The Echo and languages

[Kaiser-Ace]

The echo isnt really used for the beast tribes as it may appear. While I cant speak for the majority of the "bad" beastmen, it has been shown on numerous occasions that most of the beast tribes understand the Eorzean language. This is shown when duringnthe beast tribe quests, barring Sahagin maybe, where each tribe communicates with several other NPC. Additionally the Black Mage quests has you communicating with several beastmen as well, though the dialogue indicates that the other NPCs involved have all communicated together. So the beastmen can speak the "common" tongue.

I can personally attest to the Sahagan since I saw Novv just yesterday speak directly to a Malestrom NPC and be understood by the NPC.

[Belhi]

The echo isnt really used for the beast tribes as it may appear. While I cant speak for the majority of the "bad" beastmen, it has been shown on numerous occasions that most of the beast tribes understand the Eorzean language. This is shown when duringnthe beast tribe quests, barring Sahagin maybe, where each tribe communicates with several other NPC. Additionally the Black Mage quests has you communicating with several beastmen as well, though the dialogue indicates that the other NPCs involved have all communicated together. So the beastmen can speak the "common" tongue.

Some can. After all the weird way Goblins speak is specifically because of their attempt to speak in a language more native to those they trade with. While many of our beastmen allies likely can speak common, the lore on the goblin suggests that the majority can't. That would make sense as there is little reason the Ixali or the Amal'jaa ore even the majority of the Sahagin would have any reason to learn common.

[Enkidoh]

I think it just comes down to being another retcon, as 1.0 clearly showed the beastmen not being able to communicate with the spoken races usually, (and which was explained as also being a long-standing source of tension between the citystates and the beast tribes), so much so special organizations like the Ashcrown Consortium were set up with the specific purpose to negotiate trade with them, using beast men themselves to act as intermediaries and translators (specifically, sylphs) as well as non-Echo using members of the spoken races who had learned the beast tribe languages the hard way. Often they had to still call upon the Path of the Twelve though when even that wasn't enough in communicating with the beastmen, showing the Echo's xenoglossic ability as being extremely important when negotiating with the beast tribes.

Now in ARR however, it seems to be mostly handwaved away - beastmen seem to have no trouble communicating with non-Echo using spoken, apart from a background npc at Little Solace in the East Shroud, who, judging by his frustrated comments and the puzzled question mark speech bubble above the sylphs he's trying to talk to, cannot speak sylvaan. But on the whole, it's seems the beast tribes can speak the same language as the spoken races in ARR, retconning how 1.0 showed them.

[Eloah]

snip.

It mighy not be retconning just for the sake of retconning. Remember that at least 5 years have passed since 1.0 and 5 years is plenty of time to learn enough of a language to be considered "fluent".