When your character speaks, everyone else, even the most unlikely, can understand you. This is because as a default you speak �common�, a universal language understood by all the races and cultures of Norrath. However, there are other languages apart from common, and you can, if you put your mind to it, learn to speak them.
All Erudites start out with mastery level in two languages, namely Common and Erudian. As well as deliberately learning other languages as you go along, if you associate with other races you will �pick up� the odd word or phrase almost as a matter of course. The next time you visit your trainer, these languages will magically appear at the bottom of your skill lists as now being available to be learnt.
Why bother to learn?
As everyone can speak common anyway, learning other languages could be considered a bit superfluous, and indeed most folk never bother. Even those who do mostly treat learning languages as just a bit of fun that adds some �color� to the game. However, there are advantages to being multilingual.
Most practically languages are important in research, especially spell research. Various texts are specifically written in different languages (usually the elder ones, combine or dragon), and unless you understand that language, you are stuck. This is mostly high-level stuff, but one has to prepare!
Secondly, and this is unconfirmed, it is rumoured that certain NPC�s will open up a bit more to you if you speak to them in their native tongue. Presumably this could lead to new quests.
The third reason involves player psychology. Speaking to other characters in their own language can get you a certain amount of kudos. I always speak in the native language of another race if I am on their home �turf� (providing I have the skill to do so!) It seems only polite, and on a practical level you will be surprised just how much folk �thaw� and open up to you. Most are far more likely to go out of their way to give you directions, buffs, healing and better deals on items. It all adds up!
Fourthly, we are Erudites and renowned for our knowledge and learning. The ability to speak in other languages is a vivid demonstration of the intellectual superiority of Erud�s children.
The Nature of Language.
Each language is treated as a skill, just like any other, except that they all have a cap of 100. Anyone can learn any of them, at any stage of their development. Because the maximum level is only 100, you never get to see exactly what level you are, just the arbitrary descriptions of �awful�, �below average�, �good� and so on. The skill level directly relates to your ability to speak the language. It is the percentage chance that a letter you type when �speaking� that language will be displayed correctly to another player. In other words, if you can speak Elvish with a skill of 80, approximately 20% of all the letters in any message you send in Elvish will be randomly selected, rather than the one you type. If the person you speak to only has a skill of 30, then 70% of the message will be randomly scrambled. The same occurs if you are reading a letter in say, Elder Dragon. If your skill in that language is only 35, then 65% of the letters in that message will be substituted by random symbols, which will probably make it unreadable. As can be appreciated, fairly high skills levels are needed to make speaking in another tongue worthwhile.
As of last count, there are no less than 25 languages in Norrath. Each of the different character races have their own, apart from Humans who just use common, and Wood Elves, Half Elves, and High Elves, all of whom use Elvish. There are in addition six semi-sentient race languages, four �elder� languages (old versions of racial tongues), an alignment language, a class language, and the noble tongue of the lost combine empire.
The known languages are:
Barbarian
Combine
Common
Dark Speech (known by some evil types)
Dragon
Dwarvish
Elder Dragon
Elder Elvish
Elder Erudian
Elder Teir�dal (i.e. elder Dark Elf)
Elvish
Erudian
Faerie
Froglok
Gnollish
Gnomish
Halfling
Kobold
Lizardman (spoken by Iksar)
Ogre
Orc
Teir�dal (i.e. Dark Elf)
Thieves Cant (known to mastery level by all rogues)
Troll
Vah Shir
Plenty to keep you occupied there!
Learning languages.
There are only two ways to learn languages.
Firstly, you can spend bonus points from your trainer, just as with any other skill. The only problem is that only languages you have come into contact with will be available to be learnt. In other words, you will only be able to put bonus points into a language that you have heard spoken. It�s a kind of variation of the idea of certain skills only becoming available at certain levels.
Expending your level bonuses to learn languages is not a very good use of these valuable points. You should only use your bonus points if you are really desperate, and even then only to get a starting point or two in the more �esoteric� languages.
The premier method of learning a language is to find someone who can speak it and then listen to them a lot. Some sources allege that you can also gain skill levels by speaking the language, but I personally have never seen an increase from doing this.
Learning by listening is a great way for a group to pass ten minutes while they are medding and healing up between fights. Make sure you are grouped, in close physical proximity to each other, and located somewhere safe. If there is a chance some monster will turn up, agree a signal to notify everyone that the group is under attack. Ideally you need to be somewhere quiet where there aren�t too many people and by a zone edge (why will become apparent later). All who wish to teach should go to their speech selection screen (right click) and change the language they are using (left clicking on the current option toggles your language choices).
Now go to your SOCIALS menu and reprogram a button to �group say� five lines of text. The skill checks are per-line spoken, regardless of how much text there actually is, so to reduce �lag�, keep your messages short, like one letter long. This will reduce the amount of �spam� and therefore the chance of some poor unfortunate going linkdead. Something like this:
NAME: Lang
/g a
/g b
/g c
/g d
/g e
Put that socials button onto one of your hotkeys that is currently unused. A good idea is to turn off �group say� (found in the chat filter section of the options menu). This way you won't have to endure the zillions of messages from everyone else. All you get to see is your own chatter and the skill increases. However, if you do this, remember to turn it back on again when you finish, or someone in the party is probably going to die!
If you are going to be learning languages as well as teach, bear in mind that your chance of increasing any skill is a function of the higher of your INT or WIS statistics, so maximise whichever you can get higher before you start.
Right! You are now ready! Everyone takes a deep breath, then starts pressing their created language hotkey buttons. At random intervals, depending on your INT/WIS, a message in dark blue will flash up saying �Your language skills have improved�. This is a note that your skill level in a language has increased by one point. However, you will NOT see these improvements until you either zone or camp out. This is an important limiting factor in becoming multilingual.
The rule is that the maximum you can teach any language is one point higher than your own skill level. If you are a master in speaking a language (100) this is no problem. However, this is not always going to be the case, especially with the non player-character languages. If character A has a skill of only 20 in Faerie, the maximum that he can teach character B is 21. Once character B reaches 21, he will NOT see any more language skill improvement messages.
Are you beginning to see where this is heading? In the case above, if the two wish to continue learning Faerie, what will have to happen is that character B will have to camp out and back in again, thus registering his new skill level of 21. Alternately, both will have to zone. Then character B can teach character A from skill 20 to 22, whereupon character A has to camp out and back in again (or both zone) to register that increase. Repeat, until both reach skill 100 in Faerie or die of boredom.
You can speed up the process by learning two or more languages �out of sync�, so everyone is teaching at all times, but this is still a painful process, especially as you will almost certainly get confused as to who is meant to be teaching what and when. It is much easier to just get someone who is a master to teach you straight. Unfortunately, whilst there is no shortage of masters in the character race languages, finding someone who knows the more esoteric tongues can be quite hard. Dragon is the most popular, probably because it�s thought to be �cool� to boast �I can speak dragon� (although what you would actually want to say to a real dragon, apart from �Please don�t eat me� is anyone�s guess). The various elder languages are fairly well known because of their importance in research. The least commonly known are the various semi-sentient tongues. There are probably no more than twenty characters on the entire server that have managed to master Orc or Gnoll.
One last point. When you camp the language you were currently speaking becomes the default for when you log back on again. So do remember when you have finished to reset to common, otherwise when you log on next and have forgotten you were discussing politics in Froglok there are going to be some mighty confused and/or irritated folk answering your hail!
Doctrina says �khyt iugy thw whilreb uz Wuis!� in an unknown language!