'Ash nazg turbatuluk; ash nazg kimpatul. Ash nazg, thrakratuluk...'
If there were ever a candidate for Infernal, it'd be the language of Mordor... gutteral, lots of hard consonants, a lot of back-of-the-throat gurgling...
Though there's an argument to be made for dialects of Infernal; I mean, a Pit Fiend would sound different from an Erinyes, and likewise from an Imp.
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I have some opinions.
Abyssal: Middle-eastern mixed with germanic languages. Many words to evil stuff, like curses, death and like. Very agressive "feel" and long words. May sound like nordic-black metal often.
Aquan: Something with lots of sh/ch/gl words. The energy that you put in the speech may alter the meaning of thing. And words in aquan can have very diferent meaning in different ocasion, 'cause water is everchanging. (Be water my friend.)
Auran: Even more sh sounds. Long "S"s, like rio de janeiro ou european portuguese. I guess that south french is a example of this, too. It's because remember the sound of wind, duh. Ah, and a lot of long vogals.
Celestial: Latin-like language, nice and beautifull words.
Common: i imagine common as something like portuguese-spanish-english like, very easy to learn, but with infinite words landed from other languages, most elven, halfling, gnome and dwarven lenguages.
Draconic: Lots of troat sounds, like...german. Can't be 100% spoken by humanoid creatures without repitilian or draconic traits.
Druidic: Welsh...and it would not be secret to be so rare. The thing is almost impossible to learn.
Elven: I imagine something like french/english/welsh/nordic mixed.
Dwarven: Russian + German + Scandie.
Giant: Vikingspeach of course.
Gnoll: Well, lot of strange sounds, like random laughs meaning different things.
Gnome: IRISH
Goblin: Very short words. I imagine something like african dialects put together with some germanic stuff.
Halfling: A cozy lenguage, like, let's say...italian. Stuff from common here too.
Ignan: People speak this very fast, puting diferent words together. It has many ways to say, for example, "you", and like japanese, a different word for you, can be very ofensive...as Kisama is in nihongo. People like ignan to insult too, but it don't have sexual one, it's more things like "coward" "weak". And it's a very martial tongue, with many words for millitary and fighting stuff.
Infernal: Something that remember celestial and abyssal. It has more beauty than abyssal, but retain some agressive feel.
Orc: Oga-Booga tongue. Few words, sometimes orcs must be smart to describe things sometimes, relyng(?) in the context and gesture help.
They say funny thing like "Rogan?" and "Wololo".
Sylvan: Funny enough, i imagine Sylvan like as eslavic flavored leanguage, exotic and vibrant feel.
Terran: Lots of hard consonant. Related to dwarven, with a few shared words. Somehow slow to share ideas, using more words to this than other lenguages but it has few "double meaning" words and terms.
Undercommon: it has some of the elven poetic feel, mixed with, let's say, dwarven directness.
I'm not so confortable with human cultures from Golarion, for i am new on pathfinder(2 weeks since i started to read paizo stuff.) so i dont have a clue, while since they have paralels on earth, it's pretty obvious...
And sorry for the bad english, cause i'm uhauehauehaueh.
Aklo (which I'm not sure if you wanted), in my opinion, would be filled with lots of soft sibilant sounds (try saying that several times fast), seeing as it was the primary language of the serpentfolk. Although it says they were 'early adopters' of the language, and thus did not create it themselves, after several hundred millennia of speaking it they would have made it their own.
Aklo (which I'm not sure if you wanted), in my opinion, would be filled with lots of soft sibilant sounds (try saying that several times fast), seeing as it was the primary language of the serpentfolk. Although it says they were 'early adopters' of the language, and thus did not create it themselves, after several hundred millennia of speaking it they would have made it their own.
That is one way to look at it, but what of the many creatures that used it before them? Those things beyond the stars? I'd imagine the serpentfolk version is just a dialect. The true form of the language would be a gibbering, hard-to-pronounce affair, borrowing heavily from the Cthulhu Mythos for the feel of the language.
I always thought of Elven as sounding similar to Japanese with its elongated words, but with the soft, romantic tone of french. From many of the elven dictionaries I have seen in the past, 'a's and 'i's are very common vowels.
If Gnome is Irish-sounding, then I would say Sylvan would sound more like true Gaelic (which Irish is derived from), as Gnomish is derived from Sylvan.
