One of my players does not speak common as they come from a village that speaks entirely elvish. We are coming up on a couple weeks of downtime in the campaign and another one of the players wants to teach them common. According to the Xanathar's rules it takes 10 weeks to become proficient in a language, but they would learn some over a couple weeks. My question is how much of a language would a character pick up in that time span? How would they role play speaking common with a limited knowledge?
[RPG] Language proficiency per week of downtime
dnd-5edowntimelanguages
Related Solutions
Latin (and to some extent Greek) used to be the lingua franca during the middle ages. Later on, French became the language of diplomacy and nobility. Everyone that mattered(1) speaks a local variation of said language which should still be understandable by another speaker. For example, Quebecois and French or American and English.
So, you could have such a language that all the PCs speak. They should be able to interact with everyone else. Now, make sure that each PC speaks the language from where they will go adventuring. If not, they will have to find a teacher and learn the language. This does not take that much time. You can learn everyday grammar and vocabulary in about three to six months of (hard) study. This is what I do for all my games.
Well, almost all my games. If the game is set in a bounded location, then only those languages that are around said location will be relevant. If I set a game in 14th century Venice, I do not need to worry about the PCs speaking Japanese. If I set a game in the Crusades, you better believe that everyone will learn Latin, French, and Arabic pretty damned quickly if they want to get anything done.
If you have boogly powers (aka magic or psionics or whatever), then learning languages could be done via it.
As a side note, Middle Earth started as a setting to play with the evolution of different languages yet most characters manage to communicate quiet well -- and were delayed at the gates of Moria because of a translation error!
Philology is just cool. And just because it is hard to implement in game setting should not be a barrier to trying it out provided that it enhances the enjoyment of the game.
(1) Why, yes sire, I do have blue blood... What about Peasants? They don't need to speak to outsiders, they need to work harder and pay taxes.
The psionic power mindlink does exactly what you want: It's low level and works on any creature that has an Intelligence of 3 or higher. (As long as you spend the points to make it work on an unwilling target.)
And most importantly:
You can communicate telepathically through the bond even if you do not share a common language.
As a backup option, as long as you can touch the ice toad, you can cast tongues on it. Tongues doesn't require a willing creature, so as long as the ice toad fails its will save this should allow it to speak to and understand you.
This spell grants the creature touched the ability to speak and understand the language of any intelligent creature, whether it is a racial tongue or a regional dialect. The subject can speak only one language at a time, although it may be able to understand several languages.
This won't allow it to speak to other ice toads:
Tongues does not enable the subject to speak with creatures who don’t speak.
So if you want it to be able to speak to other ice toads, you'll have to cast the spell on them too.
There is one other fly in this ointment:
The subject can make itself understood as far as its voice carries.
This is potentially problematic, because if ice toads don't have a voice (which may or may not be the case), they will be able to understand you but not speak loud enough for you to hear. This will enable any communication method that relies on the creature understanding you, and might allow communication methods that rely on the creature having a language. (Depending on whether understanding every language counts as "having a language"; I can't find a rules definition of what that requirement actually entails.)
Alternatively, with one-way communication established, you may be able to talk it into accepting a telepathic bond or some other method that relies on having a willing target.
Best Answer
There isn't any rules for that.
Sometimes in D&D the DM is required to make a ruling, this is one of those times.
I have had someone try to learn a language using the 5e downtime rules, but I have played with players who have low int scores or are not proficient in a language. Usually, this involves the player giving some clunky broken English dialogue, and the DM further misinterpretng what they say. This allows finer control by the DM, since even if the player doesn't commit to the roleplaying and speaks in basic but acceptable English, the DM can still give them funny looks and have the NPCs misunderstand.
As for how much language is learnt in a given time span, I think making a rough guess would be fine. At 2 weeks they can speak a small, basic, amount and are frequently misunderstood. At 8 weeks they can speak very well but are occasionally misunderstood.