Zwikish

Zwikish is a fictional language spoken by the Zwiki people of the Lyrin Archipelago, a coastal region in the northern seas of Arion. It functions as a community language across several islands and has a standardized form alongside regional varieties used in daily life and storytelling.

Zwikish has five vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and a consonant set including p, t, k, m, n, s, l, r, w, h, y. The language is generally non-tonal, with primary stress on the penultimate syllable. It uses an alphabetic script of 28 letters.

Word order is mostly SVO. Nouns mark number by a suffix and show possession similarly. Adjectives follow the nouns they modify. Verbs carry suffixes for tense and aspect, while pronouns include inclusive and exclusive forms in the first person plural. Postpositions replace prepositions, combining with nouns to form phrases.

Core vocabulary centers on seafaring, weather, kinship, and craft. Northern and southern island varieties exist, with loanwords from neighboring languages due to trade. Some speakers adopt modern terms, while traditional pronunciation patterns remain in everyday speech.

Zwikish is described as arising from contact among island communities in the early medieval period and later standardized through coastal education. Today it remains vital in Zwiki communities and is of interest to linguists studying language contact, variation, and preservation.