“Wherever you go across the length and breadth of Ara, with whichever learned professors you might speak to, and in whatever dusty tomes you may find on the subject, you will be faced by a prevailing consensus; “The language of Akhret is Ancient Alagrian”.
I’m here to tell you that this is both absolutely correct, and utterly misleading. Before embarking further within the study of the ancient mysteries stored in Akhret hieroglyphs etched on the walls of crumbling ruins lost to the sands, you must divest yourself of this limiting notion.
While it Akhret is truly Ancient Alagrian, it is equally Ancient Milagonian, Ancient Mitzui, Ancient Beleghast and Ancient every other language originating on the prime material plane, for its true title is the Ur-Common.”
- The Secrets of the Sands: Akhret Translated, by Prof. (Loquacious) R. Stone, 1534
Overview
In linguistics, Akhret refers to the original language of the first peoples on Ara, who settled in what is now
Alagria. While it has been identified as the ur-Common, it is most closely associated with the Upper Kingdom of Akhret and the hieroglyphic writing system used in that nation. While it was ultimately shunned in favour of Draconic and later Alagrian in the Lower Kingdom of Akhret, Akhreti hieroglyphs have been found on ruins from the short lived Middle Kingdom of Akhret.
Interestingly, Akhret remains closer to modern Common than it does any other language in use on Ara. Despite being known as the language of a nation ruled by the Eladrin Feyroh, Akhret remained seemingly immune to the cross-polination of Common and other languages that would give birth to the other dialects of Ara.
Akhret fell out of use following the fall of the Upper Kingdom, and eventually faded from living memory.
Translation
Despite being a cause of fascination for academics across Ara, Akhret has proven resistant to translation due to being immune to the effects of the "Comprehend Languages" spell. Despite the popularity of the "Forbidden Knowledge" movement in the 8-9th Centuries P.R., which posited that the secrets of Akhret were being kept from mortals by the Gods, language scholars continued to work on the topic, until finally, in 1534, Professor (Loquacious) Rosetta "Rosie" Stone of
Hw. Habn'Izm University successfully cracked the language.
There are competing theories as to Akhret's resistance to magical understanding, with the most popular camps as follows:
- Codifiers - argue that as Comprehend Languages does not work on coded forms of dialect, like Thieves Cant and that Akhret is therefore closer to a code than a language.
- Pictorialists - argue that as the glyphs of Akhret are symbolic, they are pictures intended to convey meaning, and therefore just as Comprehend Languages cannot be used to interpret a painting, it cannot translate Akhret.
- Ormadians - argue that the Comprehend Languages was a spell ordained from Ormad himself, and therefore only pertains to the languages that Ormad created and those derived from it. Ur-common, being a gift bestowed by Ormad's clerics against his original wishes, falls outside of the spell's capabilities.
Following the successful translation of Akhret, and the discovery of its place as the Ur-Common, some scholars would argue that the spell had no effect as it could not translate Common into Common.
Prof. Stone has on many occasions declared the question "irrelevant", arguing that the use of spellcraft as a shortcut in linguistics had made academics too inexperienced in the field to adequately approach the problem.
For her work in translating Akhret, it is expected that Prof. Stone may be a prime contender to become a
Hallow of Ormad. However, this is expected to be a contentious issue amongst the Ormadian school.
Darkest Timeline
During the events of the Darkest Timeline, Prof. Stone was killed by a time elemental while researching for her work on Akhreti translations, preventing her work from being published. Her notes were jettisoned along the timeline of the Thanes of Order, appearing to them seemingly from nowhere during their travels. These notes were pivotal in solving many challenges faced in the Badalrahma Desert and allowed Gamble to read the
The Prophecy of the Thanes at the Asteramid of the Lost.
Writing System
Visually, Akhreti hieroglyphs are more or less figurative, representing real or abstract elements, sometimes stylised and simplified, but generally recogniable in form.
However, the system uses glyphs as:
- Phonograms - using the start of the word represented by an image as a phoneteic, e.g. representing the letter "R" with a picture of a Reed.
- Pictograms - using the image to represent the subject itself
- Determinative ideograms - glyphs used to classify a word type and to help distinguish a word's meaning from that of a homonym
- Akhret can be written horizontally (either right-to-left or left-to-right), or vertically (top-to-bottom only). When written horizontally, glyhps always face the start of the line.
