The linguistics power lets you learn a new language quickly with no karma by being exposed to it. What about reading the language? If an adept with the power pics up a spanish novel or two and reads them can he learn spanish? In our game we seperate R/W and speaking skills, just to piss people off. So this is important. Any ideas?

Then I would allow it to work seperately on the written form. Lot's of Languages at 1 is hardly overpowering.

I would allow, and do.

It is not game altering, and helps explain how the runners can go anywhere in the world and do leg work, read street signs, etc..

I'd allow it in two circumstances:

a) the language has the same alphabet as a language the runners already know. For instance, I could at least muddle out what written spanish is supposed to sound like, but without some actual instruction, there is no way I'd ever be able to figure out Punjabi.

2) the character has the good sense to find somewhere where someone is reading from a text that the characters also have access to, so they can corrolate sounds to letters. Religious services are great for this.

I think i agree with you mike. They would need something to go off of. Listening to people read aloud or even an hour of instruction. Thanks

Why not buy both. The speaking part needs to come from cyber and the reading comes from a comlink translator (like Babelfish)

The power's description doesn't specify that it only applies to spoken language, so my understanding of it is that one could figure out written languages as well, provided that they have access to the right stuff. For example, I guess an illustrated audio book could easily help the adept to learn both reading/writing and speaking/listening. If the adept has some kind of "handle" he can use to figure out at least a few elements he can use as a starting point, then figuring out the rest is much easier. If the adept doesn't know anything about the language, picks up a book of which he doesn't know the subject and tries to learn the language, I'd say that it could work, but I'd never allow it to work - even just for reading/writing - in (10-Magic) hours. I'd rule that it speeds up a lot a process that would happen more slowly otherwise. It won't help you figure out stuff that you wouldn't figure out in a hundred years without the power. Also, I'd say that it works faster with languages in the same family as another language that you know. Anyways, I'd adjust the time period to fit the circumstances, for sure.