D&D Languages as real languages

[Kobold-Bard]

Just something I'd occassionally thought abut before, and re-emerged in my mind when a player in a game I'm in requested using Russian to convey Draconic.

So what real world languages think convey Fictional tongues?

I personally see Elven as French, Dwarven as German and Halfling as Spanish.

[Rixx]

Halfling I think would work better as Dutch. I've always been partial to Spanish for Draconic, mostly because me and my friends once got a weird error while playing D&D: Tower of Doom that made the dragon we were fighting speak Spanish at us constantly. (The rest of the game was in English.)

[John Campbell]

Due to a coincidence of real-world native-speakers in one of our games, French is Undercommon.

I personally use Old Norse for Dwarvish, and the Black Speech for Orcish. (There isn't much canon Black Speech extant - the Ring inscription is about half of it - but there are some fan-created dialects of various quality.)

I don't play elves much, but when I do, I tend to name them in Quenya or Sindarin and give the most prosaic possible translation of their names. For instance, I played, for a while, an elven fighter/mage named Palanrandir, which I translated as, "He Who Takes Long Walks".

[Temet Nosce]

I'd equate Draconic with Latin personally. Elven... unsure, I definitely don't see it as even close to any of the languages mentioned here though. Dwarven, does kinda seem like German however.

[PId6]

With the assumption that Common is English of course...

Elven French and Dwarven German sounds about right. Gnome would be Dutch while Halfling Italian. Undercommon maybe Spanish.

[Kobold-Bard]

With the assumption that Common is English of course...

Being unilingual, yes English is my assumption of Common. If I were sucked into Greyhawk tomorrow and Common was actually Portuguese I would be unbelievably screwed.

[PId6]

Being unilingual, yes English is my assumption of Common. If I were sucked into Greyhawk tomorrow and Common was actually Portuguese I would be unbelievably screwed.

Você fala o português? Yeah, that was probably butchered.

[Kobold-Bard]

Você fala o português? Yeah, that was probably butchered.

Yeaaaaahhh. Lets just hope I'm a Sorcerer and the spells kick in soon

[Lycan 01]

I was going to make a thread about this later, actually...


In my games, I've always used Latin to represent Draconic. Yesterday, my GF gave me some ideas for what languages to use for a few other things. So, here's my current set-up for who speaks what...

English <---> Common
Latin <-----> Dragons
Spanish <--> Kobolds, Dragonborn
German <--> Goblins, Orcs, Ogres, et cetera
French <---> Elves, Eladrin, et cetera
Norse <----> Dwarves
Latin <-----> Demons, Devils, other evil things (Its spoken in reverse, btw)


That's all that really comes to mind. I have experience with English (duh), Spanish (tres anos de la clase de Espana...), and German (taking German 201 at the moment). My GF and roommate have experience with French, too.

Granted, none of it is actually spoken. Its just for if I need to scribble down a note or something, or somebody fails a bad Diplomacy roll and starts screaming in Norse.

Although, I do plan to cobble together really bad German rhymes to yell out at the table for my Half-Orc Bard...

[dragonfan6490]

Generally people equate Elvish with one of the Gaelic tounges, Dwarvish with Norse and Draconic with Latin. I second the Halfling=Spanish and the French=Undercommon.

[John Campbell]

Although, I do plan to cobble together really bad German rhymes to yell out at the table for my Half-Orc Bard...

I've discovered that Iron Maiden songs translate disturbingly well into the Black Speech.

[shadzar]

Now ye all know tha a dwarf speaks in auld english with a cockney accent dinae'ya?

[Ormur]

Being Icelandic common is Icelandic (as all other languages spoken at the table mixed with the hard-to-translate English words) but if it weren't I'd put it as Dwarfen, it's a harsh language. Yeah I also see elven as French and Draconic as Latin. Those are the only languages I've though about but Halfling as Italian would make sense for me and perhaps infernal as German.

Yeah and for you English speakers that equate Dwarfen with modern Norse (whatever version), I'd advise against it. It's a pretty silly sounding language, old Norse or Icelandic on the other hand...

