Harpy Speech

Introduction

Unfortunately, the harpy language has just as poor of a reputation amongst the kingdom-sanctioned people as the harpies themselves do, and so it has been characterized as being simplistic, crude, and lacking in the artistry and nuances inherent to other known languages.
The truth of the matter is that the harpy language structure (and communication style in general) is quite complex, but functions much differently than most other documented languages. Because of the lack of interest and the danger associated with studying harpy linguistics, the topic is still poorly understood outside of the few known experts who have come together to create this introductory text.
Though understanding more about the language will not likely help you in the field when suddenly faced with the threat of a harpy hunting party--as anyone who has attempted to study or utilize the language has discovered--we hope that this text will at least impart a little understanding and empathy for harpy culture.

What It Isn't

To understand the unique character of harpy speech, we will first explain what it is not, as those fundementals must first be broken down before we can construct a proper understanding from the bottom up.
Harpy speech is not grammar-driven, with exacting variations of each word collected into families, nor is it meant to be transcribed and shared via the written word.
Most of the languages practiced in crown-sanctioned settlements have grammar built into the forms of the words themselves and in how they are arranged, while this is a difficult concept for most harpies to even understand. In their mimicking of the Common tongue, a harpy can sound nearly fluent but still be unable to explain exactly how and why the phrases being used are conveying the meanings that they are. It almost amounts to well-educated guessing, which is likely how harpies feel about our attempts at using their language as well.
To understand how harpies communicate--not only vaguely like animal would use body language, but just as specifically as other languages function--we must break down our fundemental understanding of language. We must stop thinking only about the words being spoken with our mouths, but thinking about the nuances of what is being heard, how bodies are being held, and keeping our surroundings and relation to one another in mind. The concept of written language may intrigue a harpy for its use as a recording tool, but is often openly mocked as a tool of communication, and our spoken language accused of resembling written language too closely. More than one harpy has gone on record saying that we speak like a piece of paper, intending to point out its limitation as well as its flatness and lack of depth. Perhaps we do put too much stock in our words, worshipping prose to what is considered by harpies to be a silly extent, and it's holding us back. Harpies are musical people, and they relate our language to lyrics and tempo without rhythm or harmony, while harpy speech is a fully-fledge song.

What it is

As previously asserted, harpy speech is perhaps more complex and rich than our ears are used to listening for. We hear the words, but only as we would attempt to write them down, and thus miss the majority of what is being conveyed. From what the few truly fluent harpies have shared, they consider our language ridiculous. When we speak, it is too granular, slow, and lacking in emotion to their liking. While we might consider tone and emphasis to be an important part of speech (in Common), we view them as embelishments that merely help to refine the meaning contained in the words, while the harpies consider everything outside of the words spoken to be part of the language itself.
Famous linguistic experts have likened harpy speech to pictographs, which they had intended to be simplifying if not outright derogatory, but were in reality being reductive. It is perhaps accurate to think of harpy speech as pictorgraphs or drawings, but in the way that color and texture are just as important to the image as the lineart, and that is what tone, cadence, and other paralinguistic elements provice.
The fact that each of our words, their forms, and their place in a phrase somehow creates a specific code that conveys meaning seems incomprehensible and needlessly complicated to a harpy, especially when we use tone etc. anyway to convey emotion and contextual information. This is both why they have trouble becoming truly fluent, and why they can so accurately guess close to what our phrases mean, analyzing and mimicking how they sound when used in certain circumstances.
Continuing to use the Common language as an example, emphasis can change the entire meaning of a question or statement in spoken language. For instance, "is that YOUR cat?" has an entirely different meaning from "is that your CAT?" Expanding on this, in harpy speech, the repetition, volume, sharpness, emphasis, speed, pitch, body posture, and surrounding context are where the grammar lies, with changes to each modulating the fundemental meaning of phrases. In this way, harpy language has elements in common with Elven sung language, and Thieves' Cant relational and postural language.

