Dialect Ruleset

This page is meant as a rough-draft of all the rules for languages in the Burning Wheel. This section is a work in progress so things might change between sessions. If you see anything that you think is unreasonable just let me know and I'll see about changing it. In general these rules are meant to represent the process of language acquisition in as realistic a way as I can without making the game unfun.

Learning a Language
Languages are training skills. This means that once they've been acquired they do not advance and are never tested. Having a language skill means that you speak that language. Any relevant tests should be done using the standard social skills. Languages can only be learned in downtime. Use the social skill table to determine how much time needs to be sunk into a language in order to earn a test. Of course, a character needs to be in an appropriate position to learn that language. If you have no one to practice with and cannot practice from a book then it's impossible to train the skill.

Language aptitude measures how many tests you'll need to earn before you can mark the skill as learned. A character's language aptitude is based on the exponent of their languages skill and is subtracted from 10 to determine how many tests will need to be earned before a player speaks a given language. The number of tests needed to learn a language can never be fewer than 2.

Language aptitude can be either reduced or increased by the relatedness of languages that the character already speaks. If the character speaks a closely related language (English and German, French and Spanish, Russian and Serbian) then increase aptitude by two. If the languages are really nothing like one another (English and Chinese, French and Aramaic, Russian and Arabic) then reduce aptitude by two. If the languages share a familial relationship or are a part of a cluster (English and Russian, Turkish and Japanese, French and Haitian Creole), but are not similar then aptitude is unaltered. Players learning a lingua franca can increase their aptitude by 1.

If the starting language and the target language are incredibly similar (Serbian and Bosnian, Spanish and Portuguese) then you're probably talking about dialects of the same language and should use those rules instead.

Esoteric languages impose a +5 to the number of tests needed to learn the languages. These are the really difficult languages that only the desperate or the stupid try to learn. Esoteric is a proper linguistic term but for our purposes if a language has gone more than 100 years without anyone successfully learning it, then it's an esoteric language. Esoteric languages rarely have more than 1,000 speakers and for an esoteric language to be the language of a state would either indicate that states are a new feature of your setting or would imply some very strange recent history. Esoteric languages should be assumed to not bear any close resemblance to any other language, including other esoteric languages.

Characters who are forced to speak the target language as their only means of communication use a slightly modified version of the downtime rules. They can mark tests as if they'd been able to use all of their downtime to train the target language. They can still, in addition to this, use their downtime to train their skills as per usual. This is a pretty good deal in terms of language acquisition but this sort of arrangement usually means that the character has been sold into slavery or pressed into service in a foreign navy or something like that.

The Foreign Languages Skill
Players can make a foreign languages test at obstacle 1 in order to communicate a basic message with grunts and gestures, if appropriate. Passing this test merely indicates that a player's intentions and desires are being understood but does not grant access to social skills. There are two exceptions, seduction and intimidation, which can always be tested at +2 obstacle, albeit only with intents that are compatible with not speaking.

Characters that find themselves in multilingual environments will unlock the foreign languages skill quickly, but will have difficulty advancing it, since it is rarely tested directly. Instead the foreign languages skill earns a test each time a character learns a new pidin, dialect, or language. The difficulty of the test is equal to the number of tests that were needed to learn that pidgin, dialect, or language. So a character who has learned a language with an aptitude of 7 will have indirectly earned an ob. 3 foreign languages test. The foreign language skill can also be trained directly during down time. Players need access to speakers of foreign languages to advance the skill this way.

Players may also use the foreign languages skill as instruction for the purposes of teaching a language to another.

Pidgins
Pidgins are proto-languages that are created specifically for the purpose of fostering communication between groups that have no interest in learning each other's languages. Pidgins generally have a vocabulary under 500 words and can really only be used to express nuance about one single topic. A trade pidgin might allow speakers to compare the relative merits of different products, for example.

Pidgins allow players to speak freely to fellow speakers about some specific topic. They also allow players to use any relevant social skills, but only while speaking about that topic. Pidgins are very easy to learn. The base time to learn a pidgin is 2 months. This number is divided in half if the pidgin is rooted in a language that the player already speaks, (ie. if the grammar or vocabulary comes from that language). This number is divided in half again if the player has the foreign languages skill. In addition to granting the player a broader base of people that they can speak to, learning a pidgin earns a player a routine foreign languages test.

Dialects
Communication across dialects imposes a penalty depending on the degree of difference. Dialects impose a +0, +1, +2, or +3 ob to all social tests. These dialects might be thought of as different languages by the people in your setting. Usually this happens because two different states speak different dialects, each considering their dialect to be the "true" example of the language. Such cases might change the politics of language use and certainly do add some interesting failure results, but they do not change the difficulty of transitioning form one dialect to another.

A +0 dialect imposes no penalty but might add some interesting failure conditions.

In general the rule is that if people can speak and expect their listener to understand the core of what was said, then those people are speaking the same language. If they cannot then they are speaking different languages.

Dialects can be learned by players in the exact same way that languages can be learned. A dialect is a training skill that requires 10 - your languages skill to be learned. The difference is that unlike languages dialect tests can be earned through play. In fact, this is the main way they are earned. Each time a player makes a social test with an extra obstacle due to dialect they may mark a test for learning that dialect.

The conditions under which a player may learn a dialect in down time are a bit complicated. Most dialect continua have one dialect that is considered the "true" language. Usually this dialect is spoken in the capital or in an especially important city state. In situations like this it is very difficult to get someone to teach you a "false" version of the language, even if that false version happens to be their native tongue. A player cannot use down time to learn such a delegitimized dialect because no one will teach it to them. Instead they must learn by experience.

Certain dialects cannot be spoken by certain characters without serious repercussions. These situations almost always involve some sort of class distinction. If the nobility of a country speaks a certain dialect they might take offense at a commoner trying to use it. Similarly if a city's gutter rats all speak a dialect they might not take so kindly to rich folks using it. In these cases a character can use whatever dialect they wish, but should expect consequences to follow. This dynamic can apply to languages as well. In fact, in kingdoms where the rulers speak a completely different language from their subjects it might even be illegal for the peasantry to learn the ruling language.

Literacies
For the most part, literate characters are assumed to be literate in all of the languages that they speak. The exception to this rule is languages in which the system of writing bears little relation to the spoken equivalent. In these cases the system of writing must be learned as a dialect or in really ridiculous cases as a completely separate language.

Some languages have multiple systems of writing with one system reserved for special occasions. For example priestly letters might be written in a different dialect or even in a different language. This system is more practical than it seems. People who do not speak a common language might settle on a common system of writing and thereby be able to communicate through letters but not face-to-face.