Khal (language)

Historical Language Tree for Vland.

Khal is a "Trade Vilani" language dialect. It represents a holdover of the trade cants based on Old High Vilani, borrowing heavily from Standard Vilani's vocabulary.

Also called Karak Bilanidin ('Trade Vilani'), Gurek, Segureke, and even the Old High Vilani word Gurib, this is an analytic form of Standard Vilani used on the "frontier" (i.e. any town or world which doesn't have an indigenous Vilani population). Khal isn't any one particular entity; it describes a number of pidgins and simplifications of Vilani which are found scattered across the Imperium. Therefore, it's more of a descriptive term than a language name. However, since all varieties of Khal share the Vilani lexicon, they tend to be at least somewhat mutually decipherable.

In its purest form, Khal uses actual Vilani words, in very simple sentences, with an Anglic grammar. In its basest form, Khal uses Vilanicized Anglic-derived words. Khal tends to be analytic; in this respect, it resembles Old High Vilani; however, Khal does have a few inflected forms. This latter aspect may be part of the evolution of Standard Vilani into its next phase.

References

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.

• Loren Wiseman. "Random Notes." Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society 17 (1983): 45-47.
• Jae Campbell. Encyclopaedia Dagudashaag (Signal-GK, 2017), 49.
• Robert Eaglestone. Vilani Grammar and Glossary (Self Published, 2021), .