Novels that have language differences over distance

Most novels I've read brush aside the way languages work, and usually just have "the Isekai language" or whatever and very rarely consider the fact that there would be different languages across even fairly small distances in another world. One novel that does take this into account is Death March, but primarily the issue of language never really comes up in fantasy novels I've encountered. One of the oddest cases I can think of is Death Mage, where the world has kept Japanese as it's primary language for 100 000 years, despite the fact that modern Japanese has only existed for a few hundred years on earth at best. Nothing wrong with that since it's fantasy, but I'm curious if there are any novels that properly show the linguistic issues that would almost certainly exist in any world without some kind of extreme force that would stagnate linguistic changes over the entire planet.

So yeah, let's hear about some novels with language differences among varied populations.

 

SSS Class Suicide Hunter?

I remember there being a part where they had an orc language and a goblin language that was separate from the human language... though I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for exactly

 

I mean with that one they have the weird space changes from the tower, but that's also sort of waved away with the tower's language translation/unification thing it does, so it's not really what I'm looking for.

 

this is manga, but try Heterogeneous Linguistic.

 

Well, it's hard to write a story with language issues on them... You want your readers to understand the dialogue after all.

If I were to write one, I'd do it with a MC who doesn't know the local language and ends up never learning it. Making the language issues one of the core focuses of the story... Because otherwise, I don't think it's worth the bother to introduce this kind of thing to the story IMO.

 

Hakai no Miko does a great job of portraying different languages. There's a beast man language, different human languages, Dwarven, high elf and a few others

 

History's Strongest Senior Brother has that...to an extent. Their solution? Make MC such a prodigy that he can completely learn a language within just 2 chapters.

 

I mean, for most of humanity we've had language issues that have essentially made it impossible to see eye to eye with different groups of people, so I can't imagine it would really be that hard to implement in a story. Heck, barbarians simply referred to people who didn't speak the same language as you originally (from the Greeks and romans) so it would be a understandable thing to have in a story. Plus, language is a huge part of a group's identity, so I think it would probably add a lot of distinction between different groups to make things seem less samey. But that's mostly just my opinion as someone who thinks a lot about linguistics so I don't know how many people would actually bother to consider it.

Some languages would be like that if it's just in a similar area with a close relation. Of course I hope they don't just have him take the same amount of time to learn every language since that would be weird.

 

I dont remember anything that fits exactly but Mushoku Tensei (probably?).

 

Fu Xing Dong Lai is a magic/demon academy setting where the students are from different countries all over the world. The academy uses a large-scale magic across the campus so that they all understand each other in school, but once they leave the campus perimeters, they cannot necessarily understand each other if they did not originally know the same language(s), and they might also be lost in the environment around them. There are multiple instances where this is portrayed and how they cope with it.

Chen Yue Zhi Yao’s world setting has one shared spoken language and two distinct written languages depending on if you are from West or East. And the inability for those from one city to write/read the other city’s writing comes into play fairly often.

There’s another untranslated isekai novel I read where the (Chinese) author transmigrates into his own novel, which is a Western fantasy that he had written to use English. He mentally complains about it when he first transmigrates lmao (“why did I decide to write a Western fantasy instead of an Eastern fantasy”). But he does know English (obviously, since he did have to use some in the novel), it’s just not the language he’s most comfortable with. There is, however, a hilarious touch where the story’s people celebrate the “Day of Creation” (aka when the author actually wrote the novel) and the author ends up seeing a statue of the “Creator” who is depicted writing a “divine language” that no one understands...and when he takes a closer look, he realises it’s his manuscript in Chinese LOL. (He just barely doesn’t expose himself there haha).

 

The only novel that i noticed where languages elements is there is The Great Storyteller. I finished this novel in 2 days. It's so good.

 

There is also Allison but it is not an isekai and I honestly dont remember the finer details so maybe? >.>

Crest/Banner of Stars is also there but it is more about the cultural difference between snotty space elves and peasant landborns and again, it is not an isekai.

 

Slightly unrelated but I remember reading a raw on syosetu where MC is isekai'd into a world with no understanding of the language at all, and has to learn it from scratch. Was a while ago tho, I wonder if I can still find it.

Found it: https://ncode.syosetu.com/n4955ee/

Don't necessarily remember if it was good or not tho lol

 

This is just like the "all foreign characters in anime and manga suddenly can speak Japanese" meme. It may be easier to read, but I think it somehow eliminate a very crucial part of the civilization. It shouldn't be impossible to portray linguistic diversity, like perhaps by presenting a bilingual character or making the characters learn each others' languages. There should be writing techniques to do this as well.

 

well lingua franca can solve and prevent lot of problems for story that need mc interact with people from various country or species~ usually author just introduce different race have different language but most know lingua franca, then use note they talk on different language or something~ it can also have ancient language of ancient civilization~ on linguistic even same language can have accent which may obstruct some conversation, more so if the speakers have geography challenge meaning isolation, too far away each other, different history event ect~
language is part of culture which tied with history that can relate to world building on story~ well it can use as spice up story~

there was aikodo practitioner who transported into new world only remember that~ there variation can speak but cannot read or write language such as on Dark Mage

 

I understand your point, but putting a different language on the enemies would essentially make the author unable to write any dialogue between MC and their enemies, or at least not without a huge hassle first.

It's just... Not worth the effort, really.

 

I don't think that having different languages make all that much difference unless the book is about culture shock and the difference in languages. I read a lot of historical novels and almost all of them have a ton of different languages. In just the book I'm reading right now there are characters who speak Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, English, Korean, and quasi-Mongolian and all of this barely impacts the story other than always needing to have a translator around when the characters are talking to each other. Obviously it's more realistic to do it like this but very little changes because the book isn't about that.

 

Tsuki ga michibiku. I think it's an isekai with like a diff language for people and the "beasts or monsters". The mc was only given language comprehension and an auto translate thing to be able to communicate with the monsters or beasts but had needed to learn the human language at that world himself. It's pretty diff from the usual isekai which is coooool.