“I’m stationed as the Wiigt on the Gel Basroil.”
“I’m not surprised to hear you’re stationed on a Gel, but I’ve never heard of that particular ship before.”
“You’ve never heard of it because it’s brand-new,” Jinto explained. “But it’ll be famous soon.”
“Because of its Wiigt?”
“Of course,” he joked, “but also because the Manowas is an Abliar.”
“Oh ho!” The old man was genuinely impressed. “Now, I understand why you’re so busy all the time! Be sure to say hi to your girlfriend, Feia Borl Paryun!”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Jinto mumbled as he rose. “Anyway, I’m sorry to be in such a hurry.”
“Don’t worry about it. But do come back whenever you can spare a few minutes to be bored to death by an old man.”
“I will visit again, Lonyu Lyum Raika. Take care.” Jinto saluted.
“Of course I will, Faneb,” cackled the old man mischievously.
The Arosh Lakfakalle: the Gahorl of the Gel Basroil.
Wow. Here it is, fresh from Lori Lespor. I can’t believe how new everything is — it hasn’t even finished its breakin cruise.
Lafiel ran her hands along the new machinery, and took in a lungful of metallic “new ship” smell.
Her first Menyu! Her heart swelled to bursting with pride and joy when she looked upon the ship’s Garl Guraw, a hornet (Roil).
In the last three years, there hadn’t been time for the Labule to carry out any regular campaigns. The enemy had been in a similar stage of semi-active preparation and rebuilding, during which there had been a couple of minor skirmishes.
The log Lafiel delivered from the Resii Gosroth proved that the United Mankind initiated the attack. When the Frybar disclosed that information, it reiterated its neutrality, accusing the United Mankind of fabricating the whole pretext to the war. At that point, the Hania Federation was still pretty much uninvolved, since it had not participated in the assault on the Arosh, so the Frybar was content to ignore it.
The other three nations of the Four Nations Alliance (Bruvoth Gos Suyun) decried the Hania Federation for its perfidy. Many of the Abh, including Lafiel, were equally disappointed in the Hania Federation.
Now, the battle was deadlocked on the front lines, and the enemy controlled a full two-thirds of Fek Ilik.
It was time for the Empire to live up to its reputation of ruthlessness. It was amassing a fleet many times larger than the one it employed before the war began.
The Lespo Shipyard (Lori Lespor) cranked out Roil-class assault ships at the rate of one every ten minutes. Lori Beitur manufactured the very latest model Kau-class patrol ships. The Vorbinort Shipyard produced Sorf-class Alek, Lori Shuurar made Gamov-class assault vessels, and Gokulorsh Shipyard hammered out Heijh-class Leit. The list of shipyards that were mass producing brand-new ships went on and on.
Nearly all the reserve officers (Lodairl Kisaina) were reenlisted, and each Kenru had repetitive drills cut to save time. New enlistees were at the highest number in Frybar history. On Nahen all throughout the Frybar, the rate of Sash enrolling to fill the new ships kept pace with the Menyu factories.
The major part of the war lay before them.
Lafiel took a deep breath, trying to calm herself.
There was nobody else on the bridge. The Sash were otherwise occupied with preparatory tasks, and the Lodairl were all supervising something.
Aside from Lafiel, there were four officers: two flight officers (Lodairl Gariar), one Military Engineering Officer (Lodairl Skoem) who was Supervisor (Bynkerl), and one Administrative Officer (Lodairl Sazoirl), who was the ship’s clerk.
“Manowas,” the clerk Jinto reported. “We’re finished loading the food and supplies.”
Laughing at his formal salute, Lafiel wondered whether Jinto was making fun of the fact that she’d called him “Fektodai Sazoirl Linn” the last time she spoke to him.
Reading the amused look on her face, Jinto smiled. “It’s good to see you.”
“I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m glad to see you, too.”
“Secret’s safe with me.” He took a minute to look her over. “You haven’t changed at all in the last three years.”
“Why would I? You’ve aged a bit.”
“I like to think I’ve grown.”
Lafiel harrumphed.
“I’m sorry, Manowas, did you just snort at me?”
“It’s okay; we’re the only ones here, right now.”
“I know, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea to be so familiar around the others.”
“Yes, I won’t have you screwing up the morale on this ship.”
“I’ll do my best. I’d better get used to always calling you Manowas or Rowas Abliar.”
“Is that what you want?” she seemed slightly perturbed.
“Do you think that’s what I want?” he dodged the question, eyes a-twinkle.
Lafiel puffed out her chest, causing her brilliant blue hair to ripple and the ends of her Kos Kisegal to shimmer like fantastic earrings. “You shall call me Lafiel!”
✦ ✦ ✦
Ultimately, the ancestral language of the Abh was artificial — a derivation of a language that was itself merely a reconstruction.
Traced back far enough, Baronh was based on an ancient language that dogmatic nationalists resurrected. They discarded modern words of assimilated European multi-language origin, as well as the Chinese words that came into existence at the same time as their characters.
Naturally, this kind of severe linguistic reconstruction was not without difficulty. While the group had no intention of abandoning its technologies, the ancestral vocabulary came from the dawn of the metal ages, before the possibility of space flight was even fathomable.
There were many impossibilities, expanded meanings of forgotten words, lexemes coined from mimetic words. Basically, they brought a dead language back to life, altering it to suit their scientific society.
It was an unnatural experiment, however, so it had its faults. Originally, the language had many polysyllables. Borrowing a vocabulary from the Chinese, it drastically shortened the list of polysyllabic words. But since theChinese language was also extinct, that tendency became more and more impractical. The sudden abbreviation of many Abh words was rational, especially considering the fact that the original Baronh didn’t even have letters.
The people who created the Abh did not intend for them to become an independent culture. Instead, the Abh were designed to work as they were taught and to make simple decisions in times of intergalactic crisis.
Acting on the idea that giving the Abh the alphabet was not only unnecessary, but also potentially harmful, the Abh’s creators trained them using only images and voices as a means of preserving information.
It is well known that languages without letters are prone to rapid change, and the Abh language was no exception.
Another reason for the rapid changes was that the Abh existed in a closed environment — when one person committed a change to the language (whether it was intentional or not), it quickly spread to the whole group, and became established.
Thus, sudden alterations destroyed vocal sound rules and progressed in an extremely short time.
According to the few existing materials, popular opinion is that the loss of vowels occurred first. As a consequence of losing all those vowels, an inordinate number of homonyms popped up. Speculation is that they made a conscious effort to correct this problem by dragging out some of the vowels to sound like the ones that were dropped. So, although the number of vowels decreased, the variety of vowel sounds increased.
Concerning consonants, there were changes including: the transition of phonetic parts, “non-nasalization” of nasal sounds, and so forth. Through that process, it is speculated that the end sounds of stems and the fusion of character particles occurred.
Although these changes to the language were nothing short of severe, they were effected in a matter of two or three generations.
After that, the Abh declared independence, abandoned the restrictions imposed on them by the mother city, and developed their own culture, including a functional alphabet. With letters at their disposal, the rate of changes to the Abh language slowed to a crawl.
The Abh standard language was officially defined with the founding of the Empire. To facilitate communications with other Abh who lived in faraway interstellar ships and orbital cities, they made an incredible effort to preserve the “correct” Abh language. This meant that there were no accepted changes to the language from that point on.
The result was the preservation of the Abh’s complicated grammar. The most remarkable example of their complex grammar was the noun declension.
In this manuscript, I’ve attached a diagram of the Abh language noun declensions.
✦ ✦ ✦
Abh Language Noun Declensions
Note: In Abh language, they use specialized letters called Ath, but here the alphabet is substituted.