Languages of Gaedera

This is a working page for notes on the languages of Gaedera. Related pages can be found in the associated category, Languages.

Hies Loricoda
Main article: Hies Loricoda

Hies Loricoda, sometimes referred to as Hies for short, is the language of the deities. The language in its original form is unspeakable by mortals, but the sounds can be approximated in human speech. This language is often the primary language for communication with deities.

Hies Loricoda is known across the world, and is often seen as a reminder of the world's common ancestry under the goddess Gaede, and the pact forged in the Red Ring. Many nations and major cities retain their Hies names, such as Aora and its capital, Cisa Aorina.

Due to its ubiquity across world history, many modern languages are descended from Hies Loricoda. As a result, there is a vast family of related languages across the world with roots in Hies Loricoda, sharing many cognate words.

Hies Selahada
Hies Selahada, known also as Hies Serahada, is the language spoken by snake spirits. Snake spirits first emerged across the Solan territory in the Mirea Era under the guidance of the goddess Seraha, and their language is deeply related to Hies Loricoda, and shows the signs of that ancestry.

Selahada makes various phonetic changes in line with their speakers’ vocalisation anatomy.


 * /t/ > /θ/ (th)


 * /f/ > /θ/


 * /k/ > /h/


 * /g/ > /x/ (gh)


 * /d/ > /dʑ/ (palatised, "moves" farther back into the mouth)

Hies Keidana
Hies Keidana is a language directly descended from Hies Loricoda that is spoken in Mes Keidana. Mes Keidana (formerly Irkedaki and then Meghis Ceidana) began to culturally define itself much earlier than the rest of Irgaedera, with far greater influence from their patron deity Ceida since the Opening of Gates. This divine influence is reflected in Hies Keidana's more extensive preservation of Hies Loricoda words and pronunciation, as compared to Orbono.

The language does bear influence from Orbono nevertheless, particularly in the phonetic changes found in the patterns of elision (e 's and i 's between consonants, h 's and gh 's) and the replacement of the voiceless velar stop /k/ associated with the letter c to the aspirated voiceless velar stop /kʰ/, as represented by the letter k.

Words

 * hies (n.) whisper, language, from Hies Loricoda hies
 * keidana (n.) of Ceida (the goddess of thunder), synonymous with Hies Loricoda ceidana
 * mes (n.) mainland, large island, from Hies Loricoda meghis

Orbono
Main article: Orbono

Orbono is spoken by the people of the Orbon nations: Ro Orbon, Ro Gtero and Ptrao. It is a direct descendant of Hies Loricoda and a great amount of its vocabulary is derived from words in Hies.

Orbono is noted for its phonetic changes from Hies Loricoda, with the fairly consistent elision of unaccented i and e, h and gh, and the fortition of c (represented by the change of spelling: Orbono words are spelled with k in place of occurrences of c in the original Hies word).

Certain suffixes from Hies are also substituted for the preexisting Orbono equivalent; for instance, all pertinence suffixes simply become -o, regardless of the part of speech and the preceding letter, while all adjective suffixes become -is.

These differences give Orbono its distinctive sound and appearance when written in Belan script, which can sometimes make it seem difficult to pronounce.

[Phonetically, this language draws from Greek.]

Ismaba
Ismaba is the language spoken by the people of the Maba nations, Maba and Gatanis. It emerged early in Maba's existence and evolved as its peoples moved and their lands were conquered by Orbon.

The name of the language simply means "the language of Maba"; the "Is-" prefix is a contraction of the Hies Loricoda word hies, meaning "whisper" or "language" with the h lost over time and the ie synaeresised into a long i.

 

Ismaba has numerous words directly descended from Hies Loricoda, though the /k/ sound associated with the letter c in Hies Loricoda words often becomes a glottal stop  ' in Ismaba. This is seen in the name of the deity Soreco, which becomes Sor'o

 

The language also bears influence from old Orbono, such as the -is adjective suffix, and the historical elision of unaccented i 's, e 's, h 's and gh 's in HIes-derived words, when compared to their etyma.

