Alkesh

The Most Ancient Language on the Continent

The Alkesh Language at a Glance

The Alkesh language is a dead one, no longer in use by any living being. The only recorded form is pictographic, and to date no one has ever been able to translate it.

Canny readers may have noticed that there are in fact sample phrases included. Well, it's a joke. The phrases are Greek. As in, "It's Greek to you."

Before settlers came to Continental shores in the Second Age, the human natives spoke a tongue unique unto itself. That language, Alkesh, eventually matured into its more nuanced and complex modern form, heavily modified and enriched by the addition of high elven Quenya to become modern Thari.

A bastardized (or perhaps more ancient) form of Alkesh has become the Wildsong secret tongue of the Druids. It remains a secret because its root tongue, Alkesh, is a dead language. Even if a scholar could unearth enough information to piece together a working knowledge of Alkesh, Wildsong is still distinct enough to remain an enigma.

Writing System

Alkesh has no formal written language; rather, the ancient peoples who spoke this language employed a variety of pictographs. Due to the puzzling nature of these figures, most scholars believe that, just as regional spoken dialects develop, so too did regional pictograms. Thus, the bewildering array of figures, if anything, confound any effort to reverse engineer the language.

Successor Languages

• Wildsong

Common Phrases

• Peináo.
  (I am hungry.)
• Póso kairó tha párei aftó?
  (How long will that take?)
• Boreís na mou deíxeis ton drómo?
  (Can you show me the way?)

Script
Pictographs

Descendant Languages
Thari
Wildsong