and the more things are consistent the more likely it's a bit like learning a completely different language or dialect.
Just a reminder that we're talking about a game where almost everyone speaks Common. I think we can assume that language is stable and consistent from region to region, and that exceptions will be just that; exceptions, rather than the general rule.


(In other words, we seem to fully agree; but the book's assumption that reading/writing and speaking are closely tied is probably a weird one in most settings, and is just based on being intuitive to the people likely to be playing the game.)
Especially in a medieval fantasy world. Literacy was not common in medieval Europe, so it's strange that everyone and their mom is able to read in D&D. I'm fine with separating out a general literacy skill, and assuming that if you have literacy proficiency, then you are literate in any language you know. It sounds like you want to take it a step further.


Maybe for that mechanic you generalise by script (each script is a tool, perhaps, and you ignore reality to make it so having the tool means knowing to read in your languages that use that script [when written in that script]), not because it's that realistic, but because it's close enough for the idea while still giving some verisimilitude and a nice change to the feel of the world (e.g. not expending NPCs can magically all read).
So instead of one literacy skill for all languages (with knowledge of a script being linked to knowing a language that uses it) there is one skill for each individual script.

If you wanted to go beyond a single literacy proficiency, this would probably be the way to do it. I could argue that simply learning to read and write in the first place is much more difficult than learning a new writing system after you've already learned how to read, but I don't think that distinction is useful enough to model it in-game.

My main counterargument to this would be that learning a new writing system is generally a lot easier than learning an entire language. For example, Hangul is so easy, you can literally learn it in minutes (retention is a different matter, and will require repeated drilling). I've picked up most of the Greek alphabet just from studying it as a kid. I could probably sit down and learn Cyrillic over a week, if I really wanted to. Most of the complexity of a writing system comes from the peculiarities of the language being written, not the script itself. This is why I think it might be more reasonably to tie knowledge of a script to knowing any language that uses that script. Of course, this means you're extremely limited when interpreting writing in a language you don't speak, even if the script is familiar.

Now, exceptions might exist. As previously mentioned, I think written Chinese is complex enough to count as a separate language from spoken Chinese (which itself might include several dialects). Something like Japanese might also warrant a separate language for the writing system, as it is quite complex.


So, there's a couple of ways we could go about this.

My proposed way has one literacy skill that is treated like a language or tool proficiency (e.g. you can pick it up with either the Skilled or Linguist feats). If you are illiterate, then you can't distinguish between actual writing and random or decorative symbols. If you are literate, then you can automatically read and write in any language you can speak, and you gain the knowledge of any script for languages you know.

If you encounter writing in a script you're familiar with but in a language you don't know, you can easily distinguish that it is, in fact, writing, and can easily copy it down. You can also read it out loud, but this might require an Intelligence check to pronounce correctly.

If you encounter writing in a script you're not familiar with, you count as illiterate. E.g. you can't even tell if it's proper writing or just decorative symbols or random patterns. Alternatively, I can recognize that it is writing, but can't copy it down (correctly) or read it aloud. Context might matter here; writing in a book is pretty obviously writing, but a symbol written on a door frame might be decorative.

In your system, it sounds like there's a separate skill for each script. Again, we can treat it like either a tool or language. Perhaps the only difference I'd do compared to the above is that you don't need an Intelligence check to read a script aloud that you're familiar with, even if you don't speak the language.

Does that sound about right? I think either of these would probably work fine. Each PC would get an extra language/tool which could be spent on literacy (in general, or with a specific script), or it could be used to learn an extra language or tool instead. Alternatively, tie starting language/tool proficiencies to your INT score somehow, as a better educated person is more likely to both speak and and be able to read and write in multiple languages.

[Amechra]

Just dropping back in to add weird fact: the modern assumption that you can write any language you can read is thanks to our education system. Historically, it was entirely possible to learn how to read without being able to write (and vice-versa).

Man, this language thing is complicated. It's amazing that we put up with it (and that wee little babbies pick it up almost automatically).

---

I think the best system (if you were going whole hog) would be dependent on what languages you had in your game, what language families you had, how they were related...

