Pfft, all dwarves are either Scottish or German. Just a fact.
Dwarves are Scottish, goblins are German.
I like that one podcast where they established that a dwarf was caught in a dimensional rift and went to Scotland for a number of years before finding a way back home. But he brought back the accent and all the dwarves loved how it sounded so now all dwarves speak with bad copies of a Scottish accent.
Probably because the DM can’t keep his accent straight. But fun nevertheless.
No, Germans are goblins, there’s a difference ;)
What are the french?
They think they’re high elves, but are actually just humans with strange accents
I think there’re enough cautionary comments here re: cultural insensitivity that this is more than a little tone deaf, son.
Lmmfao.
I haven’t been called son by anyone but my dad in decades.
It was also by a condescending asshole the last time it happened.
Seeing as how one side of my family goes back to Baden-Wurttemburg and nearby areas, I can be as insensitive about my own ancestry’s culture all I want.
Fair point, though the username certainly checks out, now that you’ve also justified shitty behavior through familial hearsay. Lemme guess, you’ve also “got some Indian in there”, hmm?
Since you’re still being a condescending asshole, this will be my last response.
But, no, no “Indian” at all. No native American either (and you were whining about insensitivity).
All European as far as can be traced. Mostly Scots-Irish and German. A little dribble of Polish, a drab of Spaniard, and a healthy dose of French jizz. All of those were single instances, and nobody has traced the family lines of those contributions the last I talked to the extended family. Each of those was from an immigrant from those countries, not an established family of nationality-americans.
We’re up here near the Appalachians. If you’re a cracker up here, things were isolated enough until about twenty years ago, you had little enclaves of whatever immigrant groups came here. They would, mostly, stay to themselves with only occasional intermarriage. After ww1 and 2, intermarriage between groups became common. So you end up with folks like me that are damn near entirely a split between two known immigrant groups.
You can look up the history of immigrants in the Appalachians. Focus on the region from West Virginia down to the bottom of the Carolinas. You can see the clear waves of immigration into the region. You might even be able to roughly guess where I’m from using that information because it was such an insular thing.
None of this is hearsay. While I don’t possess them, there are family bibles recording births, deaths, and marriages going back to the 1700s in one case. There are also plenty of genealogy resources out there now that make it fairly easy to dig things up if you’re lucky. On both sides of my family, people have done the work. That’s how I can specify where in Germany my father’s father’s branch of the family came from.
So, again, since you’re being a condescending asshole, I’m sure you’ll want to make another empty minded response. Feel free to make it a real zinger since I won’t be responding again.
Germans are quite high on the cultural sensitivity list. Don’t want them declaring war on the entire world again, after all
Yes Scottish Dwarf is really good.
But Goblins are not strong enough to yield German imo, maybe it could suit orc but also orc is metal voice.
deleted by creator
Drow are Australian, on account of the land they come from
Nice :)
I played a furry porn game where otters spoke Tagalog and honestly, yeah that’s fine
I am curious.
IMO - Racial/Ethnic/National Coding isn’t inherently wrong. But using that coding to push Stereotypes and oppressive mindsets is.
Rule of thumb, if you’re worried you will in some way cross that line, don’t do coding.
Not oppressive mindset, but i’m ok with stereotypes too.
Because it can be funny, in comedy racial jokes are always set in some stereotypes for a reason. I think RP is mostly that, fun and joking around.
I have my own language mappings in my homebrew. Most of them only appear as names since most people speak Common, but I did include some people in my game who don’t. (I make sure that they are some who speak a language that I speak too.) So the mappings are:
- Common - English. We’re playing in English, duh. (Before contact with Elves, humans spoke “proto-Common” which would be mapped to German if I had to use it. Many humans still have German names.)
- (High) Elvish - French. Yes, in-universe the Common language has plenty of Elvish influence. (Classical Elvish is Latin.)
- (Wood) Elvish - Greek. Most Wood Elves speak High Elvish, but their names are Greek and many of them still speak their own language as well. The continents and seas are often named in Ancient Wood-Elvish (i.e., classical Greek) because they used to be the primary explorers before the rise of the High Elves.
- Dwarvish - modern Dwarvish is Norwegian, old Dwarvish is Icelandic.
