selgete

Selgete is a fictional language family used in speculative linguistics and worldbuilding to illustrate the diversity of agglutinative morphologies and evidential systems.

The name Selgete is linked to an imagined archipelago of the same name, a chain of volcanic islands where the languages of the Selgete group are said to be spoken. In worldbuilding materials, Selgete varieties are described as sharing a common ancestry but diverging through centuries of isolation and contact with neighboring language groups.

Linguistic profile: Selgete languages are typically described as agglutinative, with a basic SOV (subject–object–verb) order and extensive case marking. They are noted for a robust evidential system that encodes the source of information (direct knowledge, inference, and reported speech). Noun incorporation and complex verb morphology are common, including mood, aspect, and evidential suffixes.

Phonology is presented as featuring a moderately sized consonant inventory with a contrastive set of stops, fricatives, nasals, and approximants, along with a five-vowel system that may exhibit vowel length in some varieties.

Writing and transcription in Selgete-related material typically employ an alphabetic script with diacritics to mark phonation and tone in some dialects; other projects use a romanized transcription for accessibility in guides and games.

History and reception: The Selgete concept emerged in speculative-language and worldbuilding communities in the 2010s and has been discussed as a case study for how plausible linguistic diversity can be constructed for fictional settings. It is not a real, historically attested language family.

See also: speculative linguistics, worldbuilding, language family concepts. References: discussed in worldbuilding handbooks and online forums that explore fictional languages.