Special Sense languages?

[SangoProduction]

The human capacity for languages is incredibly versatile. Just about every possible human sound has been used as a language in some form or another, even whistling. The deaf can adapt with visual language, via sign language or lip reading (and so on). The blind can take in audio cues as a form of echolocation. (And so can the sighted...but you can see, so why bother with a shorter range, less integrated sense?). And even without realizing it, a majority of the information conveyed is done so through body language - a visual medium, when we learn languages, and act as though they were purely auditory.
Experiments and studies from about a decade ago even show that people can learn to associate sensations on a tactile body suit to language, and then eventually learn what is being said by body suit without need for audio-visual cues. (And yes, there's Braille, but that's less interesting than full-body language.)

It's all truly impressive.

So, it would make sense for special languages to arise out of special senses, if there were enough using them in a civilization - especially if the senses have high range, bandwidth, and granularity. Most special senses fail on range, save for some cheesy mindsight abuse. Although mindsight doesn't have much granularity, as it's purely seeing the minds nearby - there's not much room to turn that into a language.
Then again, all special senses are basically "you notice creatures within 30 feet of you," give or take. So, taken at face value, absolutely no special or even normal sense have any granularity, as that is handled by languages, and senses are just a method of detecting things.

So, some small liberties would have to be had if you wanted to allow special senses to have languages of their own. Perhaps tremorsense, rather than only being able to detect creatures and objects within range, can also decipher the tremors that are intentionally made. Considering the only stipulations on tremorsense is having a contiguous solid mass between the target in range, and the listener, the terrain's suitability to conveying sound waves seem to be irrelevant. This would make it a pretty high bandwidth (greater speed of communication, due to speed of sound in solids) language, with equivalent granularity as regular sound. The big limiter would definitely be the reach. But that could work in a small hunting party's favor. But it probably wouldn't replace other forms of communication.



Since I just realized I spent an hour, in a half-awake stupor, writing something silly like this...I may as well post it, and ask you guys to join in on the imaginary games too. What is a good way for some of the special senses to be used as languages?

[reddir]

This is a great new bit of worldbuilding I've not come across before!

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So, before I let my mind go crazy over this I think I should mention some things that would limit it.

1) How large a population in reasonable proximity? Just 1 or 2 people trying to develop an actual language beyond the most basic "stay away" or "help" or similar is mostly ludicrous, it can be done but normally it would mean they already have another well-developed language to base it off of.

2) How intelligent is the population with the special sense? Again, low intelligence would mean the level of communication would be something like simple grunts or threatening gestures - not an actual language as we think of them. Conversely, a very high intelligence should mean an almost certainly to developing a language with the special sense - even if they already have other forms of language the special sense will at minimum be used to enhance the nuances of the main language.

3) This ties a bit into the population size but, How political or interdependent are the people? If they are all very independent and do their own thing then there might not be much incentive to bother developing more detailed communications. Conversely, if they are very tight knit groups with critical interdependencies then I would expect developed communications since it would quickly become a survival necessity.

These are what came to mind right away. I am sure there are other related issues...

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Now! Ideas!

I think most of the special senses stuff in the books include at least a bit of fluff that suggests how the senses work and what they pick up on.

A fun extension of this is to consider how some of those sense-cues might be manipulated by those who have the sense.

Humans with hearing learned to modulate our voices for speech as well as make use of environmental things for music, and learned to use sigils (pictures or writing) as well as colors to communicate visually, and you already mentioned braille for touch but tactile sigils and pictures also work well here... and we sort of use smell for rudimentary signaling (ex, odor added to propane to make any gas leak evident (Thank you King of the Hill), rot smells indicating something spoiled, fruit smelling to indicate fresh/ripe, I think pheromones must at least include smell, etc). Oh! And taste is so instinctive that I forgot to even mention it - though we don't tend to use it as a language due to eating being such a deep need.

[lightningcat]

Tremorsense could use tapping feet to create drum style communication. Although this is more like a code rather than a true language, but could be used for emphasis, much like some people use hand gestures. A hard foot stomp might be fairly universal, as might fast repedative tapping.

For another game, I had a race with particularly expressive ears. Some individuals learned to control their ear movements, so that they could use them for communication, but had a side effect of giving them a minor bonus to some social rolls against other members of their race.

[Heavenblade]

The first idea that jumped to my mind is based on IRL stuff - creatures with scent who communicate with pheromones etc....and then Mages with prestidigation are sort of master liars since they can produce every smell they want basically at will...and scent language users probably think that most non scent-ers are incredibly boring since they continously say one thing (regular body odor, perfumes, etc.) Or they are constantly afraid/tired (sweat).


This type of language will probably have a lot of focus on the past and how it relates to the present - when someone smells you he gets a record of everywhere you have been/everything you did since your last shower (which means shy people will constantly clean themselves, and outgoing people might purposefully enhance certain smells...).

So when two scent-speakers meet, they relay the entire "how you been" communication in a few seconds of silence, and talk only about new info/explain certain scents they gathered.


A philosophy that would develop from such a culture might also focus on the past-present connection - you are the sum of everything that happened to you, etc.

Certain smells are like carrying giant signs that might say something about you (or just invoke prejudice)...

There are many places this can be taken to.


If we use AtLA cannon, there must be very few liars in the tremorsense society (:

[Eldan]

Mindsight is a challenge, not a write-off!

So, first thought. You have a population of sufficiently evil, telepathic humanoids. They want to communicate in absolute silence and for some reason can't just use their telepathy. (Their enemy has a way to listen in, or who knows.).

Every group member carries a small animal on them. This has two advantages: first, you can tell at a distance who is part of the group or not: everyone on the group has a second, smaller mind on their person. It can also be used as a one-time warning signal: stab the rat on your belt and everyone in range will see.

Sillier and more costly: bag of tricks produces animals. Infinite small minds to send signals with. They have to be thrown 20 feet to activate, but at least they could serve as invisible beacons. Mark enemy positions by throwing an animal at them. Line out a building plan by marking corners of each room and the length of corridors in small animals told to sit still. X-ray vision for the whole group. Heck, for real silliness, send morse code by drawing and then killing animals.

[SangoProduction]

Mindsight is a challenge, not a write-off!

So, first thought. You have a population of sufficiently evil, telepathic humanoids. They want to communicate in absolute silence and for some reason can't just use their telepathy. (Their enemy has a way to listen in, or who knows.).

Every group member carries a small animal on them. This has two advantages: first, you can tell at a distance who is part of the group or not: everyone on the group has a second, smaller mind on their person. It can also be used as a one-time warning signal: stab the rat on your belt and everyone in range will see.

Sillier and more costly: bag of tricks produces animals. Infinite small minds to send signals with. They have to be thrown 20 feet to activate, but at least they could serve as invisible beacons. Mark enemy positions by throwing an animal at them. Line out a building plan by marking corners of each room and the length of corridors in small animals told to sit still. X-ray vision for the whole group. Heck, for real silliness, send morse code by drawing and then killing animals.

Now that's thinking with portals. Or bags of infinite animals.

[Baron Faey]

In one game I ran, I had the Abeils (bee people) use walking/dancing as part of their language, in reference to bee dances (how you were moving when you said something changed its meaning). Ancient/Formal Abeil communication was done primarily through dance.