Forums » RP Discussion » Characters and languages

I've both used an actual foreign language in RP (Spanish; this was when I was much less rusty in it than I am now, though I was never more than an intermediate student at it, and a friend and I had our characters come from the same foreign country in the setting and used it as their 'native' language) and done the "'Hello,' he said in Italian" sort of thing, and I've come to much prefer the second one. It's not going to bother anyone who does know the language, it makes the meaning clear to any other player who doesn't know it (and I find that valuable, especially since I often play in situations where their character might know the foreign language even if the player doesn't), and it's just plain easier on me not to have to use Google Translate or conjugate verbs or whatever. Admittedly, I've been lucky in never having someone cross OOC/IC lines with it or anything--I know some people run into issues with that.

Exactly! The "vhat are you doing" accent is a hollywood accent. Yes Germans do pronounce the w as a v in some cases but it's not strong enough to actually be a standalone v in a word so written words ("vhat") really get on my nerves. Germans have accents in English but the hollywood accent I see in roleplay is rarely accurate or even common

I do not get angry with people who do it but as a native speaker it gets so frustrating sometimes...

The other day I saw someone who was doing exactly that, both using < > and using italics. In the same psot they were using regular ol' not fancied up text, so it a read as I wasn't sure if he was a mind reader or what.. anyways, ends up the character was speaking a different language and it worked really, really well.

I was rethinking the whole accent thing, I don't mind it but.. there has been an incident years ago where I couldn't stand how a particular characters accent was spelt out, but I think that's because every single word was somehow warped as a part of the accent and I might as well have been reading a different language. If I can't decipher it, well, my character can't! That's realistic enough for me. ;p

I struggle with accents most of the time. I am fluent in speaking and writing English, I also understand it without a problem, but I struggle to place the accents I come across. My pronunciation differs per default considering I'm Dutch, and with text I have to force myself to use the English pronunciation instead. Yet that can be hard, especially if the writing is littered with apostrophes and abbreviations and the like. Even pronouncing the writing out loud is difficult. It's not so much a problem with the ye and yar, or... uhm.... Meself and stuff. But 'tis 'en ye star' ta'kin' li'dis that I go O_O and run. Fast. Into the opposite direction.

If there's a language that some characters in the group understand and some don't, you could use the following format (assuming you trust your fellow players enough to use the honor system):
[Martian]"Sup, brah."
Use whatever parenthetical style you prefer for the language tag. Tags wouldn't be necessary in every case.

All problems solved forever.

Edit: Looked back and noticed this isn't even on topic. Thus: Don't use google translator results. This isn't a matter of opinion, the translator (like most automated translators) is simply not designed for conversational usage.

I prefer just integrating it like I would in story writing. ("I heard you're looking for some help," the man said in Norse.)

However, I think it's also really important to have a baseline, too. What is the "norm" in your setting? I tend to assume it's a generic language called "common" to make things easier, but if your setting is, say, France, you're going to assume folks are speaking French. Adding "in French" or italics or some other fancy tag I think will disrupt the flow if it's something that should be assumed.

Indeed, I chose mechanics over style in this case, and it was an arbitrary decision. As with most things, the decision should be a consensus among all members of the RP, or decided by the GM in advance.

Yes, my suggestion only makes sense when at least one character is speaking a language that at least one other character doesn't understand.

In the typical public, play-by-post RP (which is the category that most RP threads in these forums fall under), I've found that it is generally understood that each character simply speaks in the collective native tongue of the players (here, overwhelmingly English), so this isn't as much of an issue. Typically, characters only speak in a different language when they are specifically trying to prevent the possibility of eavesdropping. In this case, my "spoiler" style would be useful to objectively ensure RP integrity, but it is inelegant. Your "narrative" style ensures narrative integrity, and is elegant, and only requires the honor system - something which is assumed by definition in nearly all freeform RP. Therefore yours is objectively superior. I think mine would be more likely to be used in a more strict setting, such as "roll-playing", and indeed, just this morning I was reading a thread where this method was in use, both for foreign languages, and in the case of displaying information that is not available to every character.

Now that my post has spiraled out of my control, let me summarize by saying I think both styles have their place, but on the RPR, where freeform is the overwhelming majority, your narrative approach to displaying character-limited information is more appropriate.

Okay. I'm partly for, and partly against characters using languages that their players don't know. I am bi-lingual, technically. xD By 'technically' I mean that I fluently speak French, and English. However, I am a second year student in Japanese, and a third year student in Spanish. So while I'm not entirely fluent in the latter two, I generally have a pretty good grip on them. (Pfft. Generally.) So, yes, it bothers me when people are using online translators to kill a few lines in their posts. Sometimes when I'm tired and snarky- I will actually correct them. (Even if it's just a leeettle troll-y.) However, I do have characters that speak languages that I don't know. My personal solution to this, is by only using a word, or a phrase that I've checked 19889734 times. 'Guten Tag' 'Hola' 'Bonjour'. Things like that- where it points out your character knows this language, but at the same time I prefer to make it obvious that as the player- I do not. Because I feel like people should be allowed to create any character they want (no mater how much it may peeve me), I don't think we should be limited by technical 'language'. However, I don't think this is an open door that people should use just so that they look smart to people who don't speak the language, and look dumb to those who do. xD