Lynguistykon: Language

Language is how living beings communicate, combining words and usually intonations to record or transfer meaning. How those words and intonations present themselves varies very widely among species, cultures, and even individuals. Language can be audibly, visually, or otherwise sensorily communicated. Language can be the means by which a living being communicates internally, as well.

Words

Communication usually involves many words put together to communicate a complete idea or multiple ideas together. A word is a recognizable communication holding an idea/meaning, that can thereby be transferred. A morpheme is likewise a recognizable communication holding an idea/meaning that can thereby be transferred, but it is the smallest unit of language that does so. So all morphemes can be seen as words, but not all words are morphemes, since a word can also be composed of multiple morphemes (note that in many languages, although all morphemes carry identifiable meaning, not all morphemes are used as standalone words due to linguistic conventions or because they require pairing to transfer sufficient meaning). Similarly, depending on the language a unit of language called a letter may serve as a building block only conveying sufficient meaning combined together with other letters to form morphemes/words, or otherwise a letter may already essentially serve as a morpheme/word itself, with a basic identifiable meaning that stands on its own and that can then be combined with other letters to present deeper or altered meanings.

Intonation

Intonation is tone attached to words to either deeper or alter their meaning. It can be specifically designed into a language's structure (with tones then serving much as established morphemes, affixing words and modifying them) or simply a manifestly understood facet of communication in a language.

Writing

Writing is the recording of language visually in a way that meaning can be facilely retrieved from later. Many different systems of writing exist for languages, but the Lynguistykon and other written works related to Somewhere Else usually use a uniform system of writing in general in order to be accessible.

Syntax

Syntax refers to the linguistic rules about how to properly form phrases/sentences (the complete ideas that words come together to form) within a language.

Popular Language

(See main article: Popular Language)

Because there is more than one language, Popular Languages often arise that are used by the many groups of Somewhere Else (largely irrespective of their origins) to communicate. But Popular Language in a broader sense can also refer to communication expressions that are held in common across languages and that get expressed by their speakers alongside those languages' own expressions. Many times there exists more than one way to communicate the same thing, for example the plant "Yolkfruit". Yolkfruit may be described in different ways and thus may be represented by varying words across even the same language and especially across different languages, but the word Yolkfruit is an example of Peoplespeak. Peoplespeak is a form of Popular Language used to standardize words for things, such as Yolkfruit, so that the same idea can be understood by speakers across different languages irrespective of their language. A speaker of Prajde would likely refer to Yolkfruit by its native name in Prajde, Lajlekaan (which literally translates to yellow sweet fruit), while a speaker of Sinkaan would refer to it as Malikoven (which literally translates to happy-bread). Using Peoplespeak, "Yolkfruit" would instead be Lajlekee (which literally translates to yolkfruit) in Prajde and Qalkoven (which literally translates to yolk-bread, since Sinkaan uses the word "bread" for food) in Sinkaan. Sometimes, like in the case of the words Yolkfruit or Glitterstream, the word in Peoplespeak is a literal translation of what the item is (ex: combining the word "Yolk" and the word "Fruit"), but sometimes it is a commonly held more poetic way of representing the item too (like the word Wingsword to represent a pen). The Peoplespeak version of a word from that language (like the word Lajlekee for Prajde speakers or Qalkoven for Sinkaan speakers) can be used directly in that language, but it is also very common, perhaps even more common, that the Peoplespeak version of the word from the Popular Language of the time (for example, the Pailich version of the Peoplespeak Word Yolkfruit) is used mixed in with words from the language one is speaking.