| rdfs:comment | - There are only two languages in the world: Human and Animal. While humans and other obviously sapient creatures (such as Ridiculously-Human Robots, Petting Zoo People, and, yes, even Funny Animals) are always portrayed as having many different languages even within the same racial ethnicity (except in space, in older works), all animals speak the same language, regardless of species. In Real Life, much as with people, things like a cat's meow or a gull's cry often sound different in historically isolated populations around the globe. In a comic book Thought Bubble Speech may be used.
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| abstract | - There are only two languages in the world: Human and Animal. While humans and other obviously sapient creatures (such as Ridiculously-Human Robots, Petting Zoo People, and, yes, even Funny Animals) are always portrayed as having many different languages even within the same racial ethnicity (except in space, in older works), all animals speak the same language, regardless of species. In Real Life, much as with people, things like a cat's meow or a gull's cry often sound different in historically isolated populations around the globe. Sometimes the trope only applies one way: the animals can understand the human language, but not vice versa, like in Garfield. In some other situations, very young children can understand animals, either meaning that Baby Talk counts as a type of "Animal", or that Animal Talk is just one of those things that's Invisible to Adults. Are you a Friend to All Living Things? Or turned into an animal? Maybe found a Babel Fish, or simply Speaks Fluent Animal? You can now speak to all living things, from whales to paramecia (plants usually excepted). Is this a work about largely normal animals? In that case, all of them will share some kind of crazy common tongue (except the ones that aren't cute enough, sometimes), even if they can't talk to people, they will still all be able to communicate equally well to disparate species as with their own kin. Made particularly strange if the Translation Convention is in effect around humans: when perspective shifts to humans, the Real Life (and completely dissimilar) vocalizations of the species involved will be heard, but then when it switches to the perspective of said animals, everything will become intelligible with no Bilingual Dialogue problems at all, as the same language. In a comic book Thought Bubble Speech may be used. This is Level 3 on the Sliding Scale of Animal Communication. Examples of Animal Talk include:
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