Common

The Common language, typically known as "Common" (more rarely, "Athenian"), is the lingua franca spoken by mortals throughout the Material Plane. It was spread among all mortals by the goddess Athena at the dawning of the Age of Complexity.

From Zeus's forehead whence she had emerged, Lady Athena reached her hand once more and pulled a lightning bolt forth. She threw the lightning-lance into the sky, screaming the first word all mortals might hear: Understand! When the bolt hit the cloud, its thunderclap echoed through all mortal minds, and its echoes were a beautiful language of peace that all mortals knew.
—Legend of the Athenian Tongue

Sages believe that the language struck every mortal who knew at least one language at the time of the Litigation of Flames. The explorers on the L'invitacion, upon reaching the Mystic Lands, found that they could communicate fluently in Common with the Anthrohumanoid species that inhabited the lands.
Though most individual cultural tongues, such as Elvish and Gnomish, have retained their popularity, most of Belcantas's regional Human languages, such as Gaenoa and High Achlyssian, died out in the early centuries of the Age of Complexity. The Halfling tongue, originally a dialect of the proto-Dreibach human tongue, still flourishes, as do several of the languages of Desarmín. As Athena and her Olympian Dynasty cohorts are largely human gods, though, most human cultures see Common as their birthright and their most natural native language.
Common uses the same twenty-eight letter alphabet as Celestial. Over time, the Common language has adopted loanwords from many other mortal and immortal languages. It has also adopted a number of regional dialects, which have remained mutually intelligible despite their differences.

• Maurucommon, a dialect unique to the Western Woods that borrows vocabulary and certain spelling and grammar rules from Gnomish and Orokhimshe; its script is occasionally used to express rudimentary elements of Orokhimshe in written rather than woven form
• Dreicommon, the official language of the Dreibach Empire, thought to be the closest in form to the original language of Komm
• Forocommon, a variant heard in elven-influenced cultures (particularly in Cantonova and parts of the Aquatic Kingdoms) and popular in many genres of music

Root Languages

• Celestial

Spoken by

• Dwarven
• Elven
• Gnomish
• Halfling
• Human
• Humanoid
• Orokhim