Also inside the SCAG, are a few more alphabets. Also shout out to the people on the Forgotten Realms wiki, love the work you guys do making lore accessible. Wiki people are heroes.
Fun fact, while "Common", or "Commonspeech" / "Commontongue" is the most easilly accessible language in faerun, and in most games is treated as "whatever language the people playing speak", it actually has lore. It is in universe, a simple language that, while lacking in the ability to describe complex things, is so universal and easy that most anything can speak it. Though, it mostly is used as a trade language.
It actually has its linguistic roots in Old Common, which descended as a variant of the Jhaamdathan language (Not going to go too deep into Jhaamdath, but it jhaamdath is essentially a lost human civilization that was practically the Netheril of Psionics in a way. That is, before the elves used Elven High Magic to obliterate it.)
But yeah, the jhaamdathan language, aka "old Chondathan", combined with the language alzhedo, which descended from-
Essentially, common is a part of a big language tree with a good many other similiar, related, or cousin languages.
And! Common has its own alphabet too!
Another language with interesting lore is Infernal, which bears the following alphabet:
Its actually split into a number of sub-languages, designed around the Nine Hells and their caste society, with increasing complexity.
Its lowest form was designed as a simple tongue suited for battlefield commands. The next was equivalent to most mortal languages, and is the most commonly learnt amongst mortals.
The next form up, honestly, I could try to describe it, but I think I couldn't match the books description, so I'll give it in full (Source: Faces of Evil: The Fiend)
And the final form is just, barely comprehensible to a mortal. You need to be a proper devil, a being literally made out of the planar concept of Totalitarian Evil itself, to comprehend, and is despairing just to attempt to.
The language itself, audibly, is described as being nonsensical and complex, and generally hideous. A combination of "Elegant verse", "A barking hound", and "The subtle smell of hatred."
Draconic is also a neat language since its very old
I have no huge opinions on it, but the list of descendent languages, or languages that use its alphabet, is massive. Among them is Netherese, the big old dead guys of Toril.
Draconic looks like this:
And is audibly described as sounding a lot like a "hiss", and in writing, had a special character that took the form of a depiction of Tiamats 5 heads, or when simplified, an Asterisk, which denoted emphasis (And in speaking, forced a word emphasized to have its first and last syllable emphasized.
It also has no word for "my" or "Mine"
Dwarvish is one of my favourites, though thats because I'm fond of dwarves in general in dnd. Fun fact about dwarvish, is that you dont write it in lines, but in spirals. It also only has 24 characters, since as you'll spot, w,x and z are all representeed by the same character.
Capitalization was done to indicate the start of a sentence, as the language lacked punctuation. This was done by simply adding a flat line over the top of the letter
In addition, this alphabet has other special characters, I.E. having a dedicated, single character for "Orc"
Dwarvish is rarely written in paper or cloth, because, well, dwarves dont like the impermanence of it. So its often carved into stone or metal.
Which is why the language was made up of straight lines, easier to carve
Ah! And their number system is actually pretty neat.
And to finish off, heres a handful of untranslated pieces, feel free to have a go at deciphering them yourselves.
In dwarvish, heres one of those spiral stones I mentioned earlier
And heres a shop sign from BG3
yousharknotpass
gummygunk
theartofmadeline
vaporwave
stormborns
