Regarding the status of low speech and/or its subdivisions as "languages"

[Viktory System]

While scrollin' my way through the wiki's pages and updating my stuff, I noticed a few pages referring to subdivisions of low speech (ex. feline, equine, corvid) as languages that, in turn, determine characters that know a low speech subdivision to be bilingual:

Does 'fluency' in (any sort of subdivision of) low speech count as fluency in a language? Would knowing English and horse low speech make you bilingual?

Or does low speech's status as a lower level of communication cause none of its subdivisions to count as individual languages? Is every form of communication on the high speech layer considered a language to that end?

[Songbird]

Not speaking as staff since I'm not 100% sure on the "official" verdict of this, but, me personally, I've always considered any form of Low Speech to be considered a "foreign" language.

In my mind, it's no different than learning any other language — other than that you're making the noises that correspond to another animal versus a different dialect/version of "canine/Luperci speech." It takes time and dedication to learn what the sounds mean, and much more to mimic those sounds back, which is no different than an English-native speaker learning, say, German. And, talking to a bird, of course, would require different sounds than talking to a horse in their native Speech.

So, with that in mind, Low Speech in another animal's native tongue — to me — would be considered no different than learning any other foreign language, and it would be fair to say that a character is bilingual if they knew how to speak in a certain Low Speech as well. I would also say it's fair to say that speaking a different version of High Speech could also count as knowing a foreign language since, again, different animals make different sounds (Canine High Speech =/= Dolphin High Speech, for example).

[Raze]

The RP Guide says: "Like high speech, [low speech] is also subdivided into various languages, though these may not mimic human languages as precisely." This suggests they can be counted as languages (which have dozens of dialects even within species), though of course some species' languages might not have equivalencies to English or other languages we as humans understand. They are still lesser animals, after all. A lizard will have a less in-depth "language" than a cat, for example.

That said, my thought is that -- especially since listed skills aren't required/"official" and are more for the benefit of other players browsing your character's information -- whether these count as languages ICly would depend on the perception of the characters.

[Kiri]

This feels like a philosophical question more than anything. Does it matter what "counts" as a language? There is no practical, in-game difference between learning English and French and English and horse low-speech, except that I would say horse low-speech is harder for a Luperci to learn than French. If a character wants to call themselves bilingual for being able to make bird noises, no one is going to stop them. If anything, they might consider it "more" bilingual than them knowing French.

Crossing the species communication divide should be more difficult. Though we superimpose human languages over Luperci ones for convenience, it's probably slightly easier for an English-speaking Luperci to learn Japanese than for a human to do the same in real life (Japanese is frequently considered the hardest language for a native English speaker to learn). Canines can't actually make as many different verbal sounds as humans, etc, so it's easier for them to learn different languages within a species. Given Luperci's shorter lifespan compared to humans, this seems fair enough, and still allows us to impose practical limits on the number of languages that can be learned and retained.

Meanwhile, it'd probably take a lot longer for a Luperci to begin to differentiate bird or horse noises compared to a weird foreigner dog noise.

[Viktory System]

All good responses!

Yes, it's more a philosophical question, my intent was to just open a discussion about it because I was curious. I initially mentioned it in #soulsverse in the discord server, but Mel advised I post it here, so I did just that! English isn't my mother tongue, so I wasn't sure where best would be to ask?