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It's quite possible that Hallit actually fell out of use in Nidal long before Earthfall, with the people of Nidal finding the languages of their neighbors more practical for their current environment...
It should be noted that most forms of Hallit do not have a written form, so written records would either require creating a written form for Hallit from scratch (and getting everyone to agree on that one form) - or = adopting another language for this purpose (preferably from a neighbor).
As you point out, Nidal has a very long history, and it really doesn't take a lot of time for a language to disappear...
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Really, Nidal has the longest contiguous culture in the Inner Sea (if not all of Golarion) and by all rights Shadowtongue should be less "a weird ritual language" and more "what people in Nidal have been speaking for thousands of years before there was a Taldor.
It's probably more likely that Taldane absorbed phrases from Nidalese than the other way around.
Really, Nidal has the longest contiguous culture in the Inner Sea (if not all of Golarion) and by all rights Shadowtongue should be less "a weird ritual language" and more "what people in Nidal have been speaking for thousands of years before there was a Taldor.
It's probably more likely that Taldane absorbed phrases from Nidalese than the other way around.
Shadowtongue is a mix of Taldane, Infernal, and Azlanti (James Jacobs, et al. “Languages” in The Inner Sea World Guide, 251. Paizo Inc., 2011). So, it has to have come from humans who left to the Netherworld and likely melded Azlanti with Infernal (from the Velstracs I imagine) and then later Taldane. It would have been both before and concurrent with Taldane in different forms.
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Shadowtongue is a mix of Taldane, Infernal, and Azlanti (James Jacobs, et al. “Languages” in The Inner Sea World Guide, 251. Paizo Inc., 2011). So, it has to have come from humans who left to the Netherworld and likely melded Azlanti with Infernal (from the Velstracs I imagine) and then later Taldane. It would have been both before and concurrent with Taldane in different forms.Really, Nidal has the longest contiguous culture in the Inner Sea (if not all of Golarion) and by all rights Shadowtongue should be less "a weird ritual language" and more "what people in Nidal have been speaking for thousands of years before there was a Taldor.
It's probably more likely that Taldane absorbed phrases from Nidalese than the other way around.
That quote is a few decades old and needs clarification. In 2nd edition, Shadowtongue is the "common language" of the Netherworld, similar to how Chthonian is the language of the Outer Rifts and demons, or Thalassic is the language of water creatures. It's MUCH older than Nidal, and even older than Azlant, and having it be a mix of Taldane, Infernal, and Azlanti makes it feel simultaneously too recent and too tied to Hell (which, in 1st edition, there were more links due to how we moved D&D's kytons out of hell and into the plane of shadow to sync up with Zon-Kuthon's story). With 2nd edition, and particularly now that we're into the remastered era, Shadowtongue is not a stealth add-on language to the setting, but a core language found in the core rulebook. It's the native language of Nidal because of their thousands of years of assocaition with the Netherworld and Zon-Kuthon.
Another change we made in 2nd edition (and one that should have been this way from the start) is that the people of Nidal are ethnically Nidalese, and are neither Varisian nor Kellid nor anything else.
SO: They speak Common (because most of the nations in the Inner Sea region speak common, especially if that nation has relationships with neighboring nations), Shadowtongue (because of the association with the Netherworld), and Varisian (because Nidal neighbors Varisia, and there's a fair amount of cross-culture stuff going on there, including a very strong Varisian presence in north Nidal). Hallit is a language more commonly found in central Avistan, not so much western Avistan.
That really does work a lot better. I'd actually forgotten that the Nidalese were their own ethnicity now and not just a nationality.
Although that does beg the question: what did they speak originally, before contact with the Netherworld? Would it have been Azlanti?
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That really does work a lot better. I'd actually forgotten that the Nidalese were their own ethnicity now and not just a nationality.
Although that does beg the question: what did they speak originally, before contact with the Netherworld? Would it have been Azlanti?
Probably Varisian.
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It just seems likely that Nidal, being isolated by two mountain ranges, would have the opportunity to (before Earthfall or Zon-Kuthon or anything) develop its own language isolate since nomadic people tend not to love crossing mountain ranges for the heck of it. So my read was that the pre-Earthfall language of Nidal was something like Basque or Ainu.
This ended up mixing with the actual language of the Netherworld, plus the languages spoken by people who took refuge in Nidal during the Age of Darkness since it was, in a limited sense, safer than anywhere else.
I am rather fond of the notion that the everyday language of Nidal is a creole that heavily incorporates words and terms from Shadowtongue, but is otherwise not strongly intelligible to folk who only speak a more formal dialect of Shadowtongue. Possibly based in Varisian + thousands of years of linguistic drift and occasional influence from other languages that drop by but don't leave behind many native speakers to 'correct' the way terms are adopted and mutate in the culture.
