[Raellus]

It seems like a major oversight to omit language "skill" in a game where your PC is likely to start off as a stranger in a strange land. I wonder what the designers were thinking. A Linguist ability or skill could be a cool mechanics idea, if designed well. Some people really do have an ear for languages, and can pick them up more quickly than others. But that also seems a bit narrow conceptually. There are plenty of people who pick up a new language less out of innate ability or affinity for languages, but more out of pure necessity. Immersion has long been considered the best teacher of new languages.

People can start to pick up a new language simply through of sustained exposure (by the same token, one can lose a non-native language when one is removed from an environment where it is frequently spoken). I used a house rule in the T2k games I GM'ed that all characters started with at least 1 "free" skill point in the primary language spoken in the country in which they started the game (usually this was Poland, so all characters started with at least 1 SP in Polish; Polish PCs got on SP in Russian, given the large presence of Soviet military personnel in-country).

If I ever GM again, I think I'll change the house-rule for 1 SP in the language of the host country per year (or close enough) spent in-country. So, if an American soldier spent 3 years in Poland prior to the start of the campaign, they'd get 3 SP in Polish; instead, if they spent a year in Norway, a year in Germany, and a year in Poland, they'd receive 1 SP in each of those three languages).

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