Urdah Labra

Springing forth from the minds of high ogre archmagi, and subject to their command for millennia, it can be little surprise that the languages of human kind are rooted in the speech of their masters. To learn the spellcraft necessary to maintain the elaborate public and municipal infrastructure of their cities, the humans needed to know the high speech of the blues and other high ogres who directed them, known as Urdah Labra. Structured in a poetic cadence with meter dictated by the fashion preferences of the prefecture and heavy with symbolic meaning, Urdah Labra lends itself to metaphor and idiom. Disfavored by free humans the poetic structure of proper speech was shunned by many cultures and has remained in use only by spell weavers and some artists in modern human languages. This abandonment of the poetic meter promotes the disdain of the high ogres for their wayward working class spell weavers, as it resembles the simple language of other low ogres.   Among the speech of elves the roots of Urdah Labra are easily detected. Its association with Fae'erie where it is the native language keeps the high speech on the tongues of those trapped in the first world, using a meter favored by the folk of the shadow realm. Even among the low elves, or wood elves, the use of poetic idioms is quite common despite their adoption of the ways of dwarves or low ogres. Prevalence of oral tradition, long lifespans, and reverence for the concept of the eternal have likely contributed to the retention of Urdah Labra among the elves.   Considered an offensive mockery of their high speech, modern dwarven dialects maintain a mathematical or engineered reflection of Urdah Labra in their structure that the ogres find crass. Scholars have noted that during the height of conflict with the giants, Middle Dwarven underwent significant changes in pattern and developed its own script to set itself apart from and antagonize the enemy. By the time the remaining giants had been contained on Jotunar the more familiar forms of modern dwarven had developed, and the punitive wars against the ogres had begun.   In the remaining ogre enclaves modern dialects and meters of Urdah Labra are still spoken, and some idioms and metaphors from common legends and myths persist. The long meter of the Rynabori prefectures have been lost in favor of the verse forms of Eirghar. Some Jotunari verse forms have survived, although primarily among the giants who have displaced their smaller more populous ogrekin.