Universe Reference
Languages & Contact
There is no universal translator here, and most contact never produces a word-list at all — it produces a protocol: slow, calibrated, partial, and hard-won. Three different things are catalogued below. A couple of non-human tongues have recorded vocabulary. Some contacts are real and thorough and have no lexicon whatsoever, which is the normal outcome and not a gap. And — newest, and strangest to file under xenolinguistics — there are human languages here: our own, left alone long enough on the far side of a road to drift into something that needs a glossary. Everything is from published canon.
Ferren
Contact: 2312 · 5 words
Diverged human tongue — not alien · living tongue · Earth idiom drifted five generations
Not an alien language — ours, left alone for five generations on a heavy world under a dimming sun. The grammar is recognisably Earth-descended and the vocabulary is almost entirely intelligible; what has drifted is register and emphasis. Ferren speech is formal, sparing and old-fashioned to a modern ear, and it carries a small set of terms that mean something no Earth word covers — because no Earth speaker has had to live with the thing being described.
Physiology
Human. Broad-chested and deliberate under heavier gravity, with a dusty slate undertone to the skin, wide dark eyes adapted to poorer light, and voices pitched low.
Grammar Structure
Earth-descended and structurally unchanged. Divergence is lexical and tonal, not grammatical — which is itself the evidence of how recently these people were us.
Documented Vocabulary
the road
Device Translation
"the road"
Actual Meaning
The seam network — the whole apparatus of junctions, routes and crossings. Not a metaphor to a Ferren speaker: a road is a thing other people build, that arrives whether you asked for it or not, and that carries their traffic past your door.
roadmakers
Device Translation
"roadmakers"
Actual Meaning
Earth-humans. Descriptive in origin and used to Earth's face without deference. It stops being merely descriptive the moment anyone works out what the road costs — and the word does not change, only what it weighs.
the Going-Out
Device Translation
"the dying of the stars"
Actual Meaning
What is happening to their sky, named by people who watched it happen rather than measured it: the sky has been going out since our grandparents. It predates any human instrument reading of the same effect by generations.
the count
Device Translation
"the record"
Actual Meaning
The continuous sky-record kept by the settlement's keeper. To keep the count is an office and an obligation; to break it would be a moral failure, not a clerical one.
keel
Device Translation
"keel / home"
Actual Meaning
A section cut from the colony ship and lived in. Five generations on it means house, with no sense of makeshift left in it at all — and it still means the part of a ship that holds.
Veray
Contact: 2312 · 2 words
Diverged human tongue — not alien · living tongue · diverged human line
Another long-stranded human population, and another Earth-descended tongue — but one shaped by a different history: a people who watched their sky fail and worked out, correctly, who had done it. Where Ferren speech is formal and patient, Veray speech is clipped, and it has developed a precise vocabulary for obligation, debt and recovery that Earth-standard covers only clumsily.
Physiology
Human. A separate diverged line from the Ferren, with its own build and colouring.
Grammar Structure
Earth-descended. Divergence is lexical and idiomatic; the register is markedly terser than Ferren.
Documented Vocabulary
recovery
Device Translation
"recovery"
Actual Meaning
Taking back from Earth's abundance. Not a euphemism for theft in Veray usage — the word carries the whole argument, that what is taken was already owed, and it is used in ordinary sentences about ordinary cargo.
the dark
Device Translation
"the dark"
Actual Meaning
Their own failing sky, spoken of as a place rather than an event — something a family is under, that a person comes out of, and that a world is finally lost to.
Nhál
First contact: 2192 · 24 words
Alien lexicon · spoken tongue, largely auto-translated
A spoken, human-descended tongue. Two-beat words, soft fricatives, a glottal stop (written ’). The register is low and even — raising the voice is itself meaningful. Translator tech renders most Nhál automatically; the words below are the ones that survive untranslated, because the not-translating is the point.
Physiology
Human-descended Seam-traversal communities, stranded long ago and grown a long way from their root. By the Spent Light era they keep an oral language alongside their older Seam-network signalling.
Grammar Structure
Roots compound, and — this is the part a reader needs — the WRITTEN FORM marks how tightly they are bound. There are three degrees of join. **Bare fusion** (korrvesh, saelvesh, threivesh) welds two roots into a single settled concept, a thing in itself. A **hyphen** (tael-vesh, thren-aune, threi-sael) holds two full roots in a phrase, each keeping its own beat and its own visible work. An **apostrophe** (vesh'a, sael'korr, kel'aune) is a glottal catch binding a root to a particle or a tightly-bonded second root — the closest join of all. The rule of thumb: the more completely two parts have fused into one idea, the less punctuation. ⚠ The apostrophe is a phoneme, not typography; the forms are not interchangeable and the punctuation is never stripped. Order matters too, and is deliberate: korrsael (the weight voiced) and sael'korr (the voicing owed) share both roots and are different words. Belonging is marked by the suffix -en. Plurality is unmarked; context carries number. There is no tense — Nhál marks certainty and standing instead of past and future.
