What's the most interesting thing that happened with your

Walking through a neighbourhood talking to his people, while the party trails behind feeling ostracized. Helps if you and the DM both know a language the other players do not - talking to the butcher about his sick wife while the DM describes for the rest of the party a clearly disturbed man, covered in blood and fingering a knife, is a good time.

>>54233681
The wizard casted a spell that made learning languages pointless

Why yes I'm bitter, how did you guess?

"The creature is watching you menacingly, but doesn't show immediate hostility, then it utters something horrific and completely unintelligible as if you were giving ear to hell itself."
Followed by personal note "Asks who are you in Hungarian."

>>54233681
Most I can recall is an Exalted game where we were all playing Dragonbloods.

There's this language called Old Realm, which is essentially Latin, and most people who speak it are either immortals like local gods or scholars. Dragonblood themselves have a variant of it called Dragontongue, which is essentially the same language, though has suffered more drift over the centuries.

So here you have our group, walking up to try and beseech a god for favor, using Dragontongue to seem smart and respectful for using 'their' language, and essentially just going up and talking to them in the worst slang you've ever heard.

>>54234269
"Whom'st approaches my esteemed throne?"
"Oi oi my brother me and me pack here jus want to ask for a couple favors yeah? You wouldn't mind would ye being so mighty an strong and all that would matey?"
"Leave."

>>54233681

I will tell you the least interesting thing instead:

>They sneer at you and say in your own language, "your terrible pronunciation is painful to my ears! We will speak in your language so you can stop butchering mine."

I cannot tell you how many times my characters have heard this tired cliche.

>>54234353
Pretty much. We did eventually manage to convince them by bringing them a bunch of tribute, but it's a nice touch.

>>54234353
Je suis Christ, it's like that /k/ tale of some 'strayan grunt calling platoon commander "cunt" in a friendly welcome.

>>54234359
Wouldn't it be great if the NPCs actually complimented you on your effort for learning their language? Especially if it's uncommon like Gnomish, or isn't good for business like Orcish.

>>54234359
Every fucking time.

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>>54234399

Supposedly, the term "bullshit" originated as a reaction by Australian troops in WWI to British notions of protocol, make-work details, and military culture generally.

(Originally read this in Gwynne Dwyer's _War_. I don't know how reliable his sources were.)

>>54234359
>not replying with "I can't tell what you said just now, let's stick to your language."

>>54234441

That would be a lot better than the second most frustrating thing about trying to use secondary languages:

>It acts surprised for a moment that you can understand and speak its language. But it's too angry/crazy/stupid to communicate with and get any meaningful information out of it.

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Went undercover, used the proper dialect from the area when the people we were infiltrating were NOT from the area.

Cue pic related.

>>54233681
AD&D Elves & Half-Elves natively spoke about ten different Monster languages. Dwarves & Gnomes were nearly as bad.

"They're Orcs, you can't understand what they're saying."
"I speak Orcish."
"They're, uh, speaking in Kobold."
"I also understand Kobold. What are they saying?"
"They're, uh, talking sportsball. If you try to tell me you follow Orc Scrimmage, I'm going to flip the fucking table."

>>54234636

But let me ask you this: what is so bad about a character being able to understand what they're saying?

If you can't improvise a little dialogue or let the players gain information from a source other than something you've pre-planned to hand to them, what are you even doing sitting at the head of the table?

>>54234728
>what is so bad about a character being able to understand what they're saying?
Nothing, but you have to extract an enemy with the 'Interpreter' skill first.

>>54233681
I played a character who was a Goblin Ranger-Rogue who rode his wolf animal companion. He'd had his tongue ripped out and would only communicate via sign language through one of the other characters.

>>54234636

Aren't there like a hundred different dialects of chinese?

Just say that the constant warfare, tribes breaking up and merging beneath the newest warlord has created lots of ork pidgin.

>>54234636
But the actual number of languages they spoke was limited by their intelligence. So unless they had 16+ int, it wasn't a big deal.

>>54234875
Venom go home you're hypnotized.

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>>54234241