Fantasy Languages: What if you can talk to anything?

I love language, it fascinates me. Both the more technical stuff as well as its pure literary potential, I just think language is dope as hell.  

However, language in fantasy is boring. I like my fantasy fantastical, but somehow language in fantasy is less interesting than some theories linguists have of how real world language is supposed to work. Even the full-on con-langs, impressive as they might be, are just normal languages and are in effect no different from using any other language players can't speak yet.

From a gameplay perspective, fantasy languages are also riddled with problems. Most of the time they don't seem to facilitate interesting choices (you either already know the language you encounter or you don't), they tend to be rather gatekeepy (only those who know the language can directly interact) and for all that effort you don't get the 'feeling' of speaking a different language, because we are all still talking the same language as before. 

Like I said, real world ideas about language tend to be way cooler than the stuff we find in fantasy, so here is how language works in my RPG-setting Mankement, based on a relatively well known linguistic theory:

Linguistic relativity

"The diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs and sounds but a diversity of views of the world."

Both in philosophy and science there exists the hypothesis that language structures the way we think. The idea is that people with different languages think differently. This is basically the premis of the movie Arrival, though I personally think they did the concept rather poorly. To be clear, my point is not to convince you that this is how language actually works, a discussion on the merits and failings of linguistic relativity falls outside of the scope of this blog about make-believe games, however this already sounds a lot more fun than language only determining access to information, so let's explore what this idea could do in a fantasy setting.  

In most fantasy, different races/species/origins/ancestries/bioforms have different languages. You can speak Elf, Dwarf, Lizardperson, etc. Humans often don't have their own language, which plays into the idea that humans are default, but that is something to discuss some other time. 

Other than what I will for now call 'race-langs' there are languages for otherworldly creatures, which I'll call 'plane-langs'. In D&D Demons speak abyssal, Devils infernal, Angels celestial, etc. Again we see some things that bother me here (why does everything in Hell speak the same language as opposed to everything on the Material Plane?), but it will have to wait. 

Finally, there are the 'secret-langs'. This is your druidic and thieves cant in stuff like D&D.

Applying linguistic relativism here might in some cases be very cool and in others rather worrisome. It intuitively makes sense that otherworldly creatures might fundamentally see the world differently. Maybe you can't lie in infernal (Devils being all about contracts in D&D), which is why stuff has to be written down in such a convoluted way, Maybe injustices are literally unspeakable and unthinkable in celestial, explaining why they are creatures of goodness, but also making them uncompromising (Angels killing those forced to commit crimes, e.g.). So I think it works very well for plane-langs. 

Secret languages might also become cooler if you apply linguistic relativism. Maybe speaking thieves cant is what makes you notice things other people just literally cannot see. Maybe druidic makes you see everything as an ecology as opposed to individual entities. Anyway, I think it could work for secret-langs. 

It is the race-langs that I am concerned about. If language changes the way you think, and we have languages for specific races or ethnic-groups we get in the awkward position that 'our' language, the default language (probably English) is going to be seen as neutral, indifferent, objective. And this isn't weird, playing the game with a language like 'common' having some super fantastical mind-altering effects would be very difficult. But making the languages of the 'others' weird, radically 'others' these people, i.e. it very easily becomes a ground for real world racist thoughts (even implicit ones) to find expression in the game world. And that is something I am not comfortable with. Race-langs, it seems, aren't as good a candidate for linguistic relativism.

However, there are some things you can talk to in RPGs we haven't considered yet: Corpses, trees, animals; all those things one can typically only speak with through magical means. I think we can make that more interesting as well, if we are willing to incorporate:

Panpsychism

"a circle existing in nature and the idea of the existing circle, which is also in God, are one and the same thing … therefore, whether we conceive nature under the attribute of Extension, or under the attribute of Thought … we shall find one and the same order, or one and the same connection of causes…. " 

"The object of the idea constituting the human Mind is the Body, or a certain mode [certus modus] of Extension which actually exists, and nothing else"

Panpsychism is the belief that everything has consciousness or experience. That is, not just all animals or all living entities, but every single thing has an inner life: Stones, tables, water, etc. I love panpsychism. Not that I am sure I want to make a commitment to saying that this is how the world works, but I really tend to like the thinkers that put something like this forth; from Spinoza (quoted above) and Leibniz to Deleuze and Whitehead, I just think it is rad. And again, regardless of whether or not these philosophers are right, that at some fundamental level a rock must also have a mind, this seems like a lot of fun to put into an RPG-world. Who doesn't want to have a conversation with the mountain the dungeon is in?

And seeing how magic already allows you to talk with creatures that are typically not considered to have minds (plants, corpses, sometimes even 'nature' as a whole), I don't think it is very hard to implement this idea. In fact, panpsychism makes it way easier to consider what talking to a plant would even entail. Especially if you combine it with linguistic relativism.

Languages and their subjectivities

Here are a few examples for what happens when mortals learn certain languages in Mankement:

Earth: is slow and rhythmic. Single letters are long words to mortals. Everything has to be repeated a number of times depending on its importance. If you said it once, you might just as well not have said it at all. While speaking earth you slow down as everything around you seems to speed up tremendously. You experience having a normal conversation, but around you months pass. Having a heated discussion takes years, if not ages. During this time you age, but do not require food, drink or sleep and things other than poison and disease still affect you at the same rate.

