Enclosed is an entry from the Vsilian Manuscript to Ardalian Doctrine, by Beland of Vsil, Medicaler of Ardalvsil.
----------------------------------------
A Captain's Guide to Imsinnah, the Elven Common Tongue
Speak to any elf east of the Western Tower and they'll proudly boast that there are more elven languages than Men have constellations. And while this is partly true, we should not be thrown off by the smugness of the elves; though it's true that Elves have many languages, the Ardalian officer will hear one language more often than the others: Imsinnah.
Imsinnah
Imsinnah refers to "Tongue of Sindalos," the language spoken by Sindalian elves, the only major elvish nation to live outside of the Wraithwoods. The Sindalian elves, hardly any different from their woodland cousins, adopted a strategy of outreach and cooperation rather than isolation. This decision was, unsurprisingly, a result of necessity: the loss of their homelands by rats in the mountains has led them to the coasts, where they've learned the trade of piracy and combat few elves dared to master. However, despite the brutish nature of Sindalos, most elves in non-confrontational settings are Sindalians, and thus are not deserving of the oft-disparaging moniker of "Salah."
This guide will serve as a basic introduction to Imsinnah, how to understand its basic structure, when and why elves use it, and what the prepared officer should do in case they meet elves on the battlefield.
Why language?
Elves, by virtue of their exceeding capabilities in wind magic, can carry sounds across long distances through a process called Word-Winding. Here, elvish commanders can make requests across the entire battlefield, boost morale, and intimidate their foes from afar.
Yet word-winding is a delicate task requiring significant skill, and not every elvish commander is equally skilled. Elvish commanders often make mistakes in their wind-wording, issuing commands to fronts and flanks that are within earshot of soldiers. Thus, it is crucial that, in any open engagement with Elves and their slave armies, that officers acutely pay attention to their words.
This downside is, in theory, addressed by the use of Imsinnah, of which this manual's purpose exists. The officer and captain who can hear and react to elvish orders is one who understands their plans, and thus it is by parsing and deconstructing much of their words and orders on the field that Ardalians can better prepare against elvish armies.
Though elvish tongues may initially seem awkward, many of their root characteristics and structures are immediately recognizable. Through context and quick thinking, as well as a decent grasp of their basic military vocabulary, one can parse out general instructions of the elvish strategy.
Note, elves have, at the moment, not accounted for language learning as a means of undermining their wind-wording. It is for this reason that Marshall Haron's commission of the elvish language remains a secret specifically for his officers, and officers and captains trusted by the armies of the Southern Shield. Any news or knowledge that Ardalian soldiers learning an elvish language for the sake of war must not reach the ears of their Isdath, lest they adapt their strategies.
Owm Structure
I begin this overview of Elvish language through a breakdown of our own common tongue: Owmsech, the language of the mountains. Humans, having emerged out of the mountains from the guidance of the dragons, have a flexible and adaptable structure, no doubt thanks to the worldly knowledge of our benefactors. Most owmsech language carries a simple subject-action-object structure, which can be seen in this simple statement:
> A Knight plunges his lance into his enemy.
Here, the subject of the knight acts against the object, his enemy, through an action, plunging. We can replace the act of plunging with any other action, and the fundamental structure remains the same:
> A knight congratulates his enemy.
>
> A knight smashes his enemy.
>
> A knight dismounts his enemy.
This simple subject-action-object structure remains a crucial element of Owmsech. Part of this, as Sages suggest, is due to internal reasoning which occurs in every human, where the immediate image is translated into meaning for the sake of action. The image of a knight, for example, has no significant bearing until the mind incorporates it into action, and thus leads to an explanation of its usage (in this case, against an enemy).
Imsinnah Structure
Imsinnah, in comparison, adopts a two-tiered structure thanks to its incredibly dense construction. Most elvish is confined to a single word as part of its expression, and thus entire sentences can be found through words. Let us take the word Imsinnah, which can be broken down as thus:
Im-sin-nah, "Tongue of Sindalos," or directly translated, "One's-Sindalos-Speech"
As we can see here, Im refers to a plural one, often indirectly, though the direct usage and thus translation is dependant on its context. Im can be used to refer to a direct group or indirect group, and thus humans must get used to making quick judgments on the subject of an elf's words.
Imsinnah is an incredibly subject-intensive language. Every word must and will begin with the subject, and thus a good commander will be able to parse out the basic subject of a sentence based upon the context and the sound structure:
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Is: I, myself
Isu: You
Im: They
Em: You (Unknown, Stranger)
Though elvish subjects can conjugate in many ways, these four dominant markers will determine the nature and role of their word-sentences. For instance, an Elvish Commander, Isdath, can be translated literally as "I-Lead." Likewise, the elvish word for murder is Isunadan, or "You-Kill-Being." When strung together, elvish language can seem intimidatingly swift, as many officers who have tried to woo offstandish elvish women would surely know. But by keeping in mind this basic principle with some basic vocabulary, the prepared officer can easily adapt accordingly to any elvish war chant.
Likewise, elvish sentence structure is much less flexible. While Owmsech can adopt numerous categorical and subcategorical permutations, all Elvish languages - regardless of their Salam - adopt a standard three-word recursive structure. For example, consider the famous elvish poem, Imradia, which has been read by very few humans west of the Wentlane:
> Imradia, Israra
>
> Imlurung, Issuru
>
> Isuradia, Imudaria
>
> Imsurung, Issuru
In Owmsech, a translation can be read as:
> Maidens knelt by the creeks, Their faces in my shield
>
> The metal gleams in the sun, The brooks fawn over me
>
> I crept by the creeks, The waters cold
>
> The sun begins to burn, The brooks protect me
In this poem, we can see the carefulness of elvish sentence structure. Each word-sentence carries a simple path: Im-ra-dia, or Maidens-Creek-Kneeling. The words, though simple, are immediately expressed in the construction of the sentence. To what, the maidens may kneel by the creek, is purposely left unclear.
However, I chose this poem because of how its simple structure can be used to express an alternative meaning.
The careful reader notices that in the poem, Issuru is used twice, though its meaning is changed based upon the context provided in the previous word-sentence. Issuru, directly broken down, refers to the brooks paying the speaker attention, though the context in which that attention is paid shifts based upon the sentence before it. The author, one elvish poet from Nadashsalam, purposely uses Imlurung and Imsurung, particularly because of their similarities when uttered by his kin (as elves have difficulty speaking with 'l's without the slur of the 's'). Elvish poetry, in this sense, is more concerned with similarities and playing with those similarities.
Similar constructions can be seen on the battlefield. Im-dru-dir, the sound every soldier has surely heard on the southern front, means "Stop-Arriving-Fire," referring to Medicalers caught in the Isdath's sight. Many Ardalian captains have already realized that, in the sight of Medicalers, elvish commanders would feverishly shout such commands without worry of their concerns reaching our ears.
Likewise, the words themselves can be pitch dependant. Is-sAn-Rom, for instance, means "I-Protect-You," referring to an elvish watchman, whereas Is-San-Rom means "I-Impede-You," a nonsensical word-sentence hardly used in elvish vocabulary. This pitch structure has, apocryphally, led to more than a few outbursts of violence between the elvish city-states, as rumours abound are that the reason why elvish clans not yet unified is due to their major disagreements based on miscommunications in their own respective languages.
Compound Conjugations
Certain words in Imsinnah can be conjugated to form new compound words, creating a lengthy chain of compound word-sentences. Though many high-born and wealthy elves find such conjugations as unsightly, imprecise, and prefer spoken concision, the elvish poor have developed complex conjugation chains to discuss increasingly complex subjects. This distinction is important as, we have increasingly found, elvish poor are exceedingly adept at obfuscating information through their use of such conventions.
A famous elvish treatise by one Tasrel of Nadashsalam, for instance, begins with the famous line:
> Imserahdrados, Imsirahdrados!
Translated into Owmsech, it can be read as:
> The elves, once united, are fractured, and must now unite!
Though in our tongue it may seem awkwardly written, in its native Imsinnah the line has a peculiar poetry common in elvish low-language.
Here we can see multiple components at play, some of which may be considered by many highborn elves as a besmirching of the Imsinnah sentence structure. Tasrel begins the declaration with Imserahdrados, which is a compound of Imserah and Imdrados, the former meaning "They-elves-being" and the latter being "they-past-united."
However, Tasrel, having spent much of his adult life in East Siral, adopted a hybridized Owmsech structure and compressed the three-part word-sentence. This act, usually done to denote a past tense, compressed the word-sentence itself. The product of this decision (no doubt scandalous by many of his fellow high-born elves) is that the next word-sentence, Imsirahdrados, takes advantage of the compound conjugation to create a word-sentence that sounds similar to the previous one.
Should Tasrel write this out as proper elves would, a possible writing would be:
> Imserah Imdrados, Imsirah Isdrados!
Though there is nothing necessarily displeasing about the sentence structure, Tasrel's compounding and conjugation have made both a chant and a play on the word-sentence, expressing more than immediately audible. Tasrel's words have stoked the flames of elvish nationalism, and thus such words, spoken among the people, may be seen as simple and revanchist. However, when written, forms a distinctly poetic call to action.
Why Learn?
To some officers reading this, they may wonder why I touch upon elven poetry when the intent of my writings is to teach the Ardalian military answers to elvish warfare. How does an understanding of their low-born and high-born sentence structures teach us how to better handle the elves?
I touch upon these flourishes and developments in high-born and low-born Imsinnah because, unlike the Siralian military, elvish militarymen are determined partly by merit and territory. Thus, the successful officer and captain must realize, even if they cannot immediately discern, that the languages of high-born and low-born elves will invariably affect the way in which they relate to their captors or enemies.
I have enclosed a brief list of common words, clearly favouring terms that are more likely to show up on the battlefield.
I also, in some small part, have my own fancies of the elvish language. It is no surprise that the Sindalians, having lost their homelands, survived thanks to new changes in communication and disclosures. The speak is to be, I would argue, and to understand what elves are demands understanding how they speak, why they speak what they speak, and to understand methods around that. We have already seen how changes in low-born Imsinnah have caused difficulties for code-breakers out of the Vsil - imagine the troubles it will bring to the battlefields when we penetrate deeper into the Wraithwoods and meet the languages of the Irimsalam, Mirilsalam, and Nairsalam. It would be good to understand how they operate, even outside of war, to better match them.
After all, despite the animosity between Owmdrach and Serah, it is important to understand that the men of the forests are hardly the fools and savages we may think of them. We cannot mistake the nobility of our goal, to expand the dominion of good men and women from sea to sea, but we must also acknowledge that it can only be accomplished by recognizing that we are not dealing with bands of warring barbarians, but nations of their own, and I argue such considerations begin with language.