Communicating with someone that is shapedchanged.

[LISA100595]

I'm going to have to agree with Metaquad4 on that.

[Deathgrowl]

You get the anatomy of the creature you change into. If that lends itself to more than just the automatic languages of the creature per monster manual, it's only logical they can speak those other languages if they know them. By the same token, if a druid doesn't know sylvan or draconic, they wont be able to speak or understand those languages in treant or dragon form respectively.

I used to RP only being able to speak Terran in earth elemental form as my druid, but I don't really have any lore to suggest they can't speak other languages if they know them. It just seemed logical to me, as their anatomy (if you can call it that) must necessarily be designed for their respective elemental languages. And if you read lore descriptions of those languages, it makes sense.

I tend to object more to druids who use the animal "language" to actually have conversations. It's just our representation for animal handling.

[PJtheFey]

However... Languages is a very complex thing even in our world, amongst us humans. If you've heard Arabic, Cantonese, Japanese or Finnish, you'd realise just how many diverse vocal cords are in use. Perhaps the most well known example of this, is how Asian struggle with the pronunciation of R's and L's. And I'm quite certain those of us using the Latin alphabet would be at an absolute loss when presented with a Cyrillic or Korean alphabet.

Now we need to compare this to a world where the races are so biologically different that there's almost no similarity at all. One could assume that if an Earth element has the ability to pronounce a set of syllables for one language, then it can pronounce all syllables required for all types of languages.

I'm not a linguist or expect on the area, but I just disagree with that assumption

Korean isn't that hard. If anything it is more forgiving than western languages because their letters overlap with a few of ours. Problems comes from attempts at romanization because (I suspect) a non-native English speaker attempted to pick Latin letters that approximate English sounds, when simply put native speakers are more qualified to say what letters represent various sounds in their own written language. For example, Koreans love to say that "eo" sounds like the "aw" sound.... So in textbooks, you'll see the Korean character for what sounds to us like "saw" and the romanization "seo."

It's kinda amusing living in Korea and noting all the "English" business and product names that are intended to be puns that most foreigners (that is to say Westerners) would never get because they are made based on flawed English pronunciation. Example... Com2us ... A popular Korean App Store game provider sounds to Koreans like "come to us."

[Moltrazahn]

I'mma going to leave this here.

[Lux]

Hidden: show

I'mma going to leave this here.

[matelener]

From the monster manual on Invisible Stalkers (Elementals from the air plane):

"These creatures speak only Auran but can understand Common."

This hints at some physical build requirement required to speak common that elementals don't meet.