Thalyen
Origin Planet
Thalorya
Year
5225
Speakers
~ 120,000
Athalyn developed among coastal-highland communities of Thalorya over many centuries as a fusion of older mountain trade dialects and river-valley ceremonial registers. It stabilized into a prestige form used in ritual, law, and storytelling while numerous local dialects persisted.
Spoken by seafaring-horticultural peoples who cultivate terraced gardens and maintain strong ancestor-veneration rites tied to stones and tides. Language encodes social respect through verb morphology and a specialized register for ritual speech.
Primary community across the Thaloryan western terraces and inner fjords; diaspora communities preserve the language in ritual contexts.
Primary stress is typically on the penultimate syllable; vowel lengthening and rhythmic alternation in ritual speech can shift stress for prosodic effect.
A mixed alphasyllabic script historically derived from carved tide-stone glyphs. Basic characters represent syllables (consonant + vowel) but there are independent signs for common roots and ritual logograms. The orthography preserves final consonants and marks palatal nasal with a diacritic. In everyday use a simplified phonetic spelling is used; ceremonial texts use extended logograms and ligatures.
Noun system
Nouns inflect for three cases: absolutive (unmarked), genitive (-en), and locative (-lo). There is no grammatical gender. Noun compounds are common; definite/indefinite distinction is expressed by demonstratives and context rather than articles.
Verb system
Verbs conjugate for tense (present, past, future) and for mood (indicative, imperative, irrealis). A small set of aspectual particles combine with verbal stems to mark perfective and habitual aspect. Verbs agree with the subject in person via prefixes (1st: a-, 2nd: e-, 3rd: s-). Politeness and ritual register add prefixes/affixes.
Adjective rules
Adjectives follow the noun (Noun-Adjective) and do not agree in case. Some adjectival roots can be nominalized with a suffix -in for abstract qualities.
Number rules
Singular is unmarked. Plural is marked with suffix -ar on nouns; pronouns have distinct plural forms. Numeral+noun order is Number-Noun with the noun remaining uninflected for plural if a numeral is present.
| Phrase | Meaning | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| ali sulan | good morning (lit. 'bright river') | ˈa.li ˈsu.lan |
| vela-van | thank you (lit. 'I give stone') — idiomatic | ˈve.la-van |
| shara ✦ | blessing (ceremonial greeting) | ˈʃa.ra |
| Question | Meaning | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| tiki? | what? | ˈti.ki |
| kira? | who? | ˈki.ra |
| lo? / lolo? | where? / to where? | lo / ˈlo.lo |
| English | Translation | Literal meaning | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|---|
| The bird is strong. | Kav guro. | Bird strong. | kav ˈgu.ro |
| I see the big tree. | Ana tar talo kala. | I tree big see. | ˈa.na tar ˈta.lo ˈka.la |
| Do they speak? | Sar suha? | They speak? | sar ˈsu.ha |
| We go to the river. | Im sul lo loma. | We river to go. | im sul lo ˈlo.ma |
| Who knows the ancient mountain? | Kira met viro mira? | Who mountain ancient know? | ˈki.ra met ˈvi.ro ˈmi.ra |
Tide-Stone (van)
Large coastal stones used as community focal points. They are inscribed with names of ancestors and used in oath-taking. Speaking at a tide-stone invokes communal memory and moral accountability.
Before any formal gifting of land, elders 'offer the stone' (vela-van) and recite the family lineage.
Echo-Names
A custom of giving children an echo-name formed by reduplication or vowel change of a parent's name to signal lineage continuity. Echo-names are often used in song and ritual rather than daily speech.
A daughter of 'Mira' might be called 'Mirin' in ceremonial contexts; songs address the echo-name when invoking ancestors.
Ritual Register (shara)
A distinct lexical and prosodic register for ritual speech with special vocabulary (often containing æ) and extended prosody. Using the ritual register outside prescribed contexts is considered disrespectful.
At a harvest blessing, speakers switch from everyday words to ritual lexemes (e.g., using æ-forms and logographic inscriptions) and mark sentences with the honorific ✦.
Final obstruent devoicing: voiced stops /b, d, g/ become voiceless [p, t, k] at word end.
Example: van 'stone' is pronounced [van], but in fast speech or devoiced dialect [vant].
Palatal nasal: written 'ny' corresponds to IPA /ɲ/ and appears before front vowels.
Example: word 'nyala' (kin term) pronounced [ˈɲa.la].
Vowel harmony in compounds: high vowels (i, u) tend to assimilate across syllable boundaries in fast speech; ritual speech resists this assimilation.
Example: kala + in → kalin (standard) but in fast speech /ka.li/ may shift to [ka.lɪn].
Stress: penultimate stress; in bisyllabic verbs stress falls on first syllable when a polite prefix is added shifting default rhythm.
Example: kala 'see' = ˈka.la; polite 1sg a-kala = a-ˈka.la (stress preserved on penult).
Glottal onset: vowels beginning a word are often preceded by a light glottal stop in careful speech.
Example: ana pronounced [ˈʔa.na] in formal contexts.