Ancient Keltanish was already archaic by the time
Zahra Roydark came to speak it, and she lived a thousand years ago. Indeed, even "modern" Keltanish is now all but extinct, because of the Reveni purge, but thanks to Zahra's work at salvaging her cultural heritage, we still have glimpses of it.
History
Do I know this yet? No, I do not. It is not terribly important to the stories I want to tell at the moment, and does not inform a ton of aspects about
Tholarean society, so I'm going to leave this to fill in later.
Uses
Ancient Keltanish was used in formal settings, for inscriptions and for ceremonies. While some people did learn to speak it, the grammar and pronunciations were kept extremely rigidly, with little slang and few contractions. Since only about half the population knew the written symbols, and almost no one outside of the planet, a lot of secure computers used this language as a security measure.
Places to Find this Language Today
Zahra Roydark was fluent in this language because she was a high-ranked member of Keltan society before its destruction. As such, she encrypted a lot of the earliest files on the
Fergana in this language. She also left physical copies of books using this language and a side-by-side translation, so that later generations might learn to read it.
The deepest crypts in the Fergana use this language.
There are a lot of decorative elements in the Dome that use this language, as the script can be quite beautiful.
The spoken element appears infrequently as influencing a few of the colloquial terms of
Therran, and several of the titles for the
Insignia Council were developed with elements of this language in mind.
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