The lore book's passage on Othard says that Doman culture developed for 2000 years with no influence from the West. I don't disagree that most Domans probably speak (and have done for the last 20 years) what the Eorzean authors of the book call "the common tongue of the Hyur", but I do assert that it's as a trade language, not their native ancestral language. "2000 years separate" and "same language" are mutually exclusive concepts, and TBH 20 years is an entire generation - plenty of time for Eorzean to become widespread and develop into a local dialect.
We can ascertain from their naming conventions that the Lalafell and (ofc) the Roegadyn have their own languages. Roegadyn is cited as being a dying language, but I can't remember anything about Lalafellin. It's possible it's still spoken in the Cieldalaes, and we know it influences both their own names and the names of things like species of fish. We can also extrapolate that Elezen likely have (or had) a language in which their names are based, and we know Miqo'te have a "hunting language" comprised of clicks and whistles. And the existence of a "common tongue" of the Xaela "used for cross-tribe communication" necessarily confirms the existence of tribe dialects, and possibly completely separate languages like the Geneq, Moks, and arguably Qalli are confirmed to have.
There's a lot of diversity, and the PoV character being an Echo user/most of the NPCs surrounding them being well-travelled scholars certainly doesn't make it easy to apply an MSQ point of view in confirming or denying the existence (or lack thereof) of a variety of languages in the wider world.
Personally, I'd argue it's best to assume there's a diversity similar to IRL until confirmed otherwise - that languages diversify on a similar timescale to IRL - and that the reason why MSQ NPCs all seem to be able to communicate is because plot devices enable them to.
(3rd thread I'm saying this in lol I'm such a broken record)
We can ascertain from their naming conventions that the Lalafell and (ofc) the Roegadyn have their own languages. Roegadyn is cited as being a dying language, but I can't remember anything about Lalafellin. It's possible it's still spoken in the Cieldalaes, and we know it influences both their own names and the names of things like species of fish. We can also extrapolate that Elezen likely have (or had) a language in which their names are based, and we know Miqo'te have a "hunting language" comprised of clicks and whistles. And the existence of a "common tongue" of the Xaela "used for cross-tribe communication" necessarily confirms the existence of tribe dialects, and possibly completely separate languages like the Geneq, Moks, and arguably Qalli are confirmed to have.
There's a lot of diversity, and the PoV character being an Echo user/most of the NPCs surrounding them being well-travelled scholars certainly doesn't make it easy to apply an MSQ point of view in confirming or denying the existence (or lack thereof) of a variety of languages in the wider world.
Personally, I'd argue it's best to assume there's a diversity similar to IRL until confirmed otherwise - that languages diversify on a similar timescale to IRL - and that the reason why MSQ NPCs all seem to be able to communicate is because plot devices enable them to.
(3rd thread I'm saying this in lol I'm such a broken record)
![[Image: tUzrT.png]](https://puu.sh/tUzrT.png)
