Aikoinan

Aikoinan is a constructed language associated with the fictional Aikoi people of the Aiko archipelago, featured in a range of media including novels, comics, and interactive games. In the fiction, Aikoinan is presented as the primary means of daily communication, ritual speech, and storytelling, and is described as an integral part of Aikoi identity.

Phonology and script: The language has 18 consonants and five vowels. Syllables are typically CV or CVC, with consonant clusters limited to two. Stress tends to fall on the penultimate syllable. The writing system uses a unique alphabet of 24 letters, written left to right, with diacritics indicating vowel quality and length in older texts.

Grammar and syntax: Aikoinan is largely agglutinative, with affixes marking tense, aspect, mood, and grammatical case. The basic word order is subject–object–verb. Nouns take suffixes for number and case, while verbs are inflected for tense and evidentiality. Pronouns include inclusive and exclusive forms, and honorifics reflect social relationships and formality.

Lexicon and usage: The vocabulary draws on the archipelago's natural environment, seafaring life, and social rituals. Compounding is common, and many terms encode functional nuances through affix stacking. Formal speech uses a larger set of honorific terms and longer verb forms than everyday conversation.

Sociolinguistic context: Within the fiction, Aikoinan is the lingua franca of the Aiko archipelago and a marker of cultural lineage. Dialects exist among northern highlands and southern coastal towns, with mutual intelligibility varying by age and social group. Efforts to preserve older forms appear in storylines about education and heritage.

History and reception: Aikoinan was developed by a fictional linguist character in the late 20th and early 21st centuries within the franchise. It has since inspired fan-made grammars, dictionaries, and learning guides, establishing a small but active conlanger community around the work.