Lingua Clara (ˈliŋɡwa ˈklɑːʁa)
"Lingua Clara is the native tongue of power."
Lingua Clara is the language spoken by the Clarati sorcerers, and it served as the language of scholarship in the Northeastern Region for a thousand years. It is inspired by a combination of Church Latin and Medieval French.
Dialects
Each of the Clarati sorcerers who participated in The Conquest of Ynys had distinct habits of speech, including personal idioms and vocabulary choices. They taught these habits to the peoples they subdued, as the sorcerers preferred to converse only in their own tongue. Over the thousand years of Clarati rule in the Ynys Archipelago, each sorcerer's idiosyncrasies developed into a recognizable dialect of Lingua Clara. Even today, nearly seven hundred years after the death of the last conqueror, it remains possible to determine where a person learned Lingua Clara based on these characteristics.
Interesting Features
Because of its long association with Magic, Lingua Clara has acquired metaphysical weight in the Folk Magic systems of the Great Ring - especially in the Northeastern Region. Both the spoken and written forms of the language are believed to carry magical potency, and appear in a wide range of spells, rites, and charms. Lingua Clara has even found a place within the disciplines of True Magic and Alchemy, where it serves to guide practitioners into the proper mental state for manipulating spiritual essences and symbolic correspondences. Although its magical Association is strongest in the Northeast, sailors, Maskers, and wandering scholars have carried Clarati words throughout the islands, where they retain at least some degree of power.
Related Languages
Lingua Clara originated in a world beyond the Great Ring, and none of the native languages of the islands are related to it. However, Princière, spoken in the half-real Dolphin Islands, was shaped by the experiments of Celestina and shares linguistic roots with Lingua Clara.
Naming Traditions
The Clarati believed a person's True Name to be a private secret, revealed only to their closest intimates. To everyone else, an individual used a nomen publicum, a public name shared with those who needed to know it. These public names could - and sometimes did - change at the individual's discretion. They often evoked concepts of light, which in Lingua Clara is synonymous with "goodness."
Writing System
Lingua Clara is written in Scriptura Clara, an alphabet of twenty-two letters in which each glyph corresponds to a single sound. Manuscripts were often richly illuminated, with vibrant colors and symbolic images used to provide nuance, emphasis, or contextual shading to the text.
Geographical Distribution
Since the death of the last Clarati sorcerers of Ynys, Lingua Clara has largely fallen out of everyday use. It remains, however, an essential language for scholars studying texts from the period of Clarati occupation, and it continues to serve as the official language of legal documents in the Kingdom of Dyfed.
- Ave – Hello
- Vale – Goodbye
- Gratias tibi ago – Thank you
- Fiat voluntas tua – You're welcome (lit. Let your will be done)
- Adiuva me – Help me
- Quaeso – Please
- Quomodo vales? – How are you?
- Bene valeo – I am well
- Ignosce mihi – Sorry / Excuse me
- Etiam / Minime – Yes / No
- Luminara
- Seraphina
- Celestina
- Illuminata
- Altiora
- Aurora
- Solistra
- Lucida
- Gloriana
- Celestia
- Clarion
- Lucius
- Aurelian
- Fulmen
- Altior
- Solaris
- Lucianus
- Lumenor
- Illustrius
- Notens
- Luxor
- Elysian
- Vespera
- Aetheris
- Ignis
- Auriel
- Fulmen
- Celestine
- Serenus
- Nitor
This article was originally written for Spooktober 2024. You can find all of my Spooktober Articles at Spooktober Central.
This article was originally written for Spooktober 2023. You can find all of my Spooktober Articles at Spooktober Central.
That's very interesting. I really liked the idea of a "true name" and a "public name" What would be a reason for someone changing the public name, though?
Mostly if they felt it no longer represented them. The Clarati had used magic to make themselves ageless, and had lived for countless centuries before they died - in that time, you might decide that the name you selected when you were just starting out no longer really represented you. In many ways, the nomen publicum is like a username online - the one you pick in your teens might not fit so well in your thirties.