Harena (language)

**Harena** (commonly called **Harenan**) is the language spoken by the harena elves, a subrace of elves found in the hottest regions on the Subsolar Hemisphere of Ophaelia. It is a branch of Elven that has evolved with isolation, and through contact with entities from the Elemental Plane of Fire. The distinction between vowels and some consonants is often so minute that it takes many non-native speakers years to become fluent; it is *not* mutually intelligible with other Elven languages. Speakers describe it as the 'voice of sand' because of its characteristic crackles and whispers that one might associate with sounds of the desert.

## History

Harena evolved from an intermediary language called Deharena, which belonged to a culture that only existed during the transition that birthed the Harena culture. It was intended to be used as a cryptic language to throw off oppressors, around the time of the reign of the Zarelian Empire, but through extensive use became a language in and of itself. For this evolution, many words were borrowed from the Baž*č*ian language due to its proximity, and therefore still remain an integral part of the vocabulary.

## Dialects

***Ethimørk***
Considered to be the most widely spoken variant of Harena, Ethimørk is often used as a 'standard' for the language. Evolving from communities of elves, and descendants from the Elemental Plane of Fire, it is harmonic, yet with harsh consonants.
***Beží* Folkish**
(Pronounced /bɛ.ʒi:/). This dialect, spoken by the Beží Folk, sounded coarse and aggressive. To a standard speaker, it would sound impolite or uncivilised. Even to some non-native speakers, it has become something of a battle language. It is known to be influenced by the Infernal language.
***Níað***
(Pronounced /ni:.ʌð/). During the transition stage, speakers of Deharena migrated to the [insert name of subsolar location pre-PTE] and encountered nomads of the Vathelesc people. The nomads' journey was toward the coasts of [insert name of subsolar location], which is where this dialect is now spoken. The differing factor between the Ethimørk and Níadh dialects is that the latter interestingly has some mutual intelligibility with Celestial.
## Grammar

The grammar of the Harena language is vastly different to that of Elven. The sentence structure and grammatical rules are highly isolated from any of its precursor languages, yet it retains some similarity to Ignan.

* **Word order**: Conjunction > Subject > Preposition > Adjective > Object > Verb > Determiner > Adverb > Pronoun.
* **Affixes**:
	+ "-att" turns a verb into the word for the 'doer' of that verb.
	+ "-xal" turns a noun into its adjectival counterpart.
* **Omissions**:
	+ when referring to oneself, there shouldn't be a pronoun ending the sentence.
	+ if the Harena word for refer [to], *ᾱ ví*, is used before the subject, the pronoun for "it" isn't necessary at the end of the sentence.
* When two consecutive consonants are the same, the sounds are joined, where the first becomes an implosive consonant, and the latter is unchanged. This is analogous to British English, in the phrase "hit two."
* When two consecutive vowels are the same, the first is replaced with a glottal stop, and the latter is unchanged.

## Appendix

See Also

* Harena dictionary
* Phonetic guide