Paralinguistics

Components

To complicate matters, harpy speech is extremely dialectical in all of these components. Because harpy clans are so insular, with only the briefly-visiting Moonwake harpies traveling between them, the language exists in many little islands that are free to evolve without outside influence. A few Moonwake harpies have shared the occasional difficulty that they've had communicating with nuance while visiting certain clans. One Moonwake harpy is even on record saying that they'd missed out on forming small Moonwake flocks a couple of times because the members couldn't understand one another at all.

Repitition, Sharpness, and Volume (meaning and emphasis)

Repitition

The use of this paralinguistic element is rather unique to harpy speech. Shows up especially when harpies are just beginning to become fluent, replacing knowledge of mimicked phrases with more genuine use of single words. Some clans do this more than others. repetition can be used for emphasis but also altering the meaning of a word/phrase by indicating that it's not the first assumed meaning of the word as would normally be the case.
For instance, "bird" might mean the concept of birds or birds that had been seen recently, while "bird-bird" might mean the pet bird of the person they're looking at. If that person had a pet bird but also hunted birds recently, "bird-bird-bird" would hint at the more removed instance of the subject, which would be the hunted birds.

Sharpness

Sharpness could be mistaken for tone or pitch, but all of these facets can be used independent of each other, so they are not variations of the same thing. Sharpness specifically refers to the shape that the vowels and consonants take on, which in some clans vary quite a bit. Legato and staccato. For instance, the sounds of S, Z, H, and a rapidly-stuttered T may all be variations of the same sound depending on the sharpness being employed. There is also the misconception that sharpness is just another way to express emotion behind the words spoken, but that is only one element that alterations of sharpness might convey. It could be said that sharpness imparts the most poetry out of the paralinguistic elements. Some increases of sharpness might be used to increase specificity or proximity of the subject, an immediacy in time, or signal topics of aggression or action. Conversely, a softening of sounds could be to imply an ambiguity or symbolism of subject, speaking of the past or future, familiar or positive topics.
We'll use "weather" as an example. A crooned weather might be speaking of the concept, or calm weather of the past. A chattered weather might be speaking of recent good weather, especially during an energetic time like spring, while a weather with harsh edges is weather that is bad and likely in the near future or recent past. Tone and context would pair up to narrow down the possible meaning.

Volume

Loudness, unsurpringly, has the much more universal function of adding emphasis to a phrase. Murmurs and shouts are comparitively easy to descern the meanings of even without words. There is nuance to it that doesn't quite cross the language barrier, such as the harpy way of highlighting and grouping concepts together by volume, but it is still the easiest of the paralinguistics for someone new to harpy speech to understand.
Both the overall volume of a phrase and its relative volume to the words or phrases around it convey some sort of meaning or punctuation to harpies. These methods should seem familiar to (almost) all of us, but there are unique subtleties to seemingly every one of these familiar facets. For example, increasing overall volume and punctiating one word in particular can be used to correct someone's misunderstanding of a phrase by pointing out the error with a punctuation of loudness. Using the previous sections example, if someone fails to understand that "bird-bird-bird" refers to the birds that they had hunted recently and not to their pet bird, a bark of "bird-bird-BIRD" should clue them in. These volume spikes can be used to highlight any linguistic or paralinguistic element, and when one has a language that is so open to interpretation--especially with speakers as so fractious as harpies tend to be--conversations can become a cacophony of syllabels warbling in volume.

Speed, Pitch, and Body Posture (emotion)

Of all the generalizations that harpies are regularly accused of, being reserved is not one of them. This is partially because harpy speech is naturally geared to express emotions fully and emphatically, whatever they may be. Because of this, what listeners hear the most clearly are the vehement and negative emotions, which harpies hone to articulate shrieks and clatters of harsh, angry syllabels. Outsiders miss the tender, heartfelt, and mournful speech that they engage in just as emphatically. The importance that emotions hold for harpies is shown by how thoroughly their language is built to convey it, through the cadence and tone of their words, and the expressive ways they use their bodies to refine the exact flavor of emotions they are feeling.

