The fantasy trope that everyone of a given species shares the same language always seemed a bit funny to me.

Co-author credit on this comic to my daughter, who came up with the concept. (She makes a lot of comics about dragons, but she's too young to share them publicly.)

Feral Comics #21 by Brandon Weigel. Panel 1: A trio of human adventurers - a short female rogue with a bow, a male fighter in armour with a sword, and a female mage in a robe with a staff, are in a cave. Sets of red and green dragon talons reach toward them from the camera perspective. The fighter looks afraid, but the mage puts a hand out to stop him. Fighter: "Look out - Dragons!" Mage: "Don't worry. I studied Draconic!"  Panel 2: Two huge dragons look menacingly at the trio, while the mage attempts to communicate in a script that looks like the dragon language from Skyrim.  Panel 3: The dragons talk to each other while the human mage goes on. The green dragon looks confused, but the red dragon looks smug and confident. They do not understand the mage. Green dragon: "<Humans! What do you suppose they want?>" Red dragon: "Don't worry. I studied human.>  Panel 4: The humans are puzzled as the red dragon addresses them in Chinese.
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[–] 2 points 5 months ago

Meanwhile over in North America there was a full sign language primarily used for communicating internationally.

As you say, people find ways to communicate and while polyglots are present everywhere, the people who can easily learn 10+ languages are too rare and valuable to be the entirety of the merchant classes. It's a lot easier for a large portion of the population to learn the regional language of international trade.

A lack of a common language of some form for a region indicates isolated societies with little trade or communication with each other. This is more akin to the lower classes of the early middle ages in Europe. Most fantasy settings use medieval aesthetics, but have extensive trade and war networks.

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