Literacy

LiteracyTechnical [lore]Basic1600 hours for the first language, 200 hours for each additional language that you can speak, 400 hours for each additional language that you don't speak
Double learning difficulty, do not need to roll to learn for additional languages that you can speak (learns both speaking/reading at the same time) unless the written form is very different from what you are accustomed
This is the skill of reading and writing a particular language. Being able to speak the language is not required, but doubles learning time and difficulty. Additional languages may be learned at 1/4th difficulty and time. This is a common skill among Elves, Gaijin, and Dwarves; however, less than half of Humans are literate and few members of other races know how to read and write. Illiterate characters function in society by symbol recognition (such as a picture of a tankard above a tavern) and many people can write their own name as well as recognize numbers. Literacy is much more common amongst the citizens of the Bizzannite Empire than it is in Formour. Each language is a separate instance of the literacy skill, and each counts as one skill at character creation. However, a character who knows how to read and write at least three other languages can learn additional ones without cost, as long as he or she already knows the character set (such as an alphabet) of that language.
*Anglan, Comul, DHTML, Firpish, and Olde Anglan use the same alphabet. Old Anglan wrote characters in different ways, but a modern Anglan literate can read the letters with some difficulty, even if he can't understand what the text says. As Firpish is a creole of Anglan (through an unknown quirk of history) they collectively use a single skill (and skill point) if one is familiar with both cultures and speaks both dialects.
*Elven and Kobold use the same script though the spoken form of Kobold was related to Gobbley.
*Though Runes are technically the written form of Dwarven, most literate Dwarves write in Anglan, or just use the Anglan alphabet for writing Dwarven.
*Most of the Elder Kingdoms use Bizzannite logograms. Each of these symbols encodes a word or consonant, or forms part of a syllable chain. While it's lousy for phonetics, it allows for wide variations in spoken languages to understand each other's written forms. Many people in Byzant and parts further south don't even realise that they don't really speak the same language. Elder Kingdom tongues that are quite different from one another often use Bizzannite and some never had a separate script.
*Kame is the preferred, and most common, way to write Killian. Kame falls somewhere between true alphabets and logograms (where each symbol is one word). Each symbol in Kame consists of simpler pieces that each encodes a certain sound; the entire composite glyph is one syllable. The older phonetic form uses a similar character set to Yuan, but that ancient language is even less comprehensible to modern Killian than Olde Anglan is to Formourians and Heldans. The modern form of the phonetic alphabet is used mostly for encoding pronunciations of foreign words and names (it has a wider sound set than modern Killian) or for onomatopoeia in Killian comics.
*None of the variants of Gobbley have a written form. This includes Western Gobbley, Orcken, and Ogrespeak. The closest is when someone uses Gleer Marks or if you count the Chant, which often has a strong influence from Gobbley.
*The Chant doesn't have a proper alphabet, at most the local writing system is used for names. Most of the Chant's written form consists of gang symbols and crude pictures of body parts.
*A-oc, Draconic, Nordikkite, and Tarkin each had their own unique forms of writing.
*Neither Ogrenon nor Scathach seemed to have a written form. What little is known of either language is handed down from the memories of older Elves or pre-Bizzannite contemporaries, respectively.
*Gothic and Nocturne use a similar character set, one chief difference being that Gothic has no vowels. They are mutually uninteligible however, and count as separate skills. Neither language is in much use, and literacy (or even speech) in either is very low. Most Decadent Goths are literate in either Anglan or Bizzannite, if at all. Literacy among the Barbaric Goths is almost nil, though the Gothic abjad/abigunda is used by the few scribes.
*Gleer Marks don't exactly use a standard character set, and it counts as its own written language though all of the original users spoke Gobbley exclusively.
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