Speed

Most languages utilize changes in speed to highlight the mood of whatever they're saying, but the entire cadence of harpy speech has meaning. The speed, pacing, and rhythm of their words all hold importance. Understandably, a quick pace adds energy, highlighting immediacy, urgency, action, or heightened emotion. A slower, smoother pace levels things out, emphasizing peace, a low mood, nostalgia for the past or hope for the future, and can slow down to add weight to important and abstract concepts.
While there are many examples of how speed impacts speech that would be redundant in their familiarity, a less-intutative example in harpy speech is when speed is used to delineate time. If an action is described slowly and casually, it has likely either happened in the past or is only being spoken of hypothetically. Something quicker and more insistent could be a description of something that has just recently happened, or is a request for this thing to happen. A quicker, excited pace could be a statement what will soon happen.

Pitch

Pitch is easily the most elaborate parlinguistic element in harpy speech, as well as the most varied between clans. It's easy for most of us to detect the difference between a pleased and displeased tone of voice, and some of us are accustomed to languages in which tonal shifts entirely change the meaning of words. In harpy speech, pitch and tone play roles that are both more abstract and more specific.
Abstractly, harpies adopt vocal postures that happen unconsciously but are nonetheless full of meaning. Pitch naturally changes based on emotion, and shifts further with evolving rank within the clan. Mimicry between individuals is a common bonding tactic, which eventually leads to strong clan-specific accents and dialects.
Specifically, there are pitch shifts that are sometimes the only linguistic markers for things such as questions. Many harpy dialects lack question-specific words such as "where" and "how" and rely entirely on pitch to signal their inqueries. There are also specific pitches and tones used for warnings, reassurances, humor, promises, etc. There are even tones specifically used for various types of relationships and levels of intimacy.
To add to this already complicated topic, both the meaning behind various tonal shifts and the extent to which they are used vary widely across harpykind. A theory exists that this is one of the primary ways that closely-related and allied sister clans eventualy fracture and become just as distant from one another as other outsider clans. It's difficult to uphold alliances when a statement meant as a question is received as a threat.

Body Posture

As we have said for every one of these paralinguistic elements, the use of body posture in harpy speech is more varied and nuanced than it is for most of the other crown-sanctioned languages. Not only do harpies use body language to create specific meaning as well as abstract puncitation as in Common, but they have more limbs and features at their disposal (wings and feathers). Interestingly, the language that most closely likens itself to harpy speech in how it uses body posture is the postural and gestural elements of Thieves' Cant. Gestures will be covered below, so we will focus on posture here.
Most generally, wings held away from the body signifies growing emotion or emphasis, with wings tucking in close of course meaning the opposite. Wings that are held at an angle that is showing the most feather as they fan open intend to make the harpy appear larger, which often accompanies threats and challenges. Wings fanned out with feathers angled parallel with the ground, appearing flat and vulnerable, are used for gestures of submission and honor. Wings angled so that the wrists or shoulders are lowered while the fan out behind or higher than wrists are used in a variety of friendly, playful, or relatively harmless tussling and griping. Rigid and tall posture is to be taken seriously, while rocking and low posture is to demonstrate lack of threat.

Gesture and Context (surrounding, inherent and relational, and demonstrative context)

To distinguish between posture and gesture, it is helpful to think of posture as the state of the body for an entire topic, mood, or conversation, and gesture as the state of the body per phrase or even word. Posture is generally a larger statement of mood, with gestures altering and directing meaning. An easy example would be the difference between standing with one's hands on one's hips, which conveys a sense of confidence during a conversation, and pointing one's finger at a subject, which directly provides context for the current question or statement being conveyed.

