What language is Ancient in FK lore?

[Selveem]

I'm updating the helpfiles of languages due to the many questions I've received from other players as to what different languages are, however I ran into a slight roadblock when I came to Ancient language.

I don't think it has a basis in D&D, so I thought I'd ask here. I've looked over a couple sites and I didn't particularly care to read through all my books to attempt to find it.

[Harroghty]

I recommend Netherese (Netheril), however; there is already a help languages that basically provides the same information that your new files are providing. I recommend updating that one rather than breaking it down for a slew of one-liners.

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Netheril

[Isolrem]

Interesting, I would have guessed Thorass. It could just be a generic term for all the extinct languages of FR, for which a player may gain a rudimentary knowledge. If there is a practical application to learning Ancient, I am not where of it

[Harroghty]

I recommend Netherese over Thorass precisely because of the use. I envision the Forgotten Kingdoms' language "Ancient" to be the cryptic, long-dead language of important documents and magical texts. Thorass is desribed as a pidgin, trading language that is a common ancestor to many contemporary Faerunian languages (Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 3.0) and while it was written, I don't believe that the kind of venerable tomes of lore that an adventurer might want to decode would be written in that language. I believe that it would be more likely for such a document to be written in Netherese, a language common to an empire rife with magic and spellcasters (Ibid.).

I would contrast it this way: Common Modern English, Thorass Old English (not Elizabethan), Netherese Latin

[Larethiel]

I'd go a step further and contrast Ancient with Cuneiform or hieroglyphs, a writing that can be learned but certainly takes -a lot- of effort and studies to even master a bit. Latin is a rather comon language still, being taught in school to kiddos, at least around here. You can learn it quite easily if one desires it.