What's The Romantic Language?

[JNAProductions]

What's the language that makes men and women swoon with the vapors in D&D 5E? If you were to be cruising a bar to impress your potential partners, what language would you pepper your Common with to come off as a Casanova?

[PhantomSoul]

Probably varies quite a bit, but I could quite easily imagine Celestial, Sylvan or Fey being used based on the creatures themselves (though I can imagine the euphemisms in each may not be the same!). Perhaps Ignan if you want to play on a "burning love" them -- or you play on another motif (flowing and ever-adapting = water; stable and immutable = earth; free and everywhere = air; perhaps love is cold and not warm, and you match that with a Cold/Ice counterpart to Ignan).

For bonus points, though, maybe it's a formerly elite language (did the Elves used to rule? or Gnomes perhaps?), or a language that shows the right kind of knowledge (e.g. if magic is prestigious, Draconic or Primordial could easily turn into a socially beneficial language; once it was a language to impress with education/power, and that made it a language to woo even now that the original motivation might be lost).

[rlc]

Probably elvish

[Amechra]

You're actually looking for Orcish - thanks to a long poetic tradition and classic plays such as The Spear of Gruumsh¹, no other language will suffice. Due to social prejudice, however, written Orcish is considered to be crude and objectionable, so most non-Orcs who speak Orcish will read and write it in "high Orcish", which uses the Elvish script alongside some archaic grammar.

However, most bodice-rippers are written in Orcish due to a poorly-written obscenity law. As a result, many educated women are at least literate in "low" Orcish, though getting them to admit that fact is a different matter.

...

More seriously, this heavily depends on the history of your setting. If you're being lazy, it's probably Elvish or Sylvan.

¹ A ribald retelling of how the half-orc playwright's parents met, including romance, action, and not one but two postponed apocalypses.

[JNAProductions]

You're actually looking for Orcish - thanks to a long poetic tradition and classic plays such as The Spear of Gruumsh¹, no other language will suffice. Due to social prejudice, however, written Orcish is considered to be crude and objectionable, so most non-Orcs who speak Orcish will read and write it in "high Orcish", which uses the Elvish script alongside some archaic grammar.

However, most bodice-rippers are written in Orcish due to a poorly-written obscenity law. As a result, many educated women are at least literate in "low" Orcish, though getting them to admit that fact is a different matter.

...

More seriously, this heavily depends on the history of your setting. If you're being lazy, it's probably Elvish or Sylvan.

¹ A ribald retelling of how the half-orc playwright's parents met, including romance, action, and not one but two postponed apocalypses.

Yeah, my initial guess was Sylvan. Elvish feels a little too commonly spoken to feel right.

[Rynjin]

Yeah, my initial guess was Sylvan. Elvish feels a little too commonly spoken to feel right.

...What, you mean like Spanish and French are?

[Millstone85]

A true omniglot would use:

Sylvan to seduce and arouse.
Celestial for the proposal and vows.
Abyssal after discovering infidelity.
Infernal when signing the divorce papers.
Draconic in their book about the experience.

[heavyfuel]

...What, you mean like Spanish and French are?

To add to that, a romantic language has to be somewhat common. You want a decent number of readers/listeners to understand what you wrote, otherwise it's pretty pointless.

[JNAProductions]

To add to that, a romantic language has to be somewhat common. You want a decent number of readers/listeners to understand what you wrote, otherwise it's pretty pointless.

Fair point.

Thank you all for your contributions. I appreciate hearing from y'all.

[Rule-Of-Three]

Whatever the verbal components are to Charm Person.

If D&D Elven sounds like Tolkienian Elvish, then I'm guessing it's a panty/boxer dropper. Half elves don't bud on trees and fall to the ground.

It's Draconic is modeled after skyrim's interpretation, then that's the one I would want to back a bowl to and enjoy fine conversation over a chessboard by the tavern hearth.

[PhantomSoul]

To add to that, a romantic language has to be somewhat common. You want a decent number of readers/listeners to understand what you wrote, otherwise it's pretty pointless.

Hm, I guess the question is partly whether the goal is to have (a) integrated borrowings and expressions [e.g. you have a certain je ne sais quoi], (b) single words that make you sound intelligent and that have recoverable meanings in context [e.g. I would love to (some insinuative term in not-common) with you], or (c) say a lot in the other language, meaning you need to understand the language to really understand.

[ezekielraiden]

A true omniglot would use:

Sylvan to seduce and arouse.
Celestial for the proposal and vows.
Abyssal after discovering infidelity.
Infernal when signing the divorce papers.
Draconic in their book about the experience.

Okay, I laughed. That was good.


...What, you mean like Spanish and French are?
That was my thought as well. "Romantic" languages are almost always from a given cultural perspective.


Hm, I guess the question is partly whether the goal is to have (a) integrated borrowings and expressions [e.g. you have a certain je ne sais quoi], (b) single words that make you sound intelligent and that have recoverable meanings in context [e.g. I would love to (some insinuative term in not-common) with you], or (c) say a lot in the other language, meaning you need to understand the language to really understand.

English unfortunately biases us here rather a lot, as it is totally happy stealing vocab from other languages. Hence we get things like zeitgeist, schadenfreude, camouflage, algebra, zephyr, etc. from numerous other languages and don't even really notice. French (and Latin) have special places because of French control over England for multiple centuries.

