riehua

Riehua is a constructed language created for a fictional setting. It is described as the native tongue of the river-dwelling Riehuan people and is used across the archipelago of Vespara, where it coexists with neighboring languages in the world’s linguistic map.

Name and origin: The term riehua combines roots meaning 'river' and 'voice' in the language, reflecting the culture’s emphasis on waterways as a source of life and poetry.

Phonology and writing: Riehua has five vowel phonemes and a moderate inventory of consonants, including p, t, k, m, n, s, l, r. It features vowel harmony and syllable-timed rhythm. The standard writing system uses the Latin alphabet with diacritics to mark stress and vowel quality.

Grammar: The language is analytic with agglutinative morphology; basic word order is subject–object–verb (SOV). Noun phrases mark case with suffixes; pronouns are often dropped when recovered from context. Verbs encode aspect and mood through affixes, while negation is expressed with a dedicated negation particle placed before the verb. Numerals are usually placed before the noun.

Usage and status: In fiction, riehua is used in everyday speech, poetry, and ceremonial songs; it has a growing corpus of translated texts and fan translations in the world’s meta-narrative. Within the setting, scholars study its history as part of a language family alongside neighboring tongues.