Thu 20 Jan 2022, 14:30
As Paladin put it, it's not a rule that you cannot have a specialty twice. There is though the rule that during lifepath character creation, if you roll up a specialty you already have, you might choose any one other specialty (p. 31 No. 7). Additionally, during the 'At War' term, if you roll a specialty you already have, you are supposed to re-roll. So this could be misinterpreted as "you cannot have a specialty more than once". It's just that specialty modifiers don't stack or the effects are not quantifiable (i. e. "you learn something" or "the Referee should give you some useful information"). Linguist explicitly enables you to "know another language of your choice".
Note however that Linguist allows you to speak the language "well enough to be taken as native on a successful PERSUASION roll." Everything other form of language capabilities, I would just let my players decide. A Polish or East German character could always read, understand, write and verbalize some thoughts in Russian. Western characters could always choose from English or French, maybe with some exceptions, such as native English and French speakers, who seem often to lack any interest to learn other languages and are less forced to by their school systems and reality.
After all: What good is a language barrier in your game. Either it's a MacGuffin - you need to decipher a crucial information in Russian to move the plot along - or it's in the way of fluid gameplay.
liber & infractus