So, it seems like Shalassian was their old language, but it states that it is an archaic language that only the oldest elves may know how to read, which implies that before Darnassian there was another version of language.
As well as, how different would Darnassian be from their previous language, because I assume there isn’t much room for many new words to develop in around 15 years. Or was Darnassian a simple name change for the language?
I would say that Darnassian is the ‘modern’ version of what I’m going to call ‘ancient -assian’ and that Shalassian is the same - both just differing dialects. Strongly doubt this is elaborated in the lore.
Shalassian isn’t their old language. It’s an offshoot of Darnassian like Thalassian is. Check WoWpedia for that info and the tweet from Don Adams it sources.
But… Wait, how is Shalassian an off-shoot of Darnassian if Darnassian wasn’t even a thing up until the aftermath of the Night Elven campaign in Rein of Chaos, thousands upon thousands of years after Suramar got bubbled?
Darnassian is the ancient language, with Shalassian, Thalassian, and Nazja offshoots. So, either Darnassus was an incredibly ancient place that got lifted up during the growth of Teldrassil; or (more likely, imo) “darnas” is some yet to be defined root word that both words share, but beyond that are unrelated to each other.
(Ignoring of course, the meta answer of a dev error in naming an ancient language after a new city.)
I’m inclined to think that rather than Darnassian being recently named after Darnassus, both words probably come from a common kaldorei root word (as Galenorn suggested, perhaps something like “darnas”) that carries some form of “home” meaning.
So Darnassian could have always been their language’s name, while Darnassus wouldn’t have been named until much later.
It’s probably not overly changed much either, since there wasn’t any replacement generational turnover for the duration of the Long Vigil, so many of the literal same night elves who survived the WotA and Sundering continued speaking as they always had.
Thalassian, Shalassian and Nazja strike me as potentially originating from some form of special dialect spoken by the Highborne caste, being close enough to Darnassian to be readily comprehensible to common kaldorei, but different enough for the speaker’s societal class to be evident to the listener. There are a number of linguistic conventions, unusual phonetics and exotic pronunciations that pop up in Highborne-related names and terms that aren’t so prevalent among regular night elves, but appear more frequently among quel’dorei, sin’dorei, shal’dorei, naga and even satyr. As if Darnassian was effectively the common tongue during the time of the night elf empire, while the ruling class also spoke a sort of “High Darnassian” dialect with extra speaking formalities and particular linguistic conventions.
I could imagine something like “darnas” effectively being the common kaldorei equivalent of the Highborne, and later Thalassian “thalas.” And as “thalas” meaning home suggests that “Thalassian” in some way translates to “home tongue” or “home language”, “Darnassian” could easily mean the very same thing, in Darnassian.
Which might arguably make sense; it wouldn’t be entirely difficult to imagine the Highborne caste literally having their own word for something like “home” that immediately differentiated it from “home” for a normal night elf, as they would have considered their own cities and residences to be inherently superior and fundamentally different to those of the commoners.
Alright, you guys got some really good points, honestly, that was extremely in depth as well Raselle, thank you both. I hadn’t really considered that to be the case but it does make a lot of sense.
Makes sense to me, essentially The Queen’s English vs. Cockney.
probably an error but ya the meaning home makes sense
darnassus was named after their language, darnassian, their language for over 15.000 years, a mix between zandalar and titanspeak.
It is highly likely Darnassian was the common tongue. Shallassian and Thallassian are very likely equivalents of British English and American English, where inability to understand between the two is more a game mechanic, hence why Kael and Tyrande didn’t have to overcome a language barrier in WC 3.
Darn very likely either roughly translated to common or nature. If you use nature option it would further mean Dranassus roughly mean city of nature or something like that.
…
Now how similar the elven languages are to the troll languages is interesting. Those could very well be equivalent to French to Spanish or Italian to French or Spanish.
Probably ancient Troll language
I suspect that Darnassian has always been around as a language for tradesman and the lower classes. so that Shalassian was “High Darnassian” or somesuch.
With the exception of Tyrande and the Highborne that joined in, everyone else, including the Stormrage brothers was pretty much the peasantry of the old Empire, although with his arcane ability, Illidan might have been able to work his way into the Highborne if he had been of a mind to do so.
Zandali mixed with a view Titan words they learned from the world soul Azeroth and in time this language gradually became Darnasian.
Chronicles 1 mentioned only as much, so I can’t tell you more.
Or you know, the old Darnassus sunk beneath the waves and they simply rebuilt it once Teldrassil was fully grown.
Least that makes the most sense to me 
Here’s a question was the term Darnassian even around before the MMORG? I don’t recall seeing it in the RTS.
Otherwise I see the name coming about like this.
“Okay, we got the Night Elfs modeled and their spanking new capital and tree built. What’s the name of their language.”
** cue lots of head scratching **
“Did you give the city a name yet?”
“Creative is going for Darnassus. it sounds elfy but neither the Sony people, the Tolkien people, or the D&D people can sue us over it.”
“What about the Pathfinder people?”
“Hush you, they don’t exist yet.”
*Okay then we’ll call the language … “Darnassian!”
cigars passed all around
What’s funny is that the tree earlier had the name Kalidar (maybe star- home?)