The Languages of Hydaelyn

[Yrusama]

Common (ie: English for want of a better term)

Common depends on each player's language setting. For our purposes, English.

Oh, you might want to add ancient Miqo'te to the list. They have their own language and a variety of sounds that only they can make (like a unique hiss or purr), though they've stopped using it since crossing over.

[Yrusama]

If their language was being translated by the Echo, wouldn't the language be perfect Eorzean/Common without the use of accents?

Not to knock Japanese, but if you take the Japanese phrase "risu wo tabeta", this sentence literally only has the words "squirrel" and "ate", with the syllable "wo" tying it all together into "ate squirrel". This direct translation sounds very simplistic because it doesn't have context to give it extra meaning. Who ate the squirrel? How many squirrels? Is it "squirrel" as in the meat, or "a squirrel" as in a whole animal? I imagine the Amalj'aa and Ixal have a sentence structure that we can't always interpret smoothly into the common language, resulting in the game presenting our interpretations in accents.

We have to remember that our characters don't go out of their way to translate other languages in their heads if they understand them inherently. The translation is done by the game (or rather the writers) to help us understand what our characters hear.

[finiteHP]

From real world experience, I do know that in some tribal countries, each tribe can have their own language, but when they need to communicate with each other they all have a seperate language they all use. I see this as a possibility to explain how the beastmen communicate with each other.

This has always been my assumption. Every race has their own mother tongue including the beastmen, but also have a common/trader's language to communicate with one another. A lingua franca in other words. That language could be one of the mother tongues (Elezen for example), or an amalgamation of a few. The beastmen common language is different from the one we use, hence the need to learn it or have the echo.

Well, my guess is that the beastymen can all speak Eorzean/common. If you followed the Ifrit story or the UD story, you speak with the Amalj'aa multiple times and they speak common. You can tell it's not that they are speaking beastytongue and the game translates because you can pick up accents. If their language was being translated by the Echo, wouldn't the language be perfect Eorzean/Common without the use of accents?

The Ixali speak common too. They have a very distinct accent (from what I remember). If they were speaking in their native language, then the Echo was translating for us, I would think it would be translated into perfect Eorzean/Common so we can understand it better.

The Sylphs have a very unique way of talking, but we know for a fact that it's being translated for us by our echo ability. I would assume all the accents come through in echo understanding too.

[Anonymoose]

/kicks in the door

Rhotano Bloodcant.

/kicks through the wall and leaves through the hole

[Forgo]

I may have inadvertently asked this same question in my thread about the Echo's understanding of multiple languages, but I wanted to add here:

Since the beast tribes can speak with eachother in the 1.x storyline, Sylphs, Ixali, and Amal'jaa... Do they share a language?

primal? since they can talk to the primals no matter what race maybe its the common for beastmen?