I think "alignment language" is an unfortunate misnomer. "Ecclesiastical language" would have been a better choice, and truer to the original intent. Below I argue that the purpose of the alignment languages was to be the ecclesiastical languages of the
Cleric class.
I also argue for the expansion of this idea of "class languages" from clerics to all classes. We can see this expansion happening in AD&D, where there are 9 alignments, and the 9 corresponding alignment languages are supplemented by 2 explicitly class-centered languages:
Druidic and
Thieves' Cant.
But why stop there? Shouldn't
Magic Users have their own class language? When Wizards sit around their towers, playing
rhythmomachia, smoking their pipes, they're undoubtedly speaking their own class language, not the common language. John Dee and Edward Kelly created a "Magicall or Angelike language" called "
Enochian" by modern occultists; you can see it, for example, in Crowley's
Goetia. MUs would also employ specialist jargon taken from astrology, alchemy, mathematics, metaphysics, numerology and physics. They would write in ciphers, using
gematria,
notarikon, and
temurah. Their poetry would have correspondences between deities, planets, colors, herbs, numbers, tarot cards, and calendar dates.
Fighting Men too have their own class language, embracing
military slang,
martial arts, military law, and of course their code of conduct (
Chivalry). No mere peasant could hope to grasp this specialty language without formal indoctrination by a trained expert.
Bards (if you use them in your campaign) are in the unique position of creating language.
The Bard coined thousands of
new words and phrases.
OK, so how do I justify my thesis that "Alignment Language is a subset of Class Language, specifically Alignment Language is the Class Language of Clerics"? Here is a quote from the thread on Dragonsfoot entitled
Q&A With Gary Gygax, Part IX posted Tue Feb 13, 2007 5:18 pm:
Cab wrote:
Anyway, on a completely unrelated note, someone asked Frank when alignment tongues came into D&D, and what there rationale is, and Frank directed the questionner here to ask you (Gary) instead. I can't find that topic addressed here already, but I may have missed it. So if I may, where did the idea for aligment tongues come from? Do you see them as fully fleshed out languages?
As D&D was being quantified and qualified bu the publication of the supplemental rules booklets. I decided that Thieves' cant should not be the only secret language. thus alignment languages come into play, the rational being they were akin to Hebrew for Jewish and Latin for Roman Catholic persons.
I have since regretted the addition, as the non-cleric user would have only a limited vocabulary, and luttle cound be conveyed or understoon by the use of an alignment language between non-clerical users.
Cheers,
Gary
And on page 24 of the AD&D DMG, Gary wrote:
Alignment language is a handy game tool which is not unjustifiable in real terms. Thieves did employ a special cant. Secret organizations and societies did and do have certain recognition signs, signals, and recognition phrases -- possibly special languages (of limited extent) as well. Consider also the medieval Catholic Church which used Latin as a common recognition and communication base to cut across national boundaries.
So Gary clearly has
Ecclesiastical Latin in mind as the prototype for the Lawful alignment language, and this makes sense given D&D's medieval setting. So what would an anti-cleric speak? My personal guess is that the Chaotic alignment language is simply a degenerate, corrupted, ungrammatical form of Ecclesiatical Latin. For example, nouns would not be declined. If you examine the liturgy for the Black Mass/Missa Niger/Le Messe Noir (
link NSFW), you'll see this to be the case. I always imagined Black Masses being held in the Chapel/Shrine/Temple of Evil Chaos in the KotB.
In Supplement II, Assassins are Neutral. With an INT of 16 they can learn an additional alignment language. With an INT of 18, they can learn both Law and Chaos. In AD&D, Thieves know Thieves Cant (their class language), in addition to common and their alignment language. At high levels of INT, theives can learn more alignment tongues. At higher levels, they can learn to Read Magic...another clue that Magic should be treated as its own language. Gary wrote a book on Thieves Cant, called
The Canting Crew: The Essential Handbook for All in the Fantasy Rpg Underclass!. There's an interesting article on
Patter Flash, and some lexicons of cant
here,
here and
here.
Back in the Middle Ages, Judaism was about evenly split between Karaite Jews and Rabbinic Jews. Karaites would likely use Arabic as their common tongue and Biblical Hebrew as their Alignment Language. However, Rabbinic Jews, let's say they were Ashkenazi, would use Yiddish as their common tongue, but they would have
two alignment tongues: Mishnaic Hebrew and Aramaic (to study Talmud). So why couldn't there be two lawful alignment languages? And why couldn't a Rabbi/cleric speak both lawful tongues?
Someone in the Middle East might find a Catholic Church near a Syrian Church and a Coptic Church. The liturgies would be in Latin, Aramaic and Greek, respectively. Could there be three lawful alignment languages? A below-average catholic peasant probably wouldn't even know Latin, but a smart enough guy could learn all three of these Christian liturgical languages.
Therefore, for the sake of realism, I'd say that each class could have more than one class language, and clerics could have more than language for a given alignment.
What I'd say is that the formula given in OD&D for number of languages should be retained, namely minimum(0,INT-10)+2, (or even reduced from a +2 to a +1), but every PC must learn common first, their class language second (which for clerics is their alignment tongue) and then any other language that makes sense for their character to know, including a class or alignment language other than their own.
My justification for this is the
jovial priest in KotB (page 9): Clearly he is Chaotic, but he must know the Lawful alignment language, because he preaches using it. But his two not-so-smart acolytes only know common and the Chaotic alignment language, and that's really why they're silent---if they speak among themselves, and they slip into Chaotic, then they'll be detected as spies and traitors and probably lynched by the townsfolk. Note that the
Top Secret RPG even had a subgame about detecting a non-native speaker trying to imitate a native speaker on page 6 of the rules, something that could be imported for use in D&D.
