Games - Language

Games - Language

I was asked during a game of Wire Run about how a player might instantly learn a language. There are provisos for it before. In Shadowrun, a player could download a langsoft, that is, a digital encyclopedic knowledge of a language (they are expensive) and in Matrix-esque "I know Kung Fu", simply immediately be aware. Heck, even in basic D&D a sorcerer or wizard can cast Comprehend Languages and simply be done with it.



I have been pondering this moment for some time. The players are situated in Hong Kong, while the defacto Cityspeak (English) is worldwide prevalent, there are cultural reasons for why the other languages exist and are used in day to day business. Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai, and dozens more minor dialects exist. Some of these languages are trade languages, some are formal, some are academic. Many of them are in varying states of rise and fall, decline or sometimes on the verge of extinction.

How to bridge these ideas while at the same time, keeping the business of their use mechanically sound.

Some players rationalized at character creation why they would know Cantonese (not knowing they would be in neo-futuristic Hong Kong as a setting). Others chose different languages, and everyone got a free one.

I've realized the action of wanting to spend experience to immediately understand a language is a deeply, deeply upsetting idea for me.

Because it's colonialist.

It offends my sensibilities because it represents this weird idea that a player spends x amount of exp (already a lugubrious abstraction), in order to UNDERSTAND a culture. The rebuttal (which I've had several times now with lots of different people), is that language is an association of words. It's knowing washroom is l'toilettes in French. But it's not just that. If we're talking about word substitution, then we're talking about tourist levels of learning the language. And maybe that's all they want.

But to really know how to speak, formality, inside jokes, cultural touchstones and reference...requires a level of actual 'fluency'. It's an abstract idea that is ill-represented in our tabletop games. I don't think every game needs to have this kind of complexity, certainly. But my games are certainly trending into that direction.

Is it fun? I....think so?

Maybe more than needing to be fun though....it's honest?

I think a lot about my ESL friends. To be clear, I was raised in Canada. I was born in Canada, I'm a first-generation Canadian, I barely speak Mandarin, I don't really read it at all. I was surrounded by peers who bridged those two worlds, who struggled with their English. I spent a lot of time helping people with English, with writing, with expression. In high school, learning expression and performance helped hone the craft of how people communicate. Not just in a written form, but in body language, in silence and hesitation, in form and figure, in dance, in song.

It was expected, nee demanded that I, a Canadian, had to perfect my understanding of English. University has honed that craft, I think I write and communicate very well. But I also wonder if there are layers of erasure there that make me uncomfortable. My parents both work in the public sector, they saw first hand how their interactions could be coloured by an inability to comprehend language and communicate. They emphasized, my entire life, that I must be able to speak, read, and write English as well as anyone, if not better.

Have I lost something in my inability to have fluency in Mandarin? Or Cantonese? Or Malay? Or the myriad of other languages they understand?

Does it interfere with my comprehension of language fairness when it comes to games?

Does it unfairly punish my predominantly Caucasian players? (Many of whom are mono-lingual)

These are weird thoughts to have.