Gesture

Harpies have several gestures that are easily recognizable by most crown-sanctioned societies, including pointing with a claw or wing-wrist, while other gestures are a little more difficult for the dominant populations to recognize--especially for those of us who lack feathers, wings, and tails. As the array of harpy gestures is vast and varied between clans, we will provide only a few of the most common examples here.
Second only to their voices, wings are the most expressive part of the harpy, often used as vital context for otherwise simple statements. More often than not, a harpy's wings are more expressive than their facial expressions, which is potentially deadly to those who don't know how to read them.
Wings snapping open is to punctuate the level of drama, while the degree to which the wings are unfurled demonstrates the level of intensity. Ruffling feathers can be used to appear larger or emphasize a point, but the looser the motion, the more lenient and submissive the intent. the reverse is also true. So, flat feathers can either convey anxiety, focus, or ease, depending on the sharpness and rigidity of the body language. Waggling or flapping can be used to continue or impress the meaning of the current statement, which happens often in arguments that are not resolved right away.

Context

Once more we liken harpy speech to a pictoral method of communication. When viewing images, the recipient assumes meaning that is either the most common or the most relevant to that individual, until clues to other meanings are hinted at. For instance, someone who is very familiar with horses might assume that a vague image of a four-legged mammal might be a horse, until the image of a house is drawn around it for context and scale, and then their assumption might shift to that of the creature being a dog.
Harpy speech lacks the intricisies conveyed by specific words and their many variants in Common and other sanctioned languages, instead functioning under that the most easily-guessed meaning is the most likely, until context and other signifiers steer the meaning to something else more specific.

Examples

Posture and Gesture

→ A grounded harpy with wings level with the ground, body posture ducking low, wings waggling with increasing intensity, taking place during a tense attempt to communicate: this is either a harpy that is feeling very threatened, but is becoming more frantic as it feels as though its surrender is not being received, or is a harpy attempting to show deep and insistent submission to another harpy it highly respects or fears.
→ Two harpies running at each other with a galloping gate, screeching loudly, with shoulders dipped forward and wings open and flapping out to the side with feathers aimed backward: it might look and sound like a threat to us, but these are harpies enthusiastically greeting a very good friend.
→ A pair of young harpies screaming back and forth at each other with wings held perpendicular to the ground, snapping them open with each screech, feathers ruffled and frequently shaken out between screeching: this does in fact resemble a threat display, but the loose body posture and ruffling feathers means that this is not a serious interaction. These harpies are playing by mimicking each other, mock-arguing back and forth.
→ Harpy meeting another with half-open wings held level with the ground, very still and rigid posture, hard eye-contact, and flat feathers: this is technically a display of submission, but this is not safe body language at all. The harpy is only halfway committed to the gesture with wings only part of the way open, and the flattened feathers convey anxiety or defensiveness with a posture so rigid. Proceed with caution in this case.

Verbal Language

Phonetics and Phonology

Harpy speech has been described many different ways, to the point where the various accounts seem to completely contradict each other. Some liken the language to the sound of screeching birds, some have said that there seemed to be no detectable language underneath pure growling and hissing, and others have insisted that the language sounds only slightly different from how more common languages are formed in their words and phrases. To search for the truth in these accounts, one must not only listen to the language spoken in whatever conflict the visitor encounters when in the presence of harpies, but how it shifts and evolves in different contexts. The answer to why so many reliable accounts of harpy speech seem to be reporting on different and completely unrelated languages lies in a few key factors.
Firsty, as we have related earlier, while harpies seem to all technically speak the same language, there are stark differences between its use in different clans. Each clanbound "accent" is more like a dialect, though it does include variations in not only its form and usage but also in its fundemental sounds. The vocal postures of each clan can become quite distinct as mimicry caricaturizes and spreads identifying sounds throughout its members. With how varied and extreme some of these accents can be, it is difficult to hone in one what is the central or most basic version of the language.
Secondly, the use of allophones in harpy speech is far more extensive than in the majority of languages spoken in crown-sanctioned settlements. Mood and context both cause great shifting of verbal sounds, and this--as everything else--can vary significantly by clan. Vowels can each have more than half a dozen variations, while consonants that we would consider siblings at most can be treated as the same "letter", such as h, j, and t. These sounds are nonexeclusive and can stand in for other letters in the language. A word that sounds like "dheheh" when the harpy is calm and casual, "dejeh" when insistent or speaking in a formal manner, and "tetueh" when agitated. Add into this the pantheon of sounds and vocal treatments that are currently impossible to convey, including trills, keening, and articulate hissing. Referencing the previous example, this described word, "dheheh", might become a stuttered, half-voiced hiss when angry.
Lastly, whether intentional or incidental as the accents become more extreme, there seem to be direct swapping of entire sounds between different clans. It's as if a few spoken sounds are chosen at random to be swapped with another in the lineup. All k's become r's, all z's become y's, and all sh's and ch's meld together and become d's. One theory proposes that the swapping happens when a speech impediment of one member spreads throughout the clan through mimicry.