- Halfling - Frisian. (Fortunately I haven’t had to say anything in Halfling so far.)
- Gnomish - Welsh. (Again, fortunately I haven’t had to say anything in Gnomish yet.)
- Orc - Russian.
- Goblin - Mongolian.
- Tellurian (not a species, but an influential country) - Spanish. Many people alongside the Bay of Luria speak Tellurian as their native language instead of Common or their racial language.
- Sylvan - Finnish. (My go-to for weirder names as well. Many Fey-related creatures have Finnish names, as well as those who live near Fey portals.)
- Giant - Hungarian. (They feature a lot in Hungarian folk tales.)
- Draconic - Hindi.
- Hashiman (not a species, but a group of eight islands - though they are also the Kenku homeland so most Kenku speak this as their native language) - Japanese-ish. The language comes in two dialects, Hanego which is used primarily by Kenku but also Aaracokra, Owlin, Tortles, and other creatures with hard beaks that have difficulty pronouncing M and N, and Hadago which is used by the rest. They are identical in writing, differ mostly in pronouncing those sounds.
Orc - Russian.
Haha holy shit.
Draconic - Hindi
“The dragon rears back and bellows ‘DO NOT REDEEM! WHAT ARE YOU DOING??’”
Tolkien was primarily a linguist, so the languages he made were actually based on real languages. Tolkien elvish is based on Finnish.
Why not just you Elvish for Elvish?
I thought Kenku couldn’t speak
That was pre-MotM, and also Forgotten Realms lore which holds no water in a homebrew setting.
Oh cool. I’m only really familiar with them from the 5e Monster Manual and Volo’s Guide to Monsters, I’ll have to check out Monsters of the Multiverse. Also this is probably a stupid question but what is Forgotten Realms lore?
The Forgotten Realms setting is the “default” D&D setting. Most published adventures take place in it, specifically a small part of it (planet: Toril, continent: Faerun, region: Sword Coast, the west coast of Faerun; this region has a number of famous cities like Waterdeep, Baldur’s Gate, Candlekeep, Neverwinter, etc…). The vast majority of lore that you can find in books like the Monster Manual specifically relate to this setting (Volo, Mordenkainen, Tasha, Xanathar, etc… all live there anyway). It also has many famous characters and deities (e.g. Corellon, Gruumsh, Moradin…), countries, cultures, even some languages. And it also includes things like the Kenku curse.
But of course if you’re running a homebrew setting like I do, you can feel free to cherry-pick it or just straight-up ignore it.
Just want to point out that draconic has quite a lot of words already defined, as well as a few grammar rules. 1. Draconic, 2. Draconic Primer, and 3. Lonely Planet Vayemniri (vayemniri being the endonym for dragonborn in the Realms—a race that absolutely despises dragons wouldn’t exactly be happy about a name that says “dragon”).
I’m not sure what real-world language would be the best analogue. Maybe something Germanic?
Esperanto is gnomish
Works at larps too. One I go to (in NL) has Dutch as common, and we use English as Elvish and, depending on with whom I talk, I express Dwarvish with either Scottish English, Northern English or German. If I really want to commit to the bit, I should learn High German or an Austrian dialect for Dwarvish.
I use portuguese for common, english for elvish, japanese for abyssal and i’m learning dovahzul to use as draconic, i’m thinking on learning german too but i don’t know what it will be yet
Goblinoids are German, with various tribes having dialectual differences (my personal fave is the Heßisch goblins of the wooded riverlands, famed for their spider silk surfing), but the most insidious in both regards is the hobgoblin Sweiß-Deutsch.
Thank you, i will go with that
Heßisch goblins are not unlike SoCal coasties, though landlocked; in stark contrast to the assumed harshness of the German language, this dialect reflects its cultural roots in a laid-back and oft syncopated meter with a healthy seasoning of slang, my groms. I guder vie, oder? 🤙🏼
I just use different American accents, mostly because I’m American.
Also, because hillbilly gnomes are funny
Jello Apocalypse and crew did a Let’s Play of Skies Of Arcadia that was fantastic for a variety of reasons. Everybody in the Chinese-coded nation got Southern accents. It was… an alarmingly apt choice.
I ditched racial accents in place of regional accents.
deleted by creator