Laastien

Laastien is a constructed language created for the fictional setting of the Laasti, a seafaring people inhabiting the northern archipelago of Lyria in the Valin Sea. It was developed as part of world-building for a series of novels and has since been described in fan glossaries and linguistic write-ups. In the narrative, Laastien functions as a marker of ethnic identity and social status, and it interacts with other languages in the archipelago.

Linguistic profile: Laastien is an agglutinative language with a basic subject–object–verb (SOV) word order. Nouns inflect for number and case, including nominative and oblique; adjectives follow nouns; determiners are postposed. Verbs encode aspect and mood with affixes and agree with the subject for person and number. The language additionally distinguishes evidentiality, conveying whether the information is direct knowledge or reported.

Phonology and script: The sound system includes stops p, t, k; fricatives s, h; nasals m, n; liquids l, r, and a vowel set a, e, i, o, u. Stress tends to fall on the first heavy syllable. Laastien is written primarily with a Latin-based script, with diacritics used in some texts to mark vowel quality and tone.

Lexicon and usage: The lexicon shows influences from neighboring island languages. Pronouns distinguish inclusive and exclusive first-person plural; there are formal and informal second-person forms. In-world, Laastien appears in ceremonial poetry, records, and dialogue between elites, while colloquial speech favors simplified forms and contractions.

Variants and status: Several dialects exist, notably Northern Laasten and Coastal Laastien; mutual intelligibility varies. Within the canon, the language has undergone periods of decline and revival and is often taught in academies in the fictional setting as a symbol of heritage and tradition.