Startide Rising
"The Terran exploration vessel Streaker has crashed on the uncharted water world of Kithrup, bearing one of the most important discoveries in galactic history. Above, in space, armadas of alien races clash in a titanic struggle to claim her. Below, a handful of her human and dolphin crew battles armed rebellion and a hostile planet to safeguard her secret - the fate of the Progenitors, the fabled First Race who seeded wisdom throughout the stars."- from the back cover
This is predominately a story about uplifted dolphins, though there are several humans and one uplifted chimp. Brin's dolphins use three languages (as appropriate), Primal - a psuedo-language used by pre-sentient, pre-uplifted, natural dolphins, Trinary - a language created by humans but patterned on Primal which allows dolphins to maintain and express their three-level/value-logic view of the world, and Anglic - a language which is syntactically English, but whose semantics and pronunciation have been modified for an animal who vocalizes using a blow-hole and quite often underwater.