Documented Vocabulary
aune
/OW-neh/
Device Translation
"kin; line; those one belongs to"
Actual Meaning
Family in the widest sense: the line you come from and answer to.
aunen
/OW-nen/
Device Translation
"of my line; my people"
Actual Meaning
The -en suffix of belonging on aune (kin, line). Nhál marks possession this way rather than with a separate word.
kel
/kel/
Device Translation
"no; a refusal; a closed door"
Actual Meaning
Short, flat, final. The hardest small word in the language.
kel'aune
/KEL-ow-neh/
Device Translation
"the line that closes its door on one of its own"
Actual Meaning
kel (refusal, a closed door) + aune (kin, line). The wrong of a people that shuts out one of its own members. Spoken once, untranslated, then glossed by the speaker: “We have that word because we have needed it.”
kel'korr
/KEL-kor/
Device Translation
"“the debt that cannot be paid”"
Actual Meaning
Despair, or an unforgivable act. kel (refusal) + korr (debt). Reserved for the worst weight a voice can carry.
korr
/kor/
Device Translation
"weight owed; a debt"
Actual Meaning
A central Nhál concept. Roots most of their words about obligation, grief, and inheritance.
korrsael
/KORR-sale/
Device Translation
"the weight given to the air — a formal grief-utterance"
Actual Meaning
korr (weight owed) + sael (breath, voice). A korrsael does not narrate a grief or explain it; it is the weight itself, voiced — a long unhurried falling that ends rather than breaks off. ⚠ Contrast sael'korr: same two roots, reversed, and a different word.
korrvesh
/KOR-vesh/
Device Translation
"grief-debt"
Actual Meaning
A grief formally carried rather than discharged quickly — held, witnessed, not rushed. korr (weight owed) + vesh (the standing-quiet).
naru
/NAH-roo/
Device Translation
"to listen; to receive without answering yet"
Actual Meaning
A virtue the Nhál prize. Listening that does not rush to reply is its own act of respect.
naru-sa?
/NAH-roo-sah/
Device Translation
"“will you listen?”"
Actual Meaning
The politeness frame that opens a serious exchange. Asked before something is given that matters.
sael
/sah-EL/
Device Translation
"breath; voice; the act of speaking"
Actual Meaning
A human root buried in it, just out of reach. The unit from which speech-words are built.
sael'en
/sah-EL-en/
Device Translation
"“of one voice” — agreement, accord"
Actual Meaning
Weightier than the human "agreed." The -en suffix marks belonging.
sael'korr
/sah-EL-kor/
Device Translation
"the debt of inheritance"
Actual Meaning
What every voice owes the voices before it. "Every hand that writes is full of older hands." Paid formally, witnessed.
saelvesh
/SAH-el-vesh/
Device Translation
"“the voice-quiet”"
Actual Meaning
A willing, openable silence — stillness that holds a voice ready. The good inverse of threivesh. sael (voice) + vesh (standing-quiet).
tael
/tah-EL/
Device Translation
"light; a star"
Actual Meaning
A plain word, made heavy by what it compounds into.
tael-vesh
/tah-EL-vesh/
Device Translation
"spent light — a guttered star; a dead or dying sun"
Actual Meaning
tael (light) + vesh (the standing-quiet). The far edge is full of tael-vesh. Often left untranslated; the silence around it carries the weight.
threi
/thray/
Device Translation
"breach; the wrong-loud; disorder unset"
Actual Meaning
The order broken and not yet set right. To raise the voice is a threi- act.
threi-korr
/THRAY-korr/
Device Translation
"the breach-debt"
Actual Meaning
threi (breach; the wrong-loud) + korr (weight owed). What is owed where the order broke — debt accrued by one's own wrong-loud acts, owed to those the breach harmed. Distinct from korrvesh, which is grief for what was lost rather than guilt for what was done.
threi-sael
/thray-sah-EL/
Device Translation
"“haste-speech”; speaking or acting before standing"
Actual Meaning
threi (breach) + sael (voice). The human habit of rushing. Not quite an insult — closer to "breach-speech."
threivesh
/THRAY-vesh/
Device Translation
"“the breach-silence / the wrong-still”"
Actual Meaning
A silence that should be a voice and is not — aware, unanswering. The dark inverse of vesh. Reserved for the truly alien.
thren
/thren/
Device Translation
"the long view; the fixed line of time"
Actual Meaning
The concept that lets the Nhál speak with no grammatical tense — time is a line already drawn, not a before and after.
thren-aune
/THREN-ow-neh/
Device Translation
"the long-parted line"
Actual Meaning
thren (the long view; the fixed line of time) + aune (kin, line). A lineage recognised across time; a branch known by its bones after a long sundering. The word names the shape of such a branch and never whose it is.
vesh
/vesh/
Device Translation
"the standing-quiet; rest, stillness, baseline"
Actual Meaning
The Nhál resting state. To "hold vesh" is to be at peace. The root from which much of the language grows.
vesh'a
/VESH-ʔa/
Device Translation
"“be still / it is well / peace”"
Actual Meaning
The default greeting and leave-taking. Lands like both "hello" and "be at peace" at once.
