Tongues

Somehow, the spark of language has found itself into the evolving brains of your people. From basic sounds to complex words, your language has progressed. It wasn't all predestined though - as your culture and society changed, so did the language. What impact did those changes have? How can you trace the legacy of your people through the history of your language?

This game explores the history of a language: how words are created, how meanings change, and how concepts are lost to time. Over the course of three Ages, you draw cards to develop the origin of words.

• The First Age represents the beginnings of the language from its earliest history. 
• The Second Age consolidates the language as the civilization settles. 
• Finally, the Third Age sees the language morph into a "modern" fantasy language. 

Notice: This is not a game about creating a language. While the prompts sometimes ask what something is called, it is expected that you simply define what your Conlang word means in your native tongue. For example:

In the First Age, the 4 of Hearts is drawn. You might write:

4 Hearts - Afterlife: The dead live on in a land ruled by the goddess of night. We call this land by a word meaning “forever night”.

At the end, you will have a collection of ideas and events that have shaped the history of your language. If you would like to take it farther, you can then plug these ideas into a conlang tool or create the words themselves. 

Note - the ages only represent the societies you might find in a typical fantasy setting. A Fourth and Fifth Age could always be added for a modern or science fiction game.

Inspiration

This game is inspired by a number of other games, including Dialect and A Quiet Year. I highly recommend checking both of them out as they are fantastic games by incredible creators.