Language Proficiency
Languages are structured systems of communication that creature use, either through speech or gestures. Most languages have a visual written or iconographical representation to document the communication and its meaning.
Language proficiency describes a creature's competence in a certain language with skills such as reading comprehension, speech and writing proficiency. Additionally, higher proficiency also measures the width of a creature's vocabulary and the knowledge of the language's grammar, slang, proverbs and dialects. As well as the ability to understand and produce poetry and prose.
| Tier | Language Skills |
|---|---|
| Trained | Listening and Speaking |
| Skilled or higher | Reading and Writing |
The languages your character can speak by default is often associated with your background, which might give you access to one or more additional languages of your choice.
Some languages exists within a family, each separate instead being like a dialect to the other ones. For example, the Primordial language includes the Auran, Aquan, Ignan, and Terran dialects, one for each of the four elemental planes. Creatures that speak different dialects of the same language can communicate with one another. However, when choosing language proficiency, you must choose one of these dialects.
Language Generalization
Languages are affected by Proficiency generalization, which describes the interlinked nature of languages and how learning one increases the ability for a character to learn other ones faster.
Humanoid Languages
Humanoid languages include almost all of the languages spoken by the intelligent life walking the material plane. Some have history in other planes, some granted as a gifts of communication by the gods and most others just simply sprung up by the necessity to communicate. They are generally bound by their use on the flat material plane.
| Helian | Is the current 'lingua franca' of the southern regions of Airetam. It is prominent in both Arahaz and Eberalen, reaching from the western elven mountain ranges of Miskunn to the eastern reaches of Ascaria and it's desolate white deserts and plains. |
| Eiselar | Is the most widely used language in the eastern continents. Rough and thick, its ancestry probably originates from the mistfalls and beyond. A speech born by the relationship between this plane's inhabitants and the astral dwellers on the other side. |
| Zhenri | Zhenri is the trade language used in the isles and continents strewn throughout the Weeping Sea, north of the center of Airetam. |
Any of these languages would count as a 'common' language, spoken and adopted by many as a means for trade, spreading knowledge and bridging societies.
Minor languages are those spoken relatively widely as with common languages, but in a more restricted population. It could be in a certain region, or by a certain type of people.
| Littlish | Spoken by most smaller folk, Littlish has evolved as a sort of travel language for those always trying to fit in in larger cultures, larger being literally the larget peoples. Its most frequent users are ratlings, mousefolk, halflings and gnomes, but also some dwarves. |
| Giant | Giants generally speak with tremendous force, which have in turn turned their language into its opposite. While they can speak loud and booming, most often they speak in whispers. This language was for a long time an exclusive language for the giant species, but has since spread to both highlander and human populations in certain regions. |
Species languages are a type of minor language, with the exception of a being rather exclusive to a certain species.
| Draconic | One of the oldest surviving languages, mostly due to the extremely long life span that dragons possess. Draconic is an unchanging language where new words are a once in a century sort of thing, it is also the language most closely related to the arcane weave and its manipulation. This leads the language to a rather rigid structure and form with few synonyms and an almost non-existant realm of poetic prose. |
| Dwarvish | Dwarvish is slang for the rough Helian dialect that evolved and is spoken in the inner regions of the plane. Its name is obviously connected to the slang term for Homo Robustus, Dwarves, and is almost entirely spoken by them. The language is rough and coarse, filled with short abbreviations, proverbs and cursing. |
| Elvish Æztriska (High Elven) |
Is the traditional and historical language of the elves. Its rigidity and structure hinders most any growth of language, and new words are seldom added. This proves to be both successful in keeping understanding and knowledge between the ages, but also a difficulty when explaining new phenomenon. |
| Villriska (Wild Elven) |
Is a rough and ... The language is very dependent on the region and is highly individual and communal. Depending on the region it might be coarse and rough or cordial and friendly. |
| Kalasharr | Kalasharr is a rather uncommon language, even within kalasharr tribes. The language developed mostly as a way to keep track of hierarchies, those being their biological ones. This is mainly through not having gendered nouns, but rather hierarchical ones. |
Special languages are languages spoken with a specific intent and purpose. Depending on the region it might be harder to communicate... usually these languages are inefficient to speak in and can't communicate every possible idea.
| Druidic |
| Thieves' Cant |