Qerenoka

See also Covenant languages.

Qers'nok, commonly known as Sangheili, Pan Sangheili, Common Sangheili or Imperial Sangheili is the common name for the Covenant's lingua franca. Qers'nok is named after the original language chosen as the Covenant's common language at the time of the Writ of Union, but has evolved considerably since.

Since there's no need to redo work that's already been done, the current plan is to implement a spin-off of the Sangheili conlang created for the Halo TV show and documenting as well as expanding upon that (regardless of the show's quality, the work on the language is impressive and will serve our purposes well). (We still call it Qers'nok, though, because it's better to distinguish it from the name of the species.)

History
Modern Pan Sangheili's relationship to the original, Writ of Union-era Qers'nok is roughly similar as that of modern Italian to Latin, and perhaps even more distant. Because Qers'nok is spoken by a vast collective, it is by nature highly eclectic, being more aptly described as a language family than a singular language and encompassing hundreds if not thousands of dialects and subvariants, many of which are only barely mutually intelligible or not at all.

The version of Qers'nok documented here describes "Pan Sangheili", or the standardized version of the language spoken in High Charity, as of the early to mid-26th century. Pan Sangheili is spoken natively by much of the Covenant population, but also serves as an auxiliary language to those who speak either divergent dialects or entirely unrelated languages. Even so, Qers'nok should not be understood as being universal to the entire Covenant population. Pan Sangheili is institutionally regulated by a specific body within High Charity (likely part of the Ministry of Edification or a multi-ministerial effort), though this has not always been so. This has also slowed down the natural evolution of the language, and it has stayed relatively unchanged for centuries. There are also institutions on Sanghelios and other worlds claiming to represent the ultimate authority on the language. The language spoken by the high nobles of Sanghelios is known separately as High Sangheili or Aristocratic Sangheili, and is considerably more elaborate than Pan Sangheili.

Many sounds once present in ancient Qers'nok and other Sangheili languages have disappeared from Pan Sangheili, leaving only sounds that can be produced in some way by most of the Covenant's member species; mainly the San'Shyuum. Overall, Writ of Union-era Qers'nok featured more guttural sounds than the modern Pan Sangheili, which does not utilize the Sangheili's entire vocal range. As something of a quirky equivalent to human click sounds, some native Sangheili languages utilize a range of whistles and roars which cannot be reproduced by most species. The Sangheili have a rather bizarre facial anatomy, but they can sound like Keith David or Robert Davi. It's difficult to explain how their vocal tracts work, so all we can really say is "very well" (it likely happens in a separate cavity within their throat, likely also involving the nasal cavities, etc).

Documentation
The following is mostly copied from David Peterson's twitter with some reformatting. The inclusive/exclusive distinction in the first person plural pronouns (i.e. “we”) signifies a difference between “you and us” vs. “us and not you”. This difference shows up quite a bit in the series, so listen for “riin” vs. “jaari”.

Stress is regularly antepenultimate, i.e. on the second-to-last syllable.

Noun cases
Cases are, in this case, little tags that let you know what role a noun plays in the sentence. Ergative and absolutive are grammatical; vocative is for direct address; the rest are locative. I’ll explain these.

The ergative “o” is placed directly after a noun that effects the action of the verb. For example, in K’uucho o domo ruuk’inatan, “The warrior attacks the human”, k'uucho “warrior” is followed by “o” because it’s the one that causes the attacking to happen. Domo gets no tag.


 * Ablative: wele ga “from the ship”
 * Adessive: wele ni “on the ship”
 * Allative: wele oni “to the ship”
 * Elative: wele ba “out of the ship”
 * Illative: wele zhi “into the ship”
 * Inessive: wele me “in the ship"

Possession
Those familiar with cases may notice there are no possessive cases. This is because one uses various of the other cases for possession depending on the nature of the possessive relationship.
 * For example, K’uucho oni zhuro would be “the warrior’s weapon”. Presumably this is one the warrior owns.
 * K’uucho ni zhuro would also be “the warrior’s weapon”, but the implication would be it was one they just picked up, or was an improvisational weapon—one they happened to have.

