olanaklarnn

Olanaklarnn is a fictional language created for a science fiction world-building project. It is described as the native language of the Olan people, who inhabit the island chain of Olanara in an eastern archipelago. The term appears in in-world dictionaries and is used in multiple narratives to convey cultural nuance.

Linguistic classification and features: Olanaklarnn is presented as an agglutinative language with a subject–object–verb (SOV) order. Its phonology includes a consonant inventory of stops, fricatives, nasals and liquids, and a five-vowel system with occasional vowel harmony. Morphology relies on affixation rather than isolated particles, with evidential and mood markers appended to verbs to indicate source and certainty of information. Nouns take postposed modifiers, and numerals attach to nouns through a system of classifiers in longer phrases.

Writing and orthography: In-world, Olanaklarnn is described as having a syllabic writing system known as the Lath script, designed to encode syllables rather than individual phonemes. In many published materials within the fiction, scholars use a Latin transcription for accessibility, while some primary sources preserve the original Lath script in dedicated texts.

Geography and sociolinguistic context: Olanaklarnn is said to be spoken by a community spread across several isles, with two major dialects identified as Northern Olanaklarnn and Southern Olanaklarnn. The language is depicted as integral to cultural rituals, oral history, and navigation lore within the stories. Estimates in-universe place speaker numbers in the low hundreds of thousands, with active efforts to preserve regional varieties.

History and reception: The fictional history places Olanaklarnn’s emergence as a distinct tongue several centuries ago, followed by periods of external influence and modernization. It has become a focal point in discussions of conlang design within the project’s fan and scholarly communities.