Galden

Galden belongs to no language family. The general survey of the tongues of Erôth gives its usual speakers as Galderia, Amulta and Yovance, and holds that it is written as well as spoken. Amulta and Yovance have both since seceded from Galderia, and the language stayed where it was.

It carries a region in it, and a single sentence is not enough to place a man rightly. Given a single Galden greeting by Aldo in a Haudh-Gwenn shop, Landor de Bellun returned it with the pleasantry an Amultan would use, and Amulta has not been part of Galderia in a great many years. “Close, wrong region but close,” Aldo told him, and Landor allowed that it was pleasant to meet anybody speaking the native tongue at all, even if his way around the words was a little sour. Aldo is Galderian and out of the capital, and he alters his accent and his cadence on purpose.

Galden keeps its own names for things. Darkwood is Callidecotie in Galden where Peren calls it Ki laati, and both names stand. Those raised to it reach for it before Peren without deciding to: writing out descriptions of two missing soldiers for Mikhail, Jaden set them down in Galden by instinct, then scratched the page out and began again in Peren so the rest of the party could read them.