Now, let’s say the warrior has their father’s weapon. You’d probably say something like K’uucho oni nejo ga zhuro. That is, “the weapon FROM the father TO the warrior”.

You can also make fun distinctions like K’uucho me ik’o “the warrior’s eye(s)” (presumably still in there), and k’uucho ba ik’o “the warrior’s eye(s)” (which, regrettably, have been removed for some reason).

Note: I'll likely include a genitive case from my earlier ideas, but its use is limited to archaic or formal contexts. --Tacitus (talk) 15:45, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

Verbs
There is a distinction between dynamic and stative verbs. The understanding of the tenses will change depending on the type of verb. This should be familiar to English speakers, as we do the same thing. (Cf. “I like pizza”~“I’m liking pizza” vs. “I eat pizza”~“I’m eating pizza”.)

A dynamic verb is one where there has been some actual change in the world—where some action has taken place (e.g. “call”, “crush”, “send”). A stative verb is one that reflects more of an internal state (e.g. “understand”, “be useful”, “forget").

Sangheili has 8 tenses, but the meanings of those tenses vary depending on whether the verb is stative or dynamic. The forms are relatively simple, except for the reduplicative, which enjoys a lot of use. For dynamic verbs, it’s the imperfect tense ("I was x'ing"); for stative verbs, the emphatic.

Here are some examples:
 * ch'in ~ ch’injin “stab”
 * naya ~ nenaya “fertilize egg"
 * opkho ~ pkhaapkho “bend"
 * pkhungo ~ pkhubungo “sleep"
 * qkhoso ~ qkhoghoso “walk"
 * satkha ~ sasatkha “be sure"
 * tkhop’o ~ tkhaadop’o “name”
 * zaya ~ zaazaya “expand"
 * ik'o ~ ch'anik'o "see"

Something that’s missing from these are the question forms. When asking a yes/no question, there are special forms for the verbs used with a reduced set of tenses (4). You’ll hear them when questions are asked.

For example, in the last episode, Make says Jan o tkha q’unqijaga, k’e daaghajahe? “Are you worried I’ll forget?” Before the comma is the “I’ll forget” part. K’e is “you”. Daagha is “worry”, and the -jahe suffix is the one you’ll hear with questions. (= "That I'll forget, you worry?")

Lexicon
The other big table up there has less to do with grammar than the lexicon. The instrumental prefixes are used to derive new verbs from verb bases. It’s a little like how we have verbs like “deduce”, “produce”, “induce”, “adduce”, etc.

A basic verb would be duje “to molt”. From that, we derived the following:
 * moduje: lose track of
 * juunduje: make look good
 * gaiduje: sully

Another example using ghaina “to hear”:
 * banghaina: sense
 * t’ighaina: understand

This is khawa “to say”:
 * gaikhawa: guess
 * khekhawa: respond
 * juukhawa: claim
 * t’ikhawa: chat

If you compare the prefixes and their original meanings plus approximate uses, then combine them with the original verbs, you can get a sense of how we built these words, and came up with meanings for them.

The demonstratives are more or less explicable (this, that, yonder, at an unknown place, nowhere).

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Existing examples
These can be useful for figuring out the sound and look of the language, what kinds of syllables and sounds occur commonly, etc. If there are some clear irregularities from phonesthetic trends in names we've come up with, we can see if some things need to be readjusted or retconned. However, if some of these seem to diverge from a clear trend, we can also handwave these deviations as not being from Standard Sangheili; having more than one name for a place in different languages just makes the world richer and more layered. But most Covenant worlds have a "Sangheilized" name, namely those featured in official documentation, and by and large those have to abide by the general rules of Standard Qers'nok, even if they are derived from the endonym (and they always aren't).

