Specimen wrote:So each region its own language then?
While personally I'd love to do that and have some serious language barriers, keeping track of who's speaking what and who understands what could get cumbersome. Simplest way would be to just have two, Wutaian and... Midgarian? But that feels a bit wrong to me.
As usual, personal opinion, feel free to disagree:
- Shinra's dominance has reduced most of the former languages of the eastern continent to little more than odd pockets and dialectualisms. Everyone speaks Midgarian.
- The same is slowly happening to the western continent. A lot of people speak Midgarian to some degree, but places like Costa del Sol, Gongaga, Corel and Cosmo Canyon still retain their own languages. (I'm less sure about Nibelheim, with its close ties to Shinra).
- Wutai has a happy mess of broad dialects, though the vast majority of Wutaians will understand the standard/administrative form of the language found around Da Chao. This is also the form of Wutaian taught abroad.
- Northern continent and Mideel I'm a lot less sure about. Personally I get the impression they were settled relatively recently from the eastern continent, so probably Midgarian again.