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Mummy's mask details the relationship between the two, but it's not sanctioned for play currently, and not every GM can be expected to know that speakers of the two languages can understand each other. In PFS I suggest you treat them as two different languages unless you have an approved additional resource than explains that you can understand the other language if a GM questions you about it.
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According to ISWG, at least as I read it, learning Ancient Osiriani lets you speak but not read Osiriani.
Ancient Osiriani: This precursor to modern Osiriani
shares many similarities and differs mainly in its
hieroglyphics and lexicon. Speakers of this tongue can
speak modern Osiriani, but with an archaic accent.
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As CigarPete quoted, the Inner Sea World Guide says
Ancient Osiriani: This precursor to modern Osiriani shares many similarities and differs mainly in its hieroglyphics and lexicon. Speakers of this tongue can speak modern Osiriani, but with an archaic accent.
That does indicate that speakers of the two languages can understand each other but writing is more different.
To use what may be the broadest touchstone in the English-speaking world:
Listening to Ancient Osiriani is like listening to someone read the King James Bible. Modern English speakers will understand it but the words and phrases are ones they most likely wouldn't use. (And vice versa.)
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That sounds a lot like trying to communicate in Latin to someone who speaks Spanish.The difference between Spanish and Latin is "an archaic accent"?
I would say the equivalence would be closer to Middle English vs modern English.
Basically if you sound like you are from a Shakespeare play or a Canterbury Tale, you likely speak ancient Osiriani.
I would assume with the time that Osiria spent under kelish rule, there should be allot of borrowed language structure and words from Kelishite (kellish?). Given the amount of time they spent under the other empires influence it should be enough to render the Two languages only partially intelligile to eachother.
Shakespeare spoke and wrote in late period Early Modern English, which is quite different from Middle English. Namely that speakers of modern English can quite easily understand EMnE while they'll be quite lost with Middle English.
I think (spoken) Early Modern English like Shakespeare is a fitting comparison. It takes a modern English speaker with no exposure to the differences effort to understand the full meaning, context and idiom are significantly different. Quite a lot of the effort required to understand Shakespeare is because he was writing in iambic pantameter anyway, so it doesn't sound like conversational EME would have.
Shakespeare spoke and wrote in late period Early Modern English, which is quite different from Middle English. Namely that speakers of modern English can quite easily understand EMnE while they'll be quite lost with Middle English.I think (spoken) Early Modern English like Shakespeare is a fitting comparison. It takes a modern English speaker with no exposure to the differences effort to understand the full meaning, context and idiom are significantly different. Quite a lot of the effort required to understand Shakespeare is because he was writing in iambic pantameter anyway, so it doesn't sound like conversational EME would have.
The problem is your comparing, the natural evolution of the dominant language of an empire that had the printing press to one that was the subject of conquest.
I guess a better expected comparison for me would be to ask how much Modern Philipinos can understand the pre-spanish conquest language (think Taglio is the dialect)
However, Osirion is a fantasy language in a game and theres no garontee it follows logical assimilation patterns.
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My first character now knows 34 languages. He's always found them useful.
There's an entire module set in Niswan, where nobody speaks anything but Vudrani.
Thassilonian was practically required for Season 4.
Want to Disguise yourself as a Gnoll slaver? Practice how to laugh.
Roleplaying with Dark Folk who look and sound like squeaky muppets was one of my favorite scenarios.
You mean Sasquatch is a language?
Scouting a Dwarven Sky Citadel soon?
Are those... DROW?
GM: "Nobody here speaks Treant, right?"
Me: *raises hand*
or
GM: "The Androsphinx turns and says a few words to its compatriots in a gutteral language you can only imagine to be Sphinx"
Me: "I speak that"
GM: "It's actually not Sphinx"
Me: "Oh. What language is it?"
*GM looks at my sheet, laughs, and hands it back to me*
GM: "He just said 'let's gut them' in Protean"
And many other equally memorable scenarios.
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@Nefreet: That's fantastic.
I would assume with the time that Osiria [sic] spent under kelish [sic] rule....
Did they? I missed that. WOW - then they're really Egypt. You know what THAT means, don't you...?
It means that if it weren't for the text already specifying that speakers of Ancient Osiriani being able to speak contemporary Osiriani, all bets would be off. Reflect on the implications of the fact that Gamal Abdel Nasser was the first ethnic Egyptian to actually lead Egypt since Nectanebo II. Egyptians have been speaking a steady diet of Arabic (AKA Kelish) for centuries, and unlike Latin, which the modern world is lousy with direct descendants of and has been carefully preserved through the centuries by the Roman Catholic Church and others, Ancient Egyptian wound up practically trampled into oblivion. There's a reason the Rosetta Stone is so famous: It didn't just "revive" a "dead" language, it was practically this happening (and if you'd been around at the time, your reaction to the discovery might even have been similar).
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But people never actually forgot how to speak the language, they just forgot that hieroglyphics wrote Egyptian/Coptic.
Just like Coptic today is mostly Egyptian with a bunch of Greek in it, Modern Osiriani is probably basically Ancient Osiriani with a bunch of Kellish vocabulary absorbed into it along with whatever language they speak in Geb and Nex and maybe some Vudrani from Jalmarey. Just like I imagine that the dialect of Kelish spoken in Osirion is different from "proper" Kelish the way that Egyptian Arabic is relatively divergent from the other dialects.
On the other hand, they obviously did not put that much historical and linguistic thought into that sentence in the ISWG.
Languages are funny as they evolve two dialects can be structurally identical but mutually unintelligible. I wrote a paper on collonialism last year for my academic writing class. How much damage it does depends on th attitude of th overlord nation. Since osirion still exists at all my guess is. Their kellish overlords didn't care. But there would btech a lot of borrowed words and pronunciation shifts.
But yeah I don't think a lot of thought was put into the line Minkai iswg.
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Chaucer wrote on this subject.
"Ye knowe ek that in forme of speeche is chaunge
Withinne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
That hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straunge
Us thinketh hem, and yet thei spake hem so,
And spedde as wel in love as men now do;
Ek for to wynnen love in sondry ages,
In sondry londes, sondry ben usages."
- Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde