How should I do languages?
 

First off, I finally finished playing around and experimenting while going through the documentation, and started working on my official World, and even got to use it a little bit in last night's game. I must say: Awesome! :D

Since languages are generally associated with ethnicities, and since I have topics for the latter, I've just been putting a Language tag where that is the case, and using an alias for the ethnicity topic if the language has a name different from the ethnicity.

But then I ran into a bump. There are several languages in my world that are shared by multiple ethnicities, races, and species. I thought maybe I could have a group of topics just for such languages, but if I'm going to do that, maybe I should just make all languages a topic (with appropriate links or tags to/from ethnicities).

Any thoughts? Are you using languages, and what has worked for you?

In my realm languages are a mechanics thing so they have a custom article in the mechanics reference side of things. I use tags for big groupings like modern, archaic and planar

Unless you plan to expand on the subject and add things like sample words, notes about pronunciation, comments on grammar, and/or information about distinctions in the writing (see the Appendices to the Lord of the Rings for examples :) ), then a topic per language is going to be awfully empty... and that seems wasteful.

You could make a custom category for language families, then a topic per language family, and make the individual languages aliases on that topic.

For my own uses, since I have the characters in HeroLab, I rely on that more than RealmWorks for tracking what languages a given character speaks. I suppose I should put the same information into RealmWorks on the Individual, for easy reference outside of combat.

Thanks!

I use the Lost Lands as a campaign setting. It has numerous regional languages. While I've added these languages to Hero Lab, I also have them entered into Realm Works under the Mechanics section. This way I can keep track of their differences and who is likely to speak them -- some are spoken-only, some are dead, some are recent, some originated on another continent, some are spoken by certain classes. I could care less about grammar and such. Rather I'm interested in the historical context and how/where they spread. Migrations, wars and trade all influence language and culture.

The bottom line is that I find it useful in the campaign setting I use. Most things in RealmWorks are judgement calls. The real question is whether tracking languages is important TO YOU?