In most works of science fiction, all aliens from a planet speak one language. This is of course unrealistic. As Terra shows, one species (humans) can speak thousands of different languages: English, Korean, Swahili, Telugu, Cherokee, Spanish, Guaraní, and Warlpiri are just a few of the many human languages in existence. Similarly, as Allosapiens spread across Melidora, they gradually developed many distinct regional languages.

Detailed below is one particular language called Neriaa, spoken by the Allosapiens of an Iron Age level state located in the plains of central Lamarckia. This is by no means a complete guide to the language, but it does provide a brief overview of some aspects of its phonology and grammar.

Phonology

Neriaa is unwritten, although a romanized alphabet may be used to transcribe the language.

Letter	Pronounciation
a	"a" in father
c	"ch" in cheese
e	"ay" in day
h	"h" in help
i	"ea" in sea
k	"c" in can
kz	No English equivalent, like k but made with a popping noise from the throat
l	"l" in like
ł	The same sound as the Welsh ll. Vaguely sounds like "sh" to an English speaker, though it does not have an exact English equivalent.
łz	Ejective version of the previous letter. No English equivalent, though it can be approximated by putting tongue on the roof of your mouth and forcefully releasing air.
m	"m" in moon
n	"n" in now
ñ	"ny" in canyon
o	"ough" in dough
p	"p" in pink
pz	No English equivalent, like p but made with a popping noise from the mouth
r	Trilled r, "rr" in Spanish perro
hr	Voiceless version of previous letter, sounds a bit like "hrr"
t	"t" in tap
tz	No English equivalent, like t but with a sudden release of air
u	"oo" in shoot, "u" in Japanese unagi
y	"y" in yes
'	Glottal stop, like the pause in "uh-oh"

The phonemes of Neriaa have been shaped by the vocal abilities of Allosapiens. Allosapiens have trouble pronouncing sounds that require the use of teeth, like sibilants (s, z) and dental fricatives (th), as they speak using their toothless outer jaws. (The digraphs "pz", "kz", and "tz" are used to represent ejective plosives, and have nothing to do with the phoneme "z"). So the sound inventory of the Neriaa language mainly focuses on nasals, plosives, approximants, and trills. Although Allosapiens do not have mobile lips, they can imitate bilabial plosives by making popping noises with their outer jaws. These popping "ejective" consonants are not very common in human languages, but they are extremely widespread among Allosapiens languages. Neriaa even has some rather unusual ejective consonants, like the alveolar lateral ