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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9434750" data-attributes="member: 6877472">That is somewhat the purpose of a trade language, which is my point.  If Common is the default trade language of the setting, adopted so that disparate species can communicate with one another, then it should have been developed and adopted by the elder races before humans showed upon the scene.  You can't really say "well see, races didn't trade with one another in any real way until humans showed up, which is why everyone learned the human language and adopted it as the Common Tongue."OTOH, if Common existed before Humans, why did they then adopt that as their language?Some settings do have other Human tongues (like the Forgotten Realms with Thorass, Chondathan, and more, some of which are now effectively dead languages), but most have fallen by the wayside, replaced by Common.  Still a bit weird that every other race clings to their native tongue while also learning Common and Humans just sort of...didn't.-And yes, I understand the Doylist reasoning here, that it was done this way because Humans used to be the most populous and important race in settings, but even in settings where that isn't true, we're stuck with Humans only speaking Common and everyone else speaking Common with no Watsonian explanation.</blockquote>