'How to know which way to read? Here’s a handy rhyme:
“For glyphs in a column, read top-to-bottom,
When they’re all in a row, glyphs face the start that they know”
- The Secrets of the Sands: Akhret Translated - by Prof. (Loquacious) R. Stone, 1534
Glyphs are added as best fit for space, and so it is very common for the reader to incorporate the rules of horizontal and vertical glyphs when translating a passage of text.
Word Construction
The most common usage of Akhret sees the implementation of a phonogrammic
alphabet alphabet of 20 consonants and digraphs to form words that are generally similar to their Common equivalents.
As the standard alphabet contains no vowels, each word is finished with a suffix, formed of determinative glyphs. Typically one giving the sense of the meaning and one defining the
word type.
We can see this in action below, where the B, D, and Y phonogram glyphs spell out the word "Body". The phonograms are then followed by two determinative glyphs, one of a humanoid body to provide context for the word's meaning, and the "box" or "item" glyph, which signifies that the word is a noun.
Akhret's use of determiners means that the language can forgo the use of vowels, relying on the final glyphs to distinguish for example between the words "hoarse" and "horse", which would otherwise both appear as "HRS".
Names
In the case of names, which do not lend themselves to the use of determiners, Akhret uses an
additional alphabet of 5 vowels. To further distinguish when dealing with names, Akhret contains names within a cartouche, which is though to represent a rope tied around the name.
The cartouche covers the entire name, or "nomen", but for important people are also given a "pre-nomen" or title, like Fayroh, that would proceed their name. Both the pre-nomen and nomen are enclosed within cartouches, with any "poetic titles" following the name in normal Akhreti text.
For example in Ccommon this might look like, "Professor (pre-nomen) Rosetta Stone (nomen), she who tranlsates Akhret (poetic title)".
The best preserved example of nomen, prenomen and poetic titles can be found in the Asteramid of Queen Alakra Karnalekh, of the middle kingdom.
Numbers and plurals
Akhret uses glyphs to represent numbers as follows (as pictured below):
- 1 = a single stroke
- 10 = the curve of a cattle hobble
- 100 = the coil of a piece of rope
- 1,000 = a lotus flower
- 10,000 = a single finger
- 100,000 = a frog or tadpole
- 1,000,000 = a god holidng up the sky
The people of Akhret used these glyphs as a tally, for example, the number 345 would be represented by three "100" glyphs, four "ten" glyphs and five "one" glyphs.
When detailing the exact number of something, Akhret includes the number glyphs as the final part of the word's determinative glyphs. When detailing an unkown quantity of something, Akhret uses three "one" glyphs at a slant, which expresses the concept of "plural".
Pronouns & Articles
As in Common, Akhret uses the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person pronouns. The determinatives of these are literally transcribed as one, two or three people combined with the "one" or "plural" glyphs to distinguish between singular and plural.
For example:
For objects, the "person" glyph is replaced by the "noun/box" glyph. For the definite article, the "person" glyph is replaced by the "scroll case" glyph. Akhret has no indefinite article.
When describing ownership, Akhret defaults to the phrasing "of (subject)" or "of the (subject)".
Verbs & Tenses
Verbs in Akhret use the "NG" glyph, represented by the image of a walking box, as a determinative in much the same way that common uses the suffix "ing". However, unlike other languages, Akhret has a very simple approach to conjugation.
There are three tenses in Akhret: past, present and future. These are simplified and for the most part Akhret is free of any multi-verb constructions like "will be doing" or she "would have been".
The tense of a verb is identified by the one of three determinative glyphs; the "Dawn", "Noon-day sun" and "Moon" glyphs respectively for past, present and future.
The verb always stays the same, regardless of whether he/she/it/you/I/they or we are "verbing", it is always written as "vrb"++ +<"ng/verb">.
Sentence structure
Once you have determined what verb you are dealing with and in which tense it sits, the subject comes next, followed by the object.
As an example:
The Common: "I have explained this to you."
Becomes:
Akhret: "Explain/ing (past) I to you."
Where there is no clear object or subject, as is common in more poetic writing, Akhreti scribes tended to leave a "Circle" glyph to mark the place of the missing item. The "Circle" glyph is also used as the "Coin" glyph and represents an offering of apology to the reader for their breaking of the grammatical rules. This practice makes it much easier for the reader when interpreting such passages.
"Hope/ing (present) I that understand/ing (future) you this explanation!"
- Prof. (Loquacious) R. Stone
Comments