ISWG stated that Ignan featured many "pops" like a fire, so I'd imagine something like Chinese with more consonants. Short, quick words with sharp "ick, ek, Che" sounds.
Seeing as Terran is the language of earth, I would imagine it sounding very "grumbly" and extremely drawn out. Saying a mere word would sound like an entire sentence. This reflects the un-moving nature of earth and stone.
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Whenever I picture the use of Celestial, I think back to enochian, the "angelic script" created by some guy a century or two ago...done right, it sounds fairly impressive, each syllable sounding like a word of power. An Abrahamic language might also fit...because, you know...origin?
For Abyssal, I'd say something like the dark language of Mordor, definitely.
Infernal I have to say is probably like latin, very configured, very strict, very complex, but it sounds powerful...
I imagine Sylvan sounds a lot like Gaelic. It sounds kind of like you're singing whenever you speak, with lots of rolling syllables and enough soft L sounds to drown yourself in.
And Aklo is probably what you get when you run the above (Sylvan) backwards and then randomly intersperse it.
As for Undercommon, I always liked R.A. Salvatore's idea that its just elvish heavily influenced by dwarvish pronunciation, so it has the feeling and grammatical structure of a fair language, yet harsh consonants like what I imagine dwarvish is.
The elemental languages I always imagined, if spoken fluently, to sound exactly like what they represent. Someone speaking Auran sounds like the wind blowing through a canopy of leaves. Aquan sounds like waves lapping against a shore, or the babbling of a brook. Terran sounds like two stones grinding together, or the shaking of the earth. Ignan sounds like the spit and crackle of fire, and so on...
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Druidic: Welsh...and it would not be secret to be so rare. The thing is almost impossible to learn.
Actually Welsh isn't that hard. Arabic and the Chinese languages are much more difficult.
Basically Welsh doesn't break any of its rules except to mutate certain letters to allow a sentence to flow better. C's often become g's for example. English on the other hand breaks its own rules with reckless abandon!
I learned a little Welsh when I was younger at the same time that I learned some French. Frankly I didn't find one language more difficult than the other.
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I played in a game once where the DM decided that Abyssal was actually French. It was amusing picturing all these demons going around speaking French.
Druidic: Welsh...and it would not be secret to be so rare. The thing is almost impossible to learn.Actually Welsh isn't that hard. Arabic and the Chinese languages are much more difficult.
Basically Welsh doesn't break any of its rules except to mutate certain letters to allow a sentence to flow better. C's often become g's for example. English on the other hand breaks its own rules with reckless abandon!
I learned a little Welsh when I was younger at the same time that I learned some French. Frankly I didn't find one language more difficult than the other.
I have no clue of how speak words who have no vogals.
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I have no clue of how speak words who have no vogals.Druidic: Welsh...and it would not be secret to be so rare. The thing is almost impossible to learn.Actually Welsh isn't that hard. Arabic and the Chinese languages are much more difficult.
Basically Welsh doesn't break any of its rules except to mutate certain letters to allow a sentence to flow better. C's often become g's for example. English on the other hand breaks its own rules with reckless abandon!
I learned a little Welsh when I was younger at the same time that I learned some French. Frankly I didn't find one language more difficult than the other.
Well, this is part of the myth that Welsh is difficult. W and Y are both vowels (usually) in Welsh. The mutation rules are fairly complex, however. I found that the sentence word order and a lot else was very reminiscent of medieval French when I studied it. But since French is a Low Latin being spoken by the descendants of Celts, perhaps that's not surprising.
I had a half drow who decided that he would swear in italian to simulate undercommon. Very strange, not what I would have picked. Elvish seems like it would be italian to me. I might say undercommon would be a little like english.
Draconic has lots of x and uk sounds. Very sharp consonants with underpronounced vowels, but not harsh. Just powerful and aggressive.
Protean sounds like babbling nonsense. It's extremely complicated and the rules for grammar are basically nonexistent. A three word sentence could have a hundred meanings. It could sound soft and smooth one second and then be painful to the ear the next.
Dwarven is very much like old english. Germanic, but influenced by the giant (scandinavian) language.
Sylvan sounds like east coast native american languages. Lots of double consonants and very long, descriptive words.