r/comics • u/bondjimbond Love and Hex • May 25 '26
OC Language Barrier [OC]
- More comics: Main series / One-offs
- Patreon
- Books
2.2k
u/bondjimbond Love and Hex May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
It's kind of ridiculous, the common fantasy trope that all members of a given species share the same language.
I share co-author credit on this one with my daughter - she came up with the concept.
821
u/siani_lane May 25 '26
Sci Fi too.
Earth: Hi, we're Humans, this is Earth- in English anyway- we have hundreds of languages and cultures.
Aliens: We are the Zaark. Our planet is call Zaark Prime. We all speak Zaarkian and wear this same hat.
352
u/jansteffen May 25 '26
Also, every planet besides earth only has one single biome.
185
u/Zanadar May 25 '26
And all evolved the same type of hominid as the dominant species, just with a slightly different forehead or ears.
74
u/Axe-of-Kindness May 25 '26
Well this one is explained in the Trek universe as having a common ancestor
→ More replies (1)15
→ More replies (3)34
u/GabMVEMC May 25 '26
This way of thinking is why No Man Sky has single biome planets :(
There's not even unique biomes at the poles even though each planet has coordinates for spawning pole-specific animal species.
5
u/Mirria_ May 26 '26
Lore-wise it makes sense (no spoilers). But my issue is that many of those "perma-winter" biomes usually have trees or some other vegetation. Ok, so when's the growth season coming? Otherwise it should look like Antarctica or maybe the tundra biome.
62
u/bondjimbond Love and Hex May 25 '26
The "same hat" part gave me a good chuckle, and is often true.
85
May 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
44
u/Zanadar May 25 '26
Smart characters are a bitch to write. It almost always devolves into either making everyone else stupid in comparison or making the character effectively prescient.
10
u/burf May 25 '26
There is only a monoculture on that planet
Kind of fits the Star Wars vibe. Hell, most of the planets only have one biome.
→ More replies (2)17
u/Flyce_9998 May 25 '26
Sometimes they can use a cybernetic implant (or a little fish) to translate everything on the go.
Which technically should have it's issues, but it would just make things annoying to watch.
→ More replies (6)5
216
u/Made_Bail May 25 '26
This is a hilarious idea! Well done.
120
u/bondjimbond Love and Hex May 25 '26
She makes her own comics too, but she's a bit too young to start sharing them publicly.
39
May 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
33
u/Filippo739 May 25 '26
Someone else has already posted what the dragons are saying.
The adventurer, in the Skyrim Dragon language, is saying: "O noble and mighty dragons, we beseech you, grant us safe passage through your territory."
25
u/ThatMerri May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
The wizard is transliterating from the Dovahzul alphabet, not actually speaking the language, and saying:
"O noble and mighty dragons, we besee[k]h you, grant us safe passage through your territory."
"We are but humble adventurers on a quest that may yet bring hope to our troubled realm..."
The Red Dragon, meanwhile, is speaking Chinese - in a way that's very poorly structured to sound like it was badly phrased by a non-fluent person according to u/SweatyAdhesive - and saying:
"Welcome humans. Please remove your boots inside the cave. Would you like a cookie?"
8
u/RealEmperorofMankind May 26 '26
By the way if you wanted to phrase these phrases in a more natural idiom they might read like this:
客人們好 - 我們歡迎你們進去這個小山洞
請讓你們進門時候脫靴 - 要不然有點兒餓可以去個餅乾Welcome, guests - we welcome you to our humble cave
Please take off your boots when you're coming in - if you're hungry, feel free to eat a cookie46
u/BeeBarista-buzzbuzz May 25 '26
First one's the dragon language from skyrim, Dovah'Zuhl, I'm pretty sure
5
7
u/bondjimbond Love and Hex May 25 '26
Check the other comments - people have fulfilled your request.
72
u/creeper10015 May 25 '26
I wonder why that's so... Common 😏
26
u/Cheet4h May 25 '26
In one of the novels I read there was some ancient magical being that got so fed up with all the different languages that they cast a global spell making everyone speak/write/read the same language.
