Data File Updated: Saturday, August 03, 2024
Introduction | Grammar | Lexicon | Numerals | Names
The
Trade Language is the interstellar language of communication between the various races of the Outsider galaxy.
It has been the formal
language of trade and diplomacy among the spacefaring races for
thousands of years in the current era, but it is much older even
than this. It is a leftover from an ancient era preceding the
current one, when the last great empire (the
Soia)
was in control of the local region. Trade includes many proper names (especially for
places) that date back to the Soia era. Trade Language exists in
many different dialects, as regional versions have drifted over
the millennia. The version taught by the Orgus to humans is
substantially different in pronunciation than that used by the
Loroi, and lacks many of the archaic references that permeate
the Loroi dialect.
Without a native language of their own, the Loroi use a
customized dialect of Trade for their own needs; Loroi Trade is
the official language of the races of the Loroi Union. The Umiak
can't speak Trade directly; they lack the fleshy mouthparts to
form the sounds, and must use mechanical translators. For
writing, the Loroi use the following character set (which is
written right to left):
Sentences are terminated by a three-dot equivalent of a period. An example of Trade text, written right to left, is as follows:
Words with double-consonants (such as in bailla, "explode", or tiie, "throw") can either be represented by two of the same character, or by a single character with an inverted carat over it (as in the second and sixth words from the right in the example above). A box-shaped character is sometimes used as a separator, similar to the English colon (":").
Pronunciation
In the Loroi dialect of Trade, the characters are pronounced as follows:
| R - r as in "rain" | D - d as in "dye" |
| A - ɑː as in "swat" | T - t as in "tick" |
| L - l as in "lick" | E - ɛ as in "bed" |
| O - oʊ as in "robe" | G - g as in "girl" |
| Z - z as in "zebra" | I - iː as in "teen" |
| P - p as in "pot" | N - n as in "nod" |
| M - m as in "moon" | B - b as in "bite" |
| SH - ʃ as in "shy" | S - s as in "sack" |
Grammar
This page lists some basic grammatical rules, including sentence structure and verb conjugation.
Lexicon
A partial lexicon of Loroi Trade words can be found here.
Numeral System
Loroi Trade uses letters as numerals. A brief overview of the numeric system is here.
Loroi Trade is an original, invented language, created for Outsider. The lexicon was assembled with the aid of tools available at LangMaker.com.
See also: Umiak Language