Screw it, just go full conlang on the thing. Bonus points if you insist on running the game in a language you invented.

[SLOTHRPG95]

Just dropping back in to add weird fact: the modern assumption that you can write any language you can read is thanks to our education system. Historically, it was entirely possible to learn how to read without being able to write (and vice-versa).


I know about the former, but how would you manage the latter? The closest I can think of is phonetic/phonemic transcription. With practice, one can learn to transcribe what is being said without understanding it. But then it could be argued that the scribe could read it, they just wouldn't understand what they were saying when they were reading back their transcription.



I think the best system (if you were going whole hog) would be dependent on what languages you had in your game, what language families you had, how they were related...

Screw it, just go full conlang on the thing. Bonus points if you insist on running the game in a language you invented.

I hope that the conlang part preceding the blue was also meant as sarcasm. Don't get me wrong, conlangs are cool, but you really, really have to have the right player group to go down that rabbit hole. With that said, I agree that the system you use should be dependent on the languages that you use in your game, and the relations between said languages. Perhaps in your campaign, "Common" is really a term applied to a dialect continuum, and speakers from further away places might not really be able to understand each other beyond some basic cognates. The various types of Dwarves might all speak related languages using the same script, but perhaps asymmetric intelligibility is a big factor here. Hill Dwarves and Deep Dwarves have no problem understanding Mountain Dwarves, and Mountain Dwarves mostly understand Hill Dwarves, but have troubles understanding Deep Dwarves. And Hill Dwarves pretty much can't understand Deep Dwarves at all. It's still easier to learn a related language, but perhaps there's also some language isolates, so that no matter what languages you know, you're all equally struggling when trying to pick up Gnoll. It's not part of the Common dialect continuum that surrounds it, nor is it part of the nearby Dwarven or Elven language families, it's just Gnoll. Adding different scripts just makes things even more complicated, but with the right group this can lead to an even more immersive campaign.

Or maybe this only works if most of your friends are in/have studied linguistics.

[Amechra]

I mean, I don't expect you to inflict your conlangs (plural) on the poor players. But you might as well figure out how your languages relate, what kind of grammars they have, how much shared vocabulary there is (and why)...

As for the split between reading and writing... in a culture where Noble X can pay Scribe Y to write down their letters for them, that Noble might never develop the muscle memory required for fluid writing. It's like how a businessman back in the early 20th century might not know how to properly use a typewriter (that's for secretaries, don'tcha know).

Heck, in a culture with a bunch of Bards, I could see the nobility cultivating inarticulateness as a sign of status - after all, you're showing off that you can afford to hire someone to speak for you. Hopefully they don't insist on rhyming. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp5krDoflLI) (Not my original idea. (http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000883.html))

[jjordan]

I like mucking about with languages, including conlangs, but it's mostly non-systematic lore. Players can decide their literacy levels or other quirks. I had a half-orc that was raised by humans and his education was such that he spoke elvish better than he spoke orcish. Which was a nice handle that could be used (or not) in later gaming. Skills acquired after character generation I might feel free to tack conditions on to. If the character spent the voyage learning a variant language with a different alphabet by speaking with the sailors then I might rule that they've acquired a rudimentary ability to speak the language but not read it.

And since I like mucking about with languages I usually have language family trees and scripts and so on. Which mean very little but are nice bits of flavor to drop into the game. I've got a setting where Elves speak a common language. But they are positively addicted to dropping in cultural references, quotes, and allusions to past authors. This means that you can read and speak elvish and still not understand what's really being said because you lack the decades of cultural experience required to understand the allusions and how they are used and how they relate to the current state of affairs in the elvish lands. And I call that High Elvish. Then I've got straight elvish, devoid of all the references and allusions, which is spoken by non-elvish speakers, most notably halflings, and is referred to as Low Elvish. Unless you're in Bele'Ath which is an elvish client-state run by humans and half-elves who speak a variety of elvish that contains a lot of human loan words from the language they used to speak. This is referred to by the inhabitants as Low Elvish and pure elvish is referred to as High Elvish. Many of the sylvan creatures speak dialects of Low Elvish. And instead of having a pidgin or creole or pan-polity 'common' the orcish language is used as the common means of communication because its simplicity makes it easy to learn. Of course, no proper elf would ever speak orcish so they insist on using Low Elvish or having someone else speak for them. Which is useful because all of the cursing in orcish refers to elves. Of course orcish doesn't have a huge vocabulary so it picks up local words and forms regional variants, even more so when the humans in the area decide to just go ahead and use orcish instead of the local language. And there are lots of local languages.

Fun to imagine. Cool color for the setting. But not really important enough to codify in the system.

[SLOTHRPG95]

I mean, I don't expect you to inflict your conlangs (plural) on the poor players. But you might as well figure out how your languages relate, what kind of grammars they have, how much shared vocabulary there is (and why)...


Okay, that's more reassuring. And yes, if you're going to the effort of coming up with your own languages for your campaign, I agree that the least you can do is figure out how they relate, and what distinct properties they have. I'm running a campaign setting with exactly one tonal language (at least among humanoids), which really sets it apart from the others in terms of ease of learning. But a large part of its lexicon derives from an adjacent language, whose speakers ruled over those lands for several hundred years, and with whom economic ties still run deep. So I might make it easier to learn language A in written form if one already knows language B, but still difficult to learn how to speak since they'd be missing the tense and mood indicated by the tones.



As for the split between reading and writing... in a culture where Noble X can pay Scribe Y to write down their letters for them, that Noble might never develop the muscle memory required for fluid writing. It's like how a businessman back in the early 20th century might not know how to properly use a typewriter (that's for secretaries, don'tcha know).


When saying I understood the former but not the latter, I meant that I understood reading without writing perfectly well, but not the reverse. Upon re-reading your previous post, I see how this confusion was caused. I was using the former/latter to refer to the pairing found after "Historically" and ending with "(and vice-versa)." I realize that if the former/latter instead referred to the preceding sentence, and then that sentence sans parenthetical aside, it leads to the opposite meaning. Oops.

tl; dr What you wrote above makes perfect sense, and I never had a problem with that. But how do you fluently write a language without being able to read it (in any meaningful sense of the term fluently write)?

[Amechra]

When saying I understood the former but not the latter, I meant that I understood reading without writing perfectly well, but not the reverse. Upon re-reading your previous post, I see how this confusion was caused. I was using the former/latter to refer to the pairing found after "Historically" and ending with "(and vice-versa)." I realize that if the former/latter instead referred to the preceding sentence, and then that sentence sans parenthetical aside, it leads to the opposite meaning. Oops.

I think I might've been misremembering things myself - I knew Read/Write were separate skill sets, but I might've made up people who can write but can't read. Though that might make a cool setting detail for a setting - you have a class of people who are conditioned to produce the appropriate symbols when they hear certain sounds (maybe requiring a "scribe, write this down!"), even if they can't read or speak the language in question. What better way to keep secrets than have scribes that don't actually understand the secret message you dictated to them?

[PhantomSoul]

tl; dr What you wrote above makes perfect sense, and I never had a problem with that. But how do you fluently write a language without being able to read it (in any meaningful sense of the term fluently write)?

I could imagine something like that happening if

(a) [phonemic/phonetic writing system] The writing system has generally understood conventions, but isn't standardised, so there's a lot of ways you could write the same sound. At that point, you can have ways to transcribe what you want such that someone understands, but you might not be able to fluidly read what others write if they use more conventions that you're comfortable with or aware of, or could have trouble with ambiguities where the same string of symbols can have multiple interpretations. This can apply for an alphabet, but also works exceptionally well for systems like abugidas, syllabaries and abjads if there's also a change in pronunciations to account for leading to broader mismatches.

(b) [phonemic/phonetic writing system] This one basically amounts to in-speech differences: you don't speak the same dialect as the writing assumes (and the writing might essentially reflect a dialect no one speaks, like for English and French now), and so once again there's a mismatch between what you'll write and what you'll be able to interpret from reading, even if cases where you're able to interpret people speaking in the dialect expected in writing. (And for some inter-dialectal relationship, others could crucially still understand what you wrote.) This works well for the previously mentioned systems, but also very well for syllable-based and consonant-based logographs.