Vekhol
First contact: 2168 · 3 words
Alien lexicon · partial lexicon · recorded only where translation failed
Pulsed electromagnetic communication at 1/40 human conversational pace. Single transmissions can take 2-4 hours.
Physiology
Multi-limbed, anaerobic respiration, ~320 Earth-year lifespan. Low-light adapted.
Grammar Structure
Vekhol builds concept-words that a human sentence has to unpack: kelvath is a line, kelvath-shorel a layered cone, and the difference between them is a formation, an angle and a casualty list. What is recorded here is not a lexicon so much as a list of the places a machine could not carry the concept across.
Documented Vocabulary
kelvath
/KEL-vath/
Device Translation
"a flat fire-axis; a line"
Actual Meaning
A Vekhol formation-word. ⭐⭐ The most consequential single word in the franchise's contact record: a human instruction meaning “line” was rendered into kelvath, and the intended pattern was kelvath-shorel — a layered cone. The translation device had no concept-mapping for the second and returned the first. A Vekhol officer re-formed his ship along the wrong axis, correctly, on the instruction he was given.
Grief-debt
Device Translation
"The cost we have not yet paid (device approximation)"
Actual Meaning
Species-level reckoning of harmonic-array engagement cost. The Vekhol carry their own Wound-cost ledger at the species layer.
kelvath-shorel
/KEL-vath SHOR-el/
Device Translation
"Layered cone (device approximation)"
Actual Meaning
A layered cone: two vessels firing across each other's angle at a common target, with depth. Not a line. ⚠ The device did not carry it, and returned kelvath instead. The element *shorel* recurs in Vekhol ship names — the *Tev-Shorel* — but canon does not gloss it standing alone, and this record does not guess.
Documented contact — protocols, not lexicons
These species are catalogued, but produce no vocabulary in the human sense — contact is mathematical, spatial, or never established at all. What's known is the protocol, not a word-list.
Tarvan
First contact 2152Signal-layer modulation. First contact 2152, mathematical-only communication for 15 years before conversational exchange became possible.
No lexicon
Tarvan-human exchange proceeded through mathematical proofs for the first 15 years. Vocabulary in the human sense does not apply — concepts are transmitted as compressed symbolic structures that the PMK renders into approximate English.
Architects
First contact 2172Topology-modification overlay communication. Mathematical bootstrap established 2172–2180 via colony CW3.
No lexicon
The Architects shape spacetime itself rather than speak — so there is no lexicon to list, only readings taken by specialist equipment.
Iret
First contact 2184Hybrid mathematical-grammar requiring a specialized PMK variant. Contact ~2184.
No lexicon
The Iret are cooperative but their grammar structure resists standard PMK mediation. Specialist equipment is required. Full vocabulary documentation is pending deeper institutional contact.
The Hostile
Contact 2191 · no protocolNo linguistic contact. No communication protocol. Mathematical bootstrap failed. Further contact attempts unauthorized. PMK confidence: 0%. Classification: active threat.
No shared symbolic ground
Orun
First contact 2241The Orun do not exchange words. Contact with them is conducted in pressure — weight applied, held and set down — and the vocabulary that grew up around it is human vocabulary for a human side of the exchange. There is no Orun word-list in this archive because there is no Orun word-list anywhere: the humans who have talked with them longest still describe the conversation in terms of what was lifted and what was put down.
No lexicon
⚠ A zero-length lexicon is the NORMAL outcome of contact, not a failure of it. Most of the species in this archive have no word-list and never will.
Communication Technology
Pulse-Mediation Kit (PMK): Portable communications stack (~14kg mature design, ~40kg early prototypes). Operates at 1 exchange per 30-90 seconds. Every translation carries a confidence percentage. Below 70%, exchange is marked unreliable.
Note on the Nhál: uniquely among contacted species, the Nhál keep a spoken tongue — translator tech renders most of it automatically, so the words catalogued here are the ones characters deliberately leave untranslated.
Canon Note
This reference is compiled from published series bibles and is incomplete by design. Vocabulary will be populated as canon is documented in published works. Abstract concepts, humour, metaphor, and nuance remain untranslatable across all species.