Language of the Kingdoms

The four races of Comraich derive from the same original race. While each of the races have taken their own individual paths as far as culture is concerned, they all speak a core language which is known as “Comran”. However like all cultures that develop more or less independently each kingdom has developed specific phrases or words to represent unique items or concepts to that specific culture. These unique language exceptions are noted on the Language page for each race.

None of the cultures have a unique complete language of their own. Jillhani do not fully speak Japanese any more then the Zuberi fully speak Arabic or the Valgarins speak Gaelic or any Scandinavian languages, Dyrlings do not know the full Elven or French language.

This was done for specific OOC reasons. We believe that it is not only to much to expect players to learn a “full language” to role-play, we also, and more importantly, believe that players speaking in a “full language” that is not Comran (English) are giving the impression of role-play snobbery or attempting to be purposely confusing to others.

We believe that suspension of disbelief can be created thru the use of flavor words, and there is no need to develop complete languages, out of respect to both our casual and non-english speaking players.

Example: A Jillhani will have a term for a hakuma (the oriental warrior skirt/pants). Dyrlings obviously do not have hakuma in their culture, but a Jillhani WOULD know that the hakuma could be described in Comran as a “split skirt”.

We are not saying that every culture is going to easily understand every other culture – variations in accent, grammar and culturally specific terms/phrases can very easily make communication between two cultures a struggle. However, this is a FAR cry from two cultures that speak completely different languages.

If a character interacting with someone from another kingdom is almost exclusively using culture specific terms and phrases, it can be assumed that they are being either lazy or snobbish. Every character knows enough of Comran to correctly translate their own culture terms into an appropriate Comran phrases to communicate their meaning.

While we do recognize that MANY players enjoy the role-play of having their own language, and many have come to speak almost exclusively in culturally specific terms, we request, for courtesy reasons that this be only done amongst others that also enjoy that. If you are speaking with another player and are unsure of their opinion or comfort factor on this, we expect that your inclusion of culturally specific terms be limited to the point where the phrases can be extrapolated by the context of their usage.

In other words, don’t confuse the hell out of other players. If another player asks you to speak in Comran (or Common, or English), please respect their wishes.

Just a last bit on realism here: Even if we DID have full complete languages (which obviously we don't). It could be reasonably expected that MOST chars would know more then one language. Its really only us Americans that don't learn know more then one language. Secondly, a person that can ONLY speak their native language would really NOT be trying to interact with other cultures generally, thereby limiting their role-play circle a great deal.