What language is the Common of our world?

[Barak]

I can at least speak with respect to Canada here....French "avails" you in far more than just Quebec....Ontario and New Brunswick have significant francophone and bilingual populations, and there are French towns/areas in both Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

My experiences travelling internationally (which have been limited) have been that in the main cities, and the tourist areas of main cities, English will help. But venture into the country, or out of the tourist areas, and it becomes a lot harder to find English speakers. I found that in both France and Italy.

Even in Quebec, if you want to speak English, you're looking at the West Island of Montreal, and parts of the Outaouais, but go north, or go east, and most people don't speak any English.

Banshee

Anywhere on the island of Montreal, you can get away with only speaking english. Every store/service place will have at least one person who understands/speak it at least well enough for the purpose of the store/service.

Quebec City isn't quite as easy, but you could still easily manage.

Anywhere else, including fairly big cities (Trois-Rivières, Rimouski, Gaspé), it gets a bit iffier. I mean, you won't die of starvation 'cause you couldn't order from a restaurant or anything, but your visit wouldn't be that great. Amusingly, in the far north of the province, in native americans reservations, it's reversed, and speaking only french won't work.

The point though is that even in North America, in a place where english is an official language, you'll find plenty of people that don't speak it at all. So comparing it to common in D&D is not that good, despite what the poll says.

 

[Azzy]

Doesn't matter, though - that's a translation. Those kids, and almost everyone else in Faerun, were speaking good ol' American English.

Except that show wasn't set in Faerun.

 

[Barak]

Doesn't matter, though - that's a translation. Those kids, and almost everyone else in Faerun, were speaking good ol' American English.

Isn't the fact that the show was translated, and that the english original version wasn't "good enough" for the whole planet proof that english isn't our world's common?

 

[Col_Pladoh]

As English is the language used in most transportation, airlines for example, taught so widely as a second language nearly everywhere on earth, and will be the principle language of commerce for some unforeseeable period of time, it wins the crown of being the "common tongue" hands down. I do believe that "okay" is used in nearly every language in the world.
Certainly English has the largest vocabulary, and grows constantly with new technical terms added.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[tzor]

I voted English, but the answer could depend on how you view "common." Originally common was supposed to be the trade talk language. People knew enough of it to be able to transact business in a number of ports around the land. The best example of common would be Kloine Greek in the old Roman world. The official language of the empire was, of course, Latin, but if you are someone writing to the peoples in far off lands (like the early Christians) you wrote in the trader's Greek.

As Gary said, English is the international pilots language, so one can give a good argument for English as a trader's language. It's also a very common internet language for international internet communication. But in general most traders probably try to learn the vulgar tongue of the region as much as possible these days. So it's not a perfect common.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

I can't recall any popular media using Mandarin words, unless you count ordering Kung Pao chicken as speaking Chinese.

Well:
Ta ma duh!
You're obviously not a fan of Firefly or Serenity.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

I lived in the UK for 6 years and the hardest accents to understand (for me anyway) were Northern Ireland English and Glasgow English (Glaswegian?) accents.

Glasgow English!

I can only advise that you never, ever, visit Glasgow, or if you do, don't use the words Glasgow and English in the same sentence.

 

[Barak]

If there was no "There is no such language" poll option, than yes, english would be it. But, at least compared to the current iteration of D&D, english is nowhere near common.

 

[Henry]

Torm, the Cartoon was set in "the Realm", not "The Realms." Plus, Faerun did not become purchased as a D&D setting until after the cartoon went off the air.

Also, there's something really funny about the idea of the world's "lingua franca" being something other than French.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

Of course, while many languages have 'language police' to prevent evil foreign words entering the mother tongue, english happily gives other languages the once over, and steals any words it needs.

A potato, is a potato, not an apple of the earth

Bungalow, veranda and pyjama are indian (Punjabi?) words.

And Italian, Spanish, Portugese and French are all only dialects of one language