LogFAQs > #897046950

Zeus posted...

That said, to this day the actual world doesn't really have a "common" although we have a handful of largely consistent languages.

Well, we literally have the phrase "lingua franca", which is a similar concept and which exists for similar reasons. And while it's true that there is currently no single global language that everyone can communicate in (the efforts of Esperanto fans notwithstanding), even in fantasy settings with "common" it's rarely universal across the entire world either. In Middle Earth you can talk to Hobbits, Rangers, Gondorians, Laketowners, elves in Rivendell, and hicks from Bree using a single language (derived from Numenorean), but you'd be a lot harder pressed to find a Haradrim or Easterlings who would understand you. In Faerun "common" (which is actually derived from a trade language based on Chondathan) is understood pretty much everywhere, but you might have a much harder time being understood in Kara-Tur or Zakhara.

As you yourself implied, there was a period of time when Latin was very much akin to a "common" language for all of Europe and surrounding regions, and that shifted towards French in the Middle Ages (hence the phrase "lingua franca" in the first place, since it literally means "French tongue"). Arabic basically became the "common" of the Middle East after the rise of Islam, and Chinese was always a similar uniting language across much of Asia.

I'd argue that English has actually become the "common" of the modern world, at least until China eventually overwhelms us with sheer population and economic power, at which point "common" might become Chinese, or some variant hybrid of the two.


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