The languages are such a criminally underdeveloped part of the setting I thought I might as well have fun with them and relate them to real world languages.
Kalimag is Proto-Basque, since it’s extremely ancient and used to be spoken on a far wider area than it is today. Draconic is modern day Basque.
Titan is Proto-Indo-European.
Azerothian Titanforged speak languages from the Germanic branch. The Watchers, Earthen and Troggs still speak Proto-Germanic. Dwarven and Vrykul are Scandinavian languages ; depending on the clan, Dwarves may speak Danish, Swedish or Norwegian, while the Vrykul tongue remained more conservative due to isolation and corresponds to Icelandic. Gnomish is German due to its stupidly complex declension system. Common corresponds to the Anglo-Frisian languages : Humans from Stormwind, Stromgarde, Lordaeron and Dalaran speak English, with various local accents ; Gilneans, due to their isolationist policies, remained close to Middle Common and speak Scots, and Alteraci speak an even more distant Common, something akin to Frisian. Gutterspeak is basically Common but with a vastly different phonological system, with many click consonants like the ones you’ll find in the Khoisan languages. Also with many nasal vowels. Because their faces are full of holes.
The Dark Trolls that would become the first Elves picked up a new language at the contact of the Well of Eternity, and Azeroth being a Titan, it was an Indo-European language. Elven languages correspond to the Celtic branch. The races whose cultures remain close to that of the pre-Sundering Kaldorei Empire speak Brittonic languages : modern day Darnassian is Welsh, Nazja is Pictish, Shalassian is Breton due to its isolation and the influence of French over its lexicon and phonology. After their exile the High Elves’ language grew more and more distant, hence why Thalassian corresponds to the Goidelic languages, with the Sin’dorei speaking Irish Gaelic and the Quel’dorei speaking Scottish Gaelic. The San’layn speak Cornish because Cornish is an undead language lmao (the history of Cornish is fascinating, go look it up).
The Mogu gave up on their Titanic legacy when they found out that Ra sucked and crafted their own language, that is Mandarin Chinese. The Hozen, Jinyu, Pandaren, Saurok and Yaungol had to pick it up due to their status as slaves within the Mogu Empire, but their vernacular practice of the language led to the creation of many other Sinitic languages.
Zandali is a creole language. The bulk of its grammatical system and morphology is Maya, however languages such as Darnassian/Thalassian, Mogu, Common and Vulpera (which corresponds to Tuareg) strongly impacted its phonology and lexicon.
Grond being a Titanic creation, his descendants speak an-Indo-European language. I figured it would correspond to the Indo-Iranian branch. Similarly, due to Argus, Eredun/Draenei should be IE languages as well, and would obviously be reminiscent of the Balto-Slavic family.
Goblin is Esperanto. They wanted to come up with an international language, one that would allow them to trade with everybody on Azeroth. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work.
Alternatively, Goblin could be Maltese.
Please don’t ask me why I did this. Feel free to ignore this nonsense.
It’s a tragically neglected part of the lore. Probably because far as I can tell language was more or less invented to stop players from griefing the opposite faction.
Like characters are able to communicate perfectly when they need to. Anduin seems like the sort of guy who’d study Orcish but Saurfang doesn’t strike me as the sort who’d sit down for Common lessons. And granted he did fight quite a lot of humans but I’ve never known anyone to come back from war with a mastery of the foe’s tongue. You’re not exactly sent to the front to try to talk things out afterall.
In particular I find human accents weird. As Lordaeronians, Dalaranians, Stromgardians and Stormwindians all speak in American accent. But the Gilneans and Kul Tirans are Brits. Except for Jania and come to think of it Genn doesn’t sound too limey. Which is a shame. Because a proper upper crust, aristocratic English accent coming out of a werewolf sounds funny to me.
“Sylvanas!!! You artless coxcomb! I’ll see your knavish tricks frusturated forthwith!”
