Galian (language)

A language used in Gateway Sector and its surrounding region.

It is a common language among the nations that arose from the collapse of the old Galian Trade League.

Description (Specifications)

Galian, or Gal'an (pronounced Gal tongue click an) is a language that has Solomani origins. The exact lineage has been lost over time, in part due to the distance that Galian speakers are from Solomani space. It is commonly found in use among worlds in the extreme coreward and trailing portion of the Glimmerdrift Reaches Sector, the coreward portion of the Crucis Margin, throughout Gateway Sector and towards the rimward portion of adjacent trailing edge subsectors.

Structure

• The Galian alphabet contains 81 characters broken down into 5 verbs and 15 consonants used in 76 consonant-verb combinations, and as 5 separate verbs and 15 separate consonants. Not all consonants are associated with all verbs.
  • Each character group is spoken as a syllable.
  • Written, each symbol is placed in a box and arranged on a double column vertical grid.
  • Each box is read as a single group, and is spoken in the same manner.
  • To read the letters, one goes from the top down, across each column of two before proceeding to the next row below, in a zig-zag pattern.
  • There is no upper or lower case.
  • There are a number of punctuation symbols, and boxes left blank are read as spaces.
  • Proper nouns like names get a second box grouping them together.

Symbols

• The Galian alphabet

Morphology

Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words.

• morpheme, inflection, paradigm, declension, derivation, compound, etc.

Phonology

Phonology, the study of the sound systems of a language.

• phoneme, allophone, segment, mora, syllable, foot, stress, tone, etc.

Grammar

Grammar is the structure of a language.

• tense, aspect, mood and modality, grammatical number, grammatical gender, case, etc.

Syntax

Syntax is the study of how words combine to form grammatical sentences.

• phrase, clause, grammatical function, grammatical voice, etc.

Meaning

No information yet available.

Lexicology

A lexicon is the word supply of a language.

• word, lexeme, lemma, lexicon, vocabulary, terminology, etc.

Semantics

Semantics is the study of the meaning of words (lexical semantics), and how these combine to form the meanings of sentences.

• meaning, sense, entailment, truth condition, compositionality, etc.

Pragmatics

Pragmatics is the study of how language is used by its speakers.

• presupposition, implicature, deixis

History & Background (Historical Linguistics)

Language Families of Galian

All dates are Third Imperium baseline

Galanglic

Chol'an

Archaic Gal'an (-400)

Middle Gal'an (210)

Standard Gal'an (720)

Worlds & Sectors (Astrography)

This language is primarily in use in the following areas:

• Crucis Margin Sector
• Gateway Sector
• Glimmerdrift Reaches Sector

References & Contributors (Sources)

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 Mongoose Publishing or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.