Immigrant Ear (10BP) - Those with the immigrant ear either grew up in a multi-language home or immigrated to an area of another langauge at a young age. The character gains one additional langauge at a value of Native.

Redneck Ear (5 or 10BP) - Those speaking to a character with this negative quality add 2 to the test Threshold if they do not possess the language they are speaking to him or her in Natively. The character is also treated as Incompetent in all languages he or she does not possess a rating in.

I like them.

Back in SR3 I had an Edge called Natural Linguist

I'll have to go back to my notes to look at the details.

quite cool, though i might make a slight change- if a character gets a skill rating of somewhere in the range of 2-4 in any language, she is considered native in that language. Many people who grow up in multilingual homes wind up with more than just two languages. When I was in indonesia, I met this kisd who was the son of the Jakarta Zoo keeper. THe father was indonesian so spoke indoneasia and dutch, his mother was german. The dad would speak to him in dutch and the kid would respond in indonesian. the mother would talk to him in german and he's answer in english (the modern lngua franca).
This situation of being fluent in multiple languages is common in europe too.

I was thinking of just letting them take it multiple times, but that's so easily abused. I thought a tiered system of cost might work (10 for the first , 15 for the second..), but your suggestion is a good one, too.

Native Esperanto Speaker (5 BP) Your native language is Esperanto. Everyone else can kind of understand what you're saying.

Obscure Accent (5 BP) You don't have an accent. You don't have a brogue. You speak a completely foreign language that no one outside of your community understands, but which you believe to be your Native language. You can understand your Native language perfectly, but you must succeed at a Willpower + Charisma Test to speak it so others can understand you.

Superior Rhetorician 10pts.

You have an exceptional talent for structuring your arguments to be convincing, concise, and believable in your native tongue. Adds a bonus dice to con or negotiation tests presented in written form.

Loquacious 10pts.

Same as Superior Rhetorician for only for verbal delivery.

According to how languages work in the book, there really isn't a 'fluent' level for any language other than your native one, which is kinda dumb. Under this system the best you can do is make smalltalk if you don't divote your character to learning that language for a big chunk of your buildpoints.

In order to buy enough hits to be able to understand everything said in another language you would have to have 12 dice available (so logic 6 and 6 in the language). If you were good at rolling this would be less, but it is still difficult.

I have no idea what they mean by 'obscure subject,' unless they mean being able to understand scientific jargon, which shouldn't have a threshold at all because that would be a knowledge. If you wanted to be able to just but hits for that level you would need 16 dice...

It just makes no sense why anyone who has 3 in a language skill, no matter what their intuition is, wouldn't be able to act as an interpreter and be able to understand most everything that is said to them in that language unless it is something really obscure.

It makes even less sense that someone who has 7 in a language and 3 intuition has a chance of botching a roll and not being able to understand "the sky is nice today."

Even if it is a small chance... I mean, if they wanted us to just use common sense they should have just left out the chart.

what I meant was that if you had the quality and 2-4 skill points in teh language you would be considered fluent/indifferentiable from native speakers.
damn, I can't figure out how to make a box around the next part.

Obscure Accent (5 BP) You don't have an accent. You don't have a brogue. You speak a completely foreign language that no one outside of your community understands, but which you believe to be your Native language. You can understand your Native language perfectly, but you must succeed at a Willpower + Charisma Test to speak it so others can understand you.

I love it makes me think of Brad Pitt's character from Snatch

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Replace "<" with "[" and ">" with "]" to get:

I seen no reason not to allow somebody to take immigrant ear more than once. I would even go so far as to drop its value to 5 points but require 4 ranks in the language skill. (making it more expensive but allowing some of the cost to come from free knowledge points)

Don't forget

The Cunning Linguist (5 bp): Your speech patterns include social satire, biting wit, adult 'humor' and skilled use of thin double entendre. Adds a social modifier to all language tests, some find you high-larious and titter like schoolmaids at your (to them) risque speech and comments, others, well...others just want to brain you with frying pan, or rounds from their ares predator.