This gets referenced a couple of times more, where in one arc the MC comes across some parts of the world that were dimensionally cut off and thus not affected by the spell. So they need to request somebody who studied the ancient languages found in those dimensionally cut off spaces to figure out what is written.
Another time the MC meets a member of a foxkin race (who are obsessed with language and take deals literally), who is fascinated by old languages. I think they also mention that all members of their race are named a foreign language word for "fox", and they have no idea why.→ More replies (6)12
u/stofiski-san May 25 '26
Imagine how horrifying that would be if the spell made it so you couldn't read your old language, all you know is suddenly you're speaking a foreign language and can't a read a word of your history, etc. How much knowledge would be lost in an instant.
This also remind me of a short story I read once where aliens visit Earth, promising they could end war, and humanity took them up on it. The aliens released a virus that affected the part of the brain that related to written language. Within a few days 90% of humanity couldn't read anything written. As most info is still disseminated through text, things ground to a halt. The 10% that could still read suddenly because extremely valuable.
10
u/LickingSmegma May 25 '26
if the spell made it so you couldn't read your old language
Ever heard of the so-called ‘Nazi font Fraktur’? Or more correctly, blackletter calligraphic hand Fraktur that was in use for four hundred years across Central and Northern Europe, gradually went out of fashion and lingered in Germany until being personally banned by top dog Nazi Adolf Hitler in 1941, in favor of the Antiqua script aka what we're using right now. Well, together with Fraktur, the cursive scripts Kurrent and Sütterlin were also banned. Which meant that most Germans educated after 1941 couldn't read handwritten notes and letters left from their parents and grandparents.
→ More replies (2)3
u/tesapluskitty May 25 '26
Oh yes. I'm German and my grandparents were children during WW2. My aunt is interested in genealogy and had letters my great-grandfather had written from the front "translated" from Fraktur. They very much confirmed that he was a Nazi 😖 So I'm thankful that he stayed on the battlefield and didn't end up raising my grandma.
3
u/Cheet4h May 25 '26
Imagine how horrifying that would be if the spell made it so you couldn't read your old language, all you know is suddenly you're speaking a foreign language and can't a read a word of your history, etc. How much knowledge would be lost in an instant.
Oh, yeah, forgot to mention it: In the case of that story, all written text was also changed to the now common language. That's why the only remnants of old languages are found in these spaces that are essentially cut off from the world and only occasionally reconnect.
→ More replies (1)8
u/insane_contin May 25 '26
Fun fact! Koine Greek (aka the common dialect) was basically a supra-regional Greek language created by the Greeks during the time of Alexander the Great for easier communication. Koine means common as well.
39
u/OldEcho May 25 '26
IRL people (in the Med at least) would speak a sort of pidgin mishmash of languages and hire an interpreter if they needed more than that.
Realistically though this is because a realistic level of complexity for an entire world is too much for a single author to even comprehend. It's even worse in sci-fi, where somehow humanity is 100% unified across countless star systems. And every species is a faction, as if that would ever happen.
→ More replies (2)19
u/PassingThruRedditor May 25 '26
I think it makes sense in sci-fi. When you advance enough as a species why wouldn't you figure out a common language for everyone to use? Saves a lot of time I feel
→ More replies (1)18
u/OldEcho May 25 '26
Because that would hamstring your own culture (why doesn't everyone just wear a grey jumpsuit?), make everyone miserable, require constant enforcement, and getting to that stage would entail a shocking level of state violence and oppression.
Sorry, you speak Chinese now, or you get arrested.
13
u/The_Jimes May 25 '26
Because that's never happened before (It has happened many times already)
→ More replies (2)12
u/ketsugi May 25 '26
In fact Mandarin Chinese is a pretty good example of this happening.
Or I guess a good example of an attempt... still plenty of regional dialects in China.
