Languages in Sinath Lonn
I’m not a fan of the common tongue in D&D. The fact that most settings have a language that everybody just speaks seems really off to me. I thought about this while reading what Sam wrote at Caput Caprae:
THE COMMON TONGUE
Is bullshit. There should be lots of different human languages in your setting. A singular “common tongue” is total bullshit, meant to smooth over difficult worldbuilding and actually challenging social encounters.
There are about 8 billion people on the earth, and there are about 6,500 languages spoken, some of which by very few people. Even if with 100 times fewer, with a mere 65 languages, that’s still about 64 more languages than are commonly spoken by humans in your average D&D game.
(There’s an argument that the common tongue is “fantasy Esperanto” or “fantasy Ithkuil,” which is a very cool idea that I would love to see developed but thus far haven’t, really.)
Point is, there are lots of lots of languages, and all of them are normal to somebody. That’s not what this post is about. Merchants and couriers and diplomats will learn lots and lots of languages here in D&D-fantasyland, but those are all human languages.
Background
I’m not an authority on languages at all so anything I try to come up with is going to be pretty hamfisted. Here’s a starting point, where certain languages are spoken by certain cultures of people, with a fair amount of overlap between them. The people of one nation tend to be able to talk to each other at least well enough to do business. My goal with coming up with this list, just as with the gods, was to put something together relatively quickly and get it into play. I didn’t want to spend a year or two hammering out a fully detailed campaign setting when these details fundamentally don’t impact play very much. In the case of the gods, the nature of divine magic and interaction with the world means that it doesn’t really matter what their names are at this stage in the campaign. For languages, all we really care about is who can talk to who, not what the languages themselves are called.
Languages
With all that out of the way, here is a list of languages with some notes on usage based on cultural or geographic background. I’ll have more to say about both cultures and geography in the future, for now check the footnotes:
| Language | Cultural / Geographic Usage | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Eryssian | Dominant language of Eryssia1, used in forest, plains, and diverse cultures. | The closest thing the setting has to common at this stage. Like English, it is formed by smashing together a number of other languages. |
| Glaeyn | Dominant language in Glaeyd Strium2, used in forest and diverse cultures. | A lilting and musical language much like elvish. |
| Mashid | Primary/aristocratic language in the Mashioque Dynasty3. | An ancient language that hasn’t changed much in centuries. Anywhere outside the Dynasty, it’s considered needlessly formal and is only spoken by academics or privately tutored students, that sort of thing. |
| Rhurin | Commoner language in the Mashioque Dynasty. | This language descended from the non-Dragonborn inhabitants of the mountains in easter Yeileth, so it is identified with dwarves, goblins, and other miner types. Sounds a lot like Klingon. |
| Eopian | Spoken in the plains in eastern Yeileth4. | The people who live in the grasslands and foothills of eastern Yeileth are considered more cosmopolitan, engaging in frequent trade with the Free Cities and the Dynasty. More recently, the Dynasty has claimed some of this territory, resulting in this language becoming associated with the Mashioque Army. |
| Ghikrali | Spoken in the plains in southwestern Yeileth. | The plains south of Glaed Strium are a vast sea of grasslands with very little to break it up. Not very many people leave here. |
| Niovarin | Used broadly by the underground cultures of Yeileth, in both Glaeyd Strium and the Mashioque Dynasty. | We haven’t explored the underdark much, but if there were an undercommon, this would be it. |
| Azish | Used in the mountains in central Eryssia. | Viewed as a sort of hillbilly tongue in Alcona5, it is either a point of pride (among the goliaths and orcs who speak it) or derision (from the elves in the capital). |
| Ionqali | Used by nearly all seagoing people in the Western Bay. | This is something akin a trade tongue, used by Free Cities traders, tritons, and humans from Corus alike. |
| Utlun | A local language used in the swamps and coasts of southern Eryssia. | Another hillbilly language, spoken by gnolls and lizardfolk who are looked down on by the elves in the capital. |
| Euklish | The main language of the Free Cities of Mihira. | Each of the Free Cities is an independent nation by law, and they all have a distinct culture and set of languages. That said, anybody who’s anybody in Mihira speaks Euklish. |
| Omesh | A language from somewhere far to the east. | The PCs have no idea where this language is spoken.[^aleki] |
| Orosa | The main language of the Empire of Corus.6 | There are many more languages in the Empire, but this is the official one. It’s quite similar to German. |
Communicating despite language barriers
For ease of play in the new setting, each of the PC’s spoke Eryssian when we started. It probably would’ve been more fun to enforce some kind of background restriction but since we are playing virtually I wanted it to be workable. The party has met a few groups who don’t speak Eryssian so far, and it’s been interesting working out areas of overlap. Most anyone who grew up in a diverse culture (or near a coastline) speaks at least a few words of Ionqali, and anyone from around the Dynasty probably knows enough Eopian and Rhurin to order dinner, for instance.
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An island subcontinent, roughly the size of Texas, situated in the center of the Western Bay region. The campaign started in western Eryssia. ↩︎
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A nation in western Yeileth, on the north side of the Western Bay region. You can think of it as your typical Tolkien-esque elven kingdom and not be far off. ↩︎
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A nation covering most of northeastern Yeileth, with lots of mountains and natural resources. Very stratified society with a powerful aristocracy of Dragonborn houses. ↩︎
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Yeileth is a huge continent, making up the northern and eastern borders of the Western Bay. It is dominated by Glaeyd Strium in the northwest, the Mashioque Dynasty in the northeast, and the Free Cities of Mihira in the southeast. ↩︎
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The major kingdom in Eryssia, once a powerful elven monarchy but now on the decline under a weak regency. The setting for the campaign. ↩︎
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The Empire of Corus is metropolitan, diverse, and made up almost entirely of humans. From the small peninsula of Iyush, west of Eryssia. Fantastical tales of flying carriages and buildings a mile tall can’t possibly be true, can they? ↩︎