The third and final of three languages that will release with the campaign setting is Kejăruk, orcspeech! I’ll be releasing the subregion guide for the Hellstrand soon which will have additional examples of the language, both written and spoken, but here’s the primer:
Kejăruk (/ˈkɛʒɑɽuk/; KE-zhah-rook) is the language of the venerable, yet conflicted orcs. As strong-willed and concise as their people, orcspeech is a collection of relatively short, harshly accented words. One of the most fractured races of Nivost, it bears diverse influences: the harsh, subtle beauty of Salial, the goddess of the dawning dark; the raw power of Kavek Thul, the god of glorious rage; and the world-weary succinctness of the orcs themselves. Few non-orcs speak Kejǎruk, and thus those non-humanoids who do are typically viewed with great respect by their people.
Akin to Najath in its precise encoding, Kejăruk is arguably easier to read by sight than the more ancient tongue. Carons (ˇ) adorn the shorter, harsher vowel sounds, whereas vowels with no diacritic are longer. Beyond this, the language is highly retroflex, being spoken largely with the tip of the tongue touching the palate; however, this can be ignored in favor of a significantly more English-sounding approximation. When spoken accurately, it might sound vaguely similar to a bass-filled Urdu.
Kejăruk is written as an abugida, a consonant-centered semisyllabary, as opposed to the vowel-centered nature of the trolls’ Tsahekne. While not as relatively simply to learn as Najath, it is significantly easier than Tsahekne; consonant sounds are the main symbol set, with the smaller set of vowel sounds reduced to ornaments above them. These vowel sounds are placed above consonants they follow, with initial vowel sounds requiring a voiceless placeholder character.
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