Unlike the standard D & D world there is no “common” language per se in my realm or mortal world. When the original gods of creation made the mortal races they set within their minds the language of the gods. However, this language did not have in it all the words and phrases used to describe those things that the mortal races would make that the gods had not – hammers, and saws and bread and glass and boats, etc, etc, etc. The gods allowed their mortal creations to name these things the mortals had made and no two groups of mortals, even if they were of the same race, named the same item or idea exactly the same. As the centuries went on in the First Age and the various groups or mortals came into contact with one another they could communicate well enough even though there was some confusion due to calling the same item by two or three or ten different names. Usually names for the same thing were accepted at the various regional levels. As far as the races having an agreed upon name for the same item, place, or idea, the elves, living the longest, saw the clearest need for this and went about amongst themselves standardized what was a mix of the god’s language and what became accepted as elven pronunciations for the creations of mortals. The dwarves were next, although not as uniformly as the elves. Then the ameya with less uniformity. Then the humans, with little to no uniformity.
After the War of the Gods, with the races so devastated by the ensuing centuries of holy wars they were more segregated from one another as they had been in the early centuries of the First Age. This led to even more diversification of language – especially amongst the humans. Now, well into the Second Age, the race that is closest in speech to the original god-given language are the elves. As the elves tend to live the longest and use magic the most they have, even thru the holy wars, kept the various communities of elves across the globe connected better than the other races and thus kept the language the closest to the original. There are of course differences in accents and a couple or so different dialects (or the beginnings of dialects). Those elves that have become the most militaristic due to conflicts with humans tend to have very efficient, to the point, and somewhat hard pronunciations. Elves with the least conflicts with humans tend to have a slower paced and softer speech. Many elven words tend to be short in general in trying to keep with the original gods’ language. The ameya living in their sanctuary in the Demi Plane just edge out the dwarves in the mortal world for consistency in language – solely due to the fact they have little outside influence. When the ameya first came to their sanctuary not all spoke exactly the same language. Over time though what differences existed stewed together to form a single form of ameyan spoken now by millions of the Gentle Folk living in the sanctuary. The dwarves, still hold on to much of the original god’s tongue. As the dwarves tend to socialize with the other races the most, they have picked up the most words and phrases from the other races. The dwarves, like the elves, use magic to communicate across the globe to their kin so a root dwarven language still exists. There are several different dialects of dwarven spoken around the world and different accents – mostly due to regional differences from interaction with local human societies. Most dwarves that deal with humans regularly will speak their own dwarven mother tongue, and the language(s) of the humans they deal with. In some areas dwarven and elven are very close, almost sibling languages, even though more of the differences come from dwarves dealing with humans more than elves dealing with humans. Dwarven words tend to reflect the mountains, mining, and metal-working sounds and a heartiness not quite found in the languages of the other peoples. The ameya still in the mortal world, depending on a particular group’s whereabouts, may speak the unaltered language of their people from the First Age (ameya in some secluded community in the wilderness or underground), may have completely adopted the language of the races they live with, or hung onto the language of their forebears as well as speak the languages of the peoples around them. Ameyan tends to be gentle and happy and can be very slow to very fast depending on the emotional connotation of the idea being expressed, but always gentle. Words with hard “p” sounds in many cases are ground down to soft “h” sounds.
