Ancestral Alfen

Don't stare too long...

...Their language is nonsensical. There are no standards of sentence structure. Verbs, nouns, and objects shift and appear randomly in the sentence, we can't determine if it is meant to be read left to right, or right to left, and deconstructing a sentence can lead to words that don't even exist in the language. All of this is done to justify their love of symmetry. All of this is done to fuel their obsessions...

— Loryt from Palindromes

Viral languages are written languages that can elicit an emotional response in the one reading it, regardless of their comprehension of the words they are reading. The first viral language died out eons ago, used by the Alfen Ancestors. The only other form of viral language to exist is Formal Ozolithian, which still maintains use in select parts of the world.

Ancestral Alfen differs from formal Ozolithian in many ways. For starters, there is no correlation between the spoken language of the ancestral alfen, which resembles the language of their descendants, and their written language. Phonemes differ between the two, if they existed at all in their writing. This makes the language nearly impossible to study. Those who do have chosen sounds from the present state of the Alfen language and attributed them to each character in Ancestral Alfen. Another difference is the cosmetic element. While both formal and informal Ozolithian were designed for efficiency, establishing rules that allow an entire sentence to be spoken in a single word, Ancestral Alfen was designed for aesthetic value. The entire language centers around palindromes, words that read the same forward and backward. There are rules within the language that forces sentences and even entire paragraphs to do the same, each half of the text existing as a mirror image of the other, and yet saying something entirely different.

A Curious Artform

There is a lack of syllable structure in Ancestral Alfen. In fact, most who study the language agree that the individual letters matter far less than the overall word they are a part of, and this extends to sentences and entire texts as well. The entire "image" of the text is what conveys the meaning, and one must see the whole before they can begin to interpret what is being said with its individual parts.

The language is thought to have started as a form of artistic expression, similar to calligraphy. As time progressed and the Alfen established their empire, the language gathered traction and the empire established standardized rules, adopting it as their written language.

This comes from analyzing the behavior of surviving ancestors, who can simply look at a text and understand its meaning within fractions of a sentence, no matter how large the text is. If this is true, then the language would have been ideal for the Alfen, as it has an alarming degree of efficiency that other languages simply cannot replicate.

Study

A major issue that continues to frustrate many scholars who study ancestral Alfen comes from emotional confusion. Unlike formal Ozolithian, it is never clear if the emotions brought on when reading the language are that of the writer or the reader.

It is possible that emotions expressing intent of the writer get mixed in with instinctively emotional responses on the part of the reader, leading to overwhelming opposite emotions experienced at the same time.

In some cases, scholars studying Alfen technology have activated mechanisms that killed many on accident due to experiencing emotions that they believed the Alfen intended, when in reality it was their emotions they were feeling. The Alfen took pride and joy in the slaughter of others, but that pride and joy could easily be your own, brought on by the fact that you saved lives.

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Fun fact: Alfen Shaping

It is unknown whether the ancestral alfen wrote on parchment. All surviving text in the present is found solely on a smooth, black stone. The stone is dense and resistant to the elements, sharing many qualities with marble.

The ancestors used specialized enchanted chisels that required only a single tap from a mallet to engrave a mark in the stone. This is why their lettering consists primarily of straight lines, excluding a select few chisels that can be switched out for the marks that are not.

Dictionary

2 Words.

Viral Languages

Viral languages offer a comprehensive understanding of the intent. In Formal Ozolithian, many words found in other languages don't exist. By reading it, one can immediately understand the feelings of the writer on the subject, making fiction more than a pastime, but an experience where one can feel every emotion as events unfold on the page.

The Alfen ancestors didn't write fiction, but there is still the benefit of knowing exactly what is intended when it is written. The Alfen used art as a language, but not much else is known about their culture. The language itself is an anomaly among linguists of all skill levels in the present day. Many have dedicated their lives to studying it only to be found wanting as they realize they learned nothing.

A good analogy to how viral languages can benefit those who use them can be found in the real world. Text messaging or online chats can often be misinterpreted or have unintended consequences. Such events never occur when using a viral language one is fluent in because the intent is always clear.

