Thet is a huge melting pot of different cultures and species. Naturally, that means there are many, many different ways in which the people communicate. This section of the site catalogues the most common and important languages, in as much detail as possible. The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis may not be exactly true, but understanding how Thessians form their metaphors, words, and sentences is nevertheless an excellent way to get inside their heads. You may also be interested in the Flash Cards tool.

Each culture that has come to Thet has brought with it at least one language. The Lyrisclensiae brought with them a distant, scholarly relative of old Telaian; the Cossipai a simple, common tongue; the Lilitai, the very essence of Ksreskézaian, and so on. During the early eras, prior to the collapse of the Thessian sun, this meant that there existed a complicated mixture of grammars and vocabularies which interwove with one another; sometimes freely, sometimes not.

Glissia: The common Lyrisclensian tongue, predominantly an artificial mixture of classical Latin and Greek with Rotomemi. Glissia is an example of extreme hypercorrection, containing many archaisms we would consider out of date today.

Oksirapho: Late Ksreskézaian, full of guttural consonants and built on a robust, plain grammar. Includes a full honourific system that Lilitika dropped. (dictionary, dialectology)

Lilitika: A revised tongue based predominantly on Oksirapho, but adapted to the more tender human voice, dropping many harsh consonants and adding numerous subtle distinctions meant to disambiguate grammatical meanings. Contains isolated pockets of Rotomemi vocabulary, such as atsha (pronounced "acha"), meaning "star", which can be traced all the way back to Latin "astra". During its early years Lilitika was a very artificial language constructed to avoid use of Oksirapho, but over the course of the two millennia in which it was the mother tongue of the Lilitai, it became a very expressive and subtle form of communication. (grammar, phonology and alphabet, dictionary, examples, dialectology)

Kuanid: Modern Telaian, still widely-used outside of Thet. Rotomemi is an off-shoot. Unlike Rotomemi, there is very little baggage; the language makes up for having a poor descriptive power by having compact enough words that set phrases and extra sentences still fit in well. (grammar, phonology and alphabet, dictionary)

Roshagil: Cossipian, distinguished from Kuanid by thousands of years of cultural contamination. Also developed a heavy reliance on short particles and other words, and while it shares little vocabulary with modern Kuanid, cross-pollination of phrases is common.

Tletkettioyos: The language of the extinct natives of Thet, difficult to pronounce in its original form because it relies almost exclusively on clicking noises. Widely studied in a modified (pronounceable) form due to its importance in early Thessian archaeology. Some Physarai consider it their heritage and make a particular effort to learn it; thus it constitutes as much of a cultural tongue for them as any language could.

Rotomemi: An isolate of Kuanid as old as Glissia, which developed many unique features in its changes afterwards, though it is still many hundreds thousands of years away from Exodusial. Not a direct ancestor of Roshagil. Not actually called Rotomemi, but known that way as the passengers of the Rotomem were the last known speakers of it.

Hogedepik: The major language of the Hogedep, mostly imported into Thet via scientific exchange.

Khúsak: The language of the eponymous peacekeepers who laid out numerous concepts of diplomacy; the Ksreskzaian and Hogedepi legal codes are riddled with Khúsak terminology, and as such it tends to be studied as a matter of course amongst law students in Thet.

Paligu: The language of the Peseneyi, consisting primarily of clicks and chirps. A transphonation for the human tongue has been created which is not overly burdensome to manipulate.

Exodusial: A creole language consisting predominantly of influences from Classical English and Mandarin, with many influences from other old Terran tongues. It was spoken by the first colonists to depart from Earth, but has mostly been forgotten.

Classical English: Due to the immense amount of scientific literature written in English, the modern form of the 19th, 20th, 21st, and 22nd centuries became a prestige language taught ubiquitously in Terran schools for the next several thousand years, as Latin and Greek had before it. To this day, technical documentation on Thet is still frequently written in English, and the wealth of Terran culture material either produced in or translated into the language has given it a permanent place in history. New idioms are occasionally coined, but these have had hundreds of thousands of years to wax and wane in popularity, so a Thessian speaking English (if she or he can master the accent) is more than likely to be intelligible to a native speaker.

Effort towards a common, unified Thessian tongue began in the research institutions founded by the Lyrisclensiae, but frequented by most, if not all, of the other denizens of Thet. The need to create a standard dialect was overpowering for efficient communication.

Further reading: