What language is the Common of our world?

[Turjan]

The population of India is similarly statistically divided into speakers of Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, and so on. But, as an Indian, I can vouch for the fact that not only are a large percentage of these so-called non-English speakers very fluent in English, but English often functions as the preferred mode of communication between speakers of different Indian languages or dialects, just as Common does in a D&D world. Heck, English is one of India's two national languages, for exactly the above reason.

I have two Indian colleagues at the moment, one from Delhi and the other one from somewhere in Andhra Pradesh. Neither can the one from Delhi speak Telugu nor the other one speak Hindi. They have to communicate in English. That's different from my Chinese colleagues, who can all speak Mandarin, even if they speak something different at home.

 

[Huw]

They're used pretty interchangeably here in America. Here's what "Chinese language" pulls up over at the US version of Amazon, for instance.

True, books will use "Chinese language" in their title. And on page 1 or maybe 2, they'll clarify, and start talking about Mandarin, putonghua and classical Chinese, because the reader probably doesn't know that (which is why they've picked up a book on Chinese). Similarly, when I'm in Singapore I say "Wo shi yingguoren", 'cause no-one there knows who the Welsh are, even though I'd never say "I'm English" in English.

And having lived in the Middle East, I think you're overestimating how hard it is for Arabic speakers to muddle through understanding one another. Worst case scenario, they can whip out a piece of paper and write messages down, since the regional variations are mostly changes in vowels (which aren't written outside of the Koran and children's books). Yes, some of the accents will be thick, but they won't be awful. And since Egyptian movies and television are widely disseminated in the Arabic-speaking world, an Egyptian Arabic-speaker in particular would be pretty well understood by everyone else.

Very true. But I did say educated, and literacy is about 70% even in the most advanced Arabic speaking countries. Move out from the literary language, and you'll find huge differences in vocabulary.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't know that Egyptian action movies and soap operas are literary, other than in the broadest possible definition of the word.

 

[Barak]

Write me in as "none", with english coming closest.

 

[TheNovaLord]

its english

it is what science is written in. It is the obvious second language of anybody.

its why we englsih are hopeless at learning languages. there is no obvious second language to learn. But given how we are destroying our own language with street slang/text etc i think 'common' sums it up nicely


JohnD

 

[Xyanthon]

I'll have to say the closest thing is English. Right now I live in Okinawa, Japan and have traveled to Thailand and the Phillipeans and was suprised how widespread English is in the major urban areas. Pretty much all of the road signs are in english and the native language of the country (it was the same when I was in the Middle East). So while it may be true that the vast majority of the population in any given country may not speak english, I think it is safe to say that you can get around in many more countries using enlish than you could using Mandarin Chineese for instance.

 

[Lorgrom]

From what I have heard about which languages are most spoken around the world. I was suprised to find it is German (with English second). So I would have to vote for German.

 

[diaglo]

With all due respect, this is possibly the silliest poll I've seen so far. There is nothing remotely close to "Common" in real life. The idea of a Common language in D&D is an artificial (and not a very realistic) game convention meant to get around the in-play difficulties that would result from characters of different nationalities/races speaking different, mutually unintelligible tongues. Sure, Greek and Latin were fairly widely spoken in the Roman Empire, and Aramaic in the biblical Middle East, French and Spanish at were pretty widespread in colonial times, etc., but never to the extent that Common is spoken in any of the major campaign settings.

what is i'm going to visit the tower of babel for the my answer, Alex.

 

[Nalfeshnee]

I live in Malta and most people here speak three languages (Maltese, English and Italian). Thousands of eurpoean and asian students come to my country every year to learn english (and fornicate and get drunk....) and the number is steadily rising every year.

To me english is the 'planar trade' of our world. To put it in D&D terms, traders, merchants, kings and rulers all speak english so to me that make it the common of our world, even though chinese or cantonese (or something like that, im not quite sure) has more speakers in the world.

Also, whatever happened to esperanto? i remember there was this big fuss about it when it appeared then it just disappeared... though i always found the idea stupid. Languages just happen, they cant be 'forced' like that imho

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I agree, but to be fair, North Korea forced a top-down change of their written language according to linguistic principles. (Much like the rationale was with Esperanto.) Most linguists seem to be impressed with the result, if not the means of getting there.