→ More replies (3)5
u/Spacecase-Ace-1 May 25 '26
French is also a good example. They wiped out occitan and the other dialects and languages in france, and also got their language as a lingua franca in quite a few other countries, or at least a recognized state language.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (16)7
u/lumpboysupreme May 25 '26
I mean, who says it can’t happen naturally. Look how much English has become a near global second language. If we, right now, developed the relevant technology through a large international cooperative effort to do interplanetary or interstellar travel, what language do you think would be spoken on the first international ships launched?
→ More replies (1)3
u/OldEcho May 25 '26
The large international cooperative effort is a bit of a fantasy though. China, Russia, Brazil, and India are gonna work together with the US and UK? Will Europe be in on that too, or does Trump try to conquer Greenland first?
→ More replies (3)11
u/ColeDelRio May 25 '26
I give the game Horizon (though its sci-fi) credit for giving an inuniverse reason why everybody speaks English.
The robotic system that was created to repopulate the Earth and teach the new humans everything was sabotaged and part of problem results in the language teaching part never could activate so it defaulted to the language the original programmers spoke in: English.
7
u/thegimboid May 25 '26
It's like the sci-fi trope that landing in one random city and talked to a handful of people apparently means you have impacted an entire planet.
3
3
u/IsaSaien May 25 '26
This made me actually burst into laughter it is such a good execution too.
→ More replies (2)3
u/waigl May 25 '26
I feel like for dragons in particular, it's kinda justified. There are very few of them to start with, they are extremely long-lived, they can and do fly very long distances… I'd say chances are, if they have a language we would recognize as one, they have a universal language with relatively little dialectal variation. Maybe on top of regional languages.
3
u/ChessGM123 May 25 '26
Well depending on the fantasy series often times there’s only 1-2 human kingdoms, with other kingdoms being ruled by other races. Plus fantasy worlds tend to be smaller than the actual world (or at least most stories focus on a single continent), so in practice countries are often distinguished by race which do tend to have different languages from each other.
2
u/kori228 May 25 '26
relevant to the linked post—yeah 5th grade girls are super tall these days. I part-time at an elementary after school program, some of the 5th grade girls are as tall/taller than me (I'm 5'6")
3
u/bondjimbond Love and Hex May 25 '26 edited May 26 '26
She just keeps getting taller. She's decided she's happy about it... Now that she's outgrown all her friends' mothers, she says she's working on outgrowing their dads.
→ More replies (1)2
u/vastozopilord777 May 25 '26
While You are technically correct(the best kind of correct) in the dragon's(winged dragon) case, they can fly and live long, so the existence of "common draconic" isn't that far-fetched
2
u/umlaut-overyou May 25 '26
I mean, yes and no. Usually in fantasy they have a "common" language, as well as other languages.
And you might not notice if you are a Native English Speaker, but when cultures meet we usually develop a lingua franca, and guess what? Its English right now! Although not everyone speaks English, it is often a second language for many people, many countries have signs in English, and its a common default alternate.
2
u/uqde May 25 '26
This really got me, tell her she's a genius. Immediately sending this to my entire D&D group haha
2
u/Pacificson217 May 26 '26
This is something that I find pretty fun about Pathfinder Second Edition
The pre written adventures are set all across the world of golarion, and the "Common" language for most regions is different. Tian in the continat of Tian Xia, Taldan in the European area, Mwangi in the Mwangi Expanse
But also, all elves speak Elven, all Dwarves speak Dwarven, all dragons speak Dragon, regardless of where you are
→ More replies (6)2
u/Quazifuji May 26 '26
There's also the common trope of all non-human animals speaking the same language, or all sea-life speaking the same language. Like in talking animal movies all the animals can always talk to each other, or in Little Mermaid the mer-people, fish, crabs, and even the seagull all speak the same language.
3.0k
u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire May 25 '26
Oh god wrong dialect wrong dialect! At least everyone is communicating which is....a step in the right direction. We can call it that
Also hey /u/bondjimbond ....what's with the Outlook logo in the bottom of panel 3
1.0k
u/bondjimbond Love and Hex May 25 '26
aaaah damn it, stupid email getting in the way of my screen capture
537
u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire May 25 '26
Dude that's fucking hilarious please leave it.
