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Message: <blockquote data-quote="William Ronald" data-source="post: 2388962" data-attributes="member: 426">In the games that I have played in, different parts of the world have regional Trader's Tongues -- which are mostly used for commerce and basic communication.  (Let's say that you would not use any  version of trader's tongue for something like a philosophical treatise, an epic poem, or love poetry.  You could, but it would probably sound as bad as translating The Odyssey  into pidgin.)wingandsword, I think you are prehaps being overly generous on the use of language.  Many of the human cultures on Oerth, Toril, and Krynn  have very little to do with each other.  As humanity seems to be the dominant surface species on each of these worlds, it is likely that the common spoken of Faerun draws heavily from Faerunian human languages.  Oerth, which has NO human deities in common with Toril, likely has a very different common.  There may be some elements of similarity because of borrowing from non-human languages (see below) but it is highly probably that a speaker of Common from Waterdeep and a speaker of Common from the City of Greyhawk would find that they speak mutually incomprehensible languages -- until they come across a loan word from Dwarven or Elvish, for example.The non-human languages tend to be more resistant to change, probably because of the longevity of their speakers and the actions of non-human deities.  So, elvish on Oerth and Toril may be similar although there may be huge dialect differences.  (Perhaps along the lines of someone from Appalachia speaking to someone from London, or someone from New Zealand talking to someone from Chicago.  Or perhaps even greater.)  Possibly one rule that the gods play in some worlds is to subtly make sure that their followers on different worlds can communicate with each other.  Undercommon would likely follow similar rules.Worlds that have long been separated from other worlds may likely have evolved unique languages.  Possibly the degree of similarity among gods and cultures can be a factor. So, some of the languages of Toril may have similarities to those of a world with the same gods.  (For example, Mulhorand worships the Egyptian pantheon.  Possibly, a character from Mulhorand in the Realms who ended up in Green Ronin's Hamunaptra setting would find not only many of the same gods -- including a Ra who was NOT killed by Gruumsh -- but similar languages and some similar cultural institurions.  The same character, showing up on Oerth, would not likely find such similarities.)Krynn is a very specific case in terms of language.  The non-humans and humans of Krynn follow a pantheon that has few deities in common with Oerth, Toril, and many other worlds.  (Is Paladine really the dragon Bahamut?)  So, I suspect that the Common spoken on Ansalon could bear very little resemblance to that on Toril and Oerth.  I am not even sure how Krynn relates to the elemental planes and other planes.  If Krynn has unique planes, then the Ignan of Krynn may be very different to that of the Elemental Plane of Fire that can be accessed from Toril and Oerth.Eberron is a world with its own unique cosmology, where the existence of most gods is not quite certain.  However, the dragon deities seem to be common on Toril, Oerth, and Eberron. Possibly Draconic on the three worlds is one of the few areas where speakers can understand each other -- assuming that the dragon deities are talking to followers on Eberron.  In some cases, isolated areas tend to preserve very old aspects of languages that have vanished elsewhere.  So, a dragon on Eberron may speak a very archaic sounding form of Draconic -- at least to peers from Toril and Oerth.In one campaign that I played in, which used real world cultures and languages as a touchstone, some of the characters travelled to Toril.  The DM, noting some cultural and deity similarities, decided that perhaps 50 percent of the Western Trader's Tongue was comprensible to a speaker of Faerun's Common Tongue.  This may have been generous.  Perhaps 25 percent might be more realistic.  (Assuming that Oghma, Tyr, Loviatar, Tymora and Beshaba (the former Tyche in the Realms), Tiamat, Isis, and others have some impact on the languages of their followers.  Hmm, on a lighter note, I had a PC of mine freak out a FR PC by saying that Tyche was whole on my world.)</blockquote>

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