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<blockquote data-quote="Azzy" data-source="post: 9618791" data-attributes="member: 6563">There's a lot of fun things to think about when language and world-building meet. Since elves have been brought up, they poses an interesting thought experiment. In 5e, elves live around 750 years (in some earlier editions, especially 1e, elves generally lived longer—especially some subraces like grey elves). So, elven language would evolve a LOT slower and be much more stable than human or orc languages. If elves are originally from the feywild, they'd probably had a unified language while there, and depending on how far back in your setting's timeline that elves emerged from the feywild to the prime material (maybe in multiple waves), the elven language may have drifted very little and thus multiple elven cultures may have mutually understandable languages even though they are separated by large distances. Dwarves would have similarly stable languages (though to a lesser extent, as they are not as long lived as elves). And the language of dragons would be the most stable prime material language considering just how long those suckers live, with little to no change over many thousands of years.Humans, orcs, goblins, and such all have short lives so languages would evolve relatively fast and even communities living nearish to each other may develop dialects and languages that may not be mutually intelligible.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Azzy, post: 9618791, member: 6563"] There's a lot of fun things to think about when language and world-building meet. Since elves have been brought up, they poses an interesting thought experiment. In 5e, elves live around 750 years (in some earlier editions, especially 1e, elves generally lived longer—especially some subraces like grey elves). So, elven language would evolve a LOT slower and be much more stable than human or orc languages. If elves are originally from the feywild, they'd probably had a unified language while there, and depending on how far back in your setting's timeline that elves emerged from the feywild to the prime material (maybe in multiple waves), the elven language may have drifted very little and thus multiple elven cultures may have mutually understandable languages even though they are separated by large distances. Dwarves would have similarly stable languages (though to a lesser extent, as they are not as long lived as elves). And the language of dragons would be the most stable prime material language considering just how long those suckers live, with little to no change over many thousands of years. Humans, orcs, goblins, and such all have short lives so languages would evolve relatively fast and even communities living nearish to each other may develop dialects and languages that may not be mutually intelligible. [/QUOTE]

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