Anyone remember the wonderful language list in 1st and 2nd editons? It had languages grouped by family and included native american groups. Is is online anywhere?

Try here. It's got the whole skill list, including the languages, down towards the middle...

SR Skills

Hey thanks! That was fast.

The most amazing thing about 3rd Edition languages seems to be that Cityspeak is now a Specialization of English. Look at the Combat Mage and Sprawl Ganger archetypes, for example, to see it used this way.

This means that the English Professor from London can now walk into the sprawl and strike up a fluent conversation with the lowest ganger.

Our team doesn't follow canon on this -- we houserule otherwise.

<British Accent>
"Hello, my good sir. I am looking for a load of drek-hot grade-A SOTA bang-bangs, oh, and perhaps a wizzer deck to round it all out. Would you be able to help me with my difficulty, omae? I think that I could provide a drekload of cred for the gentlemen able to assist me."
</British Accent>

~J

*Brooklyn Accent* Oh, indubitably, good sir, I do believe my associates and I have just the equipment you may be looking for. Please, step into my study and we can sit and have a chit chat, shall we?

Damn. Trouble is, it works. I've seen too many movies with well-spoken hoods.

Language and dialect are a funny pair of traits...

Watch "The Rock" with Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery. The good Sir Connery swears - I think he calls the BG a tosser, IIRC. Then tell me how it is that British actors, when swearing, sound so much... cooler than Americans!

Probably because we hear it all the time...

It's not so much British actors, as Sean Connery. The man could sing "I'm a little teapot" and make it sound badass.

Accent depends on how thick it happens to be, irregardless of language.

After that, the Brit professor could chat quite well with the gutterpunk as long as he didn't use words that exceeded the lowest common denominator's vocabulary.

-Siege

I think of Cityspeak to be mostly derived from the Mexican, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, etc. inner city dwellers trying to communicate with one another, along with a little English thrown in. I don't think accent has anything to do with it. The professor and gutterpunk should be unable to communicate with words unless the gutterpunk knows some English.

If it's a specialization of English, then it's mostly English according to the rules.

~J

I do find that the new rules for making all the "sub" lingos specializations of English is particularly stupid.

I have English 6 so I know Cityspeak, Magespeak, Deckerspeak, whatever speak?!? I don't think Mage speak and Deckerspeak and all that is very different from English, they just use uncommon words.

But Cityspeak is supposed to be a bastardized hodgepodge of SPanish, English, Japanese and several others.

Trog should also be it's own fricken language.

My 2

Sunday

I think because you understand English, you have a chance at deciphering the jargon and vernacular which happens to be in English.

I would imagine that "deckerspeak" between two Russians would be in...well...Russian.

The lingos are like "shop talk" -- listen to two doctors discuss their day or two economists discussing predictions for the job rate.

Which, since you ask, is defined by using words outside the normal vocabulary of the general populace. Which in itself is a blurred line, but imagine a universal average with people falling over or under that line.

-Siege