Sylvan - family

Sylvan is not itself a language. It is instead a language family, and it holds two tongues: Bhaasha, kept by the Hafuwë and the fey, and Kutā, spoken by the gnolls and the Triaxians.

It did not begin on Erôth. It came out of a realm far beyond the continent, and the path to that land has long since been lost. That the Hafuwë speak out of this family is taken as the reason to believe they came from that land as well.

What the two tongues hold in common is the alphabet and the stock of sounds, which is not the same as holding the meaning in common; a word here and there carries across well enough to be guessed at, and no further. The distinction has been worth a night’s warning. Above the Valley of Doom, after dark, two rings of fire stood in the sky with characters moving inside them. Koa speaks Bhaasha and no Kutā at all, and he could still sound the characters out one at a time while Mikhail wrote them down. What they got between them was an impression and not a translation: that the gnolls had reported the company’s presence, and that an order was coming back the other way.