One of my favorite parts of Playtest Document 0.1 so far is the removal of a universal "magical language" from the game, and "Read Magic" along with it. Instead, every Magic-User writes their spells in a rare, obscure, or dead language of their choice.
What I really like about this sort of system is that it's a fountain of adventure hooks for Adventurers to go on ridiculous scholar hunts throughout the world. It's one thing to kill the wizard, but it's a whole other issue finding someone who'll teach you enough Aramaic so you can use his old spell book.
There are, however, a lot of dead, rare, and obscure languages. I gathered some of my favorites into a few different categories after trawling through the sources, culling them down while trying to maintain some variety and connectedness, and also making them into lists that'll fit onto your standard Polyhedral dice. I have some more thoughts about making these into tables as well, but we’ll get to that later.
While basically all of this is from the real world in some way or another this isn’t a work of professional scholarship; I’ve altered, fabricated, or fully abandoned facts here and there. I've also embellished some things and made up a few others. I did try to avoid anachronisms as best I could so everything would fit in an Early Modern setting, except for Voynich because that was too good to leave out.
d10 Languages of Mystical & Religious Origin
d10 Languages of Mystical & Religious Origin
1. Enochian: The celestial language of the Angels. It is also known as the "Adamical" lanugage, as it is thought to be the language used by the Adam in Eden when naming all the living things of Earth, and also the language of the creator God during the construction of the universe itself. It sounds vaguely like Hebrew, is read from right to left, and uses a unique alphabet.
3. Sandha-bhasa (also called Gongpay-kay): the "twilight language" of tantric Buddhists and certain Hindus. Its full and correct use involves very precise visual, verbal, and nonverbal communication. It is said to be such a remarkably esoteric language that only the initiated have any hope of understanding it, and even then only through the guidance of a proper teacher.
4. The Language of the Birds: Also called “Lingua Verte” or “The Green Language” by Alchemists. This language can be whistled, and so may be written using only musical notation. It is also said that it can only be used to transmit true information, and it may or may not allow one to communicate with all of nature itself including, in addition to birds.
5. Balaibalan: A language created by Sufi mystics using the Arabic alphabet, with a new vocabulary entirely constructed for it. Some of these words may be deciphered back to common Arabic words through an understanding of Sufi metaphor. There are those who claim this language is the one in which the next revelation of god will be written in, as Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic once were used.
6. Vāc: Vedic Sanskrit, from the Indian subcontinent. The language of the sacred Vedas, and thought to be the language of the Gods themselves. Found most frequently in the form of chants, the pitch used when speaking certain words can change their meaning significantly. There exist a great variety of scripts for the written form of this language.
7. Ecclesiastical or “Church" Latin: The Latin language as it is used by the Catholic church for performance of the Roman Rite, and the language of the Holy See. The grammar and pronunciation vary from Classical Latin, as well as the meaning of certain words.
8. Classical Arabic: the language of the Koran, which is distinct from the language as it is spoken throughout the world. It is related to both Hebrew and Aramaic, and written in a unique and distinctive script.
9. Hebrew: the liturgical language of the Jewish faith, and of the Israelites and their ancestors. Related to the ancient language called Aramaic, as well as Arabic.
10. Avestan: the sacred language of Zoroastrianism, written using a 53 character alphabet from right to left. This alphabet is very loosely based on the Aramaic one.
d10 Obscure Languages Of Human Design
d10 Obscure Languages Of Human Design
1. Lingua Ignota: the "unknown language". Written using the "litterae ignotae, an alphabet of 23 letters. It is a language of constructed words ordered but ordered using the Latin grammar, making it both straightforward and remarkably difficult to translate. Glossaries translating it into Latin are known to exist, and if found would make translating this language remarkably simple, assuming one is familiar with Latin grammar.
2. Lingua Universalis: The invention of a German philosopher*, typically used only for mathematical calculations among the well-educated elite. *Leibniz, in 1678.
3. Grammelot: a nonsense language of mime and mimicry composed of onomatopoeia, borrowed words, and movement. It would typically be encountered in a Commedia dell'arte performance, but despite its comedic nature it has nonetheless been used to record occult knowledge using jokes and buffoonery.
3. Grammelot: a nonsense language of mime and mimicry composed of onomatopoeia, borrowed words, and movement. It would typically be encountered in a Commedia dell'arte performance, but despite its comedic nature it has nonetheless been used to record occult knowledge using jokes and buffoonery.
4. La Cifra del Sig. Giovan Battista Belaso: the dreaded code language of Giovan Battista known as le chiffre indéchiffrable to the French ("the indecipherable cipher"). It is essentially unbreakable without knowledge of the key phrase used to decode it, as well as fluency in the language it was originally written in as well.
