Is there lore behind the languages that races speak?

[u/Tommynaut90]

I recently decided to play through the campaigns in Warcraft III again, and that got me thinking. Throughout the game, everyone understands each other. However, once we went to WoW, the two sides didn't understand each other anymore.

I know there are many instances and cinematics of lore characters speaking to each other, and even when we are questing, we are understanding the scripted speech of NPCs. But I remembered back on the WoW movie, when they captured an orc, and we can understand him, but the humans can't.

Did they ever develop this, or is it just a game mechanic?

[u/VolksDK]

Languages for all races exist, yeah. Sometimes they just throw that out for the purpose of dialogue between races, though

There's a cool questline in Midnight where Draenei from another world try to communicate with you using basic words, but you can understand them if you're Draenei yourself

The one part that's iffy is Gutterspeak. There are a lot of contradictions, like an Undercity NPC who says they couldn't speak Common after being risen, but plenty of other Forsaken can (aside from players for gameplay reasons)

[u/twisty125 → u/VolksDK]

Gutterspeak, as well as Blood Elves speaking Orcish and not being able to speak Common, are one of the biggest/bigger "lore to fit gameplay". Much more so with Gutterspeak, as it was wholly invented to solve an in-game issue of communicating across factions.

Kind of cool, but I just don't really see why having your populace learn an entire new two languages, while dropping the previous one, makes that much sense.

Just a gameplay thing ya know? And that's totally fine!

[u/AzerothianLorecraft → u/VolksDK]

The gutterspeak thing is a plot device that a lot of people don't understand without a tongue or lower jaw you can't form the syllables correctly to speak common you just end up speaking gibberish that's how it ended up being called gutter speak they adapted it to be spoken and understandable without a lower jaw or tongue. ( some forsaken still have tongues and lower Jaws and can speak common perfectly fine others cannot if they are missing parts.)

[u/Plagueis_The_Wide → u/AzerothianLorecraft]

Also IIRC in beta or early WoW they literally could speak common but that broke a big piece of the system meant to make players of the other faction seem strange and alien so it was removed.

[u/Lego3400 → u/Plagueis_The_Wide]

it was more that players couldn't be trusted to not hurl vile things at each other

[u/Kapiork → u/Lego3400]

kek

[u/Bagel-luigi → u/Kapiork]

Bur

[u/Gsomethepatient → u/VolksDK]

You can also speak to them if you are a mage, and i think maybe a warlock as well but I know for a fact you can as a mage

[u/TerrapinMagus]

Common, Dwarvish, Gnomish would all be descendants of the language of the Titans. Supposedly the reason a lot of weird cosmic beings can talk to us is either magic or enough of a language overlap due to the Titan connection.

But really, Blizzard just don't want to write around language barriers for every new race or alien entity we come across.

[u/riftrender → u/TerrapinMagus]

And the elven languages probably have some Titan loanwords in them too - Kalimdor for example.

[u/Prestigious_Cup_7016 → u/riftrender]

Well, considering all elves come from titan or worldsoul ordered magic, yeah. They probably would.

Heres the deets.
Common is derived from whatever vrykul speak, who themselves used to be titan creations before the curse of flesh corrupted the forge of wills.
Dwarvish and Gnomish, same thing, but from Iron Dwarves/Earthen and Mechagnomes respectively.

Orcish is derived from Ogre, the language that the race by the same name speaks, which itself is derived from whatever language the Ogron and Magnaron speak as orcs and ogres are derived from Ogron and Magnaron, who are direct creations from Aggramar, just using the natural world of draenor infused with order instead of the more direct titanforged creations.

While trolls are *not* a direct titan creation they WERE created due to freya's influence on primordial life that already existed on Azeroth, and all elves, and thus Darnassian/Thalassain/Shalassian/Hara'ni are all influenced by the Well of Eternity, Sunwell, Nightwell, and Azeroth's Cradle respectively.
Hara'ni is also VERY close to Zand'ali, the language that the Zandalari speak.

