Languages of Tear

Over the course of several millennia, many different languages have been spoken on Tear, spread across a range of different language families. While different species have different ways of vocalizing and making sounds, thousands of years of co-habitation has ensured that the dominant languages have developed in such a way that they are not dependent on sounds unique to specific species. In cases where vocalizations specific to the morphologies of a given species are present in a language, that language will usually accommodate alternate pronunciations, enabling members of other species to use the same words and grammar.

Over the millennia, many hundreds or even thousands of different languages and dialects have been spoken, but there are only about fifty different languages, spread across only a handful of language families that comprise the majority of all spoken languages throughout history, and in which over 99% of recorded history is written.

By the end of the Enlightenment, scholars at the University of Shahaifor had mostly arrived at a consensus that there were seven major language families in history, dating back to the beginning of the Second Epoch. Most of these languages had evolved over time, as was evidenced in the histories, as well as in the ways spoken languages appeared to have drifted and merged over centuries.