The formal stance on Common - while it has some in-universe roots and references throughout the editions, is that it is the native language of the players/publication... so if you play in France and you buy the books from a French game store, and you play with other French-speaking players, then common is 'functionally' French, or a French-like common language... and in so being, in your game spaces, it comes with all the linguistic features that that language carries (French doesn't have a neuter form at all; all nouns and their surrounding forms are either masculine or feminine. In recent years, users of the language have begun to experiment with ways to express the neuter, but the language itself is not equipped to do so. I think, and please correct me if I'm mistaken, the most common form used right now is to express gender neutrality for a person by way of a contraction of both forms of the appropriate word (so, -il for masculine and -elle for feminine, becomes -iel for neutral), but it's still evolving and experimental without agreed upon hard language rules right now).
This means that for players whose language carries a natural engendering throughout their entire sentence formation, based on the subject of that sentence, if that language is not already pre-equiped with a neutral case, the very idea of an appropriate translation becomes a nightmare with, potentially, no right answer... because the necessity to make an assumption one way or the other in order to talk at all is built into the language. It also means that in realistic play scenarios, for speakers of such languages, the fact that people will make an assumption is a natural, normal and quite literally unavoidable part of daily interaction, and nothing to get upset over beyond a quick correction of preference.
It can get pretty messy, all told.
Last edited by Niara; 21/03/23 02:14 AM.
