Dialect

Three main dialects may be distinguished in Gehennum. The dialect of Bethany is marked by its retention of archaisms such as the “w” sound at the beginnings of some words such as “prince”, the pronunciation of “nn” as “ng” and of “gk” as “ngk”, the elision of certain word-terminations, and its use of grammatical complications forgotten in the other dialects. The Bethanian for “prince” is “wanax”, for example.

The central dialect of Samarios, sale, Tinkana, and other populous islands is considered standard, and is the educated dialect of the Archaic Period.

In the Classical Period and the Decadent Period, the presence of the court at Thekla has made the Thelmond dialect the speech of the upper class, and the presence of House Azure in the same city has made the same dialect the speech of the educated. In Thelmondese dialect “th” is pronounced as “t”, “kh” as “k”, “dh” as “d” etcetera. In the Decadent Period the Thelmond dialect also loses some word-terminations.

You probably shouldn’t bother with this except to note that the speech of a person will tell something about his place of origin, class, and education, and that the writing of people from Bethany can be difficult for others to read.


Copyright © 1991 by Brett Evill. All rights reserved.