Covenant languages

Members of the Covenant collective speak a plethora of languages, the most notable of which are listed below.

Known languages
There is no one language in the Covenant Empire. There are thousands. The client species and the guilds and the traders and the holy orders all speak their own tongues, and one cannot hope to learn them all.

Sangheili / Qers'nok
Sangheili, Pan Sangheili or Common Speech acts as the Covenant's lingua franca. It is one of many descendants of from the ancient Qers'nok, the Sangheili language chosen as the Covenant's common language at the time of the Writ of Union. Like most sapient species, the Sangheili have a variety of independent language trees within their civilization, and there are many colonies, states and clans where such languages are predominant. However, for historical reasons, the language now known as Sangheili, or the Common Speech, became first a popular language of culture and trade, and later the Covenant's lingua franca. Even today, Covenant linguists call the language Modern Qers'nok or Imperial Qers'nok to differentiate it from other, unrelated languages of Sangheili origin; however, modern Sangheili bears very little resemblance to its Writ of Union-era root language.

In theory, Common Sangheili is the lingua franca of the entire Covenant Empire. But languages shift, and they shift faster the further they are from the Arterial Network of major trade routes. Nowadays, two individuals from far-flung corners of the Holy Ecumene can both speak "Pan Sangheili", and be mutually unintelligible to each other. The current form of Imperial Sangheili, the main dialect spoken amongst the high society and ecclesiastic authorities of High Charity is regarded as the "standard" version of the language.

There was always a strong case for a widely-spoken Sangheili language to be chosen as the Covenant's common tongue. There were only so many San'Shyuum, and it was much easier and more palatable for them to learn a new language than the other way around. But when it came to the language they should present to the San'Shyuum as their common tongue, the choice wasn't fully obvious even to the Sangheili themselves. Up to seven languages each put forth as viable candidates, and while the debates were at times heated, one eventually won out. What was then known as Qers'nok was a prominent lingua franca with venerable historical roots and a widespread speaker base; even many Sangheili population that didn't speak it as their primary tongue did learn it for trade and higher learning. Thus, the ancient Qers'nok became the basis of what is now known as Sangheili, or Common Speech.

Qers'nok, as it is known today, is an agglutinative language with power hierarchies heavily integrated into its structure. It is difficult to interact with anyone without automatically expressing one's societal status and rank relative to the other person. One of the reasons it was chosen as the Covenant's common tongue is its remarkable versatility. It can be curt and to-the-point, and pack a lot of meaning into a short phrase; Sangheili poets have even turned such minimalism into an art form. On the other hand, a fluent speaker can also use it to express complex concepts with no particular difficulty, also making it well-suited for poetry and song.

As the Covenant's lingua franca, the Qers'nok language family has a noticeable influence on other languages spoken within the collective. Native languages spoken by other species such as Unggoy, Kig-Yar, Jiralhanae as well as regional dialects frequently and often inadvertently pick up diction, concepts, or phrases from either Imperial Sangheili or the local Sangheili dialect, as it almost always serves as the domain-level language of communication between the regional authorities and their subjects, and is often used for commerce. This phenomenon is pervasive enough to have concept in Covenant linguistics; translated to English, it is styled as "Sangheilization".

Unggoy
Unggoy languages are numerous, with most populations speaking some form of pidgin derived from their local Sangheili dialect with some native words added in for good measure; Balaho's native tribal languages would likely have been long forgotten or pushed to the fringe due to Covenant indoctrination. Due to their natural lingual skills, many groups of Unggoy would also develop their own secret languages to communicate amongst each other, despite attempts by their masters to curtail this.

Kig-Yar
Kig-Yar languages are many and varied, and there never has been a universal common language among all Kig-Yar nor a concerted push to establish one. This is partly a consequence of the species' eclectic psychology; the Kig-Yar, by and large, are not predisposed for identifying with large collectives, e.g. nation-states or species, and even cultural practices can be easily changed to suit different conditions. Likewise, language only has a largely instrumental value to them; although most Kig-Yar on Eayn and the colonies around Chu'ot can likely speak at least one common tongue for reasons of trade and diplomacy, languages across the Y'Deio system are much more diverse, and the development of machine translation from early on has largely eliminated the need for lingual homogeneity. Many Kig-Yar colonies and crews outside the Y'Deio system are quick to adopt not only Common Sangheili, but also the local dialects and languages spoken in their home domains, and associate little to no pride with holding onto their original native languages.

Jiralhane
The Jiralhanae speak many languages, not all of them related. At the time of the First Immolation, the ethnic nations of Doisac spoke numerous and often unrelated tribal languages amongst themselves, but the master-packs and skeins had their own lingua francas for command and coordination. Of these languages, the one called "Proto-Jiral" is best documented as it served as the root language for the dialects spoken by the master-packs that surrendered to the Covenant and would later form the basis of Tartarus' coalition. Today, this language family is often known colloquially as Jiral. In the wider Jiralhanae diaspora, many more languages are spoken, some of them descending from Proto-Jiral while others trace their origins to more obscure tribal languages that have long since disappeared on Doisac.