Thinking about this I think I should adopt the "Allo Allo" method and speak all those languages with the appropriate real-world equivalent accent so non-speakers at the table would know what they shouldn't understand. If the party elves suddenly start speaking with mock French accents the human barbarian should pretend not to understand.

[Lycan 01]

I've discovered that Iron Maiden songs translate disturbingly well into the Black Speech.

Black Speech from Lord of the Rings? How on earth did you manage to pull that off?

Although, I do like the idea of using Iron Maiden... I'll have to translate The Trooper and The Legacy when I find the time... Thanks!

Oh, and I don't mind shoddily translating it myself. The more broken the German, the better the roleplaying will be...

[Prophaniti]

Since my group is mostly unilingual with a smattering of phrases from other languages, I like the 'Allo 'Allo idea the best by far. Plus, it's hilarious.

[Spiryt]

Meh, Elven is totally Finnish, Welsh (Tolkien - totally stereotypical, but face it, the guy definied modern fantasy elf stereotype), possibly Irish, some other Gaelic.

Obviously, there are other interesting choices, but French certainly is'nt one of them.

[Kobold-Bard]

I just had a flash of Gnomish = Japanese. Don't ask me why, the inner workings of my brain are a mystery even to me.

[lsfreak]

Meh, Elven is totally Finnish, Welsh (Tolkien - totally stereotypical, but face it, the guy definied modern fantasy elf stereotype), possibly Irish, some other Gaelic.

Certainly there are other interesting choices, but French certainly ins't one of them.

Definitely agree... it's Finnish. Or, actually, from what little I've heard of Farsi, it could be that too.

Disagree with Draconic as Latin. Draconic is some kind of tonal American Indian or African language. Differentiation between different levels of voicing (compare t/d) and aspiration (compare t in top/stop) and unlike European languages has ejectives, implosives, and clicks. Extremely complex with huge numbers of consonants that are impossible to differentiate unless you've specifically studied the language. Part of the reason why spellcasting is difficult is because spells make use of a Draconic-derived language while most of the other languages are Indo-European.

[Eldariel]

I...don't feel like Finnish suits Elven as is. Finnish has long vowels and hard consonants; it doesn't flow off the tongue like Elven (at least in my mind) should. The Finnish grammar, on the other hand, is great for a rich language with variance within the words themselves (which is what Tolkien did with Quenya). Still, as is, I feel Finnish would be more suited for some harsh ancient language such as Dwarven due to the strong stops so common in Finnish words.

I love the idea of using different real world languages for the variety of in-game languages. Too bad that few groups have sufficient amounts of linguistic skills to implement this fluently into their games One could try ancient Greek for Elven; it could work out reasonably well. It needs to be an ancient language tho! Of course, optimally I'd just use Quenya for Elven, but that feels like cheating

[lsfreak]

I...don't feel like Finnish suits Elven as is. Finnish has long vowels and hard consonants; it doesn't flow off the tongue like Elven (at least in my mind) should. The Finnish grammar, on the other hand, is great for a rich language with variance within the words themselves (which is what Tolkien did with Quenya). Still, as is, I feel Finnish would be more suited for some harsh ancient language such as Dwarven due to the strong stops so common in Finnish words.

Perhaps turn the stops into devoiced affricates/fricatives (random made-up word pegda becomes pfekhtha). Of course, most people have no idea what the hell I just said.

[Spiryt]

I...don't feel like Finnish suits Elven as is. Finnish has long vowels and hard consonants; it doesn't flow off the tongue like Elven (at least in my mind) should. The Finnish grammar, on the other hand, is great for a rich language with variance within the words themselves (which is what Tolkien did with Quenya). Still, as is, I feel Finnish would be more suited for some harsh ancient language such as Dwarven due to the strong stops so common in Finnish words.

Yeah, I wrote Finnish/Welch as combination as it's the base for Tolkien Elvish language, not necessarily pure modern Finnish.

Although it's visible that names and words from Kalevala are similar to Tolkien's elfy elven : Ilmarinen, Vinyamar, Kullervo, Hauin...

