Languages
An important note is that while we write in English, the languages in the game are not English. Our limitations of not developing entire alphabets and grammar structure mean we’ll just have to make pretend that what is typed actually is in the appropriate language. So while English doesn’t properly mimic the hard consonants of Klo’koon or the short, musical words of Churel, the characters are doing so, perhaps poorly if they aren’t skilled at the language, but still doing their best. Everyone speaks Seyaran/Common and their racial language. Characters can know more (or less) based on their backstory and/or skills, but it isn’t a major need to know a lot of languages usually. The language information below is not written in an In Character perspective so as to allow better understanding of the way they work. If you see some funky symbols, I suggest going to this website to hear what they sound like.
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Seyaran/Common
The primary language of the Seyarans; this language focuses on syllables that are a single letter sound when broken apart by syllables (Sey to A, Ar to R, and An to N) or are a soft sound to a hard sound (like the Sey and An in Seyaran). The word structure focuses short to medium word lengths with very few words over six symbols long. As such, conversations and sentences are shorter and tend to be more to the point. There are several variations and dialects of this language, but they are all close enough to figure out mostly what is said. The only exceptions are older variations of the language which are more difficult, especially when written, to decipher. The written language uses characters that represent each sound in a syllable, much like our language of English.
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Long-tongue
The most prominent of the Lu’ryn languages, this is the one they speak around outsiders typically. People who are close to them may hear short-tongue, which is a more informal language. Both variations of the language deal in kennings, combining words to make others, to describe things without needing to add more words. An airship is wind-boat in a direct translation. This language marks the additional words with an apostrophe. Lu’ryn stands for essentially us, or our species. The exact words are Our-face in a direct translation.
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Noglunx
A harsh sounding language sometimes described as hissing, the Exogan tongue focuses on hard consonant noises and stress. There may be one word, but due to stresses on how it is said, can change the meaning from friend to tree. When written, stress is usually denoted by a line over the top of the stressed part of the word. The words of Exogan and Noglunx are pronounced like X-o-gan and nog-lun-s. They also tend to have words that mean complete thoughts, such as a word that may mean “[The Person] acts like a child” in just one word.
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Churel
The singsong sounding language of the Rane is a series of short words which tend to have a more musical tune to it. They tend to reuse words by cutting them up such as Chur being the homeland and Churel being the language. These breaks typically denote a similarity or tie to the words. Not always does this follow this theme, but typically it does. The written form of this language uses pictographs with symbols denoting sounds. Some pictographs represent full words, like the written form of Rane in their language is a wing. Ranel uses a wing and a circle with a dot in it and it means family.There are no words in Churel that are longer than the language name. Even their most complex sounding words usually have two or three syllables.
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Klo'koon
The Kol’ok language favors hard consonants like Negolx, but relies far more heavily on the K, L, and O sounds. Their language is mostly limited to those three (as well as the T, B, P, and similar plosives) plus the “ah”, “ul”, “Oon”, “ook”, “ol” , and similar sounds. This makes it one of the easiest languages to learn the sounds for, but hardest to differentiate words from each other due to how similar many sound. The language is written in syllabolic characters that represent sounds with a series of lines, circles, and semi-circles. This means they have only eight characters in their written language, but these are then combined into one almost tower-like combination that makes a word or complicated sound. This makes each word appear to be one character long.
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Lutuk
Poruk were one of the first places with written language that is very similar to what the Seyaran language would become. While the two diverted, the languages still bear some similarities of being syllabolic, but more focus came onto soft vowels of Lutuk, Utal, and Poruk. It is extremely rare to hear two consonant sounds in a row in Lutuk, but some of the more common ones are “th-” and “pl-”. The written form of this language uses runic character much more commonly found in Ancient Seyaren texts. The exacts of it have differed enough from there that knowing how to write Lutuk doesn’t mean one automatically can understand Ancient Sayaren.
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Draconic
Most linguists describe Draconic as a series of singular syllable words that combine together to form different words. These short, throaty, growl-like noises form the basis with a series of tongue placements to make higher sounds. Guh, ouh, luh, and similar form the deeper sounds from the throat while Suh, tuh, kuh, and similar lighter sounds from the front of the mouth. Dragons lack lips, meaning they rarely have the buh and puh sounds. For example, you would have the draconic runes of Guh, Ruh, and N. Translated, it becomes Ice and Storm. The N marks the end of a multisyllabic word. This would then be translated to Hailstorm. Draconic is a favorite language of mages as many of the spell incantations are just words describing the spell. A spell that launches a spear of ice would become Guh-keh-n or Ice Stab.