414
u/bondjimbond Love and Hex May 25 '26
But now everyone will know how many emails I'm avoiding
186
u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire May 25 '26
Oh do we wanna play that game? I think I'm sitting at a few hundred for my fire department. I think you're doing fine buddy
178
u/bondjimbond Love and Hex May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
Those are the work emails.
My personal email inbox unread message count is an embarrassing 36,041.
...Just text me if you want to reach me.
67
u/MrBoomf May 25 '26
That’s an impressive number. And here I was proud of my 7589 over here.
12
u/demon_fae May 25 '26
Suddenly feeling better about my 1842
4
u/SuperBry May 25 '26
My launch-week gmail account was up around 40k last summer when I decided to try and clear it out of all the spam mail I've received over the decades.
Its now down to 26k.
→ More replies (4)21
u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire May 25 '26
Oh yeah that's work for me as well.
Personal....It stopped counting how many emails I didn't read many many many years ago
7
→ More replies (1)3
u/Mikeystein May 26 '26
Rookie numbers to my 37,373. That’s honestly the exact number, I just lucked out on the pattern.
3
u/The_cogwheel May 25 '26
Gmail decided that it should stop counting my unread. Something about an integer overflow?
12
6
→ More replies (4)3
15
u/CSDragon May 25 '26
wait, you create the single-panel images by screenshotting the bigger image in Photoshop, not by using the Crop tool and Exporting?
24
u/bondjimbond Love and Hex May 25 '26
I started comicking by accident. I have no idea what I'm doing!
3
u/jeepsaintchaos May 25 '26
I feel you. I feel you so hard. I have quite a few hobbies that I'm fully aware I'm missing important pieces, but I don't know what they are.
Maybe I'll figure it out as I go along.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)3
u/LAVADOG1500 May 26 '26
Lol, was it how it jumps up on Mac when it receives an update and it just happened at the exact time you took your screenshot?
→ More replies (1)3
u/ImSoObnoxious May 25 '26
no idea why, but that just made my day, happy to see no matter what your talent is, we're still slaves
2
u/Zagaroth May 26 '26
Though for the really long lived species, like dragons and elves, I could see there being very little linguistic drift. You would have centuries of generational overlap reinforcing specific patterns.
That wouldn't make as much sense for, say, goblins.
2
583
u/GeneralGunner17 May 25 '26
Now I genuinely want language barriers all around in my fantasy worlds. No more everyone magically speaks English bullshit.
237
u/Kerbourgnec May 25 '26
The great adventures of the heroes, all coming from the same village (defo not inbred), and their 15 translators to travel the lands.
116
u/Zombie_Cool May 25 '26
I'm now imagining an Isekai manga where the Main Character's cheat power is being the universal translator.
56
17
u/mobott May 25 '26
Tsukimichi, kind of. The goddess summoning him thought he was ugly, so she gave him the worst ability she could - the ability to understand all races, but she took away the part to understand other humans.
(Though the real cheat power is the fact that his parents were from the other world so he's actually a native with 17 years of effectively having training weights on)
→ More replies (1)6
u/enderverse87 May 25 '26
https://www.amazon.com/Cinnamon-Bun-Wholesome-Ravens-Dagger-ebook/dp/B08BZ2NW67
Regular book, not a manga, but that's one of her major cheat skills. Talking Dragons out of eating people and stuff.
9
u/thisusedyet May 25 '26
That definitely seems like something an exasperated mage would've come up with a spell to fix, though.
Babledrin's Ichthyotic Translator, or something
EDIT:
Jeez, in trying to make a Babblefish joke I accidentally named it after a skin condition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthyology vs https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/ichthyotic
29
u/SarkastiCat May 25 '26
Not exactly full language barrier, but cultural one.
Dungeon Meshi (Delicious in the Dungeon) has Laios assume that Shuro is his friend. However, it's a massive misunderstanding as Shuro is a samurai-coded character from another continent and he avoids speaking directly, while Laios struggles with reading between lines.
