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I don't know if Armageddon has any particular policy - except that we DO have coded racial and tribal languages in the game, and that the game is written and played in English. We have occasional banter on our forum about the "correct" spelling of certain words, because a large portion of our player base is British and they spell things differently. It's mostly just a fun teasing kinda thing, and rarely meant seriously.
I've come across lots of people who don't speak English as their primary language, and I have to say that most of them write English better than a lot of native English speakers I know. I also know some who struggle with words, phrases...colloquialisms...
It can certainly make for interesting RP if they don't understand what "How's it goin?" means. They might respond "How's what goin? I wasn't planning on going anywhere today." If it's an "important" character who -should- have a good command of the language being spoken, then we might just chalk it up to some eccentricity, or assume the "important person" is being witty.
If it's a half-giant, well, they tend to take things literally sometimes, so it would fit perfectly.
If the misunderstood phrase/word/sentence can possibly result in serious reprocussions, and it's a new player to the game, we -might- use the OOC command to ask if they need help outside the game structure. AIM, our IRC chat room, e-mail, contacting helpers...
As for me personally, I try to be patient with people who are obviously having trouble with the language. But I'm human, and have gotten frustrated when the other person is -so- inept at the language that all RP falls by the wayside while we try to explain what this or that word means, or wait for them to look it up.
So it really depends. Yes, the game is in English and people are expected to be somewhat fluent in it. It's also expected that people will TRY. If they don't try, they won't get much sympathy if they screw up. If they try and fail, often they will be encouraged to continue and given kudos for their attempts.
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