Over the course of its history, the people of Rosewood have had to speak a plethora of different languages to get by. Depending under whose rule the City was, people would speak different tongues to get by. At first, it was Celtic, then Latin, then Old Frankish, then Anglo-Frankish, and finally French.
There are many dialects of French, but the two most common ones are Rosewoodian French and Aqvinatian French. The former is more common in the north and is based on the Anglo-Saxon, English tongue, with the two languages being mutually intelligible, while the latter is based on Old Frankish and Anglo-Frankish linguistic tradition. Two speakers, one of them using the Rosewoodian dialect, and the other, Aqvintian, will not be able to understand each other easily since they come from different language groups. Rosewoodian is Germanic, and Aqvintian is Romance. Over the years, mutual communication has become easier, but the two languages have a long way to go before joining the same family again. Perhaps after their unification and mutual coexistence under the Crown of the Kingdom of France, they will either synthesize, or one will replace the other. It seems, however, that the latter option is more likely to happen. Rosewoodian, being the French dialect spoken in the North and in the Capital is favored by most of the nobility, and by the peasantry alike. Aqvintian is become more and more obsolete as the years go by. In the cases where lords do not wish to let go of their Aqvintian linguistic roots, all formal communication is done in Latin. This is not the case in the majority of France however. Most courts and common offices write official documents in Rosewoodian French, which has slowly taken the title of just “French”, while the Aquintian dialect is mostly referred to as just “Aqvintian”.
For foreigners, or diplomats that come to France from beyond its borders, they mostly get by by speaking Latin with those among the French people who understand it; chiefly the Clergy who must know Latin as it is the language of Catholicism. In Rosewood, there are men and women versed in High German, Lower German, English, Aqvintian, Greek, Arabic, Vulgar Latin, Spanish, and even some Nordic languages. But, in the rest of France, a traveler might have a harder time finding someone who might understand them. Those who know another language, and either Greek or Latin are highly respected in the Capital.
