I have been reading Mr J's Little Black Book and have noticed something interesting. In the contacts section none of the contacts have a language listed except when it is something relevant to the write up.

How do you handle native language? I have been making my characters pay for it out of starting points.

This was a gaming table discussion on Saturday.

At character creation each character gets a numbe rof Language POints equal to his Intelligence x 1.5 (round down) - these are spent like Skill Ppints with the assoicated Attribute being Intelligence.

So an average human (Intelligence 3) will have 4 Language Points to spend and so their native language will usually be at a Rating 3 (a rating of 4 would cost 5 points as the fourth point costs double due to it being in excess of the related attribute), with a rating 1 in another language.

That is what i thoughy.

Then along those same lines why do the write ups on contacts have no native language?

I personally (and aginst cannon) give my PCs a native language of their choice, at the cost of half their avilable lan. points. So for someone with an int 6.

English (native)
Spanish 4

Typically someone with English 3 would have R/W 2 (1 free from base 3, 1 from the leftover language skill point) rather than a point in another language (barring additional skill point expenditure).

I think they didn't put in languages because they're assumed to be monolingual and it isn't usually that important.

~J

Do the archetypes in the BBB have native languages listed?

Did they spend points on those languages or were they just dropped in with no expenditure?

i don't charge points for native language. It's not consciously learned as a second language would be.

So you think every average Intelligence 3 person would know a second language? For that matter, that every Intelligence 1 person is mildly bilingual?

~J

I find it amusing that the Language point calculation leaves the 'Average' troll unable to speak or understand his native language. Poor guy.

I feel trolls should get a break and get a chipjack with a rating 4 language soft glued into it for free. No essence cost, and not removable.

Troll: language 1 before additional skill point use. They can speak it, just not well.

~J

Also, for NPC's, the GM would just choose the languages based on the needs of the game session or campaign, so no point in detailing them as it would not promote anything to the NPC. Now, notable persons, like Damien Knight, etc. the develpoers would detail the languages, because this is a story line driven character, it's important to know if they speak the south western dialect of Swahili in addition to teh click language of the bushmen in the north.

just my two nuyen worth...

You get your Int * 1.5 for language skills, down, so you get at least 1 point...that means that the troll with 1 point of Int can have a language at rating 1 - they sound like the stereotypical troll -"Me hungry" or "Me hit you hard!" it is enough to convey basic ideas and emotions with a TN of 2, or some more complex concepts every once in a while...

According to the (active) skill level descriptions (the Knowledge skill level description doesn't really fit), rating 3 in a language would be equivalent to a high school graduate in that you are proficient in the language and can carry on normal conversation and not sound like a moron (it's easier to hit the TNs of 4-6)

now, from a real life standpoint - my wife is Ukrainian. After a small amount of instruction in English, and then living here for a year, she MIGHT have a 2 in English - she can make small talk and party conversation, but has trouble if people talk too fast or too technical. we watch tv with the subtitles for the hearing impaired, so that she can read the English along with what they're saying. She can definitely read on a 2 level. However, she can't write for crap - definitely a 1 level.

i'm the same way with Ukrainian and Russian - because i was trained in Russian, i can understand enough Ukrainian to get the idea, and speak enough to get my point across, but i must sound like a troll with Int 1 or 2 to them. And i haven't learned their alphabet yet, which is different from Russian.

Also, the family across the street is latino, and the wife has been here for 5 years and speaks almost no English - she can't even respond to simple questions i've asked her, like "When will your husband be home?"...

different languages have different difficulties - sure, spanish may be easy to some, because it is based on the same linguistic roots as english...i took high school and college French, and Russian was MUCH harder (it took a whole year just to get high school level, or level 1 proficiency by the government's standards on a 5-scale). i learned about (SR skill) level 1 Japanese as well while i lived in Japan, but never learned how to read or write it - another side note for those not aware of it - Japanese has like 4 alphabets: kanji (the pictographs), katakana/hiragana (when they don't have kanji for something), and romanji (latin alphabet).

so i'm not all that convinced that characters should get their native language for free, or that every character can be bilingual - it takes an effort - if they want it, make them spend the points on it...

Just as a note, since many of us are Americans....

Most 'intelligence 3' europeans are bilingual. Many are multilingual. Or Indians. Or Chinese. It's only growing up in a country where one language is so terribly hegemonic that we assume learning other languages is some kind of impossible task that cannot be undertaken save by the majestically intelligent or the specialized.

bitrunner: It's all about getting immersed in a language when you're young. Learning a language only gets more and more difficult as you get older. If you start learning a second language when you're under 10 years old, getting to the equivalent of a rating 1 skill takes very little effort, and even a rating 2 skill only requires a bit of upkeep.

