UC MUD Languages

What languages exist?

Different language for each sentient race? Or at least for each sentient racial group?
Common language
Guild languages
Ancient languages

degrees of separation between languages
language family tree (LFT)
different LFTs could be related due to geographical proximity
history of world has large impact on languages. A race has a common ancestor and location so their languages are all in common, but due to movement, natural disasters, and colonization/war, the languages change as the different races change.
- History needs to be developed in parallel with LFTs.

speaking to other speakers
- full immersion
- teacher vs class
studying
steps to fluency
Number of languages already known increases learning rate
Number of sister/family tree languages already known increases learning rate, cumulative with number of languages known

model fluency on a numeric scale (0-100?)
unknown languages are a 0
Hearing an unknown language spoken gets no details.
- Character will not be able to identify exact language unless the character knows another language on the family tree.
- Sister languages will count as low fluency
- Unknown language may be generified as most common language in family tree, or as "racial" language
Level of fluency determines how much of language is understood when spoken
Spoken language is assumed to be plain English (with maybe some interesting idioms used) and parsed by an NLP
- If character is not 100% fluent, words may be replaced by gobbledygook (exact sounds based on language) or phrases reordered, depending on level of fluency
- Different languages will have different homophones that can be misinterpreted as a function of fluency. "There/they're/their" in English might be "Orange/story/his parakeet" in another.

The gobbledygook fields can be place to put in random in-jokes

have one language have the same word for healer and warrior, and it sounds like doctor
slang from various sci fi shows in different languages (Firefly, I'm looking at you.)
metaphors in gobbledygook, including "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra"
"Elves do too have a word for heterosexual"
Dwarves have 30 words for beer and 100 for rock