At least the way I have run my Glorantha game, firespeech can be used to "communicate" with birds and other creatures of the fire rune. Of course a normal bird doesn't communicate much. A more powerful Yelmalian / Yelmic character can try to command creatures with word of fire speech. The tribe of fire is most authoritarian afterall.
So indeed, the natural language of a griffin is firespeech, but so it is with a sparrow. The sparrow can only understand it a bit, but a griffin can speak it too.
Having been very unclear on the sentience of them, I've run them as sentient, but quite fierce and proud. A griffin doesn't value a normal human enough to try to talk to it when it makes such a nice snack.
The stuff about feral / cultured griffins would fit well in my campaign. But it's not that most are barbaric and beyond sentience. Many just don't have a tradition of dealing with the surrounding humans (Not that many people speak firespeech afterall, especially one screeched / roared by a griffin).
So some griffin families / clans have a tradition of dealing with humans, where as others could only be approached by a brave and holy priest of some yelmic deity.
Nice, I think this works.
-Adept
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