... don't ask.

Warnings:
If you don't know Albel's backstory, this will seem even more pointless than it actually is. And it's way pointless.
While there are mild spoilers here and there, most of said spoilers won't look like spoilers unless you know what you're looking at.

=====
 

These additional four letters are not recent additions to the alphabet. Indeed, the original Elicoorian tongue (a derivation of which is the Airyglyphan court language that is still spoken today amongst the noble class) required these four letters for proper communication. Without them, the very fabric of the language changes, and words take on entirely new meanings. 

Take, for example, the case of one Albel Nox. At the time of Albel's birth, when he was registered on the kingdom's official roles, his father Glou Nox ('Glou' itself being spelled not G-L-O-U but 'gl'-O-U, therefore being pronounced either 'Glou' or 'Klou', depending on the whim of the speaker) registered Albel's name as the five-letter A-L-B-E-L, a word meaning 'long-awaited' in the original Elicoorian tongue. Court records inform us that Glou and his wife Erzabet were married for almost ten years before Albel, their first and only child, was born, making the inspiration behind the name clear; however, a month later when the child was presented to the Elicoorian god Apris his father, whether through whim or cruelty, presented the child with the four-character name 'al'-B-E-L, thereby changing the meaning of Albel's first name from 'long-awaited' to 'trapped'.

Indeed, combined with the child's surname of 'Nox' (N-O-X), an original Elicoorian word meaning 'night', certain wags pointed out that the child's original name could be a pun on 'long-awaited knight' ('knight' being 'no'-X) (2) and his newer name on 'trapped knight'. It is a good thing that his father did not take the renaming one step further. Had he also replaced the last two letters with the same character that replaced the first two, thereby rendering the child's name 'al'-B-'el', 'trapped' would have become 'surrendered', thereby making Albel Nox, in essence, the 'surrendered knight' or 'disgraced knight'. An ill omen indeed.
 

(1) The astonishing similarity between the Elicoorian Thirty-Two Great Letters and the twenty-eight Federation Standard letters suggests early contact between the two civilizations, possibly a violation of the UP3 (the Underdeveloped Planet Preservation Pact).

(2) Again we see parallels between original Elicoorian and old Earthian. Just as 'night' and 'knight' are near homophones in Earthian, so are N-O-X and 'no'-X in Elicoorian; furthermore, they have the same meanings! While it is not part of the scope of this paper to study early contact between the two civilizations, it seems clear to this researcher that contact did occur at some point before approximately S.D. 100 (this date being the earliest we see Elicoorian documents that make use of Federation Standard letters).

COMMENTS:
I am not a linguist. I know very little about linguistics or phonetics. I showed this thing to a friend of mine who is a linguist and knows phonetics, and she basically laughed until she choked on her own tongue and then explained to me why none of these four letters could actually exist. So I know this, and I accept it, and I remain unrepentant.

Besides, having the language of Elicoor not be totally realistic but instead sound like it was written by a programmer with an imperfect grasp of linguistics? Given the major plot twist, not entirely inappropriate. Ahem. (A v. poor excuse, but it made me snicker.)

back to fanfic
back to library