Common Tongues -- was Re: Quick Intro

And, at least for me, the term "common" is pretty much a convenience term,
much as is calling the Aewylin "elves", or the e'Gratën "goblins", and I
doubt it will ever make it into the story.  I'm working on the history of my
setting right now, and the first human nation was that of Ûriad, and I
suppose they spoke a language called something like Ûriite, or something.
Now, if it turns out that this language, or rather its descendant is the one
that survived after a fashion to become the common language for all Human
races, then instead of being called the Common Tongue, it might be named
after some variant of Ûriite.  Perhaps Eurian, or Eurish, or something.  It
is too early to tell.  In fact, I can't even guarantee that there WILL be a
common tongue, unless it would be similar to Latin in function, in which
case only the more learned of the various populations might understand it.

What do you folks think?  Is a "common tongue" even a logical possibility?
A natural outgrowth when you have four (possibly five, if I decide to
develop the Trollish races) separate species that are commonly interacting?

...John...

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joseph Fatula" <fatula3@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2003 10:39 PM
Subject: Re: Quick Intro


> It sounded pretty dumb to me for it to be called "Common", but then one
day
> I suddenly realized that calling a language "Common" had been done before,
> with Koine.  Still, it would have been more fun to call it "Common" in
> another language.  All of the language names in my world come from one of
> the following roots:
>
> - "language"
> - "the people" > adjective
> - geographic adjective
> - ethnic adjective
>
> But the vast majority come from one of the first two.  Actually, now that
> I'm thinking about it, a few languages that spun off as specialty dialects
> at first have different names.  There's a trade pidgin that is now a
creole
> and is called by a word that once meant "trade", and there's another
> language called essentially "king-speak", as that was the elite language
> that the conquerors used, so when common people started speaking it, they
> called it "speaking the way the king speaks".  But other than that, I
> generally call languages simply "language", just as I generally call
ethnic
> groups "people".

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