5. Real Character, or, "a Philosophical Language": Created by an English clergyman and natural philosopher*, this language is claimed to be able to describe every possible thing or notion in our universe. It is only a written language, with no agreement or guidance as to how it would or should be spoken. *John Wilkins, in 1668
6. Logopandecteision: A Scottish philosophers* remarkable invention, said to have been suppressed by the Church. It has only four numbers, uses eleven genders (which include god, goddess, man, woman, and animal), and is conjugated with eleven tenses, seven moods, and four distinct voices. It is allegedly capable of translating any idiom without altering its meaning, and expressing even the most vast sums using only two characters. *Sir Thomas Urquhart, in 1653
7. Asemic Writing: A trance language, when spoken it is known as glossolalia. A combination of legible and illegible scribbles, often fully improvised. Possibly translatable through the use of a cipher or context, but not necessarily.
8. Hermetic Language: An entirely novel but consistent writing system, vocabulary, and grammar created by the Magic-User for use in their spell book alone. Such a language likely to be readable by no other being on earth without intense and dedicated scholarship.
9. Macaronic Language: A mixture of languages within the same text, sometimes involving hybrid words. The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, or "Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream", is the most well known macaronic text, it is written in a sort of Italian with terms based on Latin and Greek, as well as some Hebrew, Arabic, and common Italian words.
10. Hermeneutic style: a variation on the Latin language that was most popular in the 10th century, it is only distinct from other forms of Latin due to its pervasive use of archaic and elaborate terminology derived from Greek.
d10 Languages Of The Bible & Of Some Ancient Empires
9. Macaronic Language: A mixture of languages within the same text, sometimes involving hybrid words. The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, or "Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream", is the most well known macaronic text, it is written in a sort of Italian with terms based on Latin and Greek, as well as some Hebrew, Arabic, and common Italian words.
10. Hermeneutic style: a variation on the Latin language that was most popular in the 10th century, it is only distinct from other forms of Latin due to its pervasive use of archaic and elaborate terminology derived from Greek.
d10 Languages Of The Bible & Of Some Ancient Empires
1. Sumerian: There are two dialects of Sumerian, one of which is sometimes used only by women, or in occult song. Longer words are created by combining many smaller ones together, similar to German. It sounds vaguely like classical Arabic when spoken, and is written using a series of wedge shaped markings known as cuneiform.
2. Old Babylonian: Also called Old Assyrian; the language of King Hammurabi, and the one used on the Code of Ur-Nammu. Written using cuneiform and logograms. Despite being written in cuneiform it is actually unrelated to the other languages of old Mesopotamia. Pronunciation varies wildly among current speakers.
3. Neshite: also called Nesite or Hittite. The language of what is now called Turkey, during the bronze-age. It's nouns only distinguish between moving and non-moving objects, rather than gendered ones. When spoken it contains several distinctive sounds produced in no other language.
4. Aramaic: The tongue of the Christian martyr known as Jesus, and also of a great many empires of the ancient world. It is related to Hebrew and Arabic, and is still sometimes used as a liturgical language. It can be written in several different cursive forms.
5. Lycian: A language of the iron age, written using a modified Greek alphabet. There exist texts which are written in Lycian, Greek, and Aramaic, greatly simplifying translation.
6. Luwian: Written in Cuneiform or by using hieroglyphs. It is closely related to the Neshite language, and is what largely replaced it in the 14th century BC. It was spoken by the Trojans, in their horse.
7. Sogdian: the lingua fraca of the Silk Road, it is written right to left using an alphabet as well as logographs.
8. Hudum Mongol bichig: a script for Mongolian developed around 1200 AD and derived from Sogdian, it is written vertically from right to left.
9. Etrsucan: No living language is related to this one, the only connection being that Latin alphabet was eventually derived from the Etruscan one. There do however exist gold leaves on which an Etruscan text is translated into Phoenician.
10. Phoenecian: A very distant ancestor of Arabic and Hebrew, the language of Canaan.
d10 Dead Languages of Europe9. Etrsucan: No living language is related to this one, the only connection being that Latin alphabet was eventually derived from the Etruscan one. There do however exist gold leaves on which an Etruscan text is translated into Phoenician.
10. Phoenecian: A very distant ancestor of Arabic and Hebrew, the language of Canaan.
1. Gothic: The language used by the barbarians responsible for the decline and fall of the Roman empire. Used in the Iberian peninsula until the late 8th century. There exist Bibles translated into this language.
2. Althochdeutsch: "old high German", the oldest form of the German language from 750 to 1050 AD.
3. Goídelc: Also called “Old Gaelic”, the notably complex ancestor language of Scottish Gaelic. In common use until 900 AD.
4. Ænglisc: Also known as Anglo-Saxon. This is English as it was spoken during the Middle Ages, and was in use for almost 700 years.
5. Castellano Antiguo: Medieval Spanish, as it was spoken until the beginning of the 15th century.
6. Zarphatic: A language used by the Jewish peoples of Northern France until the 14th century.
7. Ancien Français: French as it was spoken in the 8th through 14th centuries.
8. Old Low Franconian: the language which developed into Middle Dutch by the 12th century.
9. Medieval Galician: an ancestor language of Portuguese.
10. Medieval Latin: the highly individualistic and idiosyncratic language of medieval scholarship.
