Languages in the Spiral Empire

The Spiral Empire contains over one hundred languages in about twelve language families, the majority of which are spoken only in Dhi. Lingua and Zakhash serve as the most common languages of government and Tak as the most important for trade.

## Seprum Republic

The dominant language in Seprum is **Lingua**. During the unification period, Seprum emperors and generals mostly stamped out the two other most common languages, **Elkese** in Henesia and **Lykan** in Lykos. However, in recent years, Seprum archaeologists have struggled to decode **Planar A** and **B**, both of which appear related to Lykan hieroglyphics and possibly to **Potoma** cuneiform as well. In their efforts to translate the ancient languages, they have revitalized interest in speaking and reading Lykan, though only a few native speakers remain.

Seprum uses a 26-letter alphabet, with each character representing a sound, to write its words. It is inflective and carries roots from Lykan, Henesian, and older languages spoken in the region. Verbs are conjugated by subject and tense and pronouns are inflected by case.

## Kuan Empire

The three major tribes in the Kuan Empire speak six languages in two different language families. Tsasi Saj's tribe spoke Zakhesh, which rose in popularity when he declared himself Saj and united the other tribes. The five other languages in that family are: Choson, Turkei, Hsia, San, and Tibese. The sixth language, Nofari, is an orphan, the only remaining languages in its family. Because Zakhesh and the other Kuan languages have no written components, the history of any other languages in the region is mostly lost.

Zakhesh is an agglutinating language, where every segment of a word contains a discrete piece of meaning, either conjugation, pluralization, or inflection.

In Kuan-occupied Diao, most citizens speak both Zakhesh and Diao. Diao is written using characters, not letters, and the language is isolated, which means morphemes cannot be analyzed for meaning. Diao is a highly referential and abstract language. Most speakers have a shared knowledge of idioms, classics, and wordplay that makes puns and other linguistic jokes common, though relatively difficult for outsiders to understand.

## Makkada Sultanate

The language of government in Makkada is Tak. Fifteen other languages are spoken in the Mauzji region, most of them on Assa and Bakr. Tak was spoken most in Makkar, the city where Bari edj-Makkar was born, and he used it to write the rules of a new system of government. It became the de facto language of government after that, and, when Kuan and Seprum diplomats and soldiers learned it to communicate with Makkadi citizens, it also became the languages of trade and economics.

Tak is written using a 36-character script, where each character represents a vowel-consonant sound combination. It is an inflective language. Tak has three written forms, a calligraphic form that includes all parts of the word, a shorthand that drops a lot of unnecessary detail and may or may not include all letters, and a regular form, which drops vowel-only characters.

Rhetorical competitions play an important role in Makkadi society and the government sponsors tournaments in a variety of Makkadi languages to keep them all alive. Though they have dominant languages, they do not wish to lose any of the less spoken ones.

## Ju Kingdom

The only language spoken in Ju is Sokan, though it comes in two dialects. Unlike nearby Diao, which shares some morphological similarities, it is written using characters that represent sounds instead of whole words. It is a highly recursive language that can accept up to five embedded clauses without losing clarity.

## Commonwealth of Dhi

Some eighty or ninety languages are spoken in various parts of Dhi, from many different families. The five most common are: Gaon, Gabish, Estari, Misyu, and Dhaban. In the remote parts of the Aleya Range, each village speaks a different language, sometimes from different families. Some can be written, some cannot.