Smeralda Lingvo

Smeralda Lingvo is an enchanted form of the Earthling language of Esperanto which is useable only by those whose particular brand of love has been deemed illegal by the Empire of Oz. Having been blessed by Phina herself, it has been in use by the Emerald City’s LGBTQ+ community for over a century now. In recent years, it has also become the official language of the Ostké Liberation Front. Their love of the old ways having also been deemed illegal, they saw a loophole and dove right through it.

The Enchantment

In much the same way that every sapient being in Eden is fluent in the English language, every individual who has been discriminated against based on “loving the wrong way” is magically able to read, write, speak, and understand Smeralda Lingvo. The only exceptions are those who are also attempting to discriminate against another group.

Secondarily, those who cannot understand Smeralda Lingvo do not even hear the language being spoken. Instead, if they happen upon two people conversing in the language, they will hear an innocuous conversation in English instead. Similarly, a document written in Smeralda Lingvo will appear to be nothing more than a tedious legal document to those not blessed by the enchantment.

History

According to Wikipedia, which is never wrong, Esperanto was created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 as “a universal second language for international communication.” Conspiracy theorists in Eden believe that the goddess Phina chose it as the basis for Smeralda Lingvo because she was a fan of the Earthling comic book Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. In that comic, copies of which are readily available in the Edenian Athenæum, Esperanto is used as the language of magic.

Linguistic Properties

Smeralda Lingvo possesses the same linguistic properties as traditional Esperanto, while officially adding ri as the singular third-person gender-neutral pronoun.