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[Darkfather]

Originally Posted by coffeyfiend

Could you please explain a bit about the words in parentheses in Table 2.1 of the Adventurer's Forge? Do these affect game play?

They can. Table 2.1 is the birth language table for adventurers whose race does not have an automatic racial tongue. When a language is mentioned with some sort of parenthetical note, it means that the language is spoken in one of its dialect forms. For example, Brazilian Portuguese and Continental Portuguese have some significant differences in slang, while some phrases that make sense to a British person do not to an American. When the dialect is mentioned at all it means that the languages have different enough versions that there is at least some chance of miscommunication (for example in the heat of battle) but careful and considered communication by two individuals will likely be ok.

In practical terms Southern Celestial is the high version of the tongue, as is Great Nevari the main version of that tongue. The Nevari from the Grabbian lands is different enough to cause confusion, but close enough that traders do not need translators. A speaker of Celestial from the Inland Sea speaks a corrupted form of the language (Lake) with many Dagorian and Sedusi loan words, but the core grammar mutually intelligible.