(c) [logographs/ideographs] You can use paraphrases and the like to compensate for a lot of symbols you don't know, but can't interpret symbols you don't know. In this case, you'd probably want to say that the person isn't "fluent" in writing, but in a system that's got a huge number of symbols (or somewhat infinite, for ideographs), that's not really an odd state of affairs.

(There was another that wasn't coming to mind, but basically writing-speech asymmetries are a great source, so maybe the norm/style for writing involves syntactic structures or morphological structures that you don't natively have, so you can communicate [others will understand your writing] but you'll be unable to interpret most people's writing.)

[SLOTHRPG95]

I could imagine something like that happening if

(a) [phonemic/phonetic writing system] The writing system has generally understood conventions, but isn't standardised, so there's a lot of ways you could write the same sound. At that point, you can have ways to transcribe what you want such that someone understands, but you might not be able to fluidly read what others write if they use more conventions that you're comfortable with or aware of, or could have trouble with ambiguities where the same string of symbols can have multiple interpretations. This can apply for an alphabet, but also works exceptionally well for systems like abugidas, syllabaries and abjads if there's also a change in pronunciations to account for leading to broader mismatches.

(b) [phonemic/phonetic writing system] This one basically amounts to in-speech differences: you don't speak the same dialect as the writing assumes (and the writing might essentially reflect a dialect no one speaks, like for English and French now), and so once again there's a mismatch between what you'll write and what you'll be able to interpret from reading, even if cases where you're able to interpret people speaking in the dialect expected in writing. (And for some inter-dialectal relationship, others could crucially still understand what you wrote.) This works well for the previously mentioned systems, but also very well for syllable-based and consonant-based logographs.

(c) [logographs/ideographs] You can use paraphrases and the like to compensate for a lot of symbols you don't know, but can't interpret symbols you don't know. In this case, you'd probably want to say that the person isn't "fluent" in writing, but in a system that's got a huge number of symbols (or somewhat infinite, for ideographs), that's not really an odd state of affairs.

(There was another that wasn't coming to mind, but basically writing-speech asymmetries are a great source, so maybe the norm/style for writing involves syntactic structures or morphological structures that you don't natively have, so you can communicate [others will understand your writing] but you'll be unable to interpret most people's writing.)

In the case of (a), I don't think I could consider the writer a non-fluent reader. If we may be allowed to apply terms from oral speech and aural comprehension, we just have a continuum of written lects. In such a case, we expect an amount of asymmetric intelligibility, but it doesn't mean the writer can't read their own lect fluently. This would be somewhat akin to claiming that a Swede doesn't understand fluent Swedish, because their speech can be (mostly) understood by a Norwegian, but they cannot themselves understand Norwegian. Returning to what you have written, just because you aren't familiar with some differing conventions doesn't render you non-fluent. You're still a fluent reader in the context of your local writing conventions.

Could you expand upon (b) a little more?

In the case of (c), I'd agree that the person is not "fluent" in reading, but argue that they also are not in writing. Having to rely heavily on paraphrasing when writing seems to be a lack of full fluency. Alternatively, this is a case that might call for a modified definition of fluency.

[PhantomSoul]

In the case of (a), I don't think I could consider the writer a non-fluent reader. If we may be allowed to apply terms from oral speech and aural comprehension, we just have a continuum of written lects. In such a case, we expect an amount of asymmetric intelligibility, but it doesn't mean the writer can't read their own lect fluently. This would be somewhat akin to claiming that a Swede doesn't understand fluent Swedish, because their speech can be (mostly) understood by a Norwegian, but they cannot themselves understand Norwegian. Returning to what you have written, just because you aren't familiar with some differing conventions doesn't render you non-fluent. You're still a fluent reader in the context of your local writing conventions.

Could you expand upon (b) a little more?

In the case of (c), I'd agree that the person is not "fluent" in reading, but argue that they also are not in writing. Having to rely heavily on paraphrasing when writing seems to be a lack of full fluency. Alternatively, this is a case that might call for a modified definition of fluency.

For me all of the cases are where it's effectively a problem of the written language having a different dialect (or being a different language), and it could be rendered to the point where an individual differs from everyone else relative to the norms for that language (they can transcribe, but whatever the written form normally is differs). It would require a subset relationship, where what the writer knows is a subset of the whole system, but still sufficient to effectively and fluidly transmit information (so basically, they have a subset of the full options, with the bits they don't know not being necessary additions in order to convey meaning, but instead providing alternatives).

For instance, for (a) and (b) at once, maybe they learned the full system as a kid and haven't used it, so they forget a lot of the symbols or possible correspondences with speech. In a system like Old or Middle French where there are fairly conventional associations but no strict norms, you have lots of ways to map the same pronunciation to spellings, which just confounds there being multiple pronunciations that could underlie those spells:

Modern verb, infinitive: Pouvoir 'be able'
Attested Middle French spellings: pöeir, poheir, pouheyr, pöoir, pouoir, püoir, pohoyr; pöer, pouer, pöair; pëoir; poioir; povoir; podir

In the present indicative:
1st person, sg.: (je) puis, puys, puiz, puix; pois; posc; peuc, peuch; puz, pus, puus; pos; peus
2nd person, sg.: (tu) pues, puez, peus, peux, peuz, pueus, poez; pois; puis; puz, pus; poz; puelz
3rd person, sg.: (il) puet, pued, peut, poet, peot; pot, pout, put, poth; puelt, peult; poit, poyt
1st person, pl.: (nous) pöons, pouons, poüns, pöums; pöon, pöun, pöom, pöum, püum; poduns; pöomes; pëons
2nd person, pl.: (vous) pöez, pöeiz, pouez, püez, pöés, poiez, poieiz, poielz, poieilz
3rd person, pl.: (ils) pueent, poeent, peuent; pöent, püent; poient, poyent; podent, pothent, puedent, poedent; puient, puyent; peuvent; puelent, peulent, peullent; pulent; point

Now, to be fair, I picked that one knowing it would be a bit trickier, but you even get it with seemingly "easy" cases, like for modern aime 'like.1sg': aim, eim, ain; aing, haing; am; ains; aime, ainme.

I'd agree it's basically that there's stuff between "fluent" and "absolutely illiterate" doing all of the actual work, but our hypothetical writer could write "aim" and be understood as meaning 'like.1sg' (minimum qualification for "able to write" to me since it also follows the norms available, admitting it's still a simplification), but then be flummoxed by "eim" (which is still established within the norms and here wouldn't be expected to be a dialect or pronunciation issue, just a mapping issue, which isn't the case for all of those forms). So they could reliably write (and be understood), but can't reliably understand writing.

For (b), it would be that the writing conventions for the whole language (with standardisation at this point) assume "haing", but maybe you learned before that norm, and maybe there's holdover from the language standardisation being recent (e.g. some recent changes in prescriptive French spelling, which took a long time to be taught and are accepted alongside the old spellings for a transition period). You'll write "aim" and likely be understood (maybe it even matches speech better and would still be an accepted spelling), but when you try reading "haing" you're just lost.

Paraphrasing is already needed in speech to circumvent cases where you don't know how to communicate a concept (even for native speakers), so it seems like paraphrasing is probably fine in writing too. Especially in a system where you have a massive number of symbols (and many with low frequency), and your language already lets you compound to make words, so "fly-boat-dock" is understood as airport without a problem and might even be normal to say, but "fly-boat-dock" can be written [fly symbol][boat symbol][dock symbol] or [airport symbol], and you simply don't know [airport symbol]; you can communicate without real problems, but when you try reading you might often hit issues from symbols being cemented without you knowing them. (It's essentially like the written dialect has two synonyms, when you only have one word that covers both; and maybe there's a nuance you don't know between the apparent synonyms.)

For a morphosyntactic case of a "dialect difference" between your speech-dialect and the writing-norm-dialect; e.g. maybe "go you to the well" is an accepted way to ask whether someone will go to the well in speech, but "go you to the well" in the written norms is telling someone to go to the well, and you know to write "do you go to the well" for the question and when reading forget that it's a command and not a question. Again, it's kind of like partial fluency in the written dialect, but sufficient to communicate without reliably being sufficient to interpret.