Morphology

The morphology of harpy speech is tricky, not only for the reason we frequently reiterate about how much their languages shifts depending on clan and context, but also because it is much less strict and vital than in languages like the Common tongue. In most situations, the morphemes that would be used to shift the meaning of words are only used in their very formal situations, such as in artistic speech, singing, recitations, rituals, and only occasionally used for clarifying vague meaning. Some harpy clans focused on survival or efficiency seem to have done away with them entirely.
Generally speaking, the paralinguistic elements take care of what morphological shifts and additions would do in more verbally-based languages. When the language does employ morphological elements, they just as often involve shifting the way that the word is formed than working with actual morphemes of the word. The morphemes themselves can be either short sounds or syllabels, or with elements that are much more difficult to transcribe here, such as trills, hisses, and keens.
For instance, the addition of a sound like "ah" in the most neutral context as a prefix, sometimes while bringing the wing-wrists back in a small motion, indicates that the concept being conveyed belongs or relates to the speaker. Adding the suffix "ha" in the most neutral context, or "ba" in some clans, denotes that the concept belongs or refers to the one being spoken to. The morpheme "raow" in the most neutral context, or "gaow" in some clans, conveys that the concept belongs to or is relation to "us," which most often means the clan.
A note should be added here that while harpies are not known for using these morphemes very often outside of formal or artist situations, the instances of clarification seem to be riding lately, and this may be a language-based reflextion of the shifting attitude toward all over peoples. Where it had once been unheard of, the stories of harpies making the attempt to speak and be understood by other species has risen from "almost never" to "very rarely," and when they do, they attempt to adapt to the language of the speaker by using clarifying morephemes.

Syntax

While discussing most elements of harpy speech, the authors of this text will assert that the rumors about the language being simplistic and unrefined are unfair, and that the language is just as complex--if not more so--than the crown-sanctioned languages. However, when it comes to syntax, harpy speech truly is less refined... and at least some harpies have seemed to be proud of this fact.
The order and number of words in their sentences tend to follow the primary rule of "less is more." It's almost as if harpies make a conscious effort to use the simplest language possible in any given context, and only repeat and elaborate when needed. It might even be considered a mark of skill if you can communicate efficiently and skillfully without a bunch of chattering words cluttering things up. Language only becomes intentionally complicated for creative and ritualistic reasons.
Very generally, things that are most important or happen earliest chronologically are arranged near the beginning of the phrase, and things of lesser importance or that happen later are near the end. This guidance adds some context to otherwise vague phrasing, such as the fact that descriptors and modifiers are stated after the object that they're affecting, unless they're of more contextual importance and so would be listed first. A phrase about "dog blue" would likely be about this dog that happened to be blue, but "blue dog" would imply that the fact that the dog is blue is what we're focusing on right now.

Examples

Morphology

"Hra" - dog
"Ah'hra" - My dog
"Hraha" or "Hraba" - Your dog
"Hraraow" or "Hragaow" - Our dog

Syntax

"Enuuah hra ah'tsih" - "Blue dog see (with self-referential prefix)" - A blue dog saw me
"Tsih mree siss" - "See run hide." - I saw, ran, and then hid.

Spoken by

• Blacklace Harpies
• Bower Bog Harpies