Tongues of the Ald-Vasha
An initial survey
By Solin Kaer

I. Introduction

Little remains of the slave masters of the Heartland, naught but crumbling stones and a few shreds of precious magicks stand as a testament to their once flourishing empire. Only slightly more abundant are the disjointed and somewhat dubious accounts penned by the Alessians in the First Era. Yet we know fragments of their ancient tongue and perhaps yet we speak its descendants to this day. Without an Ayleid to question, only a few might say whence modern mannish tongues sprung or vice versa. Indeed, it appears that some tales of the Korthi contain fragments of Ayleid songs or speech, however, corrupted by time.[2] Those who have a more complete knowledge of the subject do often not want to share. Thus, this document, an attempt to impart with any peer who cares to listen to what little of the combined thunderbolts of inspiration and discovery I’ve retained.

Make no mistake, my heart enjoys the Scholarship of Mystery, but my studies of the Ayleids’ languages have made me little more than a poor grammarian. What I do know -or should rather say, believe to know, is dwarfed by the profuseness of what I do not know. Hypothesis and assumption are all I can offer. Take what you will.

II. Basic Composition of Known Sentences

First, a simple sentence in the present tense (apparently):

Vabria amaraldane aldmeris.
The wave heralds the Elves.

Apart from a lack of articles (such as ‘the’), it is not so terribly dissimilar from a Cyrodiilic[English] sentance at this level, first a Subject, followed by a Verb, and then an Object which the Subject is “verbing” upon. This is only a fragment of a larger, more detailed, sentence from a popular text.

Vabria frensca, sa belle, sa baune, amaraldane aldmeris adonai.[1]
The foaming wave, so thunderous, so mighty, heralds the lordly Elves.

While more formidable it is still within grasp of most Cyrodiils. Eliminate “sa belle, sa baune” and one immediately notices where Ayleid speech differs from our modern one. The descriptive elements in the sentence follow what they describe. Literally the sentence reads:

The wave foaming, so thunderous, so mighty, heralds the Elves lordly.

There are exceptions, however, possessives like “your” and “our” occur prior to the noun they describe1 this is not to say all possessives are as such, possession by a specific person is indicated following as the normal Ayleidic pattern.

Nou agea lattia va garlas loria.
Our lore shines in dark caverns.

Agea Soline lattia as malatu.
Solin’s wisdom shines by truth.

III. Suffixes

Several suffixes appear to be identifiable in Ayleidic sentences, however, internal consistency (there may be two or three different dialects?) seems to be lacking as these are present in only a certain percentage of examples. These are listed here with their apparent meaning.

-is

Perhaps the most readily identifiable suffix we know of, it is typically used to indicate that a noun is plural.[1]

-e

Common word ending, potentially used to indicate past tense in verbs (with verbs ending in a inserting a b between the a and the e? -abe?[1]). Low possibility, lack of examples. On names it seems to indicate that the person owns the proceeding noun.[4]

-a

Common word ending, potentially indicates present tense in verbs, double “a” endings convert to –ia. Not likely, however, as consistency is low.

-ngua

Indicates that the speaker possesses attached noun.[4]

-ya

Indicates that the person being talked to owns attached noun.[4]

IV. Imperatives

There appears to be potentially to be many different ways of expressing a command in Ayleidic. Again, internal consistency within examples is lacking.

The first, most populous seeming method is to simply omit the subject of the sentence. Another method5, rarely used, adds the word “an” following a verb (in both known cases these words end in -voy which appears in another command[4], all other commands end in –a)

V. Questions[4]

Only two examples of questions exist to my knowledge, both begin with prefix/suffix/word “-ma-”. The first example being Asma or “By what” and the second being Man or “Who”. “-ma-” therefore might be key to words that indicate a question is being asked such as: what, where, when, who, how, and why. Perhaps “when” (as a question) is as simple as combining “-ma-” with a word for time, potentially maka or akama.