Shelesh: The Angaran Lingua Franca

Introduction

Although the Angara have between 200 and 300 languages, their most common language is Shelesh, a lingua franca developed in the early days of angaran spaceflight before the Scourge. Shelesh faded into obscurity when angaran civilization collapsed, but has recently been revived as separated angaran settlements have re-established relations. Known Shelesh words and phrases from Mass Effect: Andromeda were used as a starting point for the feel and structure of Shelesh, beginning with Jaal’s Word of the Day and the Mass Effect wiki page. Clarification on whether a particular word is from the source material, derived, or original can be provided by request.
This work begins with chapters describing the structure of the language, followed by lists of words and sample translations on particular topics. Explanations of the context and relevance of the terms is given as well. The Shelesh Lexicon is an alphabetized (Latin alphabet) reference of Shelesh words that is updated periodically.
In general, angara are extremely expressive and descriptive people. Given that family, and more generally, people are culturally important to them, their language has a broad range of words to describe who other angara are. This is particularly noticeable with nouns for siblings and with personal pronouns. Personal pronouns convey an individual’s relationship to the other angara, as well as some information about the angara being referenced. This means that angaran pronouns used can vary based on the social composition of a group, much as some english pronouns and adjectives vary based on the age and gender of a group.
For example, Jaal views Torvar as a peer and uses toh, the personal pronoun for peers or similarly-aged siblings. On the other hand, Torvar is a bit awed by Jaal’s position in the Resistance (and later with the Pathfinder), so they tend to err on the side of using goh or even mohnin, a generic pronoun and one for an elder, respectively. Torvar is flattered that Jaal views them as a peer, while it annoys Jaal to be called mohnin by someone they have known as a sibling for many years. It’s a minor point of contention between the two angara that disappears in more casual interactions, with both of them using toh.

Morphology

Below are linguistic patterns based on the examples provided from the Bioware cipher.

• -an, -on, and -en tend to be affixed to nouns, particularly ones describing a person. E.g. bosen, and tavetaan
• -ir or -lyn sometimes tends to be affixed to places E.g. draullir
• -ara sometimes affixed to complex abstract concepts E.g. inlaara
• -lasea or -las forms a gerund meaning "the act of doing x" equivalent to -tion E.g. Vesolasea
• -ng or -nj is typically added to form a plural
• T is more common than c/k, with voiced stops (b,d,g) seeming more common than their unvoiced counterparts (p, t, k). However, several culturally important words begin with these sounds - Taoshay, tavetaan, paavoa

Syntax

The standard Shelesh sentence structure is often Subject - Verb - Object, or Subject - Predicate. Adjectives and adverbs are typically placed before the word they modify (e.g. tall building, quickly running). However, both of these are loose conventions and variable sentence structure is noticeable with angara from different linguistic backgrounds. There is very little duplication of related words, reflecting the unusual history of Shelesh as a created language.

Phonetics

Since Shelesh is a lingua franca initially developed and then revived to facilitate communication between all of the angaran people across the worlds, it is fairly consistent, but also exhibits many characteristics seen in other angaran languages. The full history of the language is unknown, but its pre-Scourge development most likely began from a common linguistic root for angaran languages. They went backward in order to use sounds and structures that work well for most angara. Given the recently discovered influence of the Jardaan on angaran development, they undoubtedly did have a single pan-species language at one point in their cultural evolution.
There are no silent letters. Every letter has a sound, and the sound is vocalized in spoken Shelesh. The letters C, Q, and X and Z are not used when transcribing Shelesh using latin characters, as they represent duplicate sounds in English or are not present in Shelesh at all. The letter combinations k, s, ss, or ks, je, … would be used for comparable sounds in Shelesh. The phonology described below is an example based on Jaal’s pronunciation, which is common for angara native to Havarl. The charts below use the IPA font, and will not display correctly if this font is not available.

Vowels

Latin - IPA	Std. English Example	Latin - IPA	Std. English Example
a - a or ɑ	bar, lot	aa - a: or ɑ:	bra, star
e - ɛ	bet	ee - ɛ:	air
i/y - i	be	ii/y - i:	feed
o/u - oʊ	code	oo/uu - oʊ:	door

Consonants

letters in parentheses indicate the real-world english equivalent where the sounds do not correspond to simple english equivalents. In particular, θ 'dd' is the soft 'th' sound that is very common in Welsh, and the ʒ 'juh' is easiest to transcribe as the 'je' that is common in French (and Shelesh).

Labial

Dental

Alveolar

Lateral

Post- alveolar

Palatal

Velar

Glottal

Nasal

m

n

ɲ (ny)

ŋ (ng)

Stop

p

b

t

d

k

ɡ

Affricate

ts

tʃ (ch)

dʒ (j)

Fricative

f

v

θ (th)

ð (dd)

s

ʃ (sh)

ʒ (juh)

h

Trill

r̥

r

Approximant

ɹ

ɫ

l ʎ (lly)

j (y)

w

History

The angara are a fascinating race, but their language is relatively undeveloped in the Mass Effect: Andromeda game. The transition between First Contact and fluent translation of everyone's speech takes place so quickly and during such a complex series of events that we learn more of their language from Jaal's "Word of the Day" than from the initial encounters. This is an attempt to extend canon vocabulary into an organized, functional conlang for the Angara.

Spoken by

• Angara - The Anchored People