busyOne thing we have created is a language family. It currently has three branches: Ancient, Northern, and Southern. Detailed grammar rules, dictionary entries, and other background information appear in the Torn World Wiki which is visible to contributors. There is also a "Language" forum in the Torn World forum board. On Fridays, I'll be introducing you to "Torn Tongue" with bits of vocabulary, grammar, and trivia. So let's start with greetings ...
Hello!
So far, there are two ways of saying "hello" in Torn Tongue, and these work in all three of its languages. Both of these are social words that have no other meaning besides their use as greetings; they are like "hello" rather than "salutations" in that regard.
Torn Tongue .......... English
karal ....................... hello (close); hi
haruu ...................... hello (distant); halloo
When you are near someone, within or approaching ordinary conversational distance, you say "karal." It is pronounced "KAH-rahl." This is a casual greeting, like "hello" or "hi" in English.
When you are far away from someone, and you want to get their attention or respond to their attempt to get yours, you say "haruu." Or more likely, you yell it! This word is good for yelling: "hah-ROOOO!" It's similar to English "Hello out there!" or "Halloo!"
This pair of words also provides a nice introduction to syllable stress in Torn Tongue. When a word has two syllables, like "karal," the stress usually falls on the first syllable: "KAH-rahl." However, Torn Tongue has some long vowels and diphthongs, which are written with two neighboring vowels. They take a little longer to pronounce than the short vowels written with single letters, and they also take the stress. So when you see a word like "haruu" then you know the stress will fall on the long vowel: "hah-ROOOO."
