#triworld

Now, in modern Triworld, there are 4 main languages. They're generally divided by species, though there is some geopolitical leakage.

Trade-tongue (occasionally known as humani, Lingua Franca of everywhere except the Cescere/Syvniko)

Spirit/Fae (more commonly known as Cescereli)

Angelic/Demonic/Sirenic (generally called Angelic)

Ghoulish (also used by the nearly extinct shifters)

Trade-tongue:

You can operate on the assumption that Trade-tongue will be considered the default. The Humans, and to a lesser extent, the elves, use it exclusively. It is a mish-mash of a variety of different languages, from the days when different tribes worshipped different gods, with a great deal of influence from the now-archaic Elvish tongue. To a non-native speaker it will have a rolling cadence, with rounded words than the a spirit or ghoul would be comfortable with.

Interestingly, it contains some Greek/Latin prefixes in it, as seen by the countries Luxatia and Nyctomachia. (As a writer, it's because younger me loved her fancy language and never saw what a pain it would be for older me. The lore reason is that a Wanderer found his/her way into Triworld and messed up human linguistics in the process)

Cescereli:

Oh dear. Where do I even begin? This is by far the most detailed of my languages, and I would go so far as to call it a conlang. It operates on a character based format, similar to Chinese, and any depictions of Cescereli in my writing will be limited to phonetic transcriptions until I work out how to input made-up symbols into my writing.

Sentence structure is fairly variable, given that it has dozens of dialects, and some linguists have (very hesitantly) suggested that the linguistic drift might be so great that they ought to be considered several languages. The spirits, being a very United people, cannot and will never accept that, and the Fae's pidgin of trade-tongue and Cescereli is remarkably faithful to what is known as the Imperial dialect.

Cescereli uses a great deal of compound words, with each character being seperated by a ' or a -, or nothing at all, depending on the type of character in use. Something that would incorporate all three might be Cescere'nari-ilra, which is what spirits use to refer to mountain elves.

Directly translated, it would mean Our (ces) Mountain (Cere) Long-eared (nari, also a term used to refer to donkeys and rabbits) Mortals (ilra, with ilre being the immortal version). As you can tell, it is my darling. I could write its own post about it, and about the spirits in general)

Now, the elves, being geographically close to the spirit Capital, share quite a bit of vocabulary with the spirits, so spirits often find themselves shocked to hear Cescereli within trade-tongue. Spirits are fiercely protective of their language and insist on speaking it amongst themselves. Any being that wishes to work amongst spirits, or to a lesser extent, Far, has to have at least some modicum of Cescereli proficiency.

To a non-native speaker, it sounds like a teakettle hissing. This has been the source of rage for many spirits.

Angelic:

A dot-based language, it has the greatest tonal variation of any tongue on Triworld. Angelic requires the speaker to transverse as far as three octaves across a single sentence, leading it to be known as song-tongue colloquially.

Few species have the vocal chords to actually pronounce the words, with sirens, angels, demons, and spirits (who refuse to speak it due to an ancient rivalry with the sirens) being the only ones truly able to speak it fluently. The remaining species, when trying to learn Angelic, use a variant known as Lesser Enochian (another remnant of a long-gone Wanderer), which has far less warbling.

It is known as the most beautiful language in existence, and sirens take great pleasure in reciting Angelic poetry to honoured guests. Demons, on the other hand, delight in their dialect, Infernal (which has its own set of sub-dialects), as a method of mocking those without sufficiently high ranges of hearing to catch their words. Angels prefer pretending they do not have to share their language with two other species, and insist their dialect is the only 'true' one.

Ghoulish:

As languages go, Ghoulish is a mess. It has a basis of shifter-speak, with a dash of Cescereli, some elven, a remarkable amount of Goddish, vampiric to taste, and what might actually be the original human tongue, or perhaps ancient ghoulish.

It came of the Lich-Queen of Ceredell (yes, you do note the Cescereli Cere being mixed with the trade-tongue Dell) wanting to cut her ties to humanity. As a tribute to the people who visited her coronation (I'm currently writing this story up now, so spoiler alert for the Lich-Queen!), she named her capital after the spirits, made shifter-tongue the national language, devoted a quarter of every mortal city to the Gods, industrialised the blood-substitute industry for the vampires, and offered free and safe immigration for all the above species.

The result was... This. Ghoulish growls and snaps and whistles and bounces of the walls like it's high on booze-berry. It technically uses the trade-tongue alphabet, but with each letter having indentations and inflections, it might as well be its own language.