I've seen mention of a Menagerie language a few times now in the Frapp fics and other ones, you got any actual info on it? :3c I'm a language nerd and wanted to maybe make use of it >3> (Also I foUND THE FICS!! And a few shrike faunus!Neo ideas I had too! Buff buns and murder birbs shall be seen soon)
WELL OKAY im the total opposite in that languages are Wild and Bizarre to me and frankly the fact i can even handle english as my one and only language is a miracle (duolingo please let me have my dog back im learning welsh i swear) BUT... i do have like. an origin??? of the language-- well okay lets just go all in cause tbh i think abt it a lot
SO the language spoken on Menagerie is called Menagerie Common (sometimes shortened to Menag Common or just Common) and it’s a direct advancement from the tribal creole, Tribal Common. Tribal Common was born from the merging of all 11/12+ core tribal tongues, such as Bonyornic, Akadyan, Jarran, Vandric, Yurriq, Riqran, Xuyrian, Nyrni, Soccorocoan, and Zverna. This was primarily because of Suunmord, the annual gathering in Jarro, originally born from a peace agreement between the tribes of Forever Fall.
The language has a few specific pointers: there’s no gender, for a start! Neither of people nor objects, because gender is Very Much a human thing and thus, was never incorporated even into its modern forms. That does mean it’s a very context-based language -- similar to how, in Japanese, you’ll use specific terms to denote a person’s status in relation to you, Common does the same (word choice is important. pick the wrong word and people might think you married yr mother. bad times). The other is that the language is... well... it’s not really, uh, regulated? Standardised? Different people from different tribes have different ways of speaking!
An example of this irl would probably be Esperanto, a constructed language I’m currently taking a glance at for this executive purpose! Esperanto tries to bridge the gaps between countries and is more a huge amalgamation of most European languages. Similar to that, most words are understandable from tribe to tribe, and some may even be very familiar, but stuff like syntax can change depending on the speaker, and even the spelling often switches depending on a person’s tribal heritage. Often, Faunus will argue over whether there is or is not an ‘R’ in a word, and often the only reason they’re arguing is because one tribe does and the other doesn’t.
As such, Common is best learned with a foundation in one tribal tongue, so that if you don’t know a word, or a phrase, or a way of spelling something, you have your mother tongue to fill in the gaps! Out of all the languages, though, Jarran has the advantage of having the most contribution towards Common given Suunmord, so if you know Jarran you’re, like, maybe 70% of the way there, haha.