[SLOTHRPG95]

For me all of the cases are where it's effectively a problem of the written language having a different dialect (or being a different language), and it could be rendered to the point where an individual differs from everyone else relative to the norms for that language (they can transcribe, but whatever the written form normally is differs). It would require a subset relationship, where what the writer knows is a subset of the whole system, but still sufficient to effectively and fluidly transmit information (so basically, they have a subset of the full options, with the bits they don't know not being necessary additions in order to convey meaning, but instead providing alternatives).

For instance, for (a) and (b) at once, maybe they learned the full system as a kid and haven't used it, so they forget a lot of the symbols or possible correspondences with speech. In a system like Old or Middle French where there are fairly conventional associations but no strict norms, you have lots of ways to map the same pronunciation to spellings, which just confounds there being multiple pronunciations that could underlie those spells:

Modern verb, infinitive: Pouvoir 'be able'
Attested Middle French spellings: pöeir, poheir, pouheyr, pöoir, pouoir, püoir, pohoyr; pöer, pouer, pöair; pëoir; poioir; povoir; podir

In the present indicative:
1st person, sg.: (je) puis, puys, puiz, puix; pois; posc; peuc, peuch; puz, pus, puus; pos; peus
2nd person, sg.: (tu) pues, puez, peus, peux, peuz, pueus, poez; pois; puis; puz, pus; poz; puelz
3rd person, sg.: (il) puet, pued, peut, poet, peot; pot, pout, put, poth; puelt, peult; poit, poyt
1st person, pl.: (nous) pöons, pouons, poüns, pöums; pöon, pöun, pöom, pöum, püum; poduns; pöomes; pëons
2nd person, pl.: (vous) pöez, pöeiz, pouez, püez, pöés, poiez, poieiz, poielz, poieilz
3rd person, pl.: (ils) pueent, poeent, peuent; pöent, püent; poient, poyent; podent, pothent, puedent, poedent; puient, puyent; peuvent; puelent, peulent, peullent; pulent; point

Now, to be fair, I picked that one knowing it would be a bit trickier, but you even get it with seemingly "easy" cases, like for modern aime 'like.1sg': aim, eim, ain; aing, haing; am; ains; aime, ainme.

I'd agree it's basically that there's stuff between "fluent" and "absolutely illiterate" doing all of the actual work, but our hypothetical writer could write "aim" and be understood as meaning 'like.1sg' (minimum qualification for "able to write" to me since it also follows the norms available, admitting it's still a simplification), but then be flummoxed by "eim" (which is still established within the norms and here wouldn't be expected to be a dialect or pronunciation issue, just a mapping issue, which isn't the case for all of those forms). So they could reliably write (and be understood), but can't reliably understand writing.

For (b), it would be that the writing conventions for the whole language (with standardisation at this point) assume "haing", but maybe you learned before that norm, and maybe there's holdover from the language standardisation being recent (e.g. some recent changes in prescriptive French spelling, which took a long time to be taught and are accepted alongside the old spellings for a transition period). You'll write "aim" and likely be understood (maybe it even matches speech better and would still be an accepted spelling), but when you try reading "haing" you're just lost.


So, there's a lot of things at work in this example. To begin with, as I think you allude to, some of these examples come from other contemporary langues d'oïl, or contemporary langues d'oc. At this point, even moving away from written language and to the realm of speech, it's understandable that there's difficulties understanding things not standard to your own lect. I'm a native speaker of standard French, and I'm sure I could make myself understood to a native speaker of Occitan who spoke no standard French, with relatively little difficulty. But that's not to say that there wouldn't be verb forms that I didn't recognize, or vice versa. For that matter, I could say the same about a Wallon speaker, and that's a more closely related lect. This isn't merely a question if you write "aim" or "aime" to mean the same phonological representation of the same morpheme. So I'd still find it hard to deem our hypothetical writer a non-fluent reader.



