Background: I am making an Oracle and wanting to take the Tongues curse. I was thinking about how to role-play the fact that in battle, I can only speak one of the following languages: Celestial, Infernal, Abyssal, Aquan, Auran, Ignan, or Terran. This lead me to thinking: What do these languages actually sound like? Here are my initial ideas:
Celestial: Beautific, Awe-inspiring. Play Gregorian Chant.
Abyssal: Growling, intense. Play a Death Metal Song.
Infernal: Growing, intense, but in a different way. Play a Death Metal Song......backwards.
Aquan: Sounds range from a trickle (whisper) to a waterfall (shout).
Auran: Sounds range from a quiet breeze (whisper) to a tornado (shout).
Ignan: Sounds range from a crackling campfire to a roaring blaze.
Terran: Sounds range from rocks rubbing together to an earthquake (shout).
The point of this exercise is to have fun with role-playing the weakness inherent in the Tongues curse.
So, what do the rest of you think?
I don't think the mortal voice could reproduce it, but I loved the effect in Perdido Street Station where the ambassador of Hell was speaking, but there were faint voices accompanying his voice that were saying the same thing, but screaming in agony.
So in that case, a mortal could never speak Infernal "fluently."
I always imagine Infernal sounding like Tolkein's Black Speech.
Ash nazg durbatuluk,
Ash nazg gimbatul,
Ash nazg thrakatuluk,
agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
I like to think of Infernal as being a very precise, inflectional language in which rising and falling tones and how long you hold them having a bearing on the meaning. Great for innuendo and double entendres.
Abyssal on the other, I imagine as being gutteral and growling, with barks and roars having a meaning in addition to more traditionally composed words.
I love the project, great role-playing aid!
Celestial: I imagine celestial sounding like Enya singing in Gaelic.
Abyssal: Lawful Evil, so I imagine a Combichrist or Einzurstende Neubauten song. Harsh, but rigidly structured.
Infernal: Chaotic Evil, so imagine something more like Swedish black metal or death metal.
Our group is running in LoF AP at the moment. One of the players is playing an Oracle with the curse of tongues. We use this web site for when she needs to speak in combat. We usually use Icelandic but that has dropped off the list of choices and have been trying others for now. Some of the words come through every now and then so it makes it fun for folks to try and figure out what she is saying. (We use Hero Lab as our character sheets so everyone has a laptop up during our sessions anyway.)
I imagine Infernal sounds like this
NSFW.
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For me, Abyssal = Klingon ;-)Don't you mean Infernal? I'll confess to knowing nothing about 'original klingons' from the first Star Trek, other than knowing from somewhere that they were different, but the current klingons seem to be a pretty lawful society to me.
No, Klingon is also a good interpretation of Abyssal to me too. For me Infernal still has a sense of beauty, with a hard to place sense of something wrong. You could listen to someone speaking infernal , maveling at the elegance of the words, and only after a moment, letting everything sink in do you realize that the speaker was describing a torture session step by step.
What the original poster said sounded like the classic RPG few.
What i think of when i see the following (based off TV shows)
Celestial: Talon (from Earth Final Conflict)
Abyssal: Middle Earth Dark Speech (Lord of the Rings).
Infernal: Klingon (Star Trek)
Ok have seen the listed below in so many shows, so Ya.
Aquan: Sounds range from a trickle (whisper) to a waterfall (shout).
Auran: Sounds range from a quiet breeze (whisper) to a tornado (shout).
Ignan: Sounds range from a crackling campfire to a roaring blaze.
Terran: Sounds range from rocks rubbing together to an earthquake (shout).
I don't describe the way the languages sound in comparison to real or created tongues, because Im not a linguist, and any attempt thereat would seem.. somehow off to me.
That said, I do describe the sorts of feelings these languages evoke:
Celestial in my games is pleasing and comforting to the ear. Something about it is melodic, reassuring and heartening. Hearing it is a very pleasant experience.
Infernal by contrast is harsh, rigidly ordered and arresting, with a tinge of wrongness about it. It can be soft and subtle, but that is not its default form. As a language, it has very strict grammatical rules. Similarly to Abyssal below, learned folk get miffed if you use this language in polite company, for to speak the language of devils is to draw their attention, and what sane man wants that?
Abyssal, is something entirely different. Abyssal actually hurts mortal ears to hear. Every utterance sounds like a curse against everything that lives and breathes. It's nauseating, seeming to not adhere to the structures of language as mortals understand them. As Infernal, people tend to wig out if they hear you talking it, and furthermore, speaking Abyssal tends to cause... Weird freaky stuff to happen. Clocks near you chime discordantly, and their hands move backwards, candles and lanterns sputter and the temperature in the air fluctuates. Spoken allowed, it puts one in mind of something just outside the edge of your perception, scratching at the walls, screeching just beyond the edge of perception or your range of hearing, as though it's trying to get inside.
I haven't had the other languages come up much in my games, but I'll think on em and post them later maybe.
I can see (or hear ;) Infernal as Latin or latin quior and Celestial as Enya singing or Quenya Elvish from Lord of the Rings :) Latin as High Infernal and French as mortal Infernal... if you go by that one song / video by Enigma :)