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There's two ways that I can think of. If you want a really simple solution? Declare that "Common" is a common second language. It's by no means universal - and as you move further away from major borders and trade routes it can completely disappear - but it's common enough that almost anyone could know it without straining plausibility. In mechanical terms, ...

What's important to the setting? Rude words are rude only because we decide they are. The word and phrases that a society feels are inappropriate say a lot about the people and culture, so you're going to need to start with a solid understanding of the values and beliefs of the society. Consider what is commonplace in your setting, what's sacred or ...

Latin (and to some extent Greek) used to be the lingua franca during the middle ages. Later on, French became the language of diplomacy and nobility. Everyone that mattered [1] speaks a local variation of said language which should still be understandable by another speaker. For example, Quebecois and French or American and English. So, you could have ...

Excerpt from the Shardmind racial description (PHB3, pg12): Telepathy: You can communicate telepathically with any creature within 5 squares of you that has a language. Note that it does not place a restriction on whether you speak the same language, nor does it provide details about the nature of the communication. Excerpt from the Sending ritual ...

You can communicate with anything that has a language whether or not you share a language. from the Rules Compendium pg. 316: A creature that has telepathy can communicate mentally with any creature that has a language, even if they don’t share the language. The other creature must be within line of effect and within a specified range. Telepathy allows ...

Creating slang and dialect is an art, not a science, and there are two basic strategies: invent it, or steal it. If you invent dialect, don't invent words Berk, from Berkeley Hunt or a rhyming insult. Cutter, definition 11. Barmy, Etymology 2, from balmy. and chant is just a description of oral news services. You can see that the slang used in ...

Some background: languages are shared only as far and wide as they can be communicated. Any farther than that, and variations start. Soon you have comprehensible dialects, then incomprehensible dialects and other languages. As you say, technology is what made entire countries speak the same language. Example: BSL is the British Sign Language. There's one ...

How would you approach the creation of setting-specific curses? Now when I think of swearing my mind goes to, as Spock put it, "colorful metaphors". This is keenly a product of how I, and my society, seem to use profanity (swearing, cursing). It's a way to express displeasure with another or a situation in general. With that in mind, here are a few ...

Other people have already discussed keeping Common around as a 2nd language, so I'll describe another approach. Consider modern Europe: The average person speaks their native language fluently, and anywhere from 1-3 more languages with anywhere from crude skill to fluency depending on how often they use it. The more tightly-packed the language regions are, ...

There are many options, and as always which one works for your group will largely depend on the system and the players. So long as everyone agrees to abide by the chosen convention, whichever your group likes is great. Colors You're already experimenting with colored text, and @JonathanHobbs pointed out the excellent Is there an optimum set of colors for ...

Many campaign settings are either based on existing novels/media (such as Wheel of Time or Star Wars) or have novels written about them later on (such as the Forgotten Realms). In this case, your best bet is to read up on existing media and let established authors do the work for you. If you're playing in a custom setting, @Zach's comment is a good place to ...

I'm not sure I fully understand the problem you want to solve, but I'd take a stab anyway. Suppose you are the DM textually describing a scene and want to remark if something is said (or written) in a specific language: Seeing your party approaching the man at the gate raises a hand and says: < Common>"Hail, travellers"< /Common> Of course you ...

It's a world with powerful magic at play. Common might exist because of that. For example, it could be the gift of some appropriate god, like a trade god or a god that's all about peace and unity. Or I suppose a god all about conquest and ruling conquered territory. If so, it can work however you want it to work, including being more limited than a real ...

Represent your languages with a visually distinct set of colours. As a group, create a shared set of colours you'll apply from then on. Agree what colour represents, say, Dwarven, and have everyone use that colour when speaking Dwarven, always when speaking Dwarven, and only when speaking Dwarven. The difficulty in this is creating that visually distinct ...

There are only 3 situations where I think language ought to matter in a game: You can't communicate at all. You can communicate, but there's a single word or phrase you don't recognize. You can communicate without any difficulty. Here's what we've used in our campaign. (And it's worked quite well for us.) Language names are changed, of course. All the ...

I've always viewed 'Common' as the 'Human language of the area'. So not 'common' in the sense that its specifically a 'shared' language that is common among races, but 'common' in the sense that its the everyday, 'most common' language of humans in the area. (assuming a human-centric world) So with that, the Common in one area is different from the Common ...

Realism in language diversity can become a major impediment and shift the focus from the characters & plot to the intricacies of the setting. Keep a Common language in the game to facilitate play (and fun). As noted here, it need not be fully known or ubiquitous. As a suggested mechanic: If you're interested in linguistics and the players aren't very, ...