Alaria's spoken tongues
Most of what is spoken across Alaria belongs to a handful of broad families, with a long tail of minor and local tongues beneath them. No language reaches everywhere. The closest thing to a shared speech is Northern Commonfolk, and even that is a trade language first and a mother tongue second. Where it has not taken hold, a traveler still needs an interpreter, a phrasebook, or patience.
Northern Commonfolk
Northern Commonfolk is the most widely spoken language in Alaria. It is native to much of central Clueanda and to the whole of Ve. Its real reach, though, comes from commerce rather than birth: a factor can step off a hull in nearly any major port and find someone to haggle with in it. In harbors far from Clueanda it is no one's first language and half the dock's second.
A grain-dock on the Clueandan coast at first light. A Drasnian factor, an Eloweir captain, and an orc freighthand argue the price of a cargo in three accents of the same Commonfolk, none of them born to it. The contract weighted down on the barrelhead is written in Commonfolk too, because that is the language a harbor court will read back to you.
The other trade tongues
Islander runs with the island shipping lanes. It is spoken across Urok, the West Isles, and Mueras, and carries north into Roule and the northwestern reaches of Upoceax. Ylindian holds much of Upoceax, the Free Isles, and western Aboyuinzu. Gorathi began as the speech of Gorath alone; as Gorath has grown its language has traveled with its merchants and its garrisons, and it is now heard well past the old borders.
Orcish and the bounded tongues
Some peoples never traded their language away. The orcs of northwestern Clueanda keep Orcish, ringed by Commonfolk speakers and unbothered by it. Across the countries of Aboyuinzu the pattern repeats at smaller scale: many speak a tongue that goes no further than their own borders, and a journey of a few days can cross three of them. The tribal states are the same. A language there often belongs to one region and one people, learned by outsiders only when they have a reason to stay.
The old race-languages
Elven descends from Druidic, the older speech the druids used before the elves were many peoples. It has since split into the dialects of the heritages, but most elves who still carry a native tongue can follow one another tolerably well, even across lines that have not shared a border in an age. The particular dialects belong to the heritage entities; see Elf.
Dwarven has gone the other way. Few dwarves still speak it. Over generations most clans took up the languages of the neighbors they trade with, and the old tongue thinned to a handful of pockets where it is still used at home. What survives, and where, is a matter for the dwarven heritages themselves; see Dwarf.
Deoric
One language is not spoken to be understood. Deoric is the command-tongue of the titans and one of Alaria's four sources of magic: a speech in which a thing said, with power behind it, must come to pass. As a living language it is all but dead. What mortals hold is a fragmentary reconstruction, and the working of it costs life. Its workings and its cost are covered in its own article; see Deoric.