Paraphrasing is already needed in speech to circumvent cases where you don't know how to communicate a concept (even for native speakers), so it seems like paraphrasing is probably fine in writing too. Especially in a system where you have a massive number of symbols (and many with low frequency), and your language already lets you compound to make words, so "fly-boat-dock" is understood as airport without a problem and might even be normal to say, but "fly-boat-dock" can be written [fly symbol][boat symbol][dock symbol] or [airport symbol], and you simply don't know [airport symbol]; you can communicate without real problems, but when you try reading you might often hit issues from symbols being cemented without you knowing them. (It's essentially like the written dialect has two synonyms, when you only have one word that covers both; and maybe there's a nuance you don't know between the apparent synonyms.)


Agreed, paraphrasing is important for communicating concepts on occasion. But relying too heavily on it can be a sign of lack of full fluency in a language. If (in English) I have to constantly refer to airports as "the place where the buses all come and go from, but the flying version of buses," and pink as "that color that's like red, but less dark," and doctors as "the people who make you not sick, but I think it's a different word from nurse," then chances are I'm not a fluent English speaker.

[furby076]

I disagree with your assertion that you can read any language that you speak (assuming familiarity with the script). Take English for example - we map 44 different phonemes to 26 characters in a slapdash manner that makes it impossible to know how to spell a word by just hearing it (and vice versa).. Spanish, on the other hand, maps its phonemes to the Latin symbols with almost a 1-to-1 correspondence.

More to the point, I set up the rules the way I did because you should be able to make a Sage that's literate in a language that they can't speak (like dead languages). Hell, we're in fantasy territory - it's not unreasonable to come up with a language that humans can learn how to read without physically being capable to become fully proficient in the "verbal" form (maybe Draconic has "phonemic" wing positioning).

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But yeah, literacy as a tool proficiency makes sense if you aren't going crazy with it.

I do not claim to know the science of language, but even in the real world: It is posisble to speak a language and not read/write it (illiterate) and its possible to read a language and not understand it. I know quite a few people who can read hebrew, pronounce the words, and have no idea what they mean.

[Amechra]

I do not claim to know the science of language, but even in the real world: It is posisble to speak a language and not read/write it (illiterate) and its possible to read a language and not understand it. I know quite a few people who can read hebrew, pronounce the words, and have no idea what they mean.

I think you quoted the wrong person :smallwink:

I'm similar, but with Latin instead of Hebrew. If I can understand spoken Latin at all, it's because I know Spanish (but I can't really speak it...)

[SLOTHRPG95]

I do not claim to know the science of language, but even in the real world: It is posisble to speak a language and not read/write it (illiterate) and its possible to read a language and not understand it. I know quite a few people who can read hebrew, pronounce the words, and have no idea what they mean.

I don't think anyone was arguing against the existence of illiteracy, although there was at least one person who believed one cannot be literate in a language if one is not a speaker of said language. But this is silly, just not necessarily because of the example that you laid out. That one gets us back into the mire on what it means to "read" something. Depending on the context, being able to read something does or does not imply comprehension. For example, few would balk if you gave me a copy of the Iliad in Greek, asked me to look up something about Achilles, and I simply replied that I couldn't read it. For context, I can transliterate between the Greek alphabet and ours, and I know a tiny, tiny bit about pronouncing things in Greek, but I don't understand a word of it, written or spoken. On the other hand, if you asked me to read out loud a passage from the Iliad that you'd written down from me, I wouldn't say that I couldn't read it. I'd just ask you to forgive my butchering of the pronunciation, and muddle through to a passable degree.

[Sariel Vailo]

My goblin speaks reads and writes fluently in goblin next up is halfling with a greater understanding of it she can read and write in that and since she learned common last and never really had to use it she can't read and she can't write in common. She speaks it poorly and broken and with an accident.

[Tanarii]

There are a lot of people that can read ancient Egyptian, but no one can speak it. But outside of dead languages that have been reconstructed / translated, it's seems pretty unlikely to happen.

[Sariel Vailo]

My goblin speaks reads and writes fluently in goblin next up is halfling with a greater understanding of it she can read and write in that and since she learned common last and never really had to use it she can't read and she can't write in common. She speaks it poorly and broken and with an accident.

My phone's auto correct is terrible. I fixed the post I'm terribly sorry here is a thought for other goblin players. Their is a sight called screwy truths that made a language for goblin.