The Language

Now that we have covered a little on functions that exist behind the language, we can now discuss the language itself, or what little is truly known about it. Keep in mind, this is not a language you can learn.

The dictionary lists the definitions, but no one in the world of expedition demeter knows these definitions, and there is little correlation between them that can be found. This is intentional.

The language is not meant to make sense. It isn't supposed to follow linguistic rules. For this reason, I ask that you not worry about whether or not a contradiction is present or whether a rule works. The ancestral Alfen were eldritch being beyond that of our lowly human comprehension. It's supposed to be frustrating and wrong.

Capitalization and Punctuation

There are 101 distinct characters in ancestral alfen. 50 lower case, and 50 capitalized versions. These characters can be written in a standard form or reversed form. This is how sentences begin and end. A capitalized character in standard form begins a sentence, and a reversed characters ends the sentence.

Most characters are unchanged regardless of placement in the sentence, but a select few are literally reversed when ending a sentence, leading to their classification. Anytime a character ends a sentence, it is capitalized and reversed, even when the reverse image is no different.

It is unclear if certain characters act as unique forms of punctuation, such as commas and question marks, though most agree that they do not due to the use of the final character, the lingual mirror.

The Lingual Mirror

The lingual mirror is the middle character of a word, indicating a stop and the reverse repetition of the characters seen before it, making the word a palindrome. Since every word is a palindrome in the language, the lingual mirror exists in every word in the language.

The lingual mirror is fluid, and can be expressed in nearly 20 different ways, each expression having a specific meaning that alters the nature and function of the word or the sentence a word appears in.

Some are believed to express questions, each form of a question having a corresponding form of lingual mirror. Lingual mirrors are also thought to be used for expressing point of view, used for compounding words, and used to express tenses as well.

Sentence Structure

The structure of a sentence is one of the more confusing elements of the language. A single sentence is forced to be a palindrome, which is where the language becomes impossible to decipher. Every time you use a word, you are forced to repeat the word again.

It took many years for a young Cordasian bard named Loryt De Sur to discover that this rule of the language can be meaningful, but just as often can be a cosmetic element of styling. Often times, it does not add to the sentence, change elements of the sentence, or serve any other linguistic function. It is for no other reason than to establish symmetry by making a sentence a mirror image.

When dealing with larger texts, Loryt discovered that this styling rule pertains to a text of any size. From a paragraph to a fully book, a text must be written in reverse when finished. The language can no longer function as a viral language without this styling. Writing a sentence without also reversing it will not elicit the same emotional response.

A coded language

With this new found information, attempts to translate the language got closer than ever to succeeding. in order for those not fluent to begin learning, they must first break down each sentence, and then each word. The language must be approached as one would approach a cypher. By taking note of the The Lingual Mirrors present, and then removing them, you are left with two words.

YesereseY

Yese eseY

In this case, you have two capital letters in one word, indicating a full sentence, but this also indicates a proper noun. The latter half of the sentence is only their for symmetry in the "sentence" and conveys no meaning.

Proper nouns are the only time you will find a capital letter in between the start and end of the sentence. YesereseY is the name of a city, and the latter half, well as the lingual mirror "r" can be removed. This leaves the word Yesse, which means purity.

Translating the language

This is one of 6 words successfully translated by scholars, only possible due to the fact that the alfen of the present day use the word in its original forms, though this does not mean every word can be broken down into elvish.

The fact that one can find the true word by eliminating parts of the palindrome has helped in studying the language by making it safer and less emotionally taxing, but it doesn't always work. If a word is not a proper noun, the word after the lingual mirror is unique and does add to the sentence, even if it ends with a capitalized character.

In truth, there is no method of proper translation, and the successful translations are nothing more than words that ancestral alfen share with their decendent's language by coincidence. Most words are not so clear in their meaning. Ilithtili is a prime example.

Ilit and tili are two unique words that have yet to be properly translated. For the purpose of the article, Ilit means profound, major, or extreme and tili means mistake. This means that ilithtili is actually two words put together, which is a fact heavily debated by those who study the language.