Removing the Common Tongue from Golarion

Language is an important consideration during exploration.

This is another post involving the Lest Dispelled Golarion GURPS campaign I am going to run and a small discussion of how I am going to treat the idea of a common language in a system that is incredibly flexible with regards to the understanding and modelling of language.

In the original world put forward by Paizo, Golarion possessed a Common language in order to abstract language barriers away between different cultures and races. Because the campaign I am going to run is intending to model a far more realistic and grittier Golarion, the decision has been made to remove this abstraction and instead to look at all languages and ethnicities alone. Nations will be considered individually to possess comprising cultures and languages and usually possess a dominant language.

A moment will be put aside to discuss the language of Taldane. According to the Pathfinder Chronicles: Campaign Setting, Taldane is the language Common in the Inner Sea and on the continent of Avistan. It is seen here as more of a pragmatic construct. While the intention is that it is comprised of an alphabet and numerals taken from older languages Jistka and Kelish respectively, it will be considered in this envisioning of the world as solely the language of the nation of Cheliax, and therefore of the Chelish people ¹.

Here is an example of what this means for a character in this campaign. Both Varisians and Shoanti would have a Native comprehension of their languages, but may possess a, spoken or written, Broken or Accented comprehension of Taldane, the language of the Chelish, due to the need for it in business transactions. Why might this be something one would observe? There is a large number of Chelaxian in Varisia.

The regional language for Tian-Xia is Tien with component languages for different sub-groups, as in modern-day China and the rest of the orient. Their understanding of languages like Taldane is only insofar as they need it for transactions with the Inner Sea.

The comprising cultures and languages for other regions is determined on a case-by-case basis and is usually indicated or can be inferred by the content written for that region.