Qerenoka

Qers'noki (translatable as "Common speech"), commonly known as Sangheili, Pan Sangheili, Common Sangheili or Imperial Sangheili is the common name for the Covenant's lingua franca, and the most common of the myriad languages spoken within the Holy Ecumene. Qers'noki is named after the original language chosen as the Covenant's common language at the time of the Writ of Union, but it has since evolved considerably and spawned numerous dialects and offshoot languages.

History
Qers'noki originated in the Sanghelian continent of Qivro, where it was once the language of several of the planet's early major empires. During this time, it incorporated several influences from other languages, prominently those in Yermo and Tolvuus, through cultural exchange both violent and peaceful.

Modern Pan Sangheili's relationship to the original, Writ of Union-era Qers'noki is roughly similar as that of modern Italian to Latin, and perhaps even more distant. Because Qers'noki 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'noki 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'noki should not be understood as being universal to the entire Covenant population. Pan Sangheili is institutionally regulated by a specific body within the Ministry of Edification of High Charity, though this has not always been so. This has also slowed down the natural evolution of the language, and its structure and core vocabulary have stayed relatively unchanged for centuries. Loanwords and colloquialisms from various other languages do regularly enter it, however, often coinciding with contacts with new species.

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. "Vulgar" or spoken Sangheili, especially when spoken by non-native speakers, tends to eschew some of the language's more complex features, such as some of the inflections and cases.

Many sounds once present in ancient Qers'noki 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'noki 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.

As the Covenant's lingua franca, the Qers'noki 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 an recognized concept in Covenant linguistics; translated to English, it is styled as "Sangheilization".

Characteristics
Since there's no need to redo work that's already been done, Daybreak implements a spin-off of the Sangheili conlang created for the Halo TV show by David J. Peterson and Carl Buck and documenting as well as expanding upon that (regardless of the show's quality, the work on the language is impressive, professional, and will serve our purposes well; indeed, it may be the only good thing to come out of the show). We call it Qers'noki rather than Sangheili because it's better to distinguish it from the name of the species, but both names are used in-universe.

''The following is mostly copied from David Peterson's twitter with some reformatting, minor changes, and additions to suit Daybreak's existing examples of the language. All credit for the language goes to David Peterson and Carl Buck.''

The language is a lightly inflectional head-final language with distinctive vowel length and ejectives. It uses Standard American Romanization.

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

Phonemes / Romanization

Romanization of Qers'noki, developed over time by the Office of Naval Intelligence and later various universities, is meant to use 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 (or a dialectal variant of a name) to be coined as standard.

Ejective consonants are written with a following apostrophe, and the r is the tap [ɾ]. The language has long vowels, represented by a doubled vowel, and occasionally has geminates, also written doubly. Likely the most challenging aspect of the phonology are the consonants with a velar release. These are written as if they began with a consonant cluster, but they occur at every point of articulation—namely, pkh [pˣ], tkh [tˣ], kkh [kˣ], and qkh [qˣ], and even the fricative (or fricative-ending) consonants skh [sˣ], shkh [ʃˣ], and chkh [tʃˣ].

Exotic consonants and consonant clusters are sometimes simplified in non-academic romanization, e.g. tkh = th, tskh = ts, chkh = ch, qkh = qh, shkh = sh, etc. However, it is better practice to use the full form.

Note that there is no C (outside "ch" or "chkh") or F. X, as in Xytan Jar 'Wattinree, does not commonly occur and is specific to certain dialects; the standard language form of the name would be "Zytan". This is not uncommon, however; many Sangheili from provincial backgrounds have more than one accepted form of their name in different dialects.

