Cielcin Language

Little is known about specific phonology, as the language is known only from written accounts, or as spoken by humans, who are non-native speakers.

One thing known from Lord Marlowe's accounts is that the mn sound present in many Cielcin words is a nasal diagraph, a trilling sound that humans can't produce.^[1]

The Cielcin written language is called Udaritanu, and is a non-linear glyph form of writing. Individual glyphs are called udaritani. The glyphs are described as interlocking, circular runes, which are pictoral in nature.^[2]

Below are listed known Cielcin pronouns, words, titles, and sentences, translated into Classical English. Because of the unreliability of Lord Marlowe's translations, many words and phrases have been excluded from this lexicon if their exact meaning or usage could not be corroborated with other examples provided elsewhere in the accounts.

Some non-spoken communication elements are worth noting. The Cielcin have no word for yes, but instead express affirmative with a hard exhale or outrushing of air. The Cielcin also have a few distinctive gestures to indicate yes or no. Rolling the head in a clockwise motion is akin to a human nod, whereas rolling the head counterclockwise is the equivalent of a human shaking their head. Similarly, tipping the head to the right is a curt affirmative, and assumedly, tipping the head to the left would be a curt negative.

Pronouns

The following table contains the most commonly-used pronouns. Other pronouns are evident in Lord Marlowe's books, but their exact usage is not completely clear, and they do not follow the same format as those provided in this table. They have therefore been excluded from this lexicon until more can be learned.

Cielcin pronouns typically have two genders: the masculine-active, and the feminine-receptive.^[3] In many situations, the active gender is used to refer to oneself, and the receptive used to refer to others, but this can switch depending on the social status of, or situation between, the subjects.

In comparing Cielcin dialogue with known and suspected translations or strong context clues, a consistent pattern in pronoun forms became evident, and from this pattern, pronouns not provided in Lord Marlowe's texts were extrapolated. These are denoted by italics in the following table, and are not confirmed as correct.

Dictionary

The following dictionary was developed by comparing entries in a collected database of Cielcin dialogue and terms provided in Lord Marlowe's accounts. In some cases, a translation provided in text seemed likely enough given its context to trust as accurate. In many other cases, words are only included in this dictionary if the same word, or at least word base, was used in multiple places and the majority of those instances had the same meaning attibuted to them.

Nouns are provided with plurals denoted if the plural was mentioned in the texts, and otherwise only include the singular forms. Verbs are provided in two potential forms: the base form, if available, and the command form (denoted as such in each instance), which is very commonly used. Many verbs deciphered were only available in command form, thus their inclusion in this dictionary. Many other verbs have been desiphered in one or more tenses, but because of the large variation in the availability of these forms, verbs for which the base form and/or command form weren't identifiabe are not included here, with the exception of certain forms of the verb to be because of their commonality in usage.

Command forms of verbs are consistent in always ending in -a or -aa, and in some cases, both versions have been seen for the same verb. It is possible that a single -a is the standard version, and -aa is used when the word is meant to be emphasized, but this is just theory and has not yet been confirmed.

Sentences

This table consists of a collection of Cielcin phrases for which the translations are reasonably well assured. Many other pieces of Cielcin dialogue from Lord Marlowe's texts are accompanied by apparent translations, but not all of them are able to be confirmed. In some cases, some words are desipherable and they do not match what Lord Marlowe claims they translate to, indicating unreliability of the translation given as a whole. There are phrases not included in this table for which it is possible Lord Marlowe gives accurate translations, but for the sake of accuracy, they are excluded if the meaning of any part of the phrase could not be confirmed by comparing words and word bases to other phrases in his texts.

• The grammar structure of the Cielcin language is inspired by both Latin and Japanese.^[4]

• Links to other articles that relate to the language, in a list.
• Only link pages that don't appear frequently in the text above.