Liturgical Tongue
Dai'nos Yll, the Liturgical Language, is reserved solely for public worship throughout the Covenant Empire, for theological discussion, and the communication of the clergy with their parishes; it is forbidden to use for mundane purposes. Not that many would want to. Dai'nos Yll is a language of poetry and imagery, steeped in ponderous tradition. Merely saying "hello" requires very formal use of metaphor. It is a fine language for the Covenant's top-down theocracy, but unsuitable for everyday use. The finer points of Covenant theology can only be expressed in the Liturgical Tongue, for they are too esoteric and complex to be adequately discussed in more "mundane" languages. When it comes to the nature of godhood, transcendence or the divine harmonics of the Great Journey, most languages run out of words and ways to express e.g. locality, dimensions and time; the Liturgical Tongue has impressive ways to discuss phenomena in "no-time", in more than 3+1 dimensions, or in acausal relation to one another, for example.

These peculiarities are partly the result of the language's origin. Dai'nos Yll is derived from the Forerunner archival language on the San'Shyuum's keyship, albeit translated, often incorrectly, adjusted, refined and added to many times over. Terms and concepts from other Forerunner languages or ciphers encountered on various reliquaries would be introduced to its lexicon, making it increasingly complicated and flowery. Likewise, it is only permitted to be written using a particular holographic logogram system derived from Forerunner symbols.

Covenant theology is abstruse, even frustrating, to someone not adjusted to the religion's peculiar mindset, which one can only truly learn by becoming fluent in the liturgical tongue. The higher mysticism spawned by the religion is filled with quantum probabilities, different states of being and nonbeing, and potential futures expressed in a flowery, poetic vocabulary. Because of their complexity, such concepts are often simplified in koan-like parables. Indeed, it was the sheer potential of the liturgical tongue that originally inspired many of the higher dimensions of Covenant theology. There are so many more ways to describe probabilities, potentialities, eventualities and outcomes than one might otherwise even think of. It has also resulted in theological questions where two or more answers can be equally "true" at once (which is, incidentally, also a helpful tool for settling disputes between lesser churches). Perhaps the most notable example of this is the question of the inevitability of salvation and the ultimate fate of the universe. There is a pervasive question underlining the Covenant religion of whether or not the Great Journey is the inevitable endpoint of the Covenant civilization, or if there is an equal possibility that they will be undone by Ruination. While schools vary on this, the peculiar nature of Covenant theology effectively enables both possibilities to coexist.

The intricacies of the liturgical language also help explain the complicated nature of divinity as an omni-directional continuum in space-time from the moment of ascension, explaining both how the Forerunners could be both mortal and divine simultaneously, as well as how those faithful who had died in countless past ages still join along on the Great Journey. But the language's possibilities also provoked further, more nuanced questions that can hardly even be discussed in other languages without sounding overly long-winded, confusing, or downright absurd.

Voidspeak
The common trade pidgin spoken across the Covenant, liberally translated to English as Voidspeak, Migrant or Sailors' Tongue, is a creole loosely based on Common Sangheili. However, it has heavy "foreign" influences from various languages spoken across the Covenant, and even some words, grammatical constructions and expressions whose origins cannot be definitely pinpointed to any of the Covenant species but presumably originate from the outside. Most of the alien influence would come from Kig-Yar and some of the regional dialects of more isolated Covenant territories. Naturally, there are several versions and little central regulation of the the Voidspeak and a dialect spoken in one end of the Holy Ecumene may not even be mutually intelligible with one spoken in another. Many traditionalist Sangheili aristocrats scorn the Voidspeak for its purported "debasement" of the "noble" Sangheili language.

Gutterspeak
Gutterspeak is a language which can only be adequately spoken by Kig-Yar and Yanme'e. It is a completely constructed language that uses clicks, whistles, and trills beyond the range of other species in the Covenant. A purely functional language, it is known as "the tongue of laborers and pirates."

Translation
To facilitate communication across this vast tangled web of languages and dialects, the Covenant has fairly advanced auto-translator technology. The translation disk was a necessary invention. The customs that grew up around them were inevitable in their own way. Many translation disks are embellished with elaborate designs to show the rank and station of a wearer, and are worn across the breast. When worn in this fashion, they are called phalera. Sometimes multiple phalerae are worn, to complement an outfit or to demonstrate the many varieties of traveler that an official must deal with. Such is the importance of phalerae that they have been cited as "the jewelry that holds the Holy Ecumene together".

Because of the Covenant's edict against machine learning, translator disks built for general use are very limited machines. They can parse words within their internal dictionaries and construct sentences in accordance to the rules of grammar and syntax, but they cannot learn new words or new usages. This means that a phalera is locked to a group of dialects at a particular point in time, and as those languages change, the phalera must eventually be replaced. This also means that anyone speaking to an official with a slightly-out-of-date phalera must speak a version of their language that is formal and old fashioned to their ears, which generally suits the Sangheili just fine.

Perhaps counterintuitively, however, personal flesh-and-blood interpreters are still favored among those of high rank and status. Where translation disks are mundane everyday objects available to most citizens of moderate wealth, interpreters are both a status symbol and a statement, especially when interacting with those they perceive to be "below" oneself. Because of their natural linguistic skills, it is often the Unggoy who are the most capable and effective interpreters, as long as they are properly educated, and many Sangheili aristocrats' (often fairly sizable) retinues include a trusted Unggoy interpreter. These interpreters are highly valued, and are often accorded honors and privileges most Unggoy can only dream of.