#ilr lore

[retrokid616]

k been wanting to say this since knowing Grimoria's backstory in the first half of this chapter FUCK THE FROGS!

no not them there legends!

[leahnardo-da-veggie]

Linguistics post, part 2!

Because I just can't shut up about my conlangs! Or, to be specific, one conlang, Cescereli. Warning: the road ahead contains a slightly crappy fake language

Now, to understand Cesli, as local slang calls it, you must first understand the concept of compound words. Many human languages use it (German, for starters) and Cesli is no different.

In the phonetic representation you've seen so far, there are 3 kinds of connectors : the spaceless, the dash, and the apostrophe. They're often associated with different regions, as Foresters/Deserters use the - most often, while Mountainers prefer going spaceless. That is why you will often be able to identify a spirit's origin, even without their clan name.

For example, let us take a classic deserter name: Hari-hil. The ha is pronounced the same way you would in harpy, while the ri is pronounced the way you would in rigor. The dash is an almost silent eh noise, and the Hil is pronounced as in hill.

To see it written in sigil-script:

The bottom is written the way someone would scribble down a message, while the top is divided by character. The name itself means 'Honorable Archer', Hil being honorable. You'll find the word Hil poking up a lot in mountainer language too.

Now, what about some common phrases?

Va me: vaguely translates to 'what about you?' One of the most troubling things about Cesli is the fact that it does not diffrentiate between first and second person. Hence va me (va pronounced like vast, me pronounced meh) could mean 'Am I?', 'Are you?', or even just 'What about us?'. It's probably the phrase used most often every day.

2. -ilre and -ilra: the affixes used for immortals and mortals respectively. Examples include: Ces-ilre (literally 'our people', aka spirits), Nari-ilra ('long ears', elves), kina-ilra (everywhere people, aka humans), avli-ilre (dead immortals, ghouls) and avli-ilra (revenants/zombies).

3. Csekali: just the word for 'do'. When someone says 'csekali bar'rai va' (I do stew), it means I'm making stew. Similarly, 'csekali jicil va' (I do horse) means I'm riding a horse. There are often more specific verbs, but csekali is used in informal contexts, for the sake of brevity. It is also slang for intercourse. (Csekali Vaa va is an often told joke about the coital lives of Vaa-clanners, or lack thereof)

4. Cusses: There are 4 main swear words in Cesli; Csu'kirelise (aka idiot), Kvel'laice (shithole), Jai'icai (crappy situation), and C'ckilkii (borrowed word from sirens, meaning bitch. Any resemblance to the name of the sirens' nemesis, the Selkies, is not coincidental). Notably, these all contain 's, suggesting they originated from the plains.

I hope you enjoyed your crash course in Cescereli! Please feel free to fuck around with this however you wish!

[cringedog]

lemme try hold on. PURPLED KILLED CHARLIE JE RUCKONG KILLE D HIM "THANK YOU FOR SHOWING ME HOW TO BE HUMAN" THE REVENGE THE FUCKING. ,FIANGE REUNIOIN AND KARDL O=DOESNT FUCKING REMENEVR HE DOESNT FUCIGNDFKGF HE NAMED HIM CHARLIEL. QUACKITY NAMED HIM CHARLIE HE EFUKING NAME D. HE NAME DHIM CHARLIEE EEEE AND THE IRL TJE ILR LORE THE FUCIGNK NOTE THE WAVE ATHRE. LAS NECALAS MERCH DROP BC WE ARE THE COSTPMERS COMING TO LAST NEVADAS TREW.E WFWHE WEAUFKCIGN IF

[leahnardo-da-veggie]

Linguistics post!!

I'm sure it'll come as a surprise to everyone, but just about all my fantasy short stories take place in the same universe (it was inexplicably named Triworld by my younger self, and I haven't seen fit to change it since) across different times! I've been cultivating the little universe since I was 6, and it's basically become a sprawling mess.

Nonetheless, I want to set the lore down in stone, once and for all. And where better to start than with the linguistics?

Now, in modern Triworld, there are 4 main languages. They're generally divided by species, though there is some geopolitical leakage.

