Aeth'ru
Origin Planet
Thirelia
Year
3124
Speakers
~ 72,000
Aethrul developed among scattered high-plateau communities on Thirelia where wind-carved canyons produced long echoes. The language evolved to encode echoes, subtle evidential cues, and precise temporal sequencing for navigation and oral poetry.
Spoken by the Aethri people, who are semi-nomadic cliff-dwellers and reed-weavers. Social life revolves around communal work songs, layered storytelling (echo-poetry), and intricate kinship rituals that require explicit markers of evidence and responsibility in speech.
Primarily the Aethri communities across three major plateaus and several coastal coves on Thirelia; used in ritual, trade, and navigation.
Primary stress on final syllable of lexical roots; affixation may shift stress predictably (stress is contrastive for tense/ evidential suffixes).
Aethrul uses a mixed featural-syllabary script (called Thar-Runes) designed to reflect echo-patterns: base signs indicate CV blocks; diacritics modify vowel length or indicate glottal breaks. Lines are written right-to-left in columns read top-to-bottom, reflecting traditional chanting order. Visuals favor angular stroke-echo motifs.
Noun system
Nouns mark number (singular, dual, plural) with suffixes (-Ø, -ta dual, -n plural). Possession uses suffixes (-i 'my', -ik 'your', -ir 'their') attached to possessed noun. No grammatical gender. Two case roles distinguished morphologically: nominative (unmarked) and oblique (marked with -e) used for objects of prepositions and some possessed forms.
Verb system
Verbs are agglutinative: tense is indicated by prefixes (past ka-, present Ø, future so-). Aspect is shown by suffixes: -e (perfective/completed), -a (progressive). Evidentiality is obligatory in past tense and indicated by a suffix: -li (direct/personal witness), -se (reported/heard), -ru (inferred). Negation is pre-verbal particle 'na'.
Adjective rules
Adjectives precede the noun they modify and agree only in number (adjective plural with -n). Comparative formed analytically with particle 'mera' (more).
Number rules
Counting is primarily base-10. Singular is unmarked, dual uses suffix -ta, plural uses -n. Numeral-noun order: numeral precedes noun (e.g., 'ara var' = one home). Ordinals formed with suffix -th (ara-th 'first').
| Phrase | Meaning | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| Salen ti | Peace to you / greeting | ˈsa.lɛn ti |
| Korun thar | Thank you (literally 'song-returned') | ˈko.run θar |
| Var-echo | May your shelter hold (blessing) | var ɪˈkoʊ |
| Question | Meaning | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| ka? | what? | ka |
| hurn? | where? | hurn |
| seka? | who? | seˈka |
| keni? | why? | ˈkɛ.ni |
| mali? | how many? | ˈma.li |
| English | Translation | Literal meaning | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|---|
| I see the big bird. | Mi lon gala veth. | I bird big see | mi lon ˈga.la vɛθ |
| They will go to the mountain. | Sen rith so-lar. | They mountain future-go | sɛn riθ so-lar |
| Do you (pl.) know? | Tiv zun-ka? | You(pl) know-QUEST | tiv zun-ka |
| My home is warm. | Var-i mi hira. | Home-my I warm | var-i mi ˈhi.ra |
| He gave water (reported). | Se neth ʃar ka-se. | He water give past-reported | se nɛθ ʃar ka-se |
| Don't sleep (imperative). | Na preth! | Neg sleep | na prɛθ |
Echo-Poetry
A layered oral tradition where a stanza is spoken and then repeated at a lower pitch as an 'echo' that carries additional grammatical evidential suffixes. Echo marks in writing show where the echo line should be chanted.
A storyteller chants a line declaring an ancestor's deed; the echo-line adds the speaker's claim-evidence (direct or reported).
Obligatory Evidentiality
Because of the Aethri emphasis on navigational safety and social responsibility, speakers must mark how they know a past event (direct witness, hearsay, inference). This shapes both everyday speech and legal testimony.
When someone reports a rockfall, they must use -se (reported) or -li (witness) on the verb to indicate how they know it.
Weave-Naming
Newborns are named at a communal weaving ceremony; names are woven as patterns into a sash and the verbal naming uses a special verb-form with the echo-mark, invoking both kin and landscape.
The mother's line sings the child's qualities; the community echoes the lineage with the echo-marked refrain.
Final-syllable stress: primary stress falls on the final syllable of lexical roots (affixes may change placement).
Example: veth (see) pronounced vɛˈθ (stress on final consonant syllable).
Glottal stop marks evidential or deliberate breaks; when written, use the glottal diacritic and a brief pause in speech.
Example: koru (to sing) vs koʔru (to sing with an evidential pause – reported).
ɬ (voiceless lateral fricative) appears chiefly in ritual lexicon and is produced by placing the tongue against the alveolar ridge and forcing air laterally.
Example: Word 'ɬar' (rare ritual verb) pronounced ɬar with a lateral hiss.
Long vowels are phonemic and indicated in the script with the length diacritic; they contrast with short vowels.
Example: ara /ˈa.ra/ (one) vs aːra /aːˈra/ (a different lexical root meaning 'lineage').
Aspiration: voiceless stops are lightly aspirated in initial position before vowels.
Example: tuk (four) realized [tʰuk] in careful speech.