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In 4e, Language is pretty much all or nothing. You can either speak a language very well, or you can't speak it at all. The only wiggle room in the rules as written in the Nationality (Languages) subsection of the Character Creation chapter. It states (paraphrasing here) that everyone speaks a little English, and that Warsaw Pact personnel all speak a little Russian.

A PC can learn another language in the game by using skill points to take the Linguist Specialty. However, according to that rule, adding that specialty could conceivably take a PC from not being able to speak a lick of another language to being mistaken for a native speaker of it!

INGUIST: You know another language of your choice, well enough to be taken as native on a successful PERSUASION roll. (p. 51 of the Player's Manual)

As anyone who's learned a second language can attest, it takes time to learn and build proficiency and fluency- sometimes years! I lived in South America for 6 years as a teenager and I still wouldn't consider myself fluent in Spanish.

In v2.2, at least, you could be a little proficient, or moderately so, or fluent, by allocating skill points to a second language. It was tricky (and pretty subjective) to determine how well a PC could speak another language in that ruleset because it wasn't really clearly explained what the numbers meant, but at least there were degrees of proficiency.

How have other 4e ref's dealt with acquiring additional languages?

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In 4e, Language is pretty much all or nothing. You can either speak a language very well, or you can't speak it at all. The only wiggle room in the rules as written in the Nationality (Languages) subsection of the Character Creation chapter. It states (paraphrasing here) that everyone speaks a little English, and that Warsaw Pact personnel all speak a little Russian.

I disagree with this binary look on the language situation.

On p. 51 under Linguist, it states: "You know another language of your choice, well enough to be taken as native on a successful PERSUASION roll".

This, in no way, implies that you cannot speak another language if you don't have linguist... just that you can't convince someone that you're a native unless you have linguist in that language.

I've interpreted that as most people being able to make a passable conversation in Russian if you're from the west and vice versa if you're from the east. And almost anyone who's in the country (ie. Poland or Sweden, depending on the campaign setting) can speak the native language semi-passingly. You can at least have some sort of conversation with the natives, albeit in very broken parlance and with a heavy accent.

I mean, it's been three years since the world broke down and thus the characters (and pretty much anyone they meet) has been in-country for that time and kind of had to learn the language, since they've had to interact with the natives a lot during that time.

Linguist is only for passing off as a native. Not for determining whether or not you speak another language or not.

As for learning other languages in-campaign?

Well, in order to get a speciality, you need to find someone who has that speciality and spend a week doing only that *and* pass a roll for the relevant skill.

I'd interpret that as someone who already knows the language passably (in most cases, this is gonna be Russian, English or Polish/Swedish, which most characters should know passably), sitting down with someone who speaks the language to a native level for a week long intensive training to learn to pass off as a native. And the roll for the skill is simply there to show how fast you can learn another language (since some has a natural knack for learning languages).

Now, you might say "It takes more than a week to learn another language to the level of passing as a native", to which I'd say sure... that's true.
BUT, they're not learning the language from scratch. They already know enough to hold a conversation.
Secondly, they're only learning it a week if they pass that skill check. It might take several weeks to learn to speak the language fluently enough to pass as a native. And during those weeks, the character is unavailable for pretty much all other important tasks (like whatever you do in sessions). You can probably still hunt etc. but they'd have to bring along the person who they're training with since it's all about speaking.

I see what you're saying, and your arguments make a lot of sense. When I ref'd 2.2, I house-ruled that everyone would start the campaign with at least 1 skill point in Polish (or whatever the setting country was) to reflect what they'd learned up to the start date. The 4e rules clearly state, however, that only a shift need be spent with an expert in order to add a specialty. It does say, at least, though, so house-ruling that it takes at a week is much more reasonable. But, what PC can afford to devote an entire week (2-3 shifts a day) to learning a new language in the T2kU?

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Ah, yes, that's very true... I missed the shift bit since my players (so far) have always spent their XP during breaks that are around a week long in-game.

But the system is *very* abstract in general, and you'll have to make many judgement calls.

I mean, would you say that someone can be a specialist in SERE training in just one shift? Just spend an afternoon and you'll be trained in SERE training?
Or Martial Artist from just training one afternoon?
Or Historian?
Or Investigator?
Or Blacksmith?

etc. etc.

But ignoring the ludicrously short training time for specialities, and going back to the core subject of "can the PC's speak any other language if they don't have linguist?" question:

Like I said, Linguist is specifically meant for passing off as a native speaker of the language.
NOT for just being able to communicate in the language.

For example, most swedes of my generation (same-ish as Thomas Härenstam's generation) speak English at a very high conversational level. I'm sure you've heard Thomas Härenstam speaking... however, most won't be able to pass off as native English speakers.
So they wouldn't get the Linguist speciality, but they'd still be able to have full-length and deep conversations about pretty much anything in English.

So... Linguist is for passing off as a native.
Just speaking in other languages is up to you... Personally I just make my players roll for persuasion, since that's the closest we have to a general "communication" skill.

Just speaking in other languages is up to you... Personally I just make my players roll for persuasion, since that's the closest we have to a general "communication" skill.

I like this solution. It's simple, and reasonable. A successful Persuasion roll would mean that the PC can understand and be understood by someone speaking a non-native language. Thanks!

I think I'll only apply this rule in an setting where it can be assumed that the PC has had some experience with the language in question. For example, in a campaign set in Poland, I would apply this house-rule for a conversation in Polish between an American and a Pole. I don't think I'd apply it if the PC was trying to speak a language other than that of the "host" country, though.

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Oh yeah, for sure... I let my players pick the odd language that they know a little of at the start if they want, but other than that they can only conversate in Swedish, English and Russian (playing a Swedish campaign) since after 3 years in a place where many people speak that language, you'll pick up a thing or two.

Even in the '90s, is Sweden a place English speakers would have to learn the language? That was the greatest stumbling block I experienced stationed in various parts of Europe. Everywhere I went, folks just spoke to me in English. "Ein bier, bitte," or "Dobre den," was about as far as I got.

To me, it's unlikely the typical US soldier will have picked up much Polish (or Swedish), but they will likely have picked up some essentials. Enough to communicate re essential needs (food, water, etc.), to barter, to ask simple directions, and so on. Which is desirable because enforcing a language barrier gets old fast.

But detailed conversations are probably out. And I don't think acquiring a language is really feasible in the game timeframe.

I devised my own solution to decide what's likely in the vocabulary & what's likely out: I have a Vietnam War-era Vietnamese phrasebook, & I use it as a guide to what kinds of things people can communicate. Random examples, "I'll be back in three days," "Is there a post office near here?" or "I need barbed wire and explosives."

I have added a "video game trope": skill books! When players find a "skill/language" book they can get X amount (usually 1-2, but for languages sometimes more).
I am not striving for realism here, it is just to make new talents and especially languages more desirable to buy when they don't cost that much XP.
And basically if you think of languages giving players more ways to gain languages gives more opportunities to communicate with NPCs. Though there is value gained in some scenes in communicating without a common language.
Good bonus is that you can name the books "creatively": The Bass and you" (Fishing) etc.

Even in the '90s, is Sweden a place English speakers would have to learn the language? That was the greatest stumbling block I experienced stationed in various parts of Europe. Everywhere I went, folks just spoke to me in English. "Ein bier, bitte," or "Dobre den," was about as far as I got.

It all depends on what they've been doing for the last three years.

Have they been constantly fighting? (unlikely) Then, sure...

Have they had a lot of downtime mingled with both local population and Swedish forces?
Then they've most likely picked some language up, out of curiosity if nothing else.