Aelvÿr
Origin Planet
Thirelia
Year
4275
Speakers
~ 180,000
Aelvyr developed among highland communities on Thirelia over several centuries as a trade and ritual lingua franca. It blended older clan registers with deliberate liturgical innovations introduced by a scholar-priest class; these innovations produced a compact, regular grammar and a featural script used for ritual encoding.
Spoken primarily by ridge-dwelling horticulturalists and itinerant light-binders, Aelvyr encodes social respect through lexical choice and honorific particles. The language is both practical (trade, farming) and ceremonial (binding light for communal festivals). Its poetic tradition values syllable-counted chants.
Regional: hillfolk, light-binder guilds, and traders across three provinces on Thirelia.
Primary stress on the penultimate syllable; monosyllables take full stress. In some ritual registers stress is evenly timed (isochronous).
The Feyl script is featural and semi-syllabic: basic glyphs represent consonant+vowel blocks but are constructed from a small set of strokes that indicate place and manner. Logographic ligatures exist for common cultural concepts (water, light, ancestor). The script is optimized for incised carving and woven pattern replication.
Noun system
Nouns are unmarked for gender. Case is largely analytic: nominative is unmarked; oblique/comitative uses postpositional particles (e.g., -te 'with', -ra 'to/for'). Plural formed by suffix -en (tara 'tree', taranen 'trees'). Definiteness is optional and marked by the particle 'la' before the noun.
Verb system
Verbs inflect for tense with suffixes: present/default = Ø (bare stem), past = -ta, future = -ri. There is no obligatory person agreement; optional aspect particles (e.g., 'se' for completed) and evidential enclitics exist. Negation is expressed with pre-verbal particle 'na'.
Adjective rules
Adjectives follow the noun they modify and do not agree in case, but may take plural -en if used nominally. Comparative is formed analytically with 'more' (sena 'more'), superlative by reduplication plus 'la' (e.g., 'talo-talo la' = 'big-big the' ≈ 'largest').
Number rules
Singular is unmarked; plural marked by suffix -en. Numerals precede nouns. For counting in ritual contexts there is a dual form using circumfix 'a- -i' (e.g., 'a-du-i' = 'two [paired]').
| Phrase | Meaning | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| Elyr | greetings / hello | ˈe.lir |
| Vensa | thank you (polite) | ˈven.sa |
| La-feyl | peace/blessing (ceremonial phrase) | la ˈfejl |
| Question | Meaning | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| tika? | what? | ˈti.ka |
| kem? | who? | kem |
| kuwa? | where? | ˈku.wa |
| sari? | how? | ˈsa.ri |
| English | Translation | Literal meaning | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|---|
| I see the tree. | An tara kala. | I tree see. | an ˈta.ra ˈka.la |
| The tree is big. | Tara talo. | Tree big. | ˈta.ra ˈta.lo |
| I saw the stone. | An veta kalata. | I stone saw. | an ˈve.ta kaˈla.ta |
| Do you speak? | El sura? | You speak? | el ˈsu.ra |
| They will go home. | Saran naro lomari. | They home will-go. | saˈran ˈna.ro loˈma.ri |
| Give water to the child. | An pira vela-ra kimen. | I water give-to child-ACC. | an ˈpi.ra ˈve.la-ra ˈki.men |
Light-binding (La-feyl)
Aelvyr ritual where woven bands and sung syllables are combined to 'bind' ephemeral light for festivals. The ceremony uses specific verb tenses and the logogram ☉ to mark sacred lines.
During the harvest festival elders inscribe ☉ beside participants' names and sing a standardized chant in present habitual to maintain continuity.
River Oaths (Pira-oaths)
Promises sworn with water (pira) are linguistically encoded with a special evidential enclitic and the use of the logogram ⟪. Such oaths are legally binding among clan members.
A trader who breaks a pira-oath is ritually shamed; apologies must include a public offering phrased with vela + past tense for restitution.
Tally Weaving
Counting and record-keeping are traditionally done with woven strips where the Feyl script's featural strokes map directly to knot patterns—literacy includes weaving competence.
Merchants send woven receipts (with encoded numbers and 'la' markers) when trading across valleys rather than written notes.
Penultimate stress unless word is monosyllabic.
Example: tara (ˈta.ra) vs. en (en).
Palatal glide /j/ (written 'y') palatalizes preceding velars: k + i -> kʲ effect in fast speech (perceived as slight fronting).
Example: kala /ˈka.la/ remains [ˈka.la], but in rapid speech before /i/ sequences k may be fronted.
Nasal assimilation: /n/ assimilates to following place (e.g., /n/ + /k/ -> [ŋk]).
Example: an + kara -> aŋ kara (phonetic assimilation before velar).
Glottal stop /ʔ/ optionally inserts between adjacent vowels in careful speech or chant to preserve syllable count.
Example: a + e -> aʔe in ritual chanting to maintain metre.
Vowel reduction: unstressed /a/ in rapid speech can centralize toward [ə].
Example: amin ['a.min] in quick speech can be [ə'min].