Gnomish
This older article was extensively re-written and reformatted for the May 2025 Rewrite Challenge
When it is spelled with a lower case "g", "gnomish" means "having physical or cultural traits of a gnome ." When "Gnomish" appears with a capital "G" it means "the language of gnomes".
No other creatures besides gnomes speak Gnomish as their native tongue but gnomes are a very widespread race, so a fair number of people find a reason to learn it.
Gnomes as a whole are a very literate people and many other races learn the language just to be able to read their works. Gnome diplomats and herbalists are widely considered the best in their fields so many non-gnome diplomats and herbalist learn Gnomish so they can read what the gnomes have to say about these subjects.
Despite attempts to keep High Gnomish "pure", each major continent of Scarterra has its own dialect of High Gnomish which are understandable between each other but still produces a noticeable accent.
"High Gnomish"
The goddess Mera, the original creator of gnomes wanted gnomes to spread and assimilate to other cultures, but she also wanted disparate gnomes to be able to always talk to each other no matter how far they traveled.Formal Gnomish or "High Gnomish" is resistant but not completely immune to linguistic drift mostly due to vigilant efforts on educators to keep the language just as it was. This results in the language being very formal.
Two gnomes from opposite ends of Scarterra can communicate quite easily by relying on High Gnomish just as Mera intended.
Conversational Gnomish
Most gnomish children learn High Gnomish from a young age while concurrently learning whatever the dominant local non-Gnomish language is. Thus, it is very common for gnome families and communities to switch back and forth when talking to each other or mix and match. Much like many bilingual American Latino families speak "Spanglish". When Gnomes do this, it is called "Conversational Gnomish". Conversational Gnomish is a mishmash of High Gnomish melded with words, phrases, idioms, and grammar from other languages. There dozens if not hundreds of variants of Conversational Gnomish because Gnomes will mix High Gnomish with the languages of their non-gnomish neighbors everywhere they go, borrowing words and phrases from humans, dwarves, elves, and others.Whispered Rumors finished version by Zeta Gardner
Geographical Distribution
Pretty much all of Scarterra uses the same basic version of High Gnomish though each region has it's own unique variant of Conversational Gnomish.
Gnomes are gnormally happy to teach their language to any outsider who asks them politely for instruction, but relatively few outsiders ask.
When non-gnomes learn the Gnomish language, they usually learn High Gnomish and often struggle with Conversational Gnomish though if a non-gnome knows both High Gnomish and the root base language(s) that High Gnomish is mixed with, they can muddle through.
by me with Hero Forge
Most gnomes are multilingual, so commoners seldom bother to learn the Gnomish tongue. Non-gnomes who make the effort to learn High Gnomish are usually learned scholars or fastidious diplomats.
Most non-gnomes who make the effort to learn Gnomish do so primarily to be able to read it more than to speak it. A lot of renowned scholarly works in a wide variety of fields were originally published in High Gnomish.
Dictionary
Spoken by
Common Female Names
Aryias, Galpine, Minoa, Myxi, Ragani, Wenkler, Wolnove
Common Male Names
Lanpos, Ronyer, Saber, Valdix,
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