And basing on my vast finnish studies*, I agree that it would be also good for some kind of Dwarven, or rather Troll or wild people/elf. It just sounds kinda primal.

*listening to Korpiklaani

[xyzzy]

Gnomish is Pig Latin, clearly

Actually, I prefer the idea of dwarven as Russian, elven as Spanish, and common as perhaps German.

[Leeham]

We totally 'Allo 'Allo it up. Scottish accents for Common (we're from Scotland), REALLY thick Scottish accents for dwarven, middle class English for Elven, German for Draconic, Russian for Goblin. These are the only ones that have come up so far with the new campaign, so it's all I have really.

[Temet Nosce]

I do like the idea of Undercommon as French. That actually seems to fit to me, I can actually hear it when I think about it.

[Lord Herman]

But drow should have Italian accents!

In my D&D group, we have a running gag that all drow are Italian mobsters. Don't ask.

[charl]

I have a tendency to imagine Elven as Finnish (partially due to Tolkien using that language as the base for his Elvish grammar).

My personal list, based on nothing but my own likes is something like this (in my list the languages are even related!). Planar languages are not included, since I think of these as having no Earthly equivalent:

Human Language Family
Common - English
Halfing - Dutch
Gnoll - German

Elven Language Family
Elven - Finnish
Undercommon - Magyar (Hungarian)
Sylvan - Sami (take your pick of dialect)

Dwarven Language Family
Dwarven - Russian
Gnome - Czech
Giant - Old Church Slavonic
Goblin - Bulgarian
Orc - Croatian

Draconic Language Family
Draconic - Latin

This obviously corresponds to several easily recognizable European language groups. While this leaves out a lot of Romance languages, and there's a lack of representation from the Northern Germanic languages, I like this interpretation. If you must, the Dwarven languages could be exchanges for Nordic ones instead, though I personally am against the whole "Dwarves talk like Vikings!"-cliché.

EDIT: The DnD languages are grouped by alphabet according to the PHB.

[Spiryt]

For halfling, Tolkien like, 2ed "hobbits"/settled halflings Česky could be kinda perfect.

For more Kender like ones, short trip to the south - Magyar would be fine.

[Eldariel]

I have a tendency to imagine Elven as Finnish (partially due to Tolkien using that language as the base for his Elvish grammar).

My personal list, based on nothing but my own likes is something like this (in my list the languages are even related!). Planar languages are not included, since I think of these as having no Earthly equivalent:

Human Language Family
Common - English
Halfing - Dutch
Gnoll - German

Elven Language Family
Elven - Finnish
Undercommon - Magyar (Hungarian)
Sylvan - Sami (take your pick of dialect)

Dwarven Language Family
Dwarven - Russian
Gnome - Czech
Giant - Old Church Slavonic
Goblin - Bulgarian
Orc - Croatian

Draconic Language Family
Draconic - Latin

This obviously corresponds to several easily recognizable European language groups. While this leaves out a lot of Romance languages, and there's a lack of representation from the Northern Germanic languages, I like this interpretation. If you must, the Dwarven languages could be exchanges for Nordic ones instead, though I personally am against the whole "Dwarves talk like Vikings!"-cliché.

EDIT: The DnD languages are grouped by alphabet according to the PHB.

I'd probably trade the Slavic and Finno-Ugric languages around. I feel Russian makes for great Elven and the other two fall in place as it goes. You'd have to take few more Finno-Ugric languages to the deal, but that seems very doable. Toss Estonian and e.g. Mari or one of the other smaller languages of the group.

But that's just me, I suppose. I can't deny that Sami feels like a perfect fit for Sylvan though.

[Spiryt]

I feel Russian makes for great Elven and the other two fall in place as it goes.

Russian? Elven?

Maybe that's just my Slavic perspective, but Russian is anything but not Elven...

[Jair Barik]

There is a bit on the Draconic language in the Dracomnicon including sample words and such. But in the setting it is definitely akin to latin except for the fact that people actually speak it with some cultures having it as a major language.