Editing Gnolls (section)

=== Language ===
Gnolls are one of the minority of races in Innworld that are confirmed to have their own, unique language.<ref name=":9" /> It involves a lot of growls, howls and other such noises. It is unlikely that other races can learn to properly speak Gnoll, or at least, not without an extremely strong accent. Only a few transliterations of Gnoll words into English letters exist in the source text, and most of them are names.

It is, however, not a fully-featured native language. It is described as more of a secret tongue, used by Gnolls when they don't want outsiders to overhear something.<ref name=":69">[[Chapter 6.63 P]]</ref> Gnolls can also use howling as a means of quick and efficient communication across a large area.<ref name=":33" />

All Gnolls encountered in the source text so far have been able to at least passably speak Common, with the exception of Mrsha, who is mute. This suggests that Gnolls grow up bilingual, learning Common and their own tongue at the same time.

However, when tribal Gnolls do speak Common, they generally do so heavily accented, with a distinctly 'growly' pronunciation, rolling r's, and a halting cadence.<ref name=":32" /><ref name=":69" /> They struggle with vocabulary and tenses on occasion, even after living among other races for some time.<ref name=":34" /> They frequently use awkward grammatical patterns, forgo contractions, employ oddly specific qualifiers, or frame statements as rhetoric questions. Usually they end in an affirmative, to underline the amiable intent, but when the Gnoll is upset or angry, this often changes to a negative.<ref name=":51">[[Chapter 2.34]]</ref> It is quite likely that these structures come from the Gnoll language, and that tribal Gnolls living isolated from other species tend to meld the two languages together somewhat - both in grammar and in sound. This frequently happens in the real world, too.

A typical example of tribal Gnoll speech, as provided by Krshia: “I will be there. But I go to The Wandering Inn now. To hear what may be heard. And to pick up the Mrsha child, yes?”<ref name=":6" />

Among those who have spent most, if not all of their lives among other native Common speakers, you will find Gnolls with a better grasp of the language. The City Gnolls of Pallass are noticably more eloquent than any of the tribal Gnolls in the source. A Drowned Gnoll on board a deep-sea freebooter has seamlessly adopted her fellow sailors' way of speaking,<ref name=":58" /> and a Gnoll [Actor] gained perfect mastery of speaking Common via his class.<ref name=":69" />

Gnolls have their own writing system, too. Interestingly, it is fairly similar to Human and Drake scripts, and easy to learn for those races.<ref name=":48">[[Chapter 3.23 L]]</ref> Since Gnolls have traditionally had a habit of not writing down stuff,<ref name=":18" /><ref name=":36" /> perhaps this script is a relatively recent (in historical terms) development, and borrows from other cultures that the Gnolls have met.