Qers'noki is averse to word-final consonants or consonant clusters, especially some of the more complex ones. The use of some consonants in word endings may be restricted, and geminates or consonant clusters (which can occur in the middle of a word) are never used at the end of a word. Because of the heavy use of postpositions, word endings also give clues as to word class.
 * -a, -e and -o seem to be the most common verb endings.
 * Acceptable consonants in word endings (in rough order of frequency): n, m, l, s, r, k, t (word-final -th occurs in some romanized names, but is uncommon in the actual language)

Note also the appropriate uses for apostrophes in the above table; i.e. they are mostly used to represent the ejective consonants p', t', k', q', ts', s', and ch'. The glottal stop is occasionally used independently, but it is noticeably more rare and may be limited to certain contextual affix constructions.

Apostrophes written preceding a word (e.g. Thel 'Vadam) may indicate nonstandard stress on the first syllable. Clan names are rendered this way when speaking of, or addressing, a specific individual. In other contexts, e.g. when speaking of the house of Vadam, the stress marker is not used.

343i uses 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 and 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. Peterson's and Buck's version of the language also doesn't use it, so we might as well ditch it. In this case, the proper spellings would be "qezoy'asabu" and "s'kelln", respectively (though the apostrophe use, as well as the tri-consonantal ending in the latter, is still a bit anomalous).

Some double vowels, e.g. "oo" may be dialectally specific. Diphtongs also occur.

Morphology
Typologically, Qers'noki is a strongly head-final language. It has some case-like postpositions, with no agreement. Adjectives and possessors precede the nouns they modify, as do relative clauses. There are no definite/indefinite articles; definiteness is indicated by context.

Case particles
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.

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.

Possession
Possession is described with several different cases 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).

The inessive case is used for innate characteristics and abilities, e.g. Hirajo me haat'u "The blessed one's ability".

The appositive genitive is mostly used in formal contexts to signify relationships indicated in English with the preposition "of", including the names of institutions as well as certain familial relationships and honorific titles, etc.

Pronouns
The third-person pronouns only distinguish between animacy/inanimacy; there are no gender-specific pronouns. 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” (“riin” vs. “jaari”).

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 eight 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, 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?")

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

Verb construction
Instrumental prefixes are used to derive new verbs from verb bases. This is similar to English verbs like “deduce”, “produce”, “induce”, “adduce”, etc.

A basic verb would be duje “to molt”. From that, the following have been derived:
 * 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 the words are built. The derived uses are not always literal and the meanings can be more abstract, e.g. the "ch'a(n)-" or "head" prefix is used to indicate that something is important or notable.

Official

 * kheluuga = artifact/relic
 * K’uucho = warrior
 * ruq'a = fire
 * ruq'ota = to burn
 * ruq'otajaga! = you will burn (jaga = prospective future tense)
 * zhuro = weapon
 * nejo = father
 * luuka = blood
 * khuut'a = brother
 * juukhojo = Prophet/Prophets (juu-khojo, c.f. juukhawa "claim" but uses a different base word, maybe khojo="know"?)
 * hira = (to) praise/bless
 * hirajo = "blessed one", formed with declarative suffix -jo
 * warut = go (unmodified form)
 * warut'o = go (ergative)
 * waruut = journey
 * Ch’awaruut = Great Journey (note relation to "going"; "Ch" indicates it's a bigger/more important such thing)
 * Ch'anggagomo = Halo/Sacred Ring (no distinction exists between these in the language since the idea of a halo is very culturally specific) (note "Ch" intensifier)
 * k'iis = light
 * K'iisho = Luminary
 * Q'iitu = Mercy
 * Tkhuyujo = The Ancients / Forerunners
 * Shandi = The Covenant
 * hodu = wait (imperative/command/direct address)
 * Ghashank'o = Demon
 * pkha = stop/cease/hold? Also seems to be used as an exclamation
 * pkhada = stop, imperative
 * wele = ship
 * p'uuka = question
 * eya = no
 * shaadat'u = loyalty
 * qkhaamo = shrine
 * domo = human
 * oq'o = noble/glorious/honored, likely as a general concept and as a honorific (e.g. "Noble Prophets")
 * oq'otu = glory
 * matkha = kill
 * chkhan = all/everything/ever/always?
 * Ch'ambuujo = Hierarch
 * Gaik'inat'u = Regret
 * Shak'o = the Path (in reference to the Covenant religion)
 * riikhe= together
 * t'iiwajo = heretic
 * mobaat'u = revelation
 * aamu = god, divine being
 * guulo = master

