According to ROP:M ghosts, being spirits, do not have an ability in languages (communicating instead through spectral species), so would a ghost not be able to teach someone a language they spoke while they were alive?
Where exactly does it say that ghosts do not have any ability in languages? (That not all ghosts will have one or that they may not need that ability is another thing.)
Several ghost characters throughout other books have been given a score in a language - starting with the example Ghostly Warder from the core rules.
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It does not exactly state, nor did I claim that it did so, just that it is aparent in reading t hat ghosts do not, in its view have language abilities. The fact that other books disagree with a published book is hardly world shaking news, more of "so it's a tuesday" which is why I did specify "according to ROP:M" since other books do not in fact indicate this.
It does indicate " For want of a better term, a spirit’s communication with physical beings is called Silent Speech, for h impulses are usually received as auditory species, but it could be interpreted as
smells or feelings on the skin, and still be understood with no difficulty" as an inherant virtue of all spirits, and all of the ghosts they list have no language ability without explanation of how they would lose the ability to understand the language they knew in life beyond this silent speech. The book repeatedly emphasizes that ghosts are essentially transformed humans yet also continually leaves out a language ability. It is also possible that it was expected that the silent speech would replace the language abilities given in earlier supplements, there are after all massive errata sheets with significant numbers of changes having been made for exactly this reasoning in other cases.
Ghosts are one of the few ways to learn Dead Languages, and IIRC the ghost of the Witch of Endor was perfectly capable and willing to teach Caananite Necromancy. She is, however, a very lucid ghost, as you might expect from a powerful necromancer.
So any reasonably lucid ghost should be able to teach, the trick is finding lucid ghosts.
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I allow ghosts to teach, but that might be because after reading the Amazons section in Rival Magic, I thought their method of learning from ghosts of their ancestors was cool.
Also, the whole "Disciples of the Worm" cult in TMRE only works if you can prize some useful secrets out of ghosts of ancient magicians and pagans.
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Yes, but can they learn languages which ghosts appear, from guidelines in ROP:M not to have an ability in...
There is no guideline in RoP:M saying ghosts don't have language abilities.
On the contrary, it says that apparitions usually retains all the abilities they had as mortals. All.
There is one single example ghost in RoP:M. That one does not have any listed language ability, which might as well be a mistake as deliberate. And that one ghost is the only indication in RoP:M that ghosts cannot have language abilities.
On the other hand, throughout the rest of the rulebooks there must be at least a dozen ghosts with stats - and all of those that I have checked have language abilities.
There is no stated guideline, no, once again it si not explicitly stated as such. It is however inferable from the guidelines which are stated. Do you plan to babysit this thread just to harp on this point repeatedly?
My point is that it isn't inferable from what is stated in RoP:M. It is not stated explicitly, implicitly, or even vaguely suggested as a general rule.
On the contrary RoP:M states that one type of ghosts usually retain all of the abilities they had as mortals - thus including any language abilities.
As far as I can tell the only thing in RoP:M that supports your theory that ghosts do not have language abilities is that the one example ghost in RoP:M does not have a language ability. And that by itself does not prove anything since some ghosts do forget some abilities they had as mortals.
As I stated above, there is also a large section on silent speech which indicates that all spirits communicate without language, which is a pretty big thing to overlook in making your case that it is not inferable, since ghosts are spirits.
To counter that - there is a large number of spirits (including ghosts) in other books that very explicitly has language abilities. Books published both before and after RoP:M
Each of them is a counterexample proving that ghosts (and other spirits) can have language abilites.
Silent Speech is how spirits must communicate when they are in their native intangible form in which they cannot affect the physical world. Never says it is the only way they can ever use to communicate.
If a spirit uses a power such as Eidolon (which some ghosts have) they can create a visible and audible image and that "image can move and speak as directed by the spirit"
It is hard to speak without any language.
No, I do not think the existence of Silent Speech rules out language abilities in ghosts or other spirits.
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We have covered other books three times already, but you stil drag it out as if it were somehow new to the conversation, and again I point out that it is not uncommon in AAM for later books to have rules which run counter to examples in previous books.
The point regarding manifestation is at least well reasoned, except that it is not founded in the text, which makes no mention of spirits using a different form of communication while materialized.
However the key takeaway I have here is that I am simply trying to explore the implications of one possible way to read the rules, while you seem to be, at least from my perspective, trying to sqash any notion that the rules might possibly be anything other than the one true way that you read them, which is at minimum rude, especially when you are essentially interrupting a conversation about the alternative way to read them to bully others with your own take.
If the counterexamples had only been from books published previous to RoP:M you'd have a point - but that is not the case. Later books also have ghosts (and other spirits) with language abilities. So if anything, they'd override RoP:M by being published afterwards.
They are still simply examples, and examples not following actual written rules never mind implications from previous books is hardly a new thing in AM.
And again, please allow this idea to be explored without having to bully your way in with "I'm right your wrong!" when frankly I want to consider this idea on it's own and I don't care if you are in fact wrong with the degree of certainty you feel- though I am certain that the reading is more ambiguous than what you describe, for reasons I have given above.
To answer your original question: If a given ghost no longer has a score in a given language - then of course if cannot teach that language any more than it can teach any other ability it does not know.
Ghosts that can teach anything at all, can teach those abilities they have, not those they don't have.
And that answer applies regardless of if ghosts in general can have language abilities or not.
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