Full count of languages spoken by monster entries


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

Scarab Sages

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As some of you may have noticed, I kind of have a thing for keeping data. Sometimes I use it to extrapolate interesting factoids.

Today, my players were curious about the more popular languages in Golarion. A SQL query and some excel manipulation later, and I had the answer.

Below is a link to the spreadsheet that shows all the details. It includes a full list of every instance of a language being spoken by a monster entry. A monster entry is anything found in the Monsters section of my site, which does include civilized races like the Changeling, Dhampir, or Samsaran. Basically, if it ever appeared in a Bestiary fashion (including books outside the normal Bestiaries), then it's in here.

I did remove languages that weren't actually languages: things like telepathy, tongues, truespeak, speak with animals, etc.

After that, I grabbed a list of all the "unique" languages for a final list of each one, then counted up every instance. You can get the full details on the sheet, but here are some fun facts:

1. In total, there are 3,137 counts of the languages appearing throughout all of the stat blocks.
2. Of these, there are 80 unique languages.
3. The most common language is, obviously, Common, appearing in 788 monster entries.
4. After Common, the top five languages used are Draconic (343), Abyssal (258), Infernal (242), Celestial (240), and Aklo (193).

This includes every entry up through the latest Paizo releases, including the Bestiary 4 (I'm still 65 entries short of full statblocks in the Archives, but went ahead of my work and grabbed the languages from those I hadn't finished to make sure they were counted). It also counts "can't speak" or "understands" entries as a count for that language. Understanding it matters.

Anyhow, I find this sort of thing interesting, and I hope you do too!

Language Totals

Edit: To clarify, I'm not implying that these languages are the most popular in all of Golarion. Obviously the size of a race plays a factor there. Hallit and Skald only appear 11 times each, but depending on where you live, those may be two of the most important ones. Something to keep in mind. :)


I've wanted something like this. Thank you :)


There is a bit of a problem with "common" being the most common. It is not an actual language, and more of just a base descriptor for the most common human language in a region. It is Taldane in Avistan and Garund, Tien in Tian Xia, and it is laborious to account for that when doing something like this.

Plus, saying what languages are most common on "Golarion" is kind of skewed if you decide to include outsiders, who exist on different planes and have contacts with countless other planets.

Scarab Sages

As far as I know, "Common" is always Taldane. When something speaks Tien, the stat block always lists it as such. Flip through Jade Regent or the Dragon Empires books, most of the NPCs speak Tien instead of Common (note that "Tien" is one of the languages put in statblocks, at least with 5 of them). The Inner Sea World Guide also lists Common as Taldane. I imagine that Kelish, Tien, and Varisian are considered 'common' in their respective popular countries, but when it comes to stat blocks, "Common" = "Taldane".

I did mention this in my first post (last line), but the list is not meant to represent the languages most common on Golarion (or anywhere). It's really a list of languages most common in *monster statblocks*. I gave an example of Hallit and Skald only having 11 each, yet these are probably two of the more common languages in Golarion, simply due to the proliferation of the human race.

Paizo Employee Developer

Extra Challenge!

How many don't have a Language line?

How many include (can't speak)? Extra bonus for a breakdown of the most common language that monsters understand yet can't speak.

:P

Scarab Sages

That's easy. :)

Out of the 1,968 monsters in my database so far (not including the last 50 or so monsters in Bestiary 4):
.
.

  • 637 do not have any language entry
  • 49 have "can't speak"
  • Of those 49, 12 cannot speak "Common" (but are listed as understanding it)

Keep in mind I'm only looking for the exact text "can't speak". There are other possibilities, such as "understands" (12 monsters include "understands Common" or some variant).


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Thanks for doing this, I have started on similar pursuits at other times. I would have guessed the number was greater than 80 unique languages.


I think the real challenge, would be what are the most commonly used languages throughout Adventure Paths, Modules and PFS Scenarios?

There is always that case of 'Does anyone understand the writing on the wall?' where the language is something like Elven, Kelish, or Thassilonian.

That one would probably be significantly harder to tabulate as it would require to buy, read, and count every time a language issue crops up.

Scarab Sages

Tels wrote:

I think the real challenge, would be what are the most commonly used languages throughout Adventure Paths, Modules and PFS Scenarios?

There is always that case of 'Does anyone understand the writing on the wall?' where the language is something like Elven, Kelish, or Thassilonian.

That one would probably be significantly harder to tabulate as it would require to buy, read, and count every time a language issue crops up.

Definitely. I have a feel for some just because I've run so many, but it's not something I can query as easily as the above (mostly because I don't track AP specific NPCs, and I definitely don't track simple mentions of languages).


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

You realize that since you did this, the AP writers are going to throw in the one-offs! :)

Great job and it has helped me pick my next few languages for my bard!

