Oynprith

Oynprith is a language that is primarily used by the Droyne race throughout Charted Space.

• It is a central language.

Description

For centuries, only the vast distances separating Droyne worlds from each other concealed the fact that Droyne worlds had a common language. That is not to say every Droyne spoke the same language; indeed, different Droyne communities spoke different languages, often very different languages.

In interstellar commerce, Oynprith was soon discovered by Droyne to be a universal language among their race; as trade increased, Oynprith became more commonly used, finally reaching a status as the universal Droyne language.

Morphology

Oynprith inflects for gender and certainty, and uses unbound words to represent aspect. Number is inherently plural, with no standard mechanism to represent the singular.

Grammar

Oynprith nouns are sorted into seven grammatical genders and three “exceptions”. Usually, nouns of a given gender all have the same final vowel. This connection is so strong that newly minted nouns tend to drift from their category of meaning into a different category.

Originally a research language, Oynprith is geared towards the reporting of results. Thus, besides agreeing with their subject noun, verbs finally inflect for certainty. After adding the subject noun gender-based suffix, add the certainty suffix. Certainty also can communicate other forms of grammatical mood.

Syntax

Agreement with nouns allows a (relatively)free word order, because verb and adjective suffixes indicate to which noun they refer.

Historical Linguistics

All Droyne communities shared one common language — Oynprith, the language used in the coyn casting ceremony. Outsiders missed Oynprith simply because it was not used in public very often; it had a status as a ritual or ceremonial language, much like the status of Latin on Terra.

Worlds and sectors

This language is primarily in use in the following areas:

• Charted Space

References and contributors

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Far Future Enterprises or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• J. Andrew Keith, Marc Miller, John Harshman. Droyne (Game Designers Workshop, 1985), 40-41.
• Dave Nilsen, David L. Pulver, Andy Slack, David Thomas. Alien Races 3 (Steve Jackson Games, 2000), .
• Jae Campbell. Encyclopaedia Dagudashaag (Signal-GK, 2017), 275.