should i learn one? and how can i actually speak in one? and does speaking in one up my skill or can i only train at a trainer?
Some can only be learned at a trainer. All can be learned, afaik, from grouping with others that are speaking said language. Most races start out knowing common tongue and their racial language. There is an option to change which language you are speaking in the UI somewhere. It's been ages since I used it. I think the original intent was for players that knew languages to be able to speak and others that didn't know the language would not be able to understand, but it never really panned out and it's basically useless other than for show. I can't think of an instance where NPCs use learnable languages that would be useful to players.
There are times where you may need a language for specific quests, like the PoTorment alt key quest, although you can enter that zone anyway without flags at level 55 now, so there's no need for that one specifically. I'm not sure of other languages that are required for other quests though. You can train all the way up to 100 at a trainer using your training points left over from leveling, however you can do it the old fashioned way with a little effort. You can train 1 point above the ones you are learning from in the group (must be grouped). Then you need to rezone in order for it to register in the client before it will allow you to go further on the other character. So character 1 has a 5 skill, character 2 can be trained up to 6, then you have to zone, then the first character can be trained to 7, etc. What I do is I train to 100 with one character at a trainer and then let that character train all of my other characters in that language. Can make hotkeys like this to work on multiples: /lang 2 /g hello there /lang 3 /g go away Languages like Thieves Cant can only be learned from Rogues, but any other class/race can learn it from them. I forget what others are like that. Typically, learning languages is for specific purposes when needed or for the skill OCD like myself at this point.
did ogres/trolls start at 95 common tongue skill on AK or was that an earlier era thing? I remember the default chat would sometimes replace "i" with "me" etc, it basically forced ogres to roleplay by changing what they said only mention i see in AK logs is : [Tue Nov 06 16:16:54 2012] Aether tells alliance:1, 'Iksar start at 98 common tongue?'
Once upon a time, before PoK books or even Nexus spires, the intelligent races of Norrath did not intermingle quite so much. Evil races were limited to their own cities. Player to player economics took place in neutral areas like the old tunnel in E Commons. At that point in the game, languages were used a lot on some servers. It was a huge RP element. Evil, good and neutral were important concepts that seriously affected the areas of the game you could safely explore. I remember walking around east common tunnels, muttering in dark elven, looking for more Evil people to spend time with and glaring at the fairer races as they pranced about. Really none of that RP element left unless entirely voluntary.
Going off pure Statistics one might start with Spanish although in EQ I have always found French to be more commonly seen for some reason. Perhaps start here https://www.takproject.net/forums/index.php?threads/project-quarm-fr-super-dupont/
You need to know Orcish to do the Torment alternate access quest. It's kind of irrelevant now that level based zone access has been implemented. That zone is pretty trash, but it was the first higher tier PoP zone I was able to access thanks to that quest. I was also able to get checklist flags from a Saryrn raid on my enchanter prior to killing Terris. Again, probably irrelevant at this point.
