Similar Languages

I believe that FM should make the game recognize similar languages in game.

e.g. I have seen in game a player who speaks Croatian having a language barrier in a team based in Serbia.

Maybe they should have a tab in editor denoting similar languages and maybe having a percentage of similarity.

In sheer realism terms, yes, of course.

But the game uses languages to decide whether players get on with team mates. Speaking similar languages won't make Serbians and Bosnians best buddies.

I don't think it would add much to the game, even for someone who often "collects" languages like me.

I personally think there are other areas of the game that should receive more immediate attention than making the game recognise similar languages.

In sheer realism terms, yes, of course.

But the game uses languages to decide whether players get on with team mates. Speaking similar languages won't make Serbians and Bosnians best buddies.

I don't think it would add much to the game, even for someone who often "collects" languages like me.

I thought it was used to denote communication between players, not whether they like each other or not.

I know they don't like each other, obviously that's the reason Yugoslavia split up. In the example I gave it was a foreign player who had learned croatian from playing in Croatia and moved to sebia.

It should, and I don't think it would take months to correctly implement it either...

The game probably already does this in a way by adding these languages to players list, but when a player learns a language from residing in a country it doesn't.

It only adds the language of the country.

e.g. Swedish which is to some extent mutually intelligible with both Norwegian and Danish, which is accounted for by adding Norwegian and Danish in the Swedish players language list. Although I'm not sure if that is because Swedish people are taught these languages as well or it is to remove the language barrier.

I presume it is the latter because here we go again the Yugoslav players have the other languages in their list.

The game probably already does this in a way by adding these languages to players list, but when a player learns a language from residing in a country it doesn't.

It only adds the language of the country.

e.g. Swedish which is to some extent mutually intelligible with both Norwegian and Danish, which is accounted for by adding Norwegian and Danish in the Swedish players language list. Although I'm not sure if that is because Swedish people are taught these languages as well or it is to remove the language barrier.

But that's a shortcut... and it's not the same thing either...

It doesn't cover the fact, say, Spanish players will learn their basic Italian in a matter of a few months while it's unlikely the same Spanish player will learn German or, say, Russian in such a short amount of time.

In a way the "Scandinavian shortcut" is just reflecting the (often overrated) mutual intelligibility of Eastern Scandinavian languages, so FM uses a bit of a "blanket setting" by giving all Scandinavians in the game a basic knowledge of the other cognate languages while in reality they don't really "know" those but sort of manage to understand eachother while speaking their native language.

(I've no direct experience of Slavic laguages but I suppose it's the same thing, at least within the same "branch"...)

So while I see there's a reason for taking a shortcut when mutual intelligibility is plausible I maintain it'd still be better to implement a "cognate language factor" to make the learning process faster and easier depending on the native laguage of the learner.

yes please,i usually play in portugal and even tough am not sure if spanish/portuguese players actually have problems since i think i've never bought a spanish player(tough i think i have seen an argentinian with communication problems),it would be unrealistic if they did since both languages are so closely related.

(I've no direct experience of Slavic laguages but I suppose it's the same thing, at least within the same "branch"...)

This is at least partly true. In my line of work I work with a lot of Eastern Europeans. While Lithuanian and Latvian are completely different languages to Polish and Slovak, most Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians speak basic Russian and use this as a way to communicate. This is included in the game, as all players from these countries speak Russian (they were made to learn it at school in most cases).

Also all Czech and Slovakian players speak both languages, but these languages are also remarkably similar to Polish and some people from both countries have a basic understanding of each others' languages. This though is not recognised in the game.

I'd definitely agree that there should be a cognate language factor as you suggested but bear in mind, it's often a player's 'hidden' stats that determine how well he (a) settles in to a new country and (b) learns the language. You can have two brand new arrivals in England from Poland and one will get homesick within a month while the other picks up basic English. I do like this random fact that it's a bit of a guessing game. Closer to real life that way.

This is something that clearly needs to be put in to stop laughable things from happening. Say a player goes to Serbia and learns Serbian then goes the Montenegro and cannot make himself understood despite the fact that most Montenegrins consider the language they speak to be Serbian and not Montenegrin which was only really invented as a seperate language after independence. A native english speaker from Norfolk would have more trouble in understanding if he moved to play for Aberdeen.

As a linguistic enthusiast I highly agree with this, but I'd like to expand on that concept.

Romance Languages(Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese, Catalan) Should be easier to aquire if player is proficient in family

Other linguistically close languages (German/Dutch) should have their degree of difficult reduced

This is at least partly true. In my line of work I work with a lot of Eastern Europeans. While Lithuanian and Latvian are completely different languages to Polish and Slovak, most Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians speak basic Russian and use this as a way to communicate. This is included in the game, as all players from these countries speak Russian (they were made to learn it at school in most cases).

Also all Czech and Slovakian players speak both languages, but these languages are also remarkably similar to Polish and some people from both countries have a basic understanding of each others' languages. This though is not recognised in the game.

I'd definitely agree that there should be a cognate language factor as you suggested but bear in mind, it's often a player's 'hidden' stats that determine how well he (a) settles in to a new country and (b) learns the language. You can have two brand new arrivals in England from Poland and one will get homesick within a month while the other picks up basic English. I do like this random fact that it's a bit of a guessing game. Closer to real life that way.

Even if he has settled in there would still be a language barrier between players on field when he first arrives which in real life wouldn't exist.

But that's a shortcut... and it's not the same thing either...

It doesn't cover the fact, say, Spanish players will learn their basic Italian in a matter of a few months while it's unlikely the same Spanish player will learn German or, say, Russian in such a short amount of time.

In a way the "Scandinavian shortcut" is just reflecting the (often overrated) mutual intelligibility of Eastern Scandinavian languages, so FM uses a bit of a "blanket setting" by giving all Scandinavians in the game a basic knowledge of the other cognate languages while in reality they don't really "know" those but sort of manage to understand eachother while speaking their native language.

(I've no direct experience of Slavic laguages but I suppose it's the same thing, at least within the same "branch"...)

So while I see there's a reason for taking a shortcut when mutual intelligibility is plausible I maintain it'd still be better to implement a "cognate language factor" to make the learning process faster and easier depending on the native laguage of the learner.

The problem with only using "shortcut" is that when say a Brazilian player plays in say Croatia for 6 years, and becomes fluent in Croatian why would he have a huge language barrier at a Sebian club.

Although it would be fair to have a certain language barrier until he learns Serbian but not a big one.

The problem with only using "shortcut" is that when say a Brazilian player plays in say Croatia for 6 years, and becomes fluent in Croatian why would he have a huge language barrier at a Sebian club.

Although it would be fair to have a certain language barrier until he learns Serbian but not a big one.

I agree with that, and that's also a valid reason to go past the aforementioned "shortcut" of giving a basic knowledge of cognate/similar languages by default to native speakers while long-term foreigners don't get such advantage.

So I think the "proximity bonus" should be given to ANY person learning a language in FM world... It shouldn't be linked with nationality but with the languages themselves.

So the Brazilian playing in Croatia should get, say, 1 point of Serbian every 4-5 in Croatian, or something like that... Of course it'd still depend on the player's Adaptability, so players like Tevez would still struggle to say "good morning" in a foreign language, but the average player should be able to get a headstart when moving to a country where they speak a language related to one he already knows.

I already realised that. The problem is that if he speaks one language that is very similar to another language he has a language barrier until he learns that other language, which is unrealistic.

I already realised that. The problem is that if he speaks one language that is very similar to another language he has a language barrier until he learns that other language, which is unrealistic.

From personal experience I would say that even though I'm a fluent Cantonese speaker, definitely does not mean I'm fluent in Mandarin. And yes I do have a language barrier when talking to Mandarin speaking people, and likewise some Mandarin speakers don't understand Cantonese too well either. So it isn't totally unrealistic.

From personal experience I would say that even though I'm a fluent Cantonese speaker, definitely does not mean I'm fluent in Mandarin. And yes I do have a language barrier when talking to Mandarin speaking people, and likewise some Mandarin speakers don't understand Cantonese too well either. So it isn't totally unrealistic.

This is already in the game.

Languages in the game are divided into families, groups and sub-groups.

Therefore, if there is a language that a player already speaks he will learn a language in the same family, group and sub-group (e.g. Italian and Spanish are in the Indo-European family, Italic group and South Sub-Group along with French, Portuguese and Romanian) much quicker than other languages. If languages are in the same family and group then it will be less quickly and so on.

Personal traits, such as adaptability, will also influence a person’s ability to learn a language.

The argument in this thread is that users "know" other languages "implicitly" - they don't have to learn with as much effort as before (see mutual intelligibility). The fact that they will learn a new (but similar) language quicker is a secondary point - their "starting point", however, is higher in some languages than others.

However, it is not necessarily the case that users "know" the other language. For example, Malay speakers will quickly discover they can somewhat converse in Indonesian even if they did not realise that in the first place. However, they do not speak Indonesian - they speak Malay - it is just understandable to Indonesian speakers to a certain extent.

So the argument is really that if languages are in the same "category", they should have higher "starting points" as well to reduce the risk, of immediate language barriers - as they simply won't exist.

And as an aside - I do wish that (regen) players didn't all have the same language profiles. For example, in the UK, most students learn a foreign language, usually French, Spanish or Mandarin - I'd like to see UK regens have English as their first language, but basic French/Spanish/Mandarin at random, and possibly other languages too to a lesser extent (i.e. perhaps some German, reflecting the fact that this Scot has German ancestry/went to Oktoberfest once).

From personal experience I would say that even though I'm a fluent Cantonese speaker, definitely does not mean I'm fluent in Mandarin. And yes I do have a language barrier when talking to Mandarin speaking people, and likewise some Mandarin speakers don't understand Cantonese too well either. So it isn't totally unrealistic.

That's because for purely linguistic reasons these two should be considered separate languages. The definition of what is and what is not considered a "language" is not purely linguistic, however; cultural, political, and historical criteria are also used.

the problem with bosnian/croatian/serbian/montenegan........ in FM words should be the same language (slovenian and macedonian excluded).

Apologies x42bn6 and Profesor. Wasn't really sure but good that you cleared that up...FWIW, I can probably understand Mandarin speakers if they spoke a little slowly...

And I also would like it if players didn't all have the same language profiles.

Not all Canadians know French ya kno.