The Covenant tendency to use "Adjective Noun" in names is integrated to the structure of the language and doesn't work like in English (e.g. "Joyous Exultation" vs. "Saepon'kal"; the adjective is usually compounded into the word and comes after the noun; qualities can easily be affixed into nouns this way). But sometimes these kinds of names aren't even formed from separate words in the original language; e.g. there is a distinct concept for "glorious proclamation" in Sangheili (Kaa'shash), and the English translation has to resort to two in order to capture the meaning. Plus it's already become a solidified translation convention when it comes to Covenant phrases, so most translators roll with it. Often the original Covenant names (for ships, worlds, etc.) may also contain more semantic content than is conveyed in the English equivalent, but ONI and UNSC translators especially seek to keep their translations as curt as they can; yet we do end up with names like "Long Night of Solace", which is a shorter phrase in the original language and has very specific cultural connotations.

Lexicon
When inventing the vocab, we have to consider the Sangheili/Covenant semantic space: where are they coming from, what do they regard as important, and what they don't, and which meanings they map to things. Languages don't map out 1:1 in words and phrases, especially with alien cultural contexts. Words have local context and meaning that doesn't carry over when you translate, and the very ways words are used can be radically different. (So a "literal" translation can actually be a worse one than a non-literal one that captures the meaning of the phrase better.) The semantic content created in one's head depends entirely on cultural and environmental factors. So, what is that context? Some features that could have an impact on the language: An all-encompassing religiosity, caste-based society, warrior culture, millennia of spacefaring, importance of community and family bonds, etc.

There is a notable difference between inventing a new vocabulary vs. re-encoding the English vocab. Things that are different words in English don't necessarily need to be different in another language (e.g. "sailor" and "mariner"). These are different because they came from different sources, but an alien language won't have that history. Equally, the opposite can be true - they would distinguish concepts we don't even think of. Let's say "space" and "outer space" could be words of totally different origin (the latter maybe translating to "void" or something), or one for interstellar and in-system space, and so on. Slipspace doesn't need to be a "space" at all but may derive from totally different origins. Or, in some cases distinctions may exist, but they are less frequently used only used when the distinction needs to be made.

Examples
 * "Sangheili" as a name is somewhat equivalent to "Earthling", in that it is derived from the planet and came after space travel? Different word for "people" or species designation that got gradually supplanted? "Sanghelios" means (or originally meant) "earth-sphere" or "earth air sphere" (could also have evolved into a word for world or planet)? (note that the Lights of Sanghelios are called Helios for short, so this also has to make sense unless we assume a very lax translation convention)

Number system
Sangheili uses a base-12 numbering system, which might be related to their 12 digits.

An easy way to express negative numbers, like an affix/prefix? Could be related to way to express a negative of something, or negation, in general.

Writing system(s)
Main writing system is an abjad or abugida? (no characters for vowels, but they are indicated through diacritics in the consonant characters)?

Consider ease of writing in logographic script - ie morphemes & roots represented by logograms

Romanization
The language and romanization system we use is an approximation of the original language made for human use, as we cannot perfectly replicate all the original sounds. This also explains any possible irregularities. However, the romanization system is meant to be as straightforward, literal and uncomplicated as possible for clarity's sake. Sangheili romanization more or less uses the Latin alphabet phonetically, though there are some cases where a word's or name's pronunciation has previously been ambiguous and has caused an erroneous spelling to be coined as standard.

Diareses may sometimes be used (e.g. Raah chïwei), but what do they (and other diacritics) indicate? E.g. if the vowel is pronounced separately from its surroundings. E.g. the "ï" in chïwei is not an English-style "ai" but is pronounced like the i sound at the end of the word.

Diacritics could also indicate sounds that are not silent in an environment where an English speaker might normally assume they are (e.g. Quenya does this).

Apostrophes denote stress on the next sound.

343i has taken a liking to using Klingon-style capital letters mixed amid words to indicate... something (e.g. QezoY'asabu, 'sKelln), but other than make the language seem more stereotypically "alien" (probably because we associate it with Klingon) it doesn't seem to contribute much; personally I think it just makes the romanization look more untidy. It doesn't help that we're already trying to distance our depiction of the Sangheili from the "discount Klingons" they're often portrayed as. -->