Languages in Greyhawk

Common is, of course, the language heard, spoken, and written most often in the City of Greyhawk. A variety of other languages are known to its citizens, but rarely are these displayed in public,

First, there is the Common-based argot and jargon spoken by members of specialized criminal guilds and groups, which often include hand signals, gestures, facial expressions, and so forth as part of the communicated message. The two major examples of such speech are thieves’ cant (used by the Guild of Thieves) and beggars’ cant (used by the Union of Beggars). The few members of the Guild of Assassins speak thieves’ cant, but with many added words and phrases relating to their bloody work. It ts possible that some banned cults have their own argot, circulated only among their evil priests, but this is not certain.

The Guild of Embalmers and Gravediggers has extensive jargon describing the gruesome details of its business, but this is slowly evolving into a form of criminal argot, as this guild has many illegal contacts with wizards and priests who want corpses for animation or research. This near-argot has no name as yet, though the phrase, “You talk like a gravedigger,” is beginning to circulate, meaning the speaker seems to be hinting at some nasty or unlawful activity.

A number of other legitimate guilds and occupations in the city have highly specialized jargon, particularly that used by professional sailors (called riverman talk in Greyhawk), which can describe in detail the current weather and water conditions, various items of nautical equipment, the elements of sailing, sea creatures, the types of people sailors deal with, the tactics of fighting at sea, and so forth. Members of the Guild of Lawyers, Scribes, and Accountants carry this tendency to an extreme, as they use a highly technical form of Ancient Suloise in all court’ proceedings and documents. The latter practice has its roots in the ancient days when the Suloise settlers in this region were abruptly brought into the Great Kingdom; they deliberately spoke Suloise to keep the Oeridian “invaders” out of their personal discussions. The Suloise themselves had forced the original Flan inhabitants here to speak their old imperial tongue when the former arrived.

The most commonly heard “non-Common” language in Greyhawk is probably Rhopan, which is called Rhennee cant by some. Though this tongue borrows many words and uses peculiar words and phrases in the manner of thieves’ cant, it has so many differences from any other Flanaess language as to make it a true separate language. The Rhennee folk claim to have come from a world other than Oerth, and this is certainly possible. The Rhennee do not teach fF Rhopan to outsiders and take great offense if they overhear anyone not considered a true or & honorary Rhennee using Rhopan. Rhennee usually speak Common in public.

The many immigrants who atrived in Greyhawk as a result of the Greyhawk Wars brought ‘with them their own languages, where such existed. These foreign languages are usually heard Vd ‘only in neighborhoods where folk with similar backgrounds have clustered together. Many fe refugees from Nyrond brought with them Nyrondese, and the few Tenha who escaped their — country’s collapse still speak their dialect of Flan. Some residents from the Ulek states and 2 Keoland speak Keolandish.

Other occasionally heard languages are racial tongues, especially halfling (technically called ~~ hobnis-vocca), gnome (nonis-vocca), and dwarf (dwura-vocca). These demihuman languages tend to vary across the Flanaess, but they all share so many root words and grammatical rules that a demihuman from the far west usually has a relatively easy time speaking with a demihuman from the far east. Demihuman deities appear to encourage this unifying force by sending communications to their priests in a basic form of the racial tongue that all their peoples can understand clearly.

The elf tongue (olve-vocca) is rarely heard in Greyhawk now since the recent departure of many elves to Celene. Any official Greyhawk document going out to halfling, gnome, dwarf, or elf community leaders is written in Common with a copy in the correct racial tongue. Books, maps, and other written works are produced in these languages in Greyhawk, though rarely in elven, as communication with Celene or the elf clans of the Gnarley is difficult at best.

From Adventure Begins

Rarely heard in the streets of Greyhawk are regional, barbaric, peasant, dying, or secret tongues from afar. Such minor languages include Old Oeridian, which became the main , language in Greyhawk during its earliest days as part of the Great Kingdom, but is dying out now across the Flanaess; Ferral, used only by officials of the Iron League; Lendorian, a Suloise dialect of the Spindrift Isles now being forgotten with the expulsion of all humans from those islands by the elves; Velondi, spoken by peasants on the Furyondy-Veluna border who almost never come to Greyhawk; Ancient Baklunish, spoken mostly by Baklunish nomads and regarded as uncouth by Baklunish scholars, merchants, and mercenaries in Greyhawk, who speak Common; and Fruz, the Cold Tongue of the barbarians of the Thillonrian Peninsula. No documents are produced in these languages in Greyhawk, though some books, papers, documents, and other items dating back over 300 yeats are written in Old Oeridian.

Obviously, humanoid languages are almost never spoken in Greyhawk. Anyone who overheard a conversation using words from orc, goblin, hobgoblin, or ogre languages would immediately report this to the Watch in the belief that the speaker was an infiltrator from the Orcish Empire of the Pomarj.

Unique among Greyhawk’s languages is one religion-based tongue, called druidic speech. This very ancient secret language is used only by druids of Beory and Obad-Hai; it is unknown outside their number. Druidic speech has a slight similarity to Flan and may have evolved from it, but it has become a separate, if very limited, new language. It is used to detail flora, fauna, and natural events like weather, and druids in Greyhawk use it to recognize one another.