"Beg your pardon, but I speak the local tongue poorly."

The author also spoke local tongue which made the description very vivid.

Orcs have also learned to speak local common tongues, but are not comfortable with them.

None had ever bothered to learn the local tongue.

Or rather a single voice - speaking in some local tongue but with an accent that was unmistakably English.

They'd spoken only a few, brief words in the local tongue before she'd switched off and smiled sadly at me.

It gurgled out through the speaker in the local tongue and he turned around.

In the local Celtic tongue it was called a rath.

The result was that before we ever reached a South Sea island they had a good working knowledge of the local tongues.

The Omalo yelled abuse at them, though they did not understand the local tongue and were still too far away to hear much anyhow.