Sanskerta

Sanskerta is a constructed language created for the fictional universe of contemporary fantasy literature and media. It is presented as the liturgical and scholarly tongue of the ancient Sarasen civilization within that world, and draws on features from historical Indo-Aryan languages to convey ritual, philosophy, and science.

Phonology and script: Sanskerta's phoneme inventory includes five vowels and a selection of consonants that includes aspirated stops, nasals, and liquids. Syllables are typically CV or CVC, with primary stress on the root syllable in formal speech. The language is written in the Sanskerta script, an abugida descended from Brahmi. The script uses diacritics to mark vowels and has ligatures for common consonant clusters.

Grammar and usage: Sanskerta is morphologically rich, with noun inflection for eight cases and two numbers (singular and plural), plus a dual sometimes used in ceremonial contexts. Verbs inflect for tense, aspect, mood, voice, person, and number, and allow extensive verbal prefixes and suffixes. Word order is relatively flexible, though formal texts frequently employ a predicate-final or verb-final structure to emphasize emphasis and reverence. The lexicon blends adapted roots from Sanskrit and related traditions with invented morphemes to express obscure metaphysical and astronomical concepts.

In the internal fiction, Sanskerta serves as the language of scholarship, liturgy, and ritual. Outside the story, interest has grown among conlang communities, who develop learning materials, translate passages, and create new texts to explore the language’s motifs and grammar.