The Ten Tongues of Man

Scholars refer to the "Ten Tongues of Man" as those families of languages that can be traced directly to a "parent" language (which is often no longer used in modern days). It is a bit of a misnomer, as there are human languages that aren't related to any of the ten recognized language families. Recent scholarship has uncovered that the parent languages of the Ten Tongues were invented whole-cloth by an entity known as Oghma at the conclusion of the Second Age of Man, as a means to ensure that the conflict that tore through the world in the Second Age could not repeat itself. Some scholars dispute this so-called Curse of Ten Tongues and deny the existence of a god-like being outside the ancestry of the Old Gods.