Elemental Water Language in A Strange New World | World Anvil

Elemental Water

The language of Elemental Water is one that lends itself well to sarcasm and wit. It permits the speaker to lay down insightful and often bitingly brutal comments while providing enough double meaning so as to give the speaker the ability to claim innocence and misunderstanding.   In other words it lets the speaker attack and penetrate while being able to dodge any counterattack.   Conversations in Elemental Water are entertaining, to say the least.
But what is water?
Of all the elements, Water seems to be unique in that it is very specifically "water." That is, the molecule H2O. No other liquid has an elemental form as far as we know. There are no warlocks of any other liquid besides water. Because of the revelation about the biological origins of elemental air, some believe that it is the life-giving properties of water itself that explains this restriction. To reinforce this theory, elemental water is not just liquid, but extends to all forms of water from ice to steam to the vapor in the air around you.   Besides liquid water, a water elemental can also exist in ice and steam forms. The water vapor in air is not dense enough to form an identity, so while it would not be an elemental it is still elemental water and can be manipulated by water-manipulating abilities.   Another attribute of water, especially in its liquid form, is that it is the world's most universal solvent. This means that even though elemental water consists of only water molecules, liquid water (and ice and even steam to a lesser degree) contains a number of other materials in solution, called solutes. So while all water elementals are just water, they can all have different solutes and can even modify their solutes. Akin to wearing clothes or even using tools, the ability of water elementals to adjust their solutes gives them additional capabilities not found in fire and air elementals.

Phonology

Elemental water is a very vocal language of clicks and whistles.   As alanguage, it is rare in that it enables simultaneity of sounds. This makes it a three dimensional language consisting of not just length and amplitude, but of width as well. Multiple simultaneous sounds can be communicated to provide more meaning and specificity.

Morphology

Before the advent of Warlocks, water elementals had no personal identities that we could call names. The acoustics of water permit sound to travel so clear and only marginally attenuated by distance that two water elementals in the ocean could potentially speak with one another from opposite sides of the planet. All they would need to do is figure out how to identify the recipient. Needless to say, there are a lot of word modifiers for "you" in order to help one identify oneself as the intended recipient of conversation.   Rather than using a lot of adjectives strung together to describe another, Elemental Water makes use of an extensive vocabulary to pick the perfect adjective. It accomplishes this with the use of orbital adjectives. Similar to adverbs, orbital adjectives are used to modify the base adjective. But whereas adverbs are separate independent words, orbital adjectives are adjectives that use nested suffixes and prefixes. The term orbital was coined by a warlock about 30 years before the apocalyptic calendar was created. It is an appropriate term because of the three dimensional nature of the language itself. The same sound modifier added to the bigging of an adjective would modify it defferently than if it were added at the end or if it were added simultaneously with the root adjective.

Phonetics

The sounds created by water elementals are created within the elemental itself by creating, siphoning and collapsing vapor bubbles. A surprisingly complex assortment of click pops and whistles can be mede this way.
The cover image is of a water warlock speaking Elemental Water

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