As for the people who claim druids lack the vocal chords to talk in animal form...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV6DQuEh4UQhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXm6M8m0I-Ahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSDFzg8_WfgYouTube - Talking doghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlZV0g6DlJgYouTube - Parakeet talkinghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cen6Sgj0kNohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-vRS5FNG0EAnd all of these little critters only have an intelligence of 2 or 3... UNLIKE a druid would in that form, who could better practice and anunciate with the context of his phenomes in mind.
No, I never said it would be done with perfect diction and noble accents. Logically they would have HORRIBLE speach impediments, and not entirely understandable unless you listened very closely... but hardliners deny even this possibility. And I'm certainly not saying that one should ignore physiology entirely. People who claim that animal-shapes are incapable of speaking *any* common after seeing physical evidence to the contrary are the ones who are completely ignoring physiology. One cannot cite physiological reality as a basis for an argument and then eschew all real-life physical data to the contrary in the same breath.
What I find far more unrealistic than shifted druids speaking mangled common is when a humanoid druid in a humanoid form speaks "animal tongue". How is a human to speak to a bat without high-frequency sonar capabilities? How does a druid raised in the forrest suddenly know the various languages of desert, cave and ocean-dwelling species, and any animal species he never faced before when they each have their own way of communicating? How can a druid say something in one tongue that both the badger and the bird simotaneously understand, when the two don't even understand eachother? That to me is the bigger stretch of logic.
On the same token, let's remember that the Animal language is not a fully-developed and mature language in the usual sense, but rather a common way for animals to convey simple thoughts.