I have always read
You gain the selected language as a bonus language,
as meaning that you add the language to your list of known languages when you create your character (as a bonus language), not that you add the language to the list of bonus languages you can choose from to learn with a high intelligence modifier. The reason I believe this is that it says you "gain the language as a bonus language," not "add it to your available bonus language options" as other similar features do.
This is no different in my view from gaining a bonus language from a high intelligence modifier.
You apply your character's Intelligence modifier to:
- The number of bonus languages your character knows at the start of the game.
I interpret this as meaning that it is a bonus language because it is not a language you have learned through a rank in linguistics or from your racial features -- that is, it is a bonus on top of your standard known languages. Essentially, you have a list of languages to choose from, and when you gain one from high intelligence or a class features, it becomes a bonus language. They are bonus languages because they do not require ranks in linguistics to learn them (because a linguistics rank allows you to learn any language). When you become an oracle you gain that language as a bonus.
The text that follows,
At 5th level, pick an additional language to speak in combat and
add it to your list of known languages,
indicates to me that the language added at 5th level is in addition to the bonus language gained at level 1.
Unfortunately, there is no real explanation for why the game writers used two completely different phrasings to mean the same thing, if you accept the premise in this answer as true, and, absent any developer or writer commentary on why such choices were made, I doubt we can make a determination on that.
- I'm sure I've seen it before but cant find it, but what counts as an intelligent creature?
Any creature with an intelligence score.
The Intelligence section of the Ability Scores chapter clarifies that:
Intelligence determines how well your character learns and reasons. This ability is important for wizards because it affects their spellcasting ability in many ways. Creatures of animal-level instinct have Intelligence scores of 1 or 2. Any creature capable of understanding speech has a score of at least 3. A character with an Intelligence score of 0 is comatose. Some creatures do not possess an Intelligence score. Their modifier is +0 for any Intelligence-based skills or checks.
I bolded the part that should interest you more. That section also gives a a couple of exceptions for creatures with no intelligence score:
Animals have Intelligence scores of 1 or 2 (no creature with an Intelligence score of 3 or higher can be an animal).
Oozes do not have an Intelligence score, and as such they have immunity to all mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects). An ooze with an Intelligence score loses this trait.
Regular plants, such as one finds growing in gardens and fields, lack Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores; even though plants are alive, they are objects, not creatures.
Vermin do not have an Intelligence score, and as such they have immunity to all mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, morale effects, patterns, and phantasms). Mindless creatures have no feats or skills. A vermin-like creature with an Intelligence score is usually either an animal or a magical beast, depending on its other abilities.
And the int score table gives us three examples of creatures that do not have an Intelligence score (their Intelligence is "-"):
Zombie, golem, ochre jelly
The Animal subtype also confirms that a creature with 3 or more intelligence is not an animal. But be careful to not confuse that with animal companions with high int scores.
Now, we also know that animals can be trained, and even learn how to understand speech (with ranks on Linguistics). But most animals cannot speak unless you get them a Circlet of Speaking.
Tongues does not enable the subject to speak with creatures who don't speak.
This clause on the spell description is the only thing that prevents the spell from being used to understand animals, so we have to use Speak with Animals instead.
- Can I cast the spell on myself and speak with every summoned creature (provided it counts as intelligent)?
Yes.
You are satisfying all the requeriments for the spell to work.
- If that does not work, can I cast this spell on my summons so they can understand me, as the spell doesn't say the target must be intelligent?
Yes.
However, the spell says your target can understand speech, but does not say they acquire the necessary intelligence score to follow and rationalize whatever is told him.
They will be limited by their own intelligence score. So an animal will understand "danger", "hunger" or "help", but will not understand "what direction did the bandit go?", because that is probably too much for their limited intelligence.
Score Examples Description
-: Zombie, golem, ochre jelly
0: Comatose
1: Carrion crawler, purple worm, camel Lives by the most basic instincts, not capable of logic or reason
2-3: Tiger, hydra, dog, horse Animal-level intelligence, acts mostly on instinct but can be trained
4–5: Otyugh, griffon, displacer beast Can speak but is apt to react instinctively and impulsively, sometimes resorts to charades to express thoughts
6–7: Troll, hell hound, ogre, yrthak Dull-witted or slow, often misuses and mispronounces words
8–9: Troglodyte, centaur, gnoll Has trouble following trains of thought, forgets most unimportant things
10–11: Human, bugbear, wight, night hag Knows what they need to know to get by
Best Answer
So, this player character knows Aquan, and someone wants to speak Auran to them.
As Aquan and Auran are both dialects of Primordial, that means they are mutually intelligible. That is, someone who knows Aquan can understand Auran, and someone who knows Auran can understand Aquan. The PC can talk in Aquan, and the NPC can talk in Auran, and both can understand one another.
It is not possible, according to the book, for someone to understand Aquan but not understand Auran. The languages are just too similar to one another for that to be plausible. It’s like someone speaking African-American Vernacular English to someone speaking Indian English—the languages sound pretty different, and they use some different structures and grammar, but they’re close enough that it’s hard to imagine that these two wouldn’t be able to understand one another. Have a try at reading the Scots-language Wikipedia article on the Scots language, for example: you probably can get through it, because Scots and English are mutually intelligible. Auran and Aquan are at least that close, according to the books.
This is in contrast to other “dialects,” such as those of Chinese, which are not mutually intelligible: someone who speaks Cantonese has no particular understanding of Mandarin, and vice versa.
So no, the player cannot choose to know only Aquan; there’s no such thing as knowing that without understanding the other dialects. Moreover, the language choice option covers the entire language family—that is, they don’t just understand all of the Primordial dialects, but they can speak and write in them too. To choose not to have that aptitude would be to diminish the value of the language choice, which obviously isn’t the end of the world, but as a DM I’d be somewhat leery of it, at least in a game where I expected languages to matter in the first place, and in any event the official rules don’t really allow it.
But more importantly, allowing the player to only really “know” Aquan (and therefore be able to understand the other dialects but perhaps not be able to speak or write them) is simply unnecessary. Nothing stops the player from freely choosing how to characterize this choice for their character: they can easily say, sure, my character knows Auran and Ignan and Terran and Primordial too, but they speak all of those with an Aquan accent, and will sometimes use Aquan-specific idiom and slang inappropriately in those languages, because Aquan is really their languages. The advantage of this, over saying they only know Aquan, is that if it ever comes up, the character can get by in those languages—which is usually a good thing, because “oops, no one knows that language” tends to be a bit of a buzzkill interruption in the game more than something interesting (and in a game where it was interesting, I’d be more concerned about the self-nerf since apparently languages matter here).
Characters of races or what have you that specify they know only Aquan or whatever would have a lesser degree of understanding, and would probably struggle mightily to express themselves in any of the other dialects.
But in both cases (only “knowing” Aquan vs. knowing Primordial but with an Aquan characterization), there may be nuances that get missed, cultural details that aren’t apparent from the mere meaning of words, and so on, but that has as much to do with the cultures each is coming from as it is to do with the actual language used. They also might have to speak more slowly and carefully, and possibly dumb down their language to avoid dialect-specific or culture-specific idiom or grammatical structures. Personally, I would not typically want to get mechanics involved in this—disadvantage on all checks seems much too harsh to me, for example—but keep this a matter of roleplaying.