In general in play they were ignored or just treated as an abstract language with no further comment.

As to where they came from, here's an answer from Gary Gygax on Dragonsfoot!


  As D&amp;D was being quantified and qualified by the publication of the supplemental rules booklets. I decided that Thieves' cant should not be the only secret language. Thus alignment languages come into play, the rational [sic] being they were akin to Hebrew for Jewish and Latin for Roman Catholic persons.
  
  I have since regretted the addition, as the non-cleric user would have only a limited vocabulary, and little cound [sic] be conveyed or understoon [sic] by the use of an alignment language between non-clerical users. 
  
  If the DMs would have restricted the use of alignment languages--done mainly because I insisted on that as I should have--then the concept is vaible [sic]. In my view the secret societies of alignment would be pantheonic, known to the clerics of that belief system and special orders of laity only. The ordinary faithful would know only a few words, more or less for recognition.


In other words, it was supposed to be more like religious languages, but wasn't really well thought through. It disappeared in Second Edition and was not missed.

What's the deal with alignment languages?
I have a method that scans the position and gets called on every activity I have, everytime an actions trigger I need to show an alertDialog, this is the code:

AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(mMainActivity.this);
                        builder.setMessage("test")
                           .setCancelable(false)
                           .setPositiveButton("go", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
                               public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int id) {
                                   Intent intent = new Intent(mMainActivity.this,LocationDetails.class);
                                    intent.putExtra("placeId",1);
                                    startActivity(intent);

                               }
                           })
                           .setNegativeButton("cancel", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
                               public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int id) {

                                    dialog.cancel();
                               }
                           });
                        AlertDialog alert = builder.create();
                        alert.show();


But How can I create the alert on the current activity? Because now it only gets created on AlertDialog.Builder(mMainActivity.this);