Daybreak

 * hringun = heaven, firmament, sky associated with the numinous
 * shabui = sons
 * zhuuni = strand
 * harusi = tradition, way, school of thought
 * kettar = home, abode
 * hrummo = a specific term for the integrity or "wholeness" of a social group or community
 * raah = way, path (especially in a religious sense)
 * acchun = broad
 * vaal = celebrated, cherished

Names
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. However, some of the ones that diverge from the phonetic rules of Qers'noki are also not native to Standard Sangheili; having more than one name for a place in different languages just makes the world richer and more layered. However, 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'noki, even if they are derived from the endonym (and they always aren't). Some names may also be rendered in divergent or simplified forms of romanization to be more legible for humans.

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"). But sometimes these kinds of names aren't even formed from separate words in the original language. 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.

Names
 * Saepon'kal = Joyous Exultation
 * Malurok = Decided Heart

Notes
 * "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)
 * Other species' names and homeworld names are a mix of Sangheilized species' endonyms (e.g. Jiralhanae, Kig-Yar) and Sangheili/Covenant exonyms (e.g. Unggoy, Balaho).
 * A lot of place names end in -os or -ok, though this is by no means universal. At least one of these (likely -os) may be specifically associated with place names given the name Sanghelios.
 * Though some feminine given names end in -a, it is not a universally feminine suffix like in most Indo-European languages as there are several male Sangheili with names ending in -a (e.g. Koida 'Vadam). Feminine names may use more vowel endings than male ones, especially u or i or long vowels (e.g. -uu, -ee), but it is also possible that there is no definite pattern. It is also possible that the use of -a in some names is part of a translation convention.

High Sangheili
High Sangheili is a Qers'noki dialect used by the higher aristocracy, in governance, as well as in poetry and literature. It retains a number of "archaic" grammatical and lexical traits that have long disappeared from the Common Speech, and is claimed by some to be Sangheili distilled to its "purest" form, retaining the classical Sangheili of old literature and poetry; at times, influential authors and philologists attempt to introduce what some other scholars wryly recognize as more or less artificial constructions that seek to make the language even more artful or "classical" in style. To the average speaker of common Sangheili, many of the elaborate word constructions and obscure inflections used in High Sangheili would be almost unrecognizable. It is a matter of pride for orators, poets and philosophers to master these nuances as well as the associated ideogrammatic systems. Consequently, it is mostly spoken by Sangheili, hence the name.

Vulgar Qers'noki
Vulgar Qers'noki is a blanket term for the "spoken" varieties of the language, particularly those among the lower classes and other species. This often includes varying degrees of simplified grammar, basic lexicon, and a high amount of loanwords depending on the context. The spacer creole dubbed Voidspeak is sometimes considered an extreme form of vulgar Qers'noki.

Ikanoro dialects
A notable and old group of dialects, which involves, among other things, more prominent occurrence of the "th" sound. They are more prominent in the Covenant's spinward side. The common trade tongue of the Irshun League is a prominent example of an older Ikanoro variant, though it has lost its former predominance due to the influence of Standard Qers'noki.

Solbeni dialects
The Solbeni dialects (or Solben-Mersale dialects depending on the definition) are notably influenced by Zhakhan, one of the other Sangheili languages. They are noted for, among other phonological differences, the use of a distinct "x" or "ks" sound, which is vocalized in standard Qers'noki as "gz" or "z". They also include a distinct /f/ sound in place of standard Qers'noki's /b/ or /v/ depending on the context. For example, the name "Feldokra" is in Solbeni; the standard romanization of the name would be "Beldokra".

Resources

 * David J. Peterson's documentation of dialogue in the TV show