Liberty's Edge

I am proud to call you my GM.


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Great work, Karui Kage!

For descriptions of most of these languages, you can also check out PathfinderWiki's various pages on languages spoken in the Pathfinder Campaign Setting:

Human Languages of Golarion
Nonhuman Languages of Golarion
Dead Languages of Golarion
Darklands Languages
Languages of the Great Beyond

Scarab Sages

Excellent set of links :) I make use of all of those for my home games. I'll have to adjust my site to start hot-linking a lot of those languages from the Archives to the Wiki. I already do that for Deities and some Nations (in the Background Generator) but that's about it.


In my world I just made Draconic common because the Dragons used to rule the world. . .


Karui Kage wrote:
Excellent set of links :) I make use of all of those for my home games. I'll have to adjust my site to start hot-linking a lot of those languages from the Archives to the Wiki. I already do that for Deities and some Nations (in the Background Generator) but that's about it.

Thanks! Glad to know our work is of use to others. It's a constant work in progress, so if you see something, please feel free to let us know here or on the Wiki.


You might like THIS then?

Scarab Sages

stuart haffenden wrote:
You might like THIS then?

Cool! That doc is basically how my own database is set up, minus the statistic extrapolations. Very nice :)


Someone posted it a while back and I totally yoinked it!


Awesome! I always love a good spreadsheet, thanks for putting this together. It'd be interesting to see entries waited by how often they appear in supplements, APs, etc.

Editor-in-Chief

Crazy.

Awesome.

Crazy awesome.


Karui Kage wrote:
As far as I know, "Common" is always Taldane. When something speaks Tien, the stat block always lists it as such. Flip through Jade Regent or the Dragon Empires books, most of the NPCs speak Tien instead of Common (note that "Tien" is one of the languages put in statblocks, at least with 5 of them). The Inner Sea World Guide also lists Common as Taldane. I imagine that Kelish, Tien, and Varisian are considered 'common' in their respective popular countries, but when it comes to stat blocks, "Common" = "Taldane".

Well, Taldane is listed as the common in that guide because it is the World Guide for the Inner Sea....as in the Avistan and Garund areas.

Anway, PFWiki Scribe posted the links to the places where I got my bits about Tien being the 'other common'. But looking at the citations...the listed ones are shaky, but I feel that it further shows the exasperated problem of the term 'Common'.

Basically, since there are different writers for different bestiary entries, some think of it in the terms you listed, where Tien is listed separately, and some think of it as "whatever is common to the area." With such a vague term, it is hard to understand where each writer is coming from, making it very hard to do proper research. But this is mostly my perspective on this issue. While they are valid, I am unsure of how much they would even affect this kind of research.

Scarab Sages

I did a little more digging on this, but didn't find any instances where a monster was listed with Common but meant something else. This is likely for very good reason: a GM needs to be able to know that when his players speak Common and a monster says Common... that they mean the same thing. The designers can't expect that the GM will always look at the history and background of the monster first and go "oh, it's Common, but this guy is from Tian-Xia, so it must be Tien".

Again, check out the Dragon Empires books. They never refer to Tien as Common in them, it's always Tien. :)

Really, the term Common is basically a hold-over from 3.5. If it makes it easier, replace the word with Taldane every time you see it. Common is just to make it easier to say 'this is the prominent language'.

Oh, as for the citations you spoke of: I looked in the book from Jade Regent, and I think it refers to this: "Tien, the “common tongue” of Tian Xia, is not at all similar to Taldane, Avistan’s Common, nor are its letters remotely related." That may be where the confusion derived from. Despite the mention, all the stat blocks in that book (along with others) always list Tien and Common seperately. Sometimes a monster just has Tien, sometimes it has Common, sometimes both (even though the adventure is in Tian-Xia). If you do find cases in the Paizo books where a monster is listed with Common but it *has* to mean Tien, I'd be very interested to know.

tl;dr. My point is that, when it comes to the stat blocks that I analyze, Common = Taldane. Tien = Tien. This is a purely mechanical distinction, whether the definition of Common is appropriate or not.


They also use Common in the beastiaries because those aren't setting specific/ not just for Golarian. Common in other worlds is not Taldane to be sure.

Scarab Sages

Very true. Common is just a placeholder for 'most common language'. If you set your world in Tian-Xia, then replace Common with Taldane, change Tien to Common. If you set your world in ancient Greece, change Common to Greek. Whatever works. :) I'm just saying that, if you are using Golarion, then Common (no matter what stat block it's in) is likely referring to Taldane, and they'll say other languages when they mean them.