Wind: is fleeting and sudden. There is no other tense in wind than the present. As soon as a sentence is completed it is lost. Wind requires constant interruption to be able to stay on topic. While speaking wind you lose all sense of past or present. You know not what you came to ask if you didn't ask it in your first sentence and if something does not interrupt you with an answer before you are done asking it the question is lost to the winds. Nor do you have any concerns about the future while you are speaking wind. It is possible to remember the last thing you heard or said in Wind if someone manages to interrupt you while you are hearing or saying it. 

Water: is flowing and continuous. There are no loose words or sounds, no differentiation of any kind in water. There is no way to express individuation of either. While speaking water your self starts to erode. No one speaks water for longer than an instant, because those who did are no longer individuals. Those who are lost to water are believed to be one with the entirety of the global water cycle. The knowledge they must possess is incomprehensible and must be the reason that, despite the constant danger or losing your self, some still try to learn and speak the tongue.

Fire: is consuming and irreversible. There are no ways to take anything back in fire, no ways to apologize. Everything you say has irreversibly been said. It is impossible to repeat or restate what has already been said during an exchange. Moreover, every word you say during a conversation is lost when the conversation is over. The language consumes itself as you speak it. But that is not all that is consumed. While speaking fire, you consume your own mind to fuel the words. After speaking it, you need some time to recover, but something has permanently been lost. Think of speaking fire like getting black-out drunk or getting knocked unconscious. Not all speech costs the same. Idle chatter is like a smoldering fire, heated debate like a roaring bonfire.

Order: is rigid and constrained. There are no ways to express exception or deviation. It is a very factual language, where the only counterfactuals one can express are the way things ought to be. While speaking order it is impossible to lie, deceive or make logical errors; for as long as you are speaking it you can't even consider doing any of those things. You also become unable to bend to the hypothetical and exceptions cease to exist. This makes it very hard to say anything at all in order and why it is seen as a language intended for the Gods and for us mere mortals.

Chaos: is poetic and incomprehensible. There is no grammar, just word vomit and none of the words mean the same thing the second time you hear them.  It is not a language you learn, but a language you catch, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it catches you. For they say that while speaking chaos, it is not you that speaks, but that you are but a mouthpiece of something else entirely. Some say it is beautiful, that it bests any poetry in existence. Others say it's terrible, that it upsets you to your core. Those who speak it are afterwards never the same. It seems that the language doesn't just change itself but that it changes the speaker as well.

Flesh: is intuitive and affective. We all speak flesh, we just aren't fluent in it. It is in flesh when we are somehow told that something feels off in the woods, that it seems a person is lying or when you feel like you are being watched by a hungry beast. Fluency is difficult and not always desirable. By becoming fluent in flesh you don't just become a better listener, you also become a better speaker. Yes, your gut feeling about the people, animals and plants around you will always be right, but their gut feelings about you will also always be spot on. No longer will you ever be snuck up on by anything alive, but neither will you be able to sneak up on them. 

The implications here are very interesting I think. Imagine a person who has lost the ability to speak flesh, basically becoming an automaton without empathy. It also allows those of us who think that committing to the existence of souls is a hard pill to swallow (i.e. people like me) have a way to allow people to speak with the dead: Just reanimate a corpse and speak flesh with it. 

Finally, and I think this is the real kicker: It gives me a nifty tool to explain how elementals work in my setting. Because all of this above is just explaining how mortals change, but what if some earth learns the language of people? Or what about water? Well, if we apply linguistic relativism, we might get elementals by teaching them our language.

So you taught an element to speak person?

What can you reasonably expect to happen?

Earth elementals: Compared to earth, person language and subjectivity is super fast. On top of that, things that in earth would have little to no consequence, all of a sudden make a lasting impact. I imagine earth elementals not living very long (for mountain standards) as to match their speed of thought they start moving faster than their bodies can handle, and because they aren't used to singular acts having major consequences they are clumsy and destructive. This tendency could express itself in some sort of self-destructive rage or as a Lennie from Of mice and men.

Wind elementals: Wind knows only present, which makes it very carefree. Introducing the ability to retain information and speculate about the future introduces worry to an entity that has never known it. To me, wind elementals are obsessive and fixated on a single thing. Depending on the wind, this could express itself as genuine care for something, or as hostility towards anything that could jeopardize whatever the wind happens to be obsessed with.

Water elementals: On learning person language water suddenly gains identity and unicity. Also, compared to water, the language of persons is riddled with gaps and stops. Going from having no sense of self to all of a sudden having a very strong sense of self makes me think that water elementals become narcissistic egomaniacs. Also, because they are suddenly experiencing loneliness I could see them become possessive and clingy or melancholic einzelgängers. 

Fire elementals: Fire gains the most out of learning person I would imagine. Their subjectivity normally consumes them. Losing that gives them a stability and permanence that they could before literally not imagine. They also suddenly get the possibility to try again. All of this makes me think that fire elementals are experimental and ambitious. Really I could see two kinds of fire elementals: those that lose all inhibition because they are so much more durable, and those that no longer see the need to do everything as if it is the last thing they do and instead bide their time.

I am going to leave it at that, cause this is already way too long. What it means to talk to tables and doors is something I have not yet discussed, simply because I have not yet figured it out, though I am sure that it will have fun and funny consequences for spells like animate object.