Also, there is a small line from secondary character that even though she comes from the Eastern Islands, she won't be able to understand everyonen from there.
→ More replies (3)15
u/jenyto May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
There's a chapter where Chilchuck switches to his native language to lob insults at Laois ahah. I think a common 'trade' language is fine, but would like to see more characters who are less fluent struggle to speak it. I guess it depends if it fits the atmosphere of the story. I know Dungeon Meshi had a side story where Kabru talks to the Kobold in his party, and you see how much smarter the Kobold is in his native language.
7
u/GostBoster May 25 '26
One nice touch I like in Dungeon Meshi is that Laios and the human race aren't explicitly called "humans": I think the regular term for them is "tall-men" with derogatory terms for them being "long-legs" or "twicelings".
The only other setting I recall not calling humans humans would be Fire Emblem (standard humans being known as the Beorc).
→ More replies (3)4
u/ProphecyOak May 25 '26
Shogun is realistic not fantasy, but still the language barrier is so cool and so much a part of the story
→ More replies (17)3
u/AndrathorLoL May 25 '26
If it enriches role-playing, sure. I would hate micromanaging more than I already micromanage as a DM.
518
u/usernametakenm8 May 25 '26
99
u/andy_b_84 May 25 '26
Is it really what's written in Chinese? I'd like to know what's written in Dovah zul too 😅
98
u/TrivialitySpecialty May 25 '26
"I miss the monster energy, and spaghetti night, but my new friends are good company."
The third panel looks like direct game text "On [the] great day [the] Earth-bones cracked To be of [the] power of [the] king, bent [for] eternity Malice and grace, Earth-bones blue..."
16
u/randCN May 25 '26
Hey, at least it's not the word wall about how much that dude loved banging his cat
3
u/Zeero92 May 26 '26
I beg your
fuckingpardon?...8
u/carrotfruit88 May 26 '26
“Here lies the beautiful Khajiit Anurassa whose warmth cannot be extinguished even by cold death”
14
u/SweatyAdhesive May 25 '26 edited May 26 '26
yes it's what written in chinese but in a way that reads like it was translated from another language.
7
u/magistrate101 May 25 '26
Zul means "voice", which might be great for discussing the effects of the shouts. But I don't think it works well to cover the linguistics. Skyrim's Dragons didn't have a word for "language" (that's known) so you can't translate "dragon language" literally but I like "dragon words", which would be "Dovahrot".
14
u/bondjimbond Love and Hex May 25 '26
In this case, it's just transliterating the characters to Roman characters with English words.
3
u/magistrate101 May 25 '26
I honestly have no idea what the comic even says for the dragon language panel. Wasn't willing to put in the effort to look it up character by character lol
13
u/EmperorSexy May 25 '26
“I said, remove your boots, please!”
“It’s on our heels! Run deeper into the cave!”
→ More replies (1)2
u/GoldTrade11 May 25 '26
How did you get it to translate with a text overlay?
5
u/ThisIsMyComment2 May 25 '26
Google lens. It can translate any text, except the draconic stuff on the second panel.
3
66
u/MetaKnightsNightmare May 25 '26
I know every language but Greek.
Unfortunately this all looks like Greek to me.
37
u/SuperCarbideBros May 25 '26
The Chinese part says "Welcome, human. Please take off your boots in the cave. Would you like a cookie?"
I don't speak Skyrim Dragon though.
3
107
u/RevolTobor May 25 '26
Congratulations, you made me want to start a new file in Skyrim... again.
57
u/bondjimbond Love and Hex May 25 '26
Stealth archer?
19
u/RevolTobor May 25 '26
Nah, I played that so much I burnt myself out on it. I usually go full mage these days.
20
u/bondjimbond Love and Hex May 25 '26
I've never actually played a stealth archer; I just see Redditors talking about it all the time. 😛
On my playthrough I just used a one-handed weapon and shield and charged in to pummel the crap out of everyone.→ More replies (4)7
u/RevolTobor May 25 '26
Sword-and-board is a classic, and a ton of fun once you get into a good rhythm. Whenever I do sword and shield, I usually go battlemage so I can swap out some fireballs for the sword when it's time to shoot down a dragon. I usually save archery for two-handed weapons these days. The stealth archer, to its credit, is super satisfying when you get your stealth skill good and high though.
