Wishspeak is a Fae Tongue language spoken primarily by the
wishdragons and other residents of
Tir na Nog.
Wishspeak is a simple and often inadequately-defined language, reflecting wishdragons' simple and inadequate thoughts. Sentences tend to be very short and "incomplete" by other languages' standards, with longer ones being improvised "run-on" sentences following the whimsies of speakers. Redundant or ambiguous speech is common. All of these things combine to make Wishspeak rather difficult to learn for foreigners, which wishdragons are okay with as it helps keep the contents of
an Ceirlain a secret.
Scholars are fascinated by Wishspeak and ponder whether it is the base from which all other Fae Tongues derive, and/or if it bears any influence from the Savage Tongues, specifically
Goblindegook. Wishdragons rather don't care about either.
Grammar
As with other Fae Tongues, Wishspeak mostly-consistently follows Verb-Subject-Order.
In addition, its grammatical perspective (which thing is phrased as object and which as subject) occasionally deviates from other languages such as English, and they have a love & grammatical recognition of gratuitous compound words far beyond that of any other Fae Tongue due to wishdragons' habit of ranting.
Wishspeak has the very odd distinction that adjectives may freely be placed before or after nouns. While there are guidelines for which adjectives go in each place, and at what times, excited wishdragons tend to mix them up anyway.
Word order
As with other Fae Tongues, Wishspeak mostly-consistently follows Verb-Subject-Order.
Wishspeak | Literal, word-for-word | Approx. English |
---|
Ish m' cake! | Eating me a cake! | I'm eating a cake! |
N' fa glas-bi da! | No good [them] green foods are! | I don't like vegetables! |
Compounding
Speakers of Wishspeak can and will freely compound words to an absurd degree.
A compound may effectively be an entire sentence on its own, inserted in the middle of another sentence as though it were a single word. Speakers happily invent new compounds at whimsy depending on the situation.
When transliterated to English script, compounds are identified by dashes or hyphens in the place of spaces. (The native script for the Fae Tongues hasn't been made yet.)
Wishspeak | Literal, word-for-word | Approx. English |
---|
glas-bi | green-foods | Vegetables |
pud-den-boom | thing-goes-boom | Bombs, loud machines, etc. |
trónach-din-a-deun-id-mòrlear-n'-fa | nosy-people-that-make-lots-of-no-good | Thieves, esp. seekers of an Ceirlain |
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