"'Locate'? You have, like, a list of languages in your head?"

"Nnnnno. It's kind of hard to - um, suppose as is in fact the case that Upland and Lowland Alteisec have the same alphabet and the same word for 'stop' and I am wandering somewhere and see a sign saying that in one of the two. I can tell which one."

"...what? But that—what?"

"This is admittedly more useful with false cognates." Oh look it's Kaylo's room. It looks like Korulen's but with different objects-smaller-than-furniture. His roommate is not there.

"But—I mean that's the point, in what sense is it even one language as opposed to the other?"

Hi, Kaylo's room! Kaede's mind is only like 4.7% filled with ideas involving Kaylo and his bed.

"Sometimes it's not, but usually it's a matter of who wrote it. This only works if one person wrote it; it gets muddled if the sign was agreed on by a committee and then painted by somebody who didn't speak Alteisec at all or something. Subjectively it's sort of like picking out an accent."

"That is so completely bizarre and cool. Any elaboration or other details like that about the translation magic you have? This helps figure it out."

"We can do dialects... there's sprite languages which require four arms and a set of wings to dance correctly and we can't do those unless we're in a form that accommodates it but we can pronounce sounds we shouldn't be able to, like, I could speak vampire in any form."

"So where are the sounds generated? Just, magically inside your mouth?"

"It's actually a shapeshifting thing. Any form that can make vocalizations, I should have said, if I turn into a butterfly I can't say anything at all."

"Oh, so does your throat, like, change to be able to produce the sounds it needs or something?"

"It's more like the forms come with the ability to do that in the first place. Like we change everything except the vocalizing parts."

"Oh, so natural form dragons can do... what, literally all possible vocalisations?"

"Not necessarily, if there was a language that depended on volume we might not be able to be all amounts of loud or something."

"But all the ones you've found?"

"Yeah."

"How do dragons make sounds like, I don't know, 'm' or 'f'?"

"...mmmmmm?" demonstrates Kaylo.

"I meant in natural form."

Shift. "Mmmmm."

So that continues to be hot.

"And 'f'? Does your jaw move the right way with the teeth and the lips...?"

"Fff." It does, although it's sort of weird with the sharp pointy teeth.

"Huh. I didn't think it'd move like that..." He shakes his head. "Anyway! I'm getting distracted. Link paper?"

Kaylo shifts again and turns up some paper and looks up a spell and casts and the paper is linked! The spell is not attached to him after he casts it.

Alright! So now he tries to reach a metaphorical hand for the magic in it and draw it to himself.