Belanised alphabet
a, b, d, e, g, i, l, m, n, o, p, s, t, u, z

Words

 * is (n.) language, whisper, from Hies Loricoda hies
 * gata (n.) metal, from Hies Loricoda gata
 * gatanis (adj.) like metal, synonymous with Hies Loricoda gatane

Anikorais
Anikorais is the language most widely spoken in Anikora. Descended from Hies Loricoda and branching off from early Orbono millennia ago, it shares some traits of Orbono, including the adjective suffix -is and the grammatical use of nouns as adjectives.

However, it is more similar to Hies Loricoda than Orbono: it retains the pertinence suffix of -a, and there is less frequent elision of vowels (though it is still present). A novel innovation here is that adjectives may be placed before or after the noun being referred to, as long as clarity is not affected.

Words

 * ike (n.) city
 * kor (n.) ice
 * ani (n.) south
 * is (n.) whisper, language
 * hran (n.) wood
 * ina (n.) town
 * liro (n.) ring, hollow circle
 * kalm (n.) mountain

Belan
Belan is a language spoken in Bel. It has become the most widespread language in Gaedera since Bel became an economic and academic powerhouse. The language enjoys great popularity across the world, though the people of Bel stop short of naming their children in Belan, still favouring Hies Loricoda as a source language for names.

Belan is the language in which this wiki and the associated language guides are written. [It is essentially real-world English with some words borrowed from Latin and Spanish.]

Cerdolian
Cerdolian, the language most widely spoken in Cerdolia, is quite closely related to Belan and shares many words with it. Neighbouring nations like Bel and Elraka also have a large Cerdolian speaking population.

Words

 * crissel: crystal
 * fleut: flute
 * istoir: story
 * melien: music
 * meliener: musician
 * orqueil: a drink of cocoa, chocolate pieces, condensed milk and cream.
 * pareler: speaker
 * parel: speech
 * poem: poem
 * poet: poet
 * seann: song
 * seanner: singer
 * stoirer: storyteller
 * viel: city
 * veir: glass

[Cerdolian draws orthographically on French and has several words that are identical or similar to their equivalents in French and English.]

 

Solan
Main article: Solan (language)

Solan is the main language spoken by the people of the Solan nations, especially Aora. Dialects of Solan spoken in Astra, Sonora and Onao tend to be more heavily influenced by Belan than the Oro and Aoran counterparts.

Linguistics
Solan has a distinctive pattern of syllables consisting of at least a vowel peak, with a possible consonant onset, but never a consonant coda. Its written script is a syllabary: every possible syllable in the language is represented by a character in the Solan script.

In Solan, words are compounded in an idiosyncratic way, with the last vowel of the first component word and the first consonant of the second component word (if present) elided. Nouns, verbs and adjectives are often used interchangeably.

There is a tendency for speakers of Solan to apply Solan inflections to loanwords from other languages. For instance, the name Aora is a Hies Loricoda word, but the commonly-used demonym, Aoran, is constructed via the Solan rule of appending -an at the end of the name. (In Hies Loricoda, the demonym would be Aorin, from the root aor.)

[Phonetically, this language draws from various Austronesian languages.]

Niro-hei
Niro-hei is the language of Niro. Its closest relative is Cin-fa, the language spoken by the people of Cin, from which many of its words are derived. Its script is a syllabary:, a script of symbols representing every syllable of the language. This is a simplification of the Cin script.

It is recognisable for its heavy use of hyphenated compound words. The word(s) after the first hyphen is/are always the semantic head of such a compound word. For example, kani-do literally means "crab fortress" and is the name of a city with a large seaport in the west.

Niro-hei has a number of words loaned or derived from Hies Loricoda. One example is the membership suffix -in, derived from the same suffix in Hies Loricoda (as seen in terms such as Orsandin, person from Orsand, comparable to Niro-in, person from Niro).

[Phonetically, Niro-hei draws heavily on Japanese and also features some identical words.]

Cin Fa
Cin Fa is the language spoken in Cin.


 * sang: city
 * yen: distant
 * kut: country
 * qien: ten thousand.
 * moi: plum

[It is literally just Hakka/客家话, spelled phonetically. Their script is Traditional Chinese.]

Yenhanha
Yenhanha is the language spoken in Yenhanyi. It is descemded from Cin Fa with some notable phonetic changes.