Yen - languages

Introduction

D&D knows many racial langauges plus one generic Common. On Yen there is no common language, though Go (see below) approximates it.

Spoken languages

Linguists have learned that each race on Ji speaks its own language and some even several, though there is debate where a language ends and a dialect begins. Below is a short overview of what they have learned about the languages of the sapient races of Yen.

• The iihh have a rich language where there is no distinguishable difference between speech and song. Attempts by others to speak this language are always crude and generally not appreciated by the iihh. However, their vocal cords are versatile, so they can speak the languages of most other races quite well.
• Nhokkur have no spoken language, or at least one they are willing to be known. They do occasionally communicate in writing, using a variety of logographic scripts.
• Ordh'inagei is a master of many languages. It communicates with other sapients through speech, gestures and scents, transmitted via plants and animals. Internally, among its parts, it uses chemical signals and possibly sounds.
• The poisonous pn'umnaimen have a complex language of colors and patterns that they display on their skins, but they refuse to share details of it with other species. They mostly use spoken language, though pn'umnaimen vocal cords are simple, allowing them no more than a rough approximation.
• Like many other races, simi communicate through gestures and scents, though mostly through speech. Due to their dispersion, they have evolved many languages. Five main groups can be discerned:
  • Go, the original language from Yamato, still the most widely spoken
  • Tunga, spoken by the people of the southeast
  • Altürk, the language of the Yrgiz steppes
  • Lingatio, the speech of the seafaring peoples of the Egyrr
  • Sibir, which rules the north
  They have also adopted the language of the steppes, Altürk.
• Tarhar tend to speak the language of the region they inhabit, Altürk and Tunga being the most common among them.
• The reptilian telgu use sound to communicate over both short and long distances. They can produce a high volume, but speak very slowly compared to other sapient races. Their language is called Telgul.
• Surume communicate through color, gestures and also a little scent. As other races cannot reproduce their signals and neither are the surume capable of understanding the languages of the land-based sapients, communication with them is very difficult and rare.
• Thref have not one, but two spoken languages. 'Outer Thref' is used to converse with any member of their species, 'Inner Thref' only among the members of a reproductive triplet. In the latter language sentences require the involvement of all three members to be finished; the thref are both speakers and listeners at the same time.
• The original language of the weka and wekalai, G' (Gʔ), is a hunting language that is a subtle mix of visual signals, low calls and scents. Over time, it has evolved to include words and expressions for crafts and abstract concepts. The wekalai seldom use other languages than their own, keeping aloof of other races in general.

For player characters, mother tongue should be based on race and area of origin: simi, tarhar: one of the five simi languages; telgu: telgul; wekalai: G'. To this Go should be added as a substitute for D&D's Common, unless it is already the character's mother tongue.

Scripts

Writing was invented by the simi when they were still confined to Yamato. The original script was logographic, used for trade, taxes and conveying simple messages. Over time this developed into a more complex script that included thousands of characters for all kinds of things. This became known as "ōji".
The simi took this system with them when the migrated to mainland Yen. There it was easily applied to other languages than Go. Ōji remains the main writing system on Yen until today. Only a few literary people known all its characters; some only a handful, enough to get by in their daily needs. For the half-literate, a popular variant is "kiribo", with a moderate number of characters that are all very angular like Earth runes, so they can be easily carved in wood, stone or other materials.

In 1318 HC the sage Otoroto developed a radical new writing system, a syllabary that listed syllables instead of full words / concepts, which required more reading skill but has a far smaller number of characters. This is called "tankana". It was and is often used for long texts.
The simi started to use tankana and ōji side by side. As the syllables are specific for Go, tankana never gained ground outside the sphere of that language, though the Telgu developed their own variant for Telgul, called "sesel".

Unlike on Earth, un alphabetic writing system never developed on Yen. The Age of Magic bought many new scripts from outside the world, but these never cought on, the existing native systems being already too entrenched.

Dictionary

The dictionary below lists words from Yen languages used on these pages. It is very far from a complete dictionary.