Personally, if I had to do a taxonomy, it would be:
Draconic = Fantasy Latin. Seen as "elevated," mystical when used properly, but words derived from it can feel cold and clinical.
Celestial = Fantasy Greek + Fantasy Sanskrit. Some of the same "elevated" nature of Draconic, but known to be harder and less well-understood.
Sylvan/Fey = Fantasy French. Beautiful but weirdly over-elaborate. Tons of set phrases get stolen by other languages.
Dwarven/Giant = Fantasy German. A rough-sounding language, but with tons of useful vocabulary due to building new words.
Primordial = Fantasy Russian. Often obscure to non-speakers, but really quite useful/powerful for those who can speak it well.
Infernal = Fantasy Japanese, particularly because of the attention to honorifics and the relative social differences between speakers. (Also, tons of symbols with a bajillion subtle meanings is a very Devilish thing to do.)

Not sure about most of the others. I could actually see Elvish as Fantasy Arabic, because of the strong association between the script and beautiful calligraphic art (it doesn't hurt that Tolkien's tengwar, written in cursive, bear some resemblance to Arabic letters), and because several of our modern poetic ideas about love actually come from Arabic works brought back to France after the end of the first Crusade (leading to the "courtly love" genre exploding in popularity).

[Naanomi]

Deep Speech is the language of The Heart, the amalgamated horror of a thousand combined human hearts that is run on pure Love (which is why it must continually absorb new hearts full of the stuff; young lovers are the best)

[Sparky McDibben]

Giant, because it's spoken by trolls. :)

[PhantomSoul]

English unfortunately biases us here rather a lot, as it is totally happy stealing vocab from other languages. Hence we get things like zeitgeist, schadenfreude, camouflage, algebra, zephyr, etc. from numerous other languages and don't even really notice. French (and Latin) have special places because of French control over England for multiple centuries.

English history makes borrowings from French especially common (but also relatively distinguishable), but borrowings are very much not just English's turf. They're expected in times of contact, as well as in cases where people might want to draw on other languages for semantic, pragmatic or social reasons. And even the languages that have the highest pretension/regard for their "purity" borrow -- even from the languages their "agents" claim are worst to borrow from (e.g. recent English borrowings into French).

[Sigreid]

I would say Elvish because elves are typically described as taking great care to make everything they do beautiful. I think that would apply to their linguistic development as well. A word that is not pleasing to the ear would never catch on enough to make it into the language.

[Cicciograna]

It can't be anything else but Truespeech, a language that shakes reality itself.

But more seriously, probably it's Common with terms, structures and inflections taken from Elven, Sylvan and Celestial.

[Sigreid]

To add to that, a romantic language has to be somewhat common. You want a decent number of readers/listeners to understand what you wrote, otherwise it's pretty pointless.

Eh, not really. I'm fairly certain women where I am that are likely to be taken in by something like that would swoon if someone said to them in French "You look like a pig's pucker hole". It's often not the words that get the reaction. It's the appearance of being worldly and sophisticated.

[JonBeowulf]

Theives' Cant sprinkled heavily with innuendo.


You can safely flirt without fear of angering a nearby spouse/lover/etc.
If your target doesn't understand, you know you can be as rude and crass as you want (but will likely spend the night alone) or switch to one of those fancy languages like Elvish or Sylvan or even Dwarven (in certain situations).
If your target understands, then you know you're talking to another rogue so keep going but watch your coin purse.
If your target reciprocates, then you know you're talking to a rogue who's interested. Congrats!

[Sigreid]

A club to the head and drag them off by their hair. If they don't survive, their offspring would have been too weak anyway.

[Catullus64]

In my setting, this very much depends on the vein of wooing that you're going for: there's romantic music and literature from all manner of races, all with a different take on the idea of romance. Funnily enough, this actually came up in one game, where it was established that, in a conversation between two dwarves, little sprinklings of Common are considered flirtatious, or at least bold and adventurous.

For Elves, on the other hand, speaking Sylvan isn't so much a thing of schmoozy seduction, as it is a bold, declarative tone for speaking words of grand passion.

There are Low and High variants of Draconic. High Draconic is mostly used by true dragons, whereas Low Draconic is used by dragon-adjacent creatures like Dragonborn and Kobolds. The use of High Draconic can have a similar effect to the use of Sylvan for elves.

For Humans, though, it's definitely Halfling, since any particular human mostly associates that language with sentimental ballads and sly suggestive limericks.

[PhantomSoul]

For Humans, though, it's definitely Halfling, since any particular human mostly associates that language with sentimental ballads and sly suggestive limericks.

I was imagining that as I started thinking of how the troubadours led to borrowing words or meanings from the langues d'Oc into French (from playing on "travail" as moral torment vs. labour to having their pronunciation of "amour" [love] borrowed into northern French). For my setting Halfling hasn't been common (haha) enough to come to mind quickly!

[Izodonia]

The language of love is the language that exudes the most sophistication and confidence. Remember, though, that "sophisticated and confident" are just a nice way of saying "snooty and arrogant", and that has to mean Elvish - the elves have snooty and arrogant down cold.

[Angelalex242]

Depends on what you want to convey:

Sylvan, being the nature language, probably has the most words for mating and sex.

Celestial, being the holy language, probably has the most words for love. Like, Celestial probably has something like 50 different words to very precisely describe love.