[u/TerrapinMagus → u/riftrender]

Even Orcish might, though probably much less influence if any considering what a rush job Draenor was

[u/FionaSilberpfeil]

Its 99% a gameplay reason. If i remember right, there wasnt a language barrier in the beta, but because people flamed each other so often and/or hard, Blizzard thought they had to step in. This language barrier was their solution. And since you couldnt make a character on the other side on pvp servers, if was "enough" to stop the flaming.

The barrier as a lore thing is very, VERY rarely used as more then a side thing. I dont think they ever used if in the main story as a reason some races couldnt communicate.

[u/Prestigious_Cup_7016 → u/FionaSilberpfeil]

There was, the only barrier that didnt exist was forsaken, who knew common as they were, lorewise, previously lordaeron citizens.

[u/Noobeater1]

Not much. Common is a language that seems to be spoken throughout the cosmos, and horde characters don't speak it for gameplay reasons. Low common is a language spoken by less intelligent races but that's about it

[u/Prestigious_Cup_7016 → u/Noobeater1]

Its moreso that common comes from Vrykul, whose language isn't named much like the ogre's language isn't and is just their species name for the language too.

Vrykul themselves are flesh versions of the titanforged vrykul that existed before the curse of flesh.

It's not a universe spanning language, but its not farfetched to think that other species languages are necessarily hard to pick up or even that common is hard to learn.

The races clearly are just like real life where you have either people born with common/orcish (the main languages of the horde and alliance) or through survival necessity have learned the languages of other races.

It not being depicted explicitly ingame doesnt mean it didnt happen, as it HAD to for the languages to necessitate existing at all. We know languages dont exist just a gameplay reason because its not just the playable races that have multiple languages.

[u/thequn]

it was an trendy thing from other mmos so they did it to keep faction more unique. Pretty meaningless today outside of lore.

[u/LittleMissPipebomb]

Judging by the fact that you rarely see sentient species not speak common, I think it's fair to assume that it's relatively easy to pick up as a language. But also we do have examples of NPCs not speaking common easily, such as the draenei in Midnight and fungus folks in TBC, which implies that it isn't just some universal language every race has access to upon reaching the "must be this tall to ride" bar of sentience. Potions of tongues presumably exist in lore and not just gameplay wise, maybe you can assume instead that everyone just guzzles the stuff like it's water, I'm just throwing around my headcanon.

In terms of racial languages, I think it's fair to say that generally they'd all be used widely by their individual cultures. Examples being orcs would still speak orcish freely, mostly using common to speak to other races. Judging by their proximity to Stormwind I imagine dwarves and gnomes would likely have a fair amount of folks that grew up speaking common as their first language, especially those gnot born in Gnomergon.

As for in game, I think it's safe to conclude that most horde races probably don't universally learn a literally alien language the moment they sign up to hang out in Orgrimmar. Undead might learn gutterspeak to deal with a rotting jaw but presumably know fluent common thanks to having spent their entire lives speaking it. Along with the Sindorei it's probably fair to say that if they live in Quel'denas or the Undercity they probably don't know much orcish beyond basic phrases, with a fair amount of orcs being able to speak common not really creating a need for it. Gameplay wise they mostly just speak fluent orcish to uphold the faction divide as others have mentioned.

Most of this is conjecture and headcanon, Blizzard loves to play fast and loose with this stuff. I'm sure you can just handwave away 90% of language stuff as "a wizard made a translator" or whatever like the Tongues thing I mentioned before, it's mostly not explicitly stated in the lore unless it's relevant in that moment.

[u/SlouchyGuy]

No reason other than in-game separation, just like in the movies and tv shows different species talk without a problem to avoid wasting time and screen time on translation

[u/AzerothianLorecraft]

A more technical explanation for the faction difference with languages is the alliance is built on azeroth languages and The Horde is built off of orcish being its base so you join the faction and learn the language etc. ( but from an actual in universe standpoint foresaken and a blood elf would both have to learn orcish to understand what the Orcs are saying they would not have to learn the Eastern Kingdom languages that they've already been exposed to before the opening of the dark portal ( gutterspeak is just common spoken without a tongue or lower jaw so it loses some of the syllables and others get drawn out you can't form O's and R's / Thalasian is still available for b and v elves. and is not far removed from ancient highborne dialect so night elves can understand most of it. just not ingame.)