Languages of the People, Part I

The languages spoken by the People of the End of the World are many and varied. Neighboring tribes of the same race might speak the same language, but it is just as possible for such tribes to speak tongues not only mutually unintelligible but of vastly structure and origin. Given the vastness of their lands and their tumultuous history, the People speak hundreds, if not thousands, of different languages and dialects. 
 

For the purposes of running a campaign, however, many of this myriad of tongues can be combined into broad groupings. It is these groupings that are termed “languages” by the game rules. It should be noted that a person fluent in a grouping can usually, with no more than minor difficulty, understand and communicate with others fluent in the same grouping, even though their native languages in that grouping might be different. Languages within a grouping share many elements, such as syntax, vocabulary, and structure.

Languages within a family descend from a common ancestor language. Although the evidence for a common ancestor for languages in a given grouping is convincing, ancestors to different groupings can be theorized as well, although with less certainty. These mother tongues are thought to be the original tongue of a given race of the People, or at least of a given race of People living in the End of the World. It is unknown if the tongues of any remnant populations of the People living elsewhere in the world share any appreciable traits with their counterparts in the End of the World.

The Orcish Tongues

Orcish languages are all thought to derive from one language, known to scholars as ur-orcish. This mother tongue was likely spoken long before the exile of the People; the legends of numerous orcish tribes tell that the orcs already spoke many different languages during the flight to the End of the World.

Three main branches of orcish language are extant today: western orcish, eastern orcish, and central orcish, which correspond to the three routes of migration taken by the People after the Exile. By far the most widespread of these is eastern orcish, with speakers ranging from the eastern coast of the lands north of the Bite and the islands of the Ocean of Storms, to almost all of the lands south of the Dusk Line. Central orcish is the next most widely spoken, with most speakers located directly south of the Gates of Exile. Lastly, the few speakers of western orcish are restricted to the slopes of the Spine of Korthag.

The extant groupings of eastern orcish are coastal orcish, spoken by the traditional fisherfolk and whalers of the coasts and islands, southern orcish, spoken by the nomadic tribes that roam the endless steppes, forests, and tundras south of the Dusk Line, and imperial orcish, originally derived from the Stormfist dialect of coastal orcish and influenced by the many diverse peoples of Stormfist's empire. Imperial orcish is the closest thing to a common language among the People, and is spoken far and wide by soldiers, merchants, and other far-ranging souls.

Western orcish has diverged into two groupings, mountain orcish and slave orcish. Mountain orcish is spoken by the tribes native to the slopes and foothills of the Spine of Korthag, while slave orcish is spoken by the tribes enslaved by the frost giants common to the icy western coasts of the End of the World, and has been influenced greatly by the giant languages.

Speakers of central orcish can be divided into those who speak border orcish and bastard orcish. Both groupings are descended from old border orcish, but bastard orcish has picked up a large amount of vocabulary and syntax from the languages of the Others (mostly human tongues, with lesser dwarven influence) who live on the other side of the Gates of Exile, while border orcish has evolved without such influences.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.