Both yours and Karithia's arguments are ones I used when this point came up before. I think it was when someone posted a log of them talking "drow" to a newbie who was asking to group.

However, with your solution (and mine), you do run into problems when you are in a group with one other elf and one felar.

And, in practice, I've often found myself in exactly the position Karithia describes when people started talking "drow" to my drow. A few key words is one thing because people pick them up from the context. I could always work out what the k'sra based roleplaying person whose name I forget meant. But when I get 20 words of gibberish I tend to give up.