Allundean
The elvish speech is known as Allundean to its speakers. It was
first recorded as a language in during Year 70 of the Dragon's Reign,
during that time when the Dragon's servants collected vast reserves
of knowledge of the world for the [now lost] Library which he was
intent on constructing. It is likely that Allundean existed for one
or two centuries before that time as a complete language. Before that
time, the elvish tribes were too small and too far apart on the outskirts
of the Empire of Man for any linguistic conventions to be established.
With the Dragon's arrival in the Known World and the subsequent
and speedy fall of the Empire, the elvish tribes banded together for a
short while (perhaps two hundred years). While closely grouped, the
tribal tongues grew more and more related, eventually becoming what
is now recognized as Allundean.
This language shares the peculariarity of Bendune and Cavilish
in that seven vowels are used for speaking, but no vowels are used in
the written form of the language.
Anyar
The speech of the northern tribes folk, collectively known as the
Anyali, is called Anyar. It is a soft, slurred language punctuated
with whistles, pops and tongue clicks, and seems to bear little to no
relationship to other languages of the Known World, except for words
such as sirihish trade terms, which have crept into it.
There is no known written version of Anyar, with the exception of
a few scattered runes used to leave camp markers.
Bendune
The language of the nomadic tribesmen of the Known World is called
Bendune. It bears some resemblance to the elvish speech, and even more
to the language known as Cavilish. The real history of linguistic
development is most likely that the tribal tongues became united at
Gol Krathu several Ages before the arrival of the Dragon into a more
primitive form of Bendune. It was not until many years later that the
elvish and Cavilish tongues were certain to have existed.
While most contemporary desert tribes are composed of refugees from
the city-states or of elvish nomads, the Allundean and Sirihish languages
are far more common in the wilderness that they once were. On the fringes
of the Known World, however, most still speak Bendune.
The richness of the language derives from its highly concrete nature,
coupled with an incredible array of sentence structures to describe
various states of being. Different nouns thus typically yield entirely
different sentences. Bendune follows in the nomadic language convention
of using seven vowels for speaking and no vowels for writing.
Cavilish
Part of the so-called "nomadic" group of languages, this tongue
was evidently descended directly from Bendune. It shares most of the
same characteristics such as vowel usage, but possesses a sentence-
structuring approach more similar to that of Sirihish or Tatlum.
The legendary dune traders of ages past, once travelling merchants
of nomadic heritage who spoke Bendune, settled in the city-states at
Gol Krathu and Vrun Driath somewhere in the neighborhood of one thousand
years after the Dragon's departure from the Known World. At once they
began to adopt the languages of their customers, who spoke mostly
Sirihish. Within their homes, however, they continued to use their
native Bendune speech. With the passage of generations, the younger
family members, eager to assimilate more fully into the culture of the
city-states, made increasingly larger use of Sirihan language structures.
And, as time wore on, their native Bendune became so changed that it
was categorized by scholars as its own language.
Because of the history of Cavilish, it is sometimes referred to
as the "Merchant's Tongue," since it is used almost exclusively by
the current members and owning families of Merchant Houses.
Heshkrak
Heshrak is the language of the gith. It appears to have been
descended somehow from the Allundean tongue, though where the split in
the languages would have occurred is too difficult to determine--undoubtedly
it was an extremely long time ago.
Because of the hostile nature of gith culture to other demihumans,
it has been of the greatest challenge to compile any useful information
on the language which they speak.
What is known is that the written and oral aspects of the language
are far more integrated than any other in the Known World, where nineteen
phoenetics are used in both forms, and vowels (of which there are five)
appear to be standard and identically used.
The most probable history is the common folklore which holds that
the gith are a forgotten tribe of elves who lived beyond the Known World
for some several eons and evolved under extraordinarily harsh conditions
into their present form. Requiring a strong sense of culture to assist
them in maintaining their lives in the face of a high death rate, their
written language was greatly developed. A strong central culture would
also explain the lack of fragmentation this language has suffered.
Kentu
The language of the halflings is called Kentu. It is a fabulously
diverse and rich language which is very foreign to all other tongues in
the Known World. Its history is entirely unknown, and it appears to have
absolutely nothing in common with other ways of speaking, which puts to
shame all theories of the one "mother tongue" that some have argued was
the progenitor to all subsequent languages.
The Kentu language uses a staggering twelve vowels and thiry-one
phonetics. There does not appear to be a written form of this language,
possibly due to the powerful ties which halfling cultures enjoys. This
tongue relies heavily on cultural metaphor, and thus is difficult for
others to comprehend. This reliance causes many halflings a great deal
of trouble when learning the languages of other races.
Mirrukim
The language of the dwarves is known as Mirukkim by its speakers.
It apparently emerged as a language at about the time of the Dragon's
departure from the Known World. Before that time the linguistic
conventions were scattered, non-uniform rules used by handfuls of
people at any given instant.
There are striking resemblances between Mirukkim and very old
human languages (predating Tatlum). It is not unreasonable that the
Mirukkim tongue was once a unified language similar to Kenessesh or
some other extremely ancient human speech. The dominance of the Empire
of Man (during which dwarves were most probably used as slaves) and
the arrival of the Dragon quite possibly caused much of the fragmentation
of Mirukkim. That it ever re-appeared is strong testimony to the
dwarvish dedication to long, hard tasks.
The written form uses identical syllabic rules as does the spoken
version, which is also similar to Kenessesh and Old Tatlum. There are
five vowels in each form, using only six consonant symbols decorated
by various accentuations.
Nrizkt
The language of the mantises is called Nrizkt. It has absolutely
nothing in common with the demihuman languages, being composed of various
clicks, whines, and pops which are almost impossible for demihumans to
produce.
All evidence suggests that Nrizkt has been in existence since long
before even Old Tatlum. The mantis tribes were virutally undisturbed
by the Empire of Man and the reign of the Dragon as they did not live in
stable civilizations until very recently. There is almost no contact
between the mantis tribes and demihumans, and when such contact occurs
there is often misunderstanding (the mantises may well assume any
ambassadors from demihuman lands are in fact the evening meal). These
circumstances appear to have preserved the Nrizkt language throughout
the ages, and will no doubt continue to do so until a distant time in
the future.
Sirihish
The language called Sirihish is the "common" tongue of nearly all
humans and is the unifying cultural element among all races of the
Known World. In fact, many historians consider the societies of Allanak
and Tuluk to be a single society because of their common linguistic
traits (i.e. the use of sirihish).
Sirihish is quite obviously derived from Late Tatlum, which was
the bastardized form of the ancient speech left to the humans after
the Dragon's departure from the realms of mortals. It possess the
largest vocabulary, is broadest in aspect and in potential meaning,
and is the most capable of abstraction of all the known languages.
