Gothic
Low Gothic, also called Imperial Gothic or simply Gothic, is the common language of most of the Imperium of Man. Gothic was derived over many Terran millennia from the ancient language High Gothic. Low Gothic is composed millions of dialects which developed over the long years of the Age of Strife when all the interstellar colony worlds of Humanity were cut off from one another or Terra by powerful Warp Storms. Inevitably, dialects of Gothic differ from world to world and can be mutually unintelligible.
Some settlements were founded during the Dark Age of Technology by ethnic minorities attempting to recreate a sense of national identity away from the overpopulated cities of Old Earth. Some of these groups made a deliberate attempt to revive elements of dead languages, perceiving them as a source of national identity and communal strength. These languages are often used by the nobility - sometimes to the extent that ruling aristocracies might only know enough Low Gothic to swear in. The situation in Normandy which maintains the use of Gothique among the ruling Nobles of that Knight-World, is widely considered to be an example of this - but linguistic analysis suggests Gothique is, in fact, not a variant of Low Gothic itself but rather a debasement of High Gothic.
In some cases, trade with xenos or unaligned human worlds will lead to the development of trade-pidgins which may become solidified as a creole. Although a linguistic heresy and blasphemy (to debase the language spoken by humans with the tongues of xenos) pragmatism encourage the practice and the distance from Imperial authority often makes any theoretical dangers moot. One such example is Gotthikós in T'au-contested space on the Eastern Fringe.
Root Languages
Successor Languages
