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Common Tongue: Difference between revisions
"fan fic"->"fan works", added examples
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{{examples}}
== Fan
* ''The Basalt City Chronicles'' averts this; in the Empire of Smilodons, it's said that there's a language for every island and a dialect for every village. Some cultures even have more than one language, for example the Deltharians (most of whom are deaf) have a spoken language used by the few who can hear.
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* In the [[Liaden Universe]], the common language is called Trade, and that's what it's mostly used for.
* In ''Hellspark'' by [[Janet Kagan]], the common language is called GalLing' (presumably from "galactic lingua franca"); it's an artificially-constructed language, and one of its design features is that it only uses phonemes common to all human languages, so that anybody can speak it without difficulty.
* This is a puzzling matter in ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' series, and one of the greatest flaws in what is otherwise a masterwork of
** It is somewhat explained in that all the languages are based on a common ancestor
** Also, according to [[Word of God]], literacy within the setting is unusually high due to the
* ''[[Discworld]]'' (specifically, said by Lord Vetinari, in ''[[Discworld/Jingo|Jingo]]''):
{{quote|"And Morporkian is something of a lingua franca even in the Klatchian empire. When someone from Hersheba needs to trade with someone from Istanzia, they will undoubtedly haggle in Morporkian."}}
* In the ''[[Foundation]]'' series everyone speaks Galactic Standard, albeit with some dialects.
* The characters in [[Tamora Pierce
* In the ''[[Robotech]]'' Expanded Universe, it's revealed that though there are many languages still spoken amongst the Sentinal's races, [[Proud Warrior Race|Zentraedi]] has become a sort of common tongue that everyone can understand. This is justified because the [[Big Bad|Robotech]] [[The Empire|Masters]] used the Zentraedi as soldiers to create their empire, and thus the language was spread.
* The ''[[Humanx Commonwealth]]'' universe has "symbospeech", an [[In-Universe]] [[Con Lang]] that became a common tongue through serendipity. Shortly after humans and [[Bee People|thranx]] met one another, they spent some time working out a language that was easily pronounceable by both species, as they had wildly different vocal apparatus, and the thranx language incorporated significant body language aspects in addition to vocalizations. When additional species were encountered, symbospeech was found to be functionally pronounceable by them, too, and thus became the ''de facto'' galactic language.
* Anne Mason's Kira Warden novels have "the interplanetary language". Theoretically, most people know how to speak it; in practice, a lot of them are pretty bad at it, and it's not very good at nuance, providing lots of work for interpreters like the protagonist.
* In ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'', the main language of Westeros ("translated" as English) is actually referred to as the Common Tongue. It is contrasted with the Old Tongue (i.e. Old English), spoken by the original people who lived on the continent,as well as High Valyrian (i.e. Latin/Romance languages), spoken by foreign conquerors.
* In the ''[[Uplift]]'' series the ridiculously organized and stagnant culture of galactic civilization has resulted in at least twelve different Galactic languages (numbered 1-12) designed to accommodate the wide variety in vocal structures, humans seem to have the easiest time with Gal 7. One of the assorted ways that [[Humans Are Special|Earthclan]] is different from the other oxy-breathing races is that they have languages other than Galactic, mostly Anglic and Trinary, a poetic language designed for dolphins.
* Generally, [[Harry Harrison]]'s novels set in the future will have Esperanto (a failed [[Real Life]] attempt at making one language out of many) as the language of the old Empire and as lingua franca of all worlds. In the ''[[
* Subverted in the ''[[Ethshar]]'' series by [[Lawrence Watt-Evans]] -- each nation has its own "language", but the reader eventually learns that the differences are really little more than a local dialect and/or shifted pronunciation of a common tongue.
== Live Action TV ==
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*** Simplified in 4th edition, (no surprise there) for the most part there are only ten languages, with common being the trade language. There are however 7 other languages for different regions.
* ''[[Traveller]]''. Galanglic was the official language of the Third Imperium.
* In the ''[[Rolemaster|Spacemaster]]'' setting ''Privateers'', the language Species Standard is spoken by all of the known intelligent races.
* In ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' the "Gothic" language this purpose for the Imperium, acting as a way for cultures from different worlds to communicate. There is also High Gothic, which is used for official and religious purposes and has a role similar to Latin in medieval Europe in that no-one actually uses it as a first language but scholars and those of high rank are expected to know it.
* ''Dark Dungeon'' RPG, supplement ''Samaris, island of Adventure''. In the world of Yaddrin, the Common Tongue is spoken by most merchants and travelers.
* Played with in ''Narth 2000'', a ''[[GURPS]]'' gameworld documented [http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/narth2k.shmtl on its creator's website]. The game is set some five hundred years after an unspecified [[Apocalypse How|Class 3 Planetary catastrophe]] struck a "standard" fantasy roleplaying world. According to its [http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/chars.shtml#header9 character creation guidelines], all the languages in the starting area descend from "Old Common" but have diverged, somewhat radically; at the lower end this is little more than a difference in dialects, but at the upper end it can be like the difference between Portuguese and Romanian (both descended from Latin).
== Video Games ==
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* In ''[[Dark Star One]]'', all alien races use a language called Terra (read: [[Aliens Speaking English|English]]) in order to make communication between them easy.
==
* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' actually has ''five'' common languages: Galstandard West, East, Eight, Brown, and Peroxide. Given recent revelations that Galstandard Peroxide is only spoken by ocean-dwelling creatures (with a few exceptions), it seems as though each language is tailored to a certain general type of vocal organs. The language structure evidently differs, and may leave a strong accent when speaking another language.
* Most units in ''[[Erfworld]]'' speak Language, but Natural Allies have their own (unnamed) languages, and only a few members of each tribe speak Language.
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