“Just imagine it!”
“Master?”
“If we could talk to the animals!”
“You can, master. Buy a scroll in the mystic market of animal conversations.”
“Chatting to a chimp in chimpanzee!”
“Or you could get a wand.”
“Grunt and squeak and squawk with the animals! And they could squeak and squawk and speak and talk to us!’
“Oh dear . . .”

It comes up from time to time at our gaming table, often from our stubborn refusal to accept that Pathfinder gnomes can’t talk exclusively to burrowing mammals (which, with us, is the extent of their speak with animals spell).

The speak with animals spell is fairly evasive about what conversations you can have with animals and goes on to say that . . . the more stupid ones make inane comments.

Marvellous. What an opening for some occasional silliness at the roleplaying table.

Here, then, are one hundred things an animal is most concerned about; drop it verbatim into any conversation, use it as the animal’s opening comment or a comment it repeats while providing some potentially useful information, or make it an inane comment that serves as the only thing it has to say. You might also consider an animal’s attention span to be very short and randomly roll each time a PC strikes up a conversation with a less than clever animal if you like, but don’t overdo it.

Having said that, an adventure based around animal conversations could be a fun one-shot.

The conversation is two way, so some words come out from the spellcaster’s translation of what the animal is trying to say, or a word the animal has heard before and wants explaining.

1. I hungry
2. I still hungry
3. Do you have eating?
4. Do you taste nicely?
5. What be hat?
6. Man, the spears pointing at us for the ending soon maybe?
7. Are you talking me?
8. How do I know you speaking?
9. Where you nest?
10. Very frightened
11. Not
12. Plenty
13. Legs, why have you?
14. Man made fire that bites
15. Leave my nuts
16. I like fruit
17. What you?
18. Teeth it has for biting, plenty
19. Are you same me?
20. What be triangle?
21. Your fur look funny
22. I have some lumps of it hid near
23. I can I can’t
24. Many
25. Is that worm?
26. Keep away!
27. Very tall
28. It has lots of legs!
29. Something strange, it smells
30. Something strange, smells you
31. I like grass
32. Like water I
33. Can I eat?
34. What’s color?
35. Look my teeth the many, they for bite your leg could I!
36. Stay back, lots more me nearby!
37. I have teeth!
38. Can lay eggs you?
39. Wet soon be bad
40. Earwigs—yum!
41. Darktime bad
42. What?
43. Darktime good
44. Why you why?
45. Soil!
46. Soil?
47. What say?
48. Chasing I for eating, you
49. Man can’t see thing with arms many behind him
50. Yum!
51. I have bedding
52. Argh!
53. I need mate, you need mate?
54. Man eat me wanting hungry
55. Cold!
56. Hot!
57. Keep back, or great god Zubba eat you!
58. Grrrrrrrrr!
59. Flowers I like
60. I bite you speak me many
61. Words in head make me hurting, stop!
62. What be chutney?
63. Big bad things nearby plenty
64. Smell many things are far
65. Smell, many things are near
66. Eating?
67. With wings the man fish soar
68. I lonely, you live me?
69. A man cook my mummy dead!
70. A badger nearby I know for friendly
71. Strange smells many have you the legs
72. The many legs are eating
73. I lion am!
74. One head he watching
75. The food you eating horrid
76. The food you eating now, give me
77. Many head he watching you now stand behind
78. It time not to do do
79. I smell bad thoughts on you
80. What be time?
81. Time now for running
82. More than me, many, the bad things near
83. I told you once
84. Stone is hard
85. Tree is high
86. Man is on fire
87. Bears make honey
88. Back! Back! Back!
89. Cows make buckets
90. Sheep make floors
91. Again?
92. We make baby now?
93. Many arms near much, the touching
94. Snow many the sun eating
95. Day not day now
96. I can climb tree!
97. What’s crocodile?
98. Noises strange the making
99. Fish in the sea there are?
100. The strange one is back . . .