Difference between revisions of "Ek"

Revision as of 16:57, 26 December 2005

Ek is the ancient language of The Fleeting Daydream Of Safalra. Philologists believe the language became extinct as a spoken language at least 1000 years ago, and the language is now known only from place names. A script found in various archæological sites, usually referred to as the Ek script, is believed to be the written form of Ek, but is only poorly understood.

Ek And Kernewek

Ek is a language of the Celtic language family, and, of the known Celtic languages, it most closely resembles Kernewek (Cornish). Some philologists have attempted to use this resemblance to help in the interpretation of the Ek script, but have had little success. Many of the differences between Kernewek and Ek words are regular - for example, t and p usually become the voiced d and b, while g usually becomes the unvoiced k. Some shifts in meaning have occured - for example, avra, meaning bay, comes from the Kernewek arvor, meaning coast. The name Ek probably shares its origin with the Kernewek suffix ek, which can be used in language names - for example, Kernewek, Bretonek (Breton), Iwerdhonek (Irish), Manowek (Manx) and Kembrek (Welsh).

Ek Vocabulary

Ek Nouns

Twenty-one Ek nouns have been deduced from place names. The table below shows each Ek noun, a similar Kernewek Kemmyn noun, the English equivalent, and an example place name. Where the Kernewek noun has a slightly different meaning, this is noted.

Ek Adjectives

Twelve Ek adjectives have been deduced from place names. The process of deriving adjectives is more difficult than the process of deriving nouns for two reasons; firstly, the appropriate English adjective to describe a location is less clear than the approproiate English noun, especially as locations such as woodland change dramatically over time, and secondly, many Ek adjectives share their roots with Kernewek nouns rather than adjectives. The table below shows each Ek adjective, the English equivalent, the Kernewek Kemmyn word with which it shares ancestry, and the English equivalent of the Kernewek word.

In Ek veer (green) can be used to describe the green of plants, whereas in Kernewek glas (blue) is used to describe the green of plants.

Ek Noun-Phrases

Nouns and adjectives are combined into noun-phrases by placing the adjectives after the noun. This can be seen in several place names:

• Kossnoss - dark forest (or night forest)
• Krakvara - cold tor (or Winter tor)
• Lussbren - high cliff (or sky cliff)
• Nyed(owa)bren - high mountain(s) (or sky mountain(s))
• Venveer - green moor

The Ek Script

The Ek script is shown in the diagram below. The twelve characters with a light red background are almost certainly vowels. The twenty-two characters with a light blue background are almost certainly consonants. The remaining character is exceedingly rare, and is probably a consonant.

Few inscriptions in the Ek script have been found, but many that have been, such as the Winter Artefact, are inscribed with poetry, with characters grouped into words and lines, and patterns of characters corresponding to rhyming, alliteration, and assonance clearly visible. Modern linguistic analysis suggests that the Ek script is a purely phonetic alphabet, where each character always represents the same single sound. The analysis has made it possible to deduce which characters correspond to vowels and which to consonants with near certainty, except for one exceedingly rare character.

Unfortunately the Ek script has not been decyphered, and the correspondences between the characters and sounds are not known. A minority of philologists support a theory that the Ek script does not actually write Ek, but another lost language, and that this explains the lack of success in decyphering the script. The majority view among philologists, however, is that the lack of success is due to the limited supply of artefacts inscribed with the script.

Aditional Materials

• Ek - the document from which the original text of this article was taken (with permission from Safalra)