Trade-tongue (occasionally known as humani, Lingua Franca of everywhere except the Cescere/Syvniko)

Spirit/Fae (more commonly known as Cescereli)

Angelic/Demonic/Sirenic (generally called Angelic)

Ghoulish (also used by the nearly extinct shifters)

Trade-tongue:

You can operate on the assumption that Trade-tongue will be considered the default. The Humans, and to a lesser extent, the elves, use it exclusively. It is a mish-mash of a variety of different languages, from the days when different tribes worshipped different gods, with a great deal of influence from the now-archaic Elvish tongue. To a non-native speaker it will have a rolling cadence, with rounded words than the a spirit or ghoul would be comfortable with.

Interestingly, it contains some Greek/Latin prefixes in it, as seen by the countries Luxatia and Nyctomachia. (As a writer, it's because younger me loved her fancy language and never saw what a pain it would be for older me. The lore reason is that a Wanderer found his/her way into Triworld and messed up human linguistics in the process)

Cescereli:

Oh dear. Where do I even begin? This is by far the most detailed of my languages, and I would go so far as to call it a conlang. It operates on a character based format, similar to Chinese, and any depictions of Cescereli in my writing will be limited to phonetic transcriptions until I work out how to input made-up symbols into my writing.

Sentence structure is fairly variable, given that it has dozens of dialects, and some linguists have (very hesitantly) suggested that the linguistic drift might be so great that they ought to be considered several languages. The spirits, being a very United people, cannot and will never accept that, and the Fae's pidgin of trade-tongue and Cescereli is remarkably faithful to what is known as the Imperial dialect.

Cescereli uses a great deal of compound words, with each character being seperated by a ' or a -, or nothing at all, depending on the type of character in use. Something that would incorporate all three might be Cescere'nari-ilra, which is what spirits use to refer to mountain elves.

Directly translated, it would mean Our (ces) Mountain (Cere) Long-eared (nari, also a term used to refer to donkeys and rabbits) Mortals (ilra, with ilre being the immortal version). As you can tell, it is my darling. I could write its own post about it, and about the spirits in general)

Now, the elves, being geographically close to the spirit Capital, share quite a bit of vocabulary with the spirits, so spirits often find themselves shocked to hear Cescereli within trade-tongue. Spirits are fiercely protective of their language and insist on speaking it amongst themselves. Any being that wishes to work amongst spirits, or to a lesser extent, Far, has to have at least some modicum of Cescereli proficiency.

To a non-native speaker, it sounds like a teakettle hissing. This has been the source of rage for many spirits.

Angelic:

A dot-based language, it has the greatest tonal variation of any tongue on Triworld. Angelic requires the speaker to transverse as far as three octaves across a single sentence, leading it to be known as song-tongue colloquially.

Few species have the vocal chords to actually pronounce the words, with sirens, angels, demons, and spirits (who refuse to speak it due to an ancient rivalry with the sirens) being the only ones truly able to speak it fluently. The remaining species, when trying to learn Angelic, use a variant known as Lesser Enochian (another remnant of a long-gone Wanderer), which has far less warbling.

It is known as the most beautiful language in existence, and sirens take great pleasure in reciting Angelic poetry to honoured guests. Demons, on the other hand, delight in their dialect, Infernal (which has its own set of sub-dialects), as a method of mocking those without sufficiently high ranges of hearing to catch their words. Angels prefer pretending they do not have to share their language with two other species, and insist their dialect is the only 'true' one.

Ghoulish:

As languages go, Ghoulish is a mess. It has a basis of shifter-speak, with a dash of Cescereli, some elven, a remarkable amount of Goddish, vampiric to taste, and what might actually be the original human tongue, or perhaps ancient ghoulish.

It came of the Lich-Queen of Ceredell (yes, you do note the Cescereli Cere being mixed with the trade-tongue Dell) wanting to cut her ties to humanity. As a tribute to the people who visited her coronation (I'm currently writing this story up now, so spoiler alert for the Lich-Queen!), she named her capital after the spirits, made shifter-tongue the national language, devoted a quarter of every mortal city to the Gods, industrialised the blood-substitute industry for the vampires, and offered free and safe immigration for all the above species.

The result was... This. Ghoulish growls and snaps and whistles and bounces of the walls like it's high on booze-berry. It technically uses the trade-tongue alphabet, but with each letter having indentations and inflections, it might as well be its own language.

Well, that's about it! I'm sorry to anyone who made it this far, that's 5 minutes of your life that you're not getting back. I could talk endlessly on my world building, but I try to obey the principle of Show, not Tell. Next up, Geography!!!