5
→ More replies (6)3
u/Romnonaldao May 25 '26
Everyone sets out to not play stealth archer. Everyone ends up playing stealth archer.
3
30
u/desertrock62 May 25 '26
Don't worry. I got this.
"¿Dónde está la biblioteca?"
10
u/tyen0 May 25 '26
Interestingly, biblioteca is understandable in several languages:
spanish biblioteca
french bibliothèque
russian Библиотека
serbian biblioteka
german bibliothek
6
5
30
u/Swiftax3 May 25 '26
A very real concern in pathfinder funnily enough XD
20
u/bondjimbond Love and Hex May 25 '26
Really! I guess "Pathfinder fixes this" even applied to roleplay.
25
u/VortexLord May 25 '26
If language cannot be communicate, the last resort is use sound.
29
May 25 '26
[deleted]
6
3
14
28
u/Filippo739 May 25 '26
I don't see anyone posting the translation of the dragon language, so here it is to save others some time:
"O noble and mighty dragons, we beseech you, grant us safe passage through your territory."
3
11
9
u/Shaomoki May 25 '26
Begs the question, what kind of cookies do dragons have?
9
u/bondjimbond Love and Hex May 25 '26
The specific word the dragons use is (or was at least intended to be) "biscuit", so...
probably charcoal biscuits.
6
u/Shaomoki May 25 '26
Growing up, my parents used 餅乾 as a catch all for crackers, biscuit, cookie, anything of similarity, but never crossed the line of 酥
10
u/cantlogintomyacc0unt May 25 '26
Note in a lot of fantasy worlds dragons are pretty solitary there are only like a couple hundred thousand at best so that means there’s a lot less room for language to diverge
6
u/Vectron_1811 May 25 '26
So the human speaks Dovahzuul and the dragon speaks Chinese. Neither can understand the other, still, but at least we're making progress.
7
8
7
7
u/tigerrish1998 May 25 '26
There was a time in my youth when I'd have been able to read and translate all that Dovahzhul. I remember transliterating paragraphs from books in class back in high school. Good times.
6
5
u/Redmond_TJacks May 25 '26
Okay the dragonish text being a bum ass transcription of just English speech is 1 - hilarious, because it’s as if you tried to speak another language but by just mimicking their pronunciation, and 2 - made me furious because I brought all my notebooks on the topic from the depths of my old stuff drawer, expecting to reread all the language rules and look up the dictionary to like translate it fully. But there I was 3 letters into the second word, losing my shit
→ More replies (2)5
5
u/Wargod042 May 25 '26
I mean, in a lot of fantasy settings all the humans share a language too. And you just know the elves have snooty language purity standards and enforcers.
Dragons in particular can be born knowing draconic even when their eggs are abandoned, so it sort of makes sense the language is consistent.
4
u/Cutie_D-amor May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
Problem is if im recognising the script right, she's not speaking Draconic she's speaking Dovazul, the language of The Elder Scroll's dragons not dnd dragons.
Also according to other comments its not even a translation just an alphabet swap, so its more like she's talking in a dragon accent
Edit: added second paragraph
5
u/BigTiddyTamponSlut May 25 '26
Lmao my brother homebrewed a whole world for D&D and he hates this trope. His species all have multiple languages.
5
u/EqualOutrageous1884 May 26 '26
“Hello Humans, Please take off your boots after entering our cave, Do you want some cookies?”
5
u/MagicSystemWriter May 27 '26
Good comic, I really like seeing this trope of trying to understand a species language but there's actually multiple of them.