But multiple characters from the northern EK have Russian and German accents. Most notably Jandice Barov and Dr.Krastinov in Stratholme who certainly have Russian looking names, und Jagdhundmeister Braun von das Scharlach Mönchskloster.
From a meta perspective I know they’re there because their ‘villain accents’. But I do like to imagine there’s some linguistic diversity scattered around. Presumably they all spoke something else before Common was a thing.
And I do insist Alteraci’s have a German accent. Because they have Swiss cheese. Which suggests they are somehow aware of Switzerland and perhaps severely misunderstood their neutrality given their actions in the 2nd War.
Seriously why not Alpine cheese? Which is it’s proper name as there are Austrians and Bavarians also in them there hills who’ll stare daggers at you if you call them Swiss. I’d still have a bee in my bonner as Alpine means “of the alps” so that’d be weird regardless but less weird than just name dropping an IRL nation in your fantasy setting.
There’s also the question if some races could even speak other’s languages.
I wonder if the Forsaken’s tongue switching from Gutterspeak to Forsaken suggests they actually developed their own language. We know the Forsaken speak magically as people without jaws or indeed nothing below their neck can communicate just fine. So do they make noises unique to their unnatural physiology? Could someone speaking with breath even hope to replicate certain sounds?
You’d think Orcish and Draenei would be a nightmare to learn. Languages from other hemispheres are notoriously challenging to learn because with say European languages there’s usually some connective tissue. Spanish and German aren’t considered at all similar but you’d be surprised at the amount of crossover. Same can’t be said for say Portugese and Mandarin. But we’re at least all still humans living on the same planet so we do have words for the same objects and concepts.
But Orcish and Draenei? There may well be sensations and senses they can’t really explain to other races as they’re outright incapable of feeling them. Like the Orcish blood rage probably isn’t a relatable feeling. And on just minor stuff the Draenei have hooves. So a human talking to them about walking on a beach is going to be describing a sensation they fundamentally do not understand.
And speaking of hooves what about the Tauren? How much do their tails factor into body language? Do they factor that in at all? Or what about the Vulpera for that matter?
So many interesting stuff you could do here that’s rarely touched. We really know so little about the races cultures and languages. Like there’s a bit in Shadow’s Rising where Zekhan is sexually attracted to Talanji and notes her dainty tusks. Is that the common beauty standard of trollkind or is Zekhan just a man who prefers smaller tusks? Is the reverse the case for men? Are large tusks associated with other large appendages or are they maybe just generally seen as low class or unattractive?
I agree the linguistics have largely been ignored, probably because things could get rather messy in a hurry. I was thinking about this the other day.
“Common” is the term that stands in for the player’s language, depending on what language the player is playing in. For me, that’s English, for someone in Germany that’s German, and so on. For me, then, “Common” has some etymology from real-life languages.
Of course, Azeroth has no idea what English or Latin or Greek is, so we can’t say that their English words are based on Latin or Greek, because they’re Common words based on…Titan and something else? They would also need different etymologies for some of the same idioms we use.
I have always imagined Earth is out there somewhere in Azeroth’s universe, unless Azeroth is some sort of proto-Earth we came from, or a haven for humans long after Earth has wasted away. I tend to think of Azeroth as something of a Battlestar Galactica or Stargate situation, where we’re doing our thing, blissfully unaware there’s other humans out there doing theirs.
From what I’ve read there’s really no history about how humans got to Azeroth, whether they evolved from primordial ooze, or were formed there by the gods, or what. Maybe we crashlanded on Azeroth eons ago, and we’ve just forgotten. That would seem to make sense in some ways, why we speak Earth languages. Of course, languages evolve, and ours would evolve very differently in a world like Azeroth than on planet Earth, but we’ve got to draw the line somewhere.
Humans evolved from Vrykul who used to be Titan Forged but had the curse of flesh put upon them from Yogg-Saron.
You’re reading too deeply into why many Azerothian cultures speak languages that are derivatives of real languages. They speak it because Blizzard were inspired by them to give fictional races and nations flavor and uniqueness. Nothing more.