Saannish

Saannish is a constructed language created for a fictional setting, intended to be spoken by the Saanni people in the northern coastal region of the imagined continent of Eldara. It was developed by a linguist-writer collaboration to provide a distinct linguistic texture for the culture, and to supply consistent rules for dialogues and inscriptions in media.

Phonology: Saannish has a relatively simple vowel system of five short vowels, /a e i o u/, and a consonant inventory that includes stops, fricatives, and a few sonorants. Stress is typically syllable-timed with penultimate stress. The language permits CV and CVC syllables, with occasional gemination to indicate emphasis or lexical contrast.

Grammar: Saannish is largely agglutinative with a subject–object–verb (SOV) word order. Nouns inflect for case using suffixes, such as nominative -a, accusative -in, and dative -or. Verbs encode aspect and mood through suffixes; negation is expressed by the particle ni before the verb. Adjectives follow nouns and agree in case.

Writing: The standard orthography uses a Latin-based script with diacritics to mark vowel quality and stress. A secondary script, the historic Saanni script, is depicted in ceremonial inscriptions within the fictional setting. Official texts tend to favor the Latin-based form for accessibility in published works and translations.

Usage and resources: Saannish features in fictional literature, games, and films within its universe and in companion scholarship. Dictionaries, grammars, and sample texts exist in-world and among fan communities, providing pronunciation guides, dialogue conventions, and linguistic notes on dialectal variation between coastal and inland varieties.