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I simply don’t like the idea of a global lingua franca in fantasy and… in general honestly lol. Again, I understand WHY they need to exist in video games and RPGs like D&D, but I find it much more interesting and realistic to exclude them. And again, this is certainly something more suited for writing than MMOs.

The EXISTENCE of a lingua franca on a global scale — by my non-linguist understanding — relies on some sort of colonial history and/or a global, instant communication system. Azeroth doesn’t have an internet, and I just… don’t like colonialism. Crazy take, I know.

My narratives recognize the Alliance as imperialists unlike Blizzard’s, so it’s not like I took that out of the picture. They are absolutely colonialists lol and that is absolutely something that must be dealt with in my AU. I just didn’t want their influence to be that far-reaching, because honestly, I find that sad and unfun to think about. I do use WoW and this AU for escapism, among other things, so some decisions are motivated in part by that.

SO, I made Common a non-universal language and renamed it to Human to subtly imply that. I went with “Human” because many other languages in similar fantasy settings are named after the races that natively speak them and not the country (see: Dwarvish, Orcish*). It fit in a lot better to just go with that. Worth mentioning though! It does have regional dialects, some of which are so different they could really be considered separate languages. But they all originated from a group of humans, so they’re put under that umbrella. I suppose it’s more like a family of languages in that case then, like I made Zandali…

((*on that note, Orcish also isn’t universally spoken within the Horde.))

So yes, there would be a Stormwindian/Elwynnian dialect and an Alteraci dialect, etc. The Stormwindian dialect is probably most common because of the existence of the Alliance and of Stormwind’s place as a major trade city. Many dwarves in Ironforge speak that dialect, but inversely, many Stormwindians also speak Dwarvish (which also has its own dialects. All the languages in my AU have dialects to some extent). Or at the very least they’ll use Dwarvish words and expressions even while speaking Human. Like I’m doing right now with Italian (“lingua franca”).

There are mages who make livings off knowing translation spells (and even those can only translate literally). Travelers and traders are by necessity going to know the trade languages, Stormwindian Human being one of them (if we’re talking about the Alliance). But the average, non-human person very well might not.

I’ll end that whole ramble with a specific example of an OC story that couldn’t have worked if I went with Common as a true lingua franca: Cathala was stranded on Pandaria for about fifty years pre-MoP, and she had to learn Pandaren to get by. Eventually she all but forgot how to speak Darnassian. It’s a major point in her story when she meets Tarinne and Tarinne helps her relearn Darnassian. If I went by the game’s logic, there would’ve been almost no need for Cathala to learn Pandaren, and no need for her to relearn Darnassian. Which just feels so flat to me, and would take away a huge part of the foundation of hers and Tarinne’s relationship. Additionally, Cathala’s character heavily focuses on finding identity, and that whole history with language is a large part of it.