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Keristine Sign
Due to lacking vocal cords normally, Keristine do not communicate via vocalizations but instead through sign language. Some Keristines grow vocal cords in order to communicate in other languages, but almost all Keristines focus on their primary language. This Sign Language features a series of motions with body focusing around the arms and hands they have. While inspired by Seyaran-based sign language, their sign has next to no pronouns. Secondly, their verbs come at the end of each sentence rather than after the subject. If an object is plainly visible, their communication prefers to point at the object, but they do have gestures for most of these words or can combine signs to form something close enough. A form of traditional Keristine Sign uses a worn metal chest plate, hollowed in certain locations like a drum, to produce sounds used to form certain words. Some still use this method today.
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Fae
The Fae language stands as one of the most bizarre not for complexity or linguistic depth, but that every Fae is born with intrinsic knowledge of the language. It matters not if the seed is left completely alone with no interaction from either parent. There are some exceptions, but are incredibly rare. Beyond that, the Fae language emulates natural sounds. Despite each Fae type having different sounds for each word, with Life Fae emulating animal, plant, and similar noises; Fire Fae making burbling lava, crackling fire, and sizzling heat noises; and each of the others uses a similar scheme. Because of this depth, most other species have struggles learning the language in full, learning only one or two of the Fae types.
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Giant
The base of the Giant language is a conglomeration of their original language and the Lu'ryn language of Long-tongue. The original Giant tribes are believed to have originated from Lu'ryl or perhaps they happened to develop the same linguistic knack to kennings. Scholars are not fully sure. For non-kenning aspects of the language, Giant focuses on heavy consonant uses with sounds produced from the back of the mouth, or velar, or made when pressing one's tongue at the small ridge behind the top row of teeth, called the alveolar ridge. Though it does have some other sounds as well, but the primary two are those. Within those, you also get what is known as a stop or plosive focus with sounds like p, b, t, d, k, and g. The other focus within those is a fricative like f, v, θ, ð, s, z, ʃ, ç, x, É£, and h sounds.
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Goblin
Often described by the uninformed as shrill and chattering, the Goblin language is one of the more expressive languages through facial muscles alone. This led to a lack of written language until only in the last hundred years. Rumors had been spread that Goblins were afraid of writing when instead most other writing systems didn't articulate very well to their unusual speech method, causing misunderstandings. For example, the phrase "We don't mean harm" seems innocuous enough, but the words have the same characters as "We wish to kill you painfully." This is changed in meaning by the facial position in which the words are said. While much of that has fallen to the side to allow non-face-to-face communication by modifying words or tones into the language to change the meaning, it hasn't shaken from their culture to get up close to read the face of the person they are talking to.
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Elemental
Similar to Draconic, the Elemental tongue is a magically oriented language. This makes it rather popular among wizards, sorcerers, and other casters or scholars. While it comes naturally to many of the elemental denizens, the language requires a controlled set of ranges to imitate more clicky and whooshy sounds, focusing around ke, eh, sh, wu, and similar syllabic pairings. The language can be soft to hear through normal conversation, leading to Elemental having a different set of words and sounds when yelling, featuring sounds like Fwa, Puh, Kha, and similar. The written language is based around normal conversation though expletives tend to be written more like their shout forms.
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Dryad
Dryad as a language features a large number of regional variations mostly dependent on island, heritage, and relationship to other tribes. While it carries a number of similarities to Seyaran alphabet, the language itself uses Subject-Object-Verb sentence formatting rather than the more typical Subject-Verb-Object of Seyaran. The regional differences tend to shift more around vocabulary, but some tribes have a completely different system. Typically, one can learn a base and then understand most other dialects. The words tend to be spoken quicker than other languages with tonal and contextual reading to fully understand, making it typically harder to learn the language. The most unique thing that is true of almost every regional variation is Dryad's future tense being a unique modifier on the words like -ed on "She wanted to go" for past tense.
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