Guild Wars 2

I’ve been puzzling about ‘Common’ as a language and its potentially huge implications (or plot/lore-holes) recently and I need a bit of help.

Now, while discussing ingame someone mentioned a statement by one of the devs that the ‘common’ language can be traced back to Glint. I remember such a post too, but even after browsing the forum with google search, I can’t find anything on the forums. Or maybe it was in an interview?

I am rather certain that this was a thing, though to fabricate any solid theories I need and would love to find this statement. Any fellow lore-hounds can help me out? ;_;

Factions called it “Tyrian”; Ecology of the Charr calls is “Human”.

Hrangmer volcano (translated to human, the name means “Jaws of Oblivion”)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Ecology_of_the_Charr

So the language is Tyrian human of origin, it would see.

Charr, norn and asura, are all known to have their own spoken language, though we never actually see samples of such (beyond Bookah, Hrangmer, and knowing norn have multiple words for “hunt”).

The comment of Glint is a misinterpretation by how you say and comes from Hidden Arcana, which states that Glint learned language from the races (including humanity). Language did not come from her, she learned it. This is part of why she turned good. Theforum post you’re thinking of.

Thanks for your speedy reply but nope, that’s not the one Konig.

The post I remember went along the lines of the ancient races not understanding each other because they spoke different languages. And then Glint united them and that’s where Common’s from.

I’m rather certain that if it was on the forum, it was not in the lore-sub. So probably in general or one of the living world ones.

Then this is news to me because I’ve never heard such. This also makes little sense given that the races were united supposedly before being hidden by Glint, which by EoD’s dialogue indicates to be after Kralkatorrik went to sleep (though the other ED may still have been awake, Glint hints that it was reading Kralk’s mind as he slept that made her go ‘I need to help the races’ after gaining free will).

Anyways, I checked the dev tracker back to October and got no mention of this. So either it was not a dev post (or rather, was not a red account – but I also checked Angel’s non-red account posts and no go there), or it’s not on the forum. A google search resulted in nothing.

I honestly don’t have a clue what you speak of, and as I said, it doesn’t make sense if true. Because all sources point “common” as the human language that spread to other races.

I found this which is apparently the result of asking some Arenanet devs – Mathew Medina and Meelad Sadet – some lore questions at PAX a few months ago, which seems related to what the OP is looking for: http://majortechcat.tumblr.com/post/96277409649

The relevant part to this thread being:

“The ‘common’ language, while generally being a game mechanic that makes the most sense, DOES have a piece in the lore. In the previous cycles of dragons eradicating species in the past, there was an incident, led by Glint, when she saved portions of several species in her small haven, she was able to communicate telepathically with them, but they all had different languages and couldn’t speak to each other. When that attack ended, the surviving people banded together in a ‘maybe we can win if we can talk to eachother.’ Some races were too proud to do so, and not enough banded together to take down the dragons. Hence the few remaining fragments of those species are the few that spoke common and found ways to survive, even if they weren’t the majority of their race.”

I’m not going to make any claims of credibility or reliability to this mind. I’m just posting it. Don’t shoot the messenger etc etc.

Aaaah, thank you Wings! This is exactly the statement I was trying to find.

Having this at hand helps to check for different interpretations and not to get things mixed up when trying to theorycraft. I’m also rather curious what the others on this forum would make out of these tidbits.

That’s interesting because it doesn’t make sense on multiple levels:

1. As I pointed out above, the Ecology of the Charr calls the ‘common’ language to be the human language.
2. Humanity is the primary user in this ‘common’ language, but was not around during that time. Similarly, the asura, charr, norn, krait, kodan, quaggan, largos, and perhaps more races were supposedly not around at this time, and were for the most part isolated races. Any understanding of this language should be relatively recent for them (and for humanity, it would have to be learned from older races – Forgotten and dwarves primarily – the question is, where did the other races, whom were without contact to most if not all of the elder races, learn to speak ‘common’?).
3. According to Arah, it sounds like the supposed alliance between the five major races was before being hidden and surviving the dragonrise. So if they couldn’t understand each other… how did they work together? How could the mursaat betray the seers, if the two races couldn’t understand each other and thus did not band together yet?

Some counter arguments to make this comment ‘make sense’ – respectively:

1. The charr may have been around during the previous dragonrise, per their recently revealed to players’ mythology of what seems to be the Giganticus Lupicus’ fall to the Elder Dragons. Based off of this, they would not have been among those Glint hid, and survived on their own; thus in time they heard common and came to understand it, but misattributed it to humanity rather than the ancient races. This, however, would be yet another blow to human lore by making the previously considered ‘human language’ to be not human.
2. The Forgotten are said to have guided the world, so they could have come into contact with a lot of the now-isolated races back before they retreated into the Crystal Desert. Similarly, the attribution to humanity by Ecology of the Charr may be more direct than it seems. Per Ogden during Hidden Arcana which sparked the thread I linked to above – “Glint has the power to communicate with her mind. She learned language from humans this way.” – this may mean that humanity was indeed one of these ‘gathered races’, but then this throws a wrench into lore as per that thread makes note, and counters Angel’s comment confirming that it was that she learned language from humans after hiding the races… which in turn contradicts with that interview statement. And this is a bit piece of lore to mess up with such a detailed comment.
3. It may be that the comment shouldn’t be taken completely literally for “no one knew anything another race was saying” – the races could have banded together sooner with translators; scribes who studied the other races’ languages, before Glint hid them. Alternatively, it may also be that the Bloodstone and betrayal happened while Glint hid the races though that seems unlikely.

Either way, I’m guessing Anet’s going to pull a “well, during interviews devs can get things wrong” or “that was said, but never put into our lore bible.” Aka ‘unintentional retcon and we’re going to cover our butts by claiming it’s not a retcon but an error. of miscommunication’