In any event, it's neither here nor there. Getting on a bit of a tangent. :)


Just caught my typo, meant 'weighted'. How easy do you think it might be to show this information geographically? Or maybe by environment type. Like most common language in deserts etc.

Scarab Sages

Hmm. A bit more time consuming, but not impossible. I'll see about playing around with that next week. Just got done entering Bestiary 4, so I'm a bit burned out for the weekend, haha.


Am busy checking off everything from your list to make sure it's been included in the Wiki. One thing that I have a question about is your entry for "Ghol-Gan". I've only ever seen it referring to the ancient cyclopes civilization, never their language. What is your reference?


Such a cool research. This will surely come in handy.

Thanks, Karui.

Scarab Sages

PFWiki Scribe wrote:
Am busy checking off everything from your list to make sure it's been included in the Wiki. One thing that I have a question about is your entry for "Ghol-Gan". I've only ever seen it referring to the ancient cyclopes civilization, never their language. What is your reference?

You can probably cross that one off as a worry, unless you guys want to include stuff that appears to have been 'updated'. The only instance of Ghol-Gan as a language is from the original Gholdako in Isles of the Shackles (page 49). The latest version, from Bestiary 4, replaces this with Giant.


Karui Kage wrote:
PFWiki Scribe wrote:
Am busy checking off everything from your list to make sure it's been included in the Wiki. One thing that I have a question about is your entry for "Ghol-Gan". I've only ever seen it referring to the ancient cyclopes civilization, never their language. What is your reference?
You can probably cross that one off as a worry, unless you guys want to include stuff that appears to have been 'updated'. The only instance of Ghol-Gan as a language is from the original Gholdako in Isles of the Shackles (page 49). The latest version, from Bestiary 4, replaces this with Giant.

Either that, or it was changed in Bestiary 4 because it's a "setting-neutral" source. But I think you are right, I think it was a typo, although I'll keep my eyes open for further instances.

Grand Lodge

PFWiki Scribe wrote:
Karui Kage wrote:
PFWiki Scribe wrote:
Am busy checking off everything from your list to make sure it's been included in the Wiki. One thing that I have a question about is your entry for "Ghol-Gan". I've only ever seen it referring to the ancient cyclopes civilization, never their language. What is your reference?
You can probably cross that one off as a worry, unless you guys want to include stuff that appears to have been 'updated'. The only instance of Ghol-Gan as a language is from the original Gholdako in Isles of the Shackles (page 49). The latest version, from Bestiary 4, replaces this with Giant.
Either that, or it was changed in Bestiary 4 because it's a "setting-neutral" source. But I think you are right, I think it was a typo, although I'll keep my eyes open for further instances.

In setting it probably should be Cyclops.


Starglim wrote:
PFWiki Scribe wrote:
Karui Kage wrote:
PFWiki Scribe wrote:
Am busy checking off everything from your list to make sure it's been included in the Wiki. One thing that I have a question about is your entry for "Ghol-Gan". I've only ever seen it referring to the ancient cyclopes civilization, never their language. What is your reference?
You can probably cross that one off as a worry, unless you guys want to include stuff that appears to have been 'updated'. The only instance of Ghol-Gan as a language is from the original Gholdako in Isles of the Shackles (page 49). The latest version, from Bestiary 4, replaces this with Giant.
Either that, or it was changed in Bestiary 4 because it's a "setting-neutral" source. But I think you are right, I think it was a typo, although I'll keep my eyes open for further instances.
In setting it probably should be Cyclops.

Yup! The Inner Sea World Guide is generally my go-to reference in the Pathfinder Campaign Setting. Looks like there's a bit of confusion as to what the proper language of the ancient cyclopes should be.

And just as an FYI, the Kasatha (as of right now) have not been mentioned in a Campaign Setting source, only in the Advanced Race Guide and Bestiary 4.

Dark Archive

dejate de joder que pelotudes!!!!!


Although certain langagues like goblin or orc will be more useful at low levels then some of the high level cr 20 outsiders.


I always pick giant. Seems like there are appropriate challenges with giants at any level, from ogres and ettins to eldritch giants and rune giants

Elven, dwarven, giant, abyssal, infernal, and draconic are usually what I pick. Monsters that speak those languages are encountered at a wide rangld of levels, and also there is a likelihood to find ancient texts in any of them as well


Hi, sorry to res an old thread here.

How difficult would it be to remove all the monsters that spoke common (or others) from the list?

From what i understand about summons, all the (summonable) monsters that speak celestial also speak common. Making Celestial redundant for summoning monsters.

I'm curious what would be the most efficient languages.

I assume that Draconic is the best 'second' language, but potentially 340 of the 343 that speak Draconic also speak common. If this is a manual thing don't worry about it, but i'm hoping it is a relatively easy thing to work out with a data base.

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