Languages

There are two major human languages in the Empire, the Old Tongue (Kuroren or Firen) and the Common Tongue (Fulren). The Old Tongue is the original native language of the original Union of Five, later known simply as the States after the Third Crusade. Now, the Old Tongue is spoken mostly by Priests, and the Common Tongue is a creole formed by the assimilation of at least a dozen other languages and generations of time, though the Old Tongue remains the largest influence.

The Sůroïä and the Suṙjafiä have their own languages, known as Sůroïren and Jafren, respectively. Jafren appears to be a divine tongue, granted to the Suṙjafi by Rajafaṙ Ailja, because it shows extremely little variation between Suṙjafi colonies, many of which have been almost completely isolated for hundreds of cycles. Sůroïren can be separated into many dialects, but as a rule, the dialects spoken by any particular village remain mutually intelligible for any distance less than a month's travel (72 days).

Both human tongues have a system of natural gender with three genders: Divine, Animate, and Inanimate. The pronouns in use for each gender have remained the same in the Common Tongue, but they are not translated in this document because they lack good English equivalents. They are: "Ail", meaning "divine", "sur", meaning "life", (In Firen, fire is considered to be alive, and is referred to with sur.) and "fol", meaning "thing". Unlike the other two, fol is not commonly seen in words, but its use is mostly confined to that pronoun. Rather than having entirely separate pronouns to refer to groups, you instead add an A to the end of the pronoun, and for mixed groups, you "round up". To form the reflexive, you suffix the pronoun with "ja". For possessives, you use the construct "ko <pronoun>".

To recap, "Sur lent me ko sur horse.", (<Person> lent me <person>'s horse.) "Ailistiff constructed the World Seed Ailja.", (Ailistiff constructed the World Seed itself. (Note that Ail is not like it at all, but it's even less like he or she. I could use they in a singular sense, but that would just muck it up because Ail is syntactically singular and the plural form is Aila.)) "Pick fola up." (Pick those things up.) "Sura invited me to feast ko sura." (They invited me to their feast.).

This is somewhat oversimplified and further information can be found in the Glossary.

For convenience, the Common Tongue is always translated to English, while the Old Tongue is preserved because uneducated people on Corasur likely can't understand it that much better than you do. (And for flavor)

Inspiration for this language comes mostly from whatever I decide sounds good, but some roots are vaguely from Greek or Latin. The writing system (Baofusk) is inspired mostly by Korean, and uses its "alphabetic syllabary" format (my name, because it appears that hangul is entirely unique among Earthly orthographies and therefore has never been categorized properly). It is simpler than hangul, however, and maintains a sharp orthographic distinction between vowels and consonants. Eventually, I will create a font for it and incorporate information about it here in the Wiki, but at the moment I cannot easily accomplish that.

Glossary

This is a list of terms used in the Old Tongue with translations into English. The Common Tongue is understood to be the lingua franca of this world, and is universally translated into English, though the reader should note that the Common Tongue is actually a creole of Old Tongue and various assimilated languages, and nothing like English. Not much literature is written in the Common Tongue,

In this document, Old Tongue words are rendered in this alternate font where there is a translation, or when the non-English nature of the word(s) is being specifically evoked, and not for cases when a translation would not be suitable. Proper names are the primary example of the latter, and also the various uses of Corasurian pronouns.

In general, nouns are made plural by appending "a". Unlike in English, this is generally only done for uncounted nouns, so you would say "People live in the town.", but "There are 5 person living in this house." Pluralizing explicitly counted nouns isn't wrong per se, but is redundant.

Roots

cora

"Land of", used as a prefix. (Corasur: "Land of" + "Life", Corasal: "Land of" + "Silver") Modified to colra to mean "nation", "satrapy" or more generally, "territory with designated borders". Formed from the uncount noun cor, ("land") but is now enough more significant that it is placed first in this glossary.

Ra--(t)ar

"Aspect", is a circumfix, which is similar to a prefix or suffix, but is applied to both ends of the word at once. To use it, you take a root word, like jaf, ("stone") and you place it in the middle, giving "ra-jaf-(t)ar". Since "jaf" ends in a consonant, you leave off the T, and you get the final form Rajafar, "Aspect of Stone". Most worlds in the Old Tongue start with a consonant, but when they do not, an apostrophe is inserted representing the compound. This is usually, but not always, a glottal stop. ("Glottal stop" sounds scary, but in reality, it's just the name for the separation of two "breathy" sounds, like in "n'uh-uh". (Yes it is a word!) (This is different from the hiatus in "uh-huh", by the way. I specifically mean the form used for negatives which doesn't have a second H. You might pronounce it with or without the N.)

ko

"Property-of", used to mark possession. Most common in phrases of the form <noun> ko <owner>.

dai

"Unending" or "eternal".

hay

"Home".

lao

"Sign". Plural: lao'a.

sur

"Life" and "fire", Old Tongue does not clearly demarcate the two concepts. Also used as a pronoun for living beings.

Related words include: suri, "person"; suro, "animal"; and suray, "plant".

nul

"Death" (abstract). "nulli" is "corpse",

-i

Suffix meaning "person" (abstractly). May be applied to a number of roots for slightly different effects.

Demonyms are commonly formed by <description> + suria.

"Human" specifically is suraf.

Suro'i

"Animal-people". Formed by suro ("animal") + suri ("person") with the duplicate part elided. Plural: Suro'ia.

kor

"Law". Kori is a derived term, and means "lawgiver" or "governor".

korsuri

Translated in this document as "satrap", literally "lawmaking person".

corakor

"Satrapy", literaly "land of law".

mar

"City". Often a suffix.

Ful

"Common".

list

"Iron" or other common metals. (Specifically "iron" is "fullist", literally "common iron")

sal

"Silver". Prototypically refers to the metal, but also to the combination of color and luster we would call "metallic silver".

jaf

"Stone" or "Earth" (only infertile rocky soils, like gravel or sand).

su

"Water".

kof

"Heat", also abstractly refers to fire.

surkof

"Fire", literally "living heat".

na

Negative term.

la

"Strength" or "power".

voli

"Change" and "growth".

fi

"Knowledge".

curo

"Time", "age"

rayn

"Speech", "talking"

Counting

Corasur's people use a base-12 positional counting system, also known as dozenal. In this document, I have transcribed the numerals as 0123456789AB.