Language:

The fact that you are even reading this is a small miracle unto itself. The information held within this endeavor was originally told to me in the Veru Lingae(VL), or “true tongue,” a highbrow language spoken in the westernmost portions of the Otherrealm. It has by necessity been translated to English so you can read it here.

What is the Veru Lingae, you ask? Latin? Well, yes and no. It has a Latin base, to be sure, but it has evolved; most of the men and women who crossed from our realm to the Other did so many years ago, and the languages they brought with them evolved in their own way. Their version(s) of Latin is no different. The Veru Lingae is spoken by many learned folk in the more centralized lands. The closest approximation is to say it’s a medley of Latin and Greek peppered with analogous fragments of Cantonese, Khmer, and (oddly) Dutch slang, much of which would not be understood by any linguist you or I might know. It is loudly proclaimed as the language of the modern scholar, as opposed to the Propil Lingae (PL), or “traditional tongue,” which is considered antiquated. (Many ancient documents of note were written in the Propil Lingae, however, so scholars continue to teach it as a necessity.) The Propil Lingae is much closer to actual Latin and Ellenic, a bastardized form of Greek, both of which are still widely utilized in their native lands, Nova Terra and Ellene respectively.

That said, most people don’t speak either language. The most common language spoken is the Custom (or “common”) (or “trade”) Tongue, a mishmash of at least 20 languages spoken by almost everyone else in the world. The custom tongue was born out of necessity, in seaports and borderland trading posts, and perhaps 90% of the people in the centralized nations of the Otherrealm speak at least some of the Custom Tongue.

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