Re: OT: Quick Intro

Joe wrote:
>Andreas wrote:
>I've, in RPGs, seen rather
> > amusing examples of this, where Dwarfs speak Dwarf, Minotaurs speak
> > Minotaur and Halflings speak Halfling, while the humans, in addition to
> > being the only race that doesn't get a capital letter, for some reason
> > don't speak Human. And they _never_ bother to explain this irregular
>state
> > of affairs.
> >
>
>Maybe it's just that they all sound the same to human ears.
This's been in RPGs; game mechanics have made it clear that it's indeed been
only one Dwarf/Minotaur/Whatever language.

>Anyway, humans speak Common.
Which makes one wonder why they're not known as Commons ... :-)

I wonder to what extent this preference for having a Common Tongue is due to
Tolkienian influence; it's certainly convenient from a pragmatic view to
have a lingua franca represented by English (or Sinhalese or whatever
language the thing is written in), but there's little reason it need be
called "Common", is there?

                                                 Andreas

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