Having not yet taken university courses in second language acquisition, I would go as far as saying that what SR considers Intelligence has almost nothing to do with learning a second language. He/she might never become a great writer or a witty talker, but an "Intelligence 2" person could certainly be fluent in several languages.

Anyway, I use BeCKS, where everyone gets one language skill at rating = Int, and then gets Int x 15 Karma points to spend on Knowledge (or Language) skills. It works well enough for me.

I'm not saying that learning additional languages is difficult. I'm saying that, at least in the US, most people just don't, while a free first language plus language skill points would make nearly everyone bilingual or more.

~J

The thing about languages is that rating 1 is considered to be perfectly fluent. Anything beyond that is useless except for certain language tests that rarely come up.
Writing a novel, legal brief, or research paper may require a language test. Deciphering a code without the necessary key or understanding a related but different language requires a test. Making a public speach may require a language test but it would more likely require a chrisma test. Writing the speach, on the other hand, would probably require a language test.

I just look at it this way. None of us made a conscious choice to learn English, we just grew up speaking it and we learned to communicate English whether we wanted to or not. I prefer my char gen system to reflect that by giving a no cost head start in the characters native tongue. And if we want to assume that the current increasing trend in bilingualism (regardless of the reason) will continue then I see having the majority of the people being bilingual, or more realistic yet, knowning snippets of many languages from dealings with the various syndicates, metahuman groups, foreign investment groups, merc groups, NAN, elves etc.... I think that actually fits the Sixth world better than the current system.

Just tossing my 2 cents in, I can see how having 1.5 * INT for languages is low, on the other hand it can be seen as too much, especially in America especially Indiana (I can't tell you how many people in the building I work in barely have English 3, let alone a second language) But then again the state of the world in the 2060's is much different, looking specifically at Seattle being very diverse in its enthic/multi-lingual population and closer to more nations, and extra territorial Coprs than RL Seattle today (not saying that its not today just less so than its SR counterpart), could justify giving someone their native language at their Intelligence, and allotting INT rating in points for additional Languages instead of INT*1.5. But personally I just use the book rules. Alternately we have a natural lingust Edge, and a similar flaw that we house ruled, each level adds/subtracts .5 to/from the multiplier for determining languages.

I don't like the Native Language=Int solution, but I can't put my finger on why. More later.

~J

There's nothing to say the average European (or Troll) isn't using some Knowledge (or Active) skill points to increase their Language skills.

The Good Old American Know-How is revealed to be just reallocation of knowledge skill points not used on other languages

~J

Normally I hate this sort of nitpicking as much as the next guy, but given the subject, I just can't resist.

*nods solemnly*
Coherience is of the utmost import in communicating basicly with others.


Yes, I make errors just as much as anyone else. It's just the topic, nothing personal.

If he cared how it's spelled, I'm sure he'd have used the spell checker.

Some people apparently can't grasp the irony.........

Perhaps someone was being ironic?

I've always found the rules for languages in Shadowrun to be a bit...peculiar.
The funny thing is that if you apply the same rationale as is often raised on these boards for skills such as Drive then most people don't need to have language skills at all...
ie The skill is needed to make tests, and tests are only needed in exceptional circumstances, etc etc.

YMMV

Since I speak several languages myself, I think the rules make it a bit too hard for characters to be multilingual...but that's a personal prejudice, and I'm well aware that most of my gaming group think I'm a "mutant talk-monkey". (that, apparently, is engineer-speak for 'linguist')

Ah, OK. It works if you assume that Joe Outside meant that his language skills are good while others' aren't. I rather not assume such things, because I reserve the right to criticize others in areas where I personally possess no skills at all.

Actually, Solstice caught me on that one. *hangs head in shame* I don't misspell words all that often, so I don't typically use spell check. I like to think that I have an above average command of the english language, so I suppose the irony of the situation is on me.

What if you just learned Braile then no matter what country you were in you could get by fine.

Hmmm, Native languages are free IMO. You get language skill points based on your intelligence, some (not necessarily all, and sometimes not possibly all) are spent on a native language, and others are spent on a second or even third language. And no one said you had to spend all your language skill points if you don't want to.

Brail is just letters transliterated into bumps in certain patterns. The language used will still pose the obstacle, and typically your R/W will be lower than your verbal.

Also, sign languages are foreign languages with their own words, syntax, grammer, and subleties. There is a reason ASL is "American Sign Language" and not english. In addition there is not a Chinese person or a Turk (etc.) could understand you if they don't have the "spoken" skill of ASL.