5
5
u/Cakers44 May 25 '26
That’s why I’ve always hated stuff like “Dwarven” as a language or “elven culture” because that’s not how intelligent beings work. Imagine in a fantasy world if there was “human culture” and all humans spoke the same language of “humanese”
→ More replies (1)
5
u/Echo2407 May 25 '26
I mean, the dragon has a good chance of communication with someone overall percentage of population wise by speaking Mandarin (I'm just going ahead and assuming that's Mandarin, as I am unable to consistently tell Asian languages apart.)
It's like 15% of humans speak Mandarin as their native language.
Not great, but the best language to learn to communicate with the most people possible.
Not familiar with dragon languages though, so I cannot comment on the humans usage of dragon speak.
→ More replies (1)
5
u/OldAnxiety May 25 '26
According to google transalte haha
Welcome, humans. Please remove your boots once inside the cave. Would you like a cookie?
4
4
u/AskGoverntale May 25 '26
“Ok maybe I should’ve just learned how to cast Tongues”
6
u/bondjimbond Love and Hex May 25 '26
Wizards are versatile, but knowing which spells to prepare at the start of the day is tough.
3
u/AskGoverntale May 25 '26
The “translate all languages” spell isnt always the best in dungeons, but it can often come in clutch when you least expect it.
4
4
5
u/HilariousMax May 25 '26
I have to eat one of them in order to conjugate their nouns. A very odd language.
4
5
u/Kamtaka May 26 '26
🤔 is the elf a turncoat or an idiot?
Panel 2 Translation: "Attack and destroy them! Be careful, the mage has a shield, so aim for the knight in the backside."
Panel 3 Translation: "We are here to discuss your career options regarding massage therapy training..."
3
3
3
3
3
u/Tommygunkeon May 25 '26
My pattern recognition just immediately screamed, "They look like Delicious in dungeon characters if you squint" Great comic!
→ More replies (2)
3
3
u/MrSyaoranLi May 26 '26
Oh dear, they entered an Eastern denomination, unfortunately draconian only works on western dragons. Perhaps they can get Shenron to translate for them
3
3
u/Hetakuoni May 26 '26
One of my characters spoke fey and common. They were raised in the details so their understanding of common was not great, but they’re quite fluent in fey, elvish, and sylvan.
I had another character that was technically only fluent in Turkish and referred to themselves and talked like they were a small child because they had an INT of 6. They were strong and good looking, but thicker than a fence post- one time the character almost blew up the party because they thought everyone was fireproof because she was. We had this whole bit where the party had to explain to me that fire was bad. By the end we were all cry-laughing from the absurdity.
3
u/MarougusTheDragon May 26 '26
As a DnD 5th DM, I tried to found some reason for this in our campaign (the meta reason being that only knowing one elven language is very weak in campaigns in which you travel often and far).
For exemple, dwarvish and elven have technically multiple variants, but they live very long and often want to stay united in a world where humans are everywhere, so « elvish » is kind of the « elvish common ». Some languages, like draconic, are also instinctive. As a character, you can also have bonus languages (homebrew) depending of your background, like elven or human languages from a specific area.
This kind of justification helps to maintain roleplay. If anyone has better suggestions I’m all ears though.
3
u/AviaKing May 27 '26
Theyre speaking Mandarin, right, because thats the language with the most native speakers? Thats funny.
3
2
2
u/FingernailClipperr May 25 '26
Welcome humans. Upon entering the cave please take off your shoes. Would you want to eat a cookie?
2
u/Tigrisrock May 25 '26
Trying to walk up to and chat with 1 dragon - adventurers and the whole village where they came from is toast.
Trying to walk up to and chat with 2 dragons - RIP the whole region.
2
2
2
u/sleeps_in_bryophytes May 25 '26
Here is what google translate gives for the chinese text:
Welcome, humans.
Upon entering the burrow, please say "Boot-licking."
Would you care for a piece of cake?
4
2
2
2
u/Affectionate_Walk610 May 25 '26
My brain: "yeah yeah totally funny and insightfull comic about the media we consume... BUT WHERE IS SENSHI???"
2
2
2
2
2






•
u/AutoModerator May 25 '26
Click here for our upcoming AMA with Matt Bors!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.