Modern English is the language spoken throughout Elf Killers and the epic series, Heart of the Staff. Fairies speak Middle English without most of its obsolete words in Good Sister, Bad Sister, The Burgeoning, Reaper Witch and Doom . The rest of the languages used appear as isolated words and sentences chosen to give realism and color to various characters. Most of these are explained by context and all can be found translated in the respective glossaries in the books where they appear.
Language: What it is: Who speaks it:
Niarg Standard current Modern English Kingdom of Niarg
Kingdom of Loxmere
Kingdom of Goll
Kingdom of Bratin Brute
Jutish Elves
naked dragons
Cyclopsia
Archaic Modern Niarg Middle English all Fairies
all profanities uttered by
Ocker the raven
Niarg (600 yrs prior)
Old Niarg Standard Welsh Kingdom of Niarg
Kingdom of Loxmere
Kingdom of Goll
Kingdom of Bratin Brute
Cyclopsia
Jutish Elven Irish Jutish Elves
Old Gwaelic Elven Irish Gwaelic Elves (1M yrs prior)
Gwaelic Elven Manx Gwaelic Elves
Gwaelic Cornish Gwael
Headlandish Breton Penvro (Head)
Dark Empire
Mammvro
Goblish-Beakish Pictish Kingdom of Marr (Beaks)
Doric
Scots
Ngop Wagiman the Ngop
Wagiman is almost extinct. The last I knew, only ten Australian Aboriginals still speak it.
Trollish transposition of an trolls
aboriginal language
Trollish is a very nasal sounding language, the transposition of an aboriginal New World language, where each letter in the original tongue is replaced with a different letter. In particular, the sounds most frequently used by the aboriginal speakers are replaced with the sounds which are the very most difficult for them to pronounce. Trollish uses such non European peculiarities as noun-verbs, which we originally tried to represent in English by running nouns and verbs together (as they are in the aboriginal) in words such as, headsmash, juicychamp, cantgoback, rollybottomhohoslap and grabupsqueakers, which we soon changed to head-smash, juicy-champ, can’t-go-back, rolly-bottom-ho-ho-slap and grab-up-squeakers in order to be easy to read.
And as always, please let us know what you think,
*** When reading our books please keep the above languages in mind, and… Especially remember that the language of the Fairies (In the four books below) is not full of grammar or syntax errors, it’s MIDDLE ENGLISH! ***