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In addition to their clearly endemic languages, it seems like each of the major campaign settings also have a language called Common. I know of at least Greyhawk, the Realms, Krynn, and Mystara - there may be others.

Within at least some of these settings, Common is explained as a recent trade language that is a blend of several other languages. On Oerth, for example,

It originally was a combination of the dialect of Old Oeridian spoken in the Great Kingdom and Ancient Baklunish.

while in the Realms,

Common developed directly from Thorass, or "Old Common", which was itself a pidgin variant of the Jhaamdathan language ("Old Chondathan") and Alzhedo.

Certainly at first blush these seem like completely different languages that just happen to be called Common as a standard but unnecessary naming convention. But what if instead there is a "hidden history" driving either a common origin or forcing a convergent evolution?

Are there canon references to speakers of Common from different worlds being mutually intelligible, or unintelligible, to one another?

For example, when wizards from different worlds gather in Ed Greenwood's kitchen, is it ever explained how they understand one another and how he understands them?

Or for the wizards of different worlds who are at the center of Vecna: Eve of Ruin - is it ever explained how they understand one another and how the PCs understand them?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Out-of-universe, Common is a story device for when you don't want to deal with characters not understanding each other. Having Common from different worlds be unintelligible to each other IMO defeats the purpose of the story device (unless your story asks for characters not understanding each other). \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jul 15 at 7:06

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Common comes from Sigil.

The 2024 PHB says this on page 37:

Every player Character knows Common, which originated in the planar metropolis of Sigil

So the explanation is that this multiversal language comes from the place where all worlds meet together and has spread throughout the cosmos from there.

Though one has to use a certain degree of suspension of disbelief here. Most worlds do not have a steady connection to Sigil, so realistically their languages would have evolved into completely different ones over the course of the thousands or so years that the Material worlds are old. In the end it's just an easy, handwaved way of giving the D&D multiverse a lingua franca.

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    \$\begingroup\$ That's an interesting find but clearly a retcon. As you point out, most worlds do not have a steady connection to Sigil - and some, like Greyhawk and FR predate the conception of Sigil. I +1'd, but I was hoping for an answer that drew on something older than the 2024 rules. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jul 12 at 17:31
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Kirt Yes I completely understand, it was just what I was personally able to contribute. I am also curious what other users might answer regarding older editions. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jul 12 at 17:43
  • \$\begingroup\$ I could see educated people using some version of "Sigilese" due to its prestige, albeit with heavy localized variation, even if it had been decades or centuries since the last visitor from Sigil came by with new dictionaries. Something similar happened with languages like Latin or Arabic in different times and places. But I cannot really suspend my disbelief about every player character knowing it. Sure, clerics, bards, wizards and artificers might all speak it, but is some barbarian or fighter obviously going to be familiar with the interplanar lingua franca? \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jul 13 at 11:21
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    \$\begingroup\$ Amusingly the 2e Planewalker's Handbook claims that "Planar Common" is actually derived from the Common language of the earliest primes who settled in the planes, and that it remains mutually intelligible to the extent that a brand new first time visitor to the planes can still essentially understand it - which in context implicitly assumes that the common spoken in various different D&D settings is all fundamentally the same language, but without examining that any further. It's all clearly hand-waving away the language issues that should exist though. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jul 13 at 13:35
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Idran Indeed I did, thank you. So yes, the Common spoke on the outer planes is derived from the Common spoken on one of the Primes...but if that is true for all campaign worlds, then that would imply that the Common of each world is mutually intelligible to the others. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jul 14 at 23:32
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It bears noting that for about the first decade, the term usually appeared in lower-case and scare-quotes as "common tongue" -- that is, not the proper name for any specific language. For example, the very first appearance in original Dungeons & Dragons (1974, Volume 1: Men & Magic, p. 12) says this:

LANGUAGES: The "common tongue" spoken throughout the "continent" is known by most humans. All other creatures and monsters which can speak have their own language, although some (20%) also know the common one. Law, Chaos and Neutrality also have common languages spoken by each respectively. One can attempt to communicate through the common tongue, language particular to a creature class, or one of the divisional languages (law, etc.). While not understanding the language, creatures who speak a divisional tongue will recognize a hostile one and attack.

As usual for OD&D, that's incredibly sketchy -- it broadly assumes that the reader is familiar with the fantasy literature corpus at the time and filling in details appropriately, e.g., as by Tolkien or others. That paragraph is the entirety of the discussion of languages in the original three volumes.

Even in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules (1977-1979), the books are still writing the phrase in lower-case and commonly in scare-quotes. The Player's Handbook states rather clearly that it does not indicate any particular or universal language, even within a single game-world (p. 34):

All humans, as well as those semi-humans and non-humans in close contact with people, speak the "common tongue". This language is spoken by all states in the central campaign area, but your referee may well have areas in which the common tongue is different from that which your character speaks.

Interestingly, the earliest proper-noun capitalization I can find is in Dragon Magazine #1 (June 1976) within a guest article on languages by Lee Gold (of Alarums & Excursions fame). The earliest official D&D publication is the Holmes Basic D&D book (1977, "Elves speak... Common speech" etc., p. 6), although elsewhere it still uses the original "common tongue" in quotes (p. 9). The Moldvay Basic D&D (1981) is the first that almost always refers to it as "Common" with a capitalized, single-word term (p. B13):

The "common tongue" (or more simply "Common") is spoken by most humans, dwarves, elves, and halflings.

It also appears as the capitalized name of a particular language in Gygax's World of Greyhawk folio (1980). To me, it appears like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition is the first to universally use the single-word term, to avoid introducing it in scare-quotes, and to say somewhere that it's maybe some kind of global language (1989, Player's Handbook Glossary):

Common - the language that all player characters in the AD&D game world speak. Other languages may require the use of proficiency slots.

However, 2nd Edition in the broader text still talks about regional languages as being the basic starting assumption (e.g., PHB p. 20): "Human PCs generally start the game knowing only their regional language - the language they grew up speaking"; and all languages are spelled lower-case. 3rd Edition is the first to commit to using capitalized keywords as a device, and "Common" is used in that context without exception, seemingly as the in-world name for a particular language.

In summary: The earliest editions either implied or outright stated that "common tongue" was a placeholder for some regional in-world dialect, not a proper name for any particular language, and certainly not a universal or even global one. My reading is that the original author surely had in mind Tolkien's Westron, which he also calls "Common Speech", as a canonical example. Later editions evolved in the direction of shaving off this inherited linguistic nuance.

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    \$\begingroup\$ This is the kind of deep history I was hoping for. However, the rules books are by their nature generic or worldless. What I am really interested in is where each specific setting says their Common is from, and whether there has been any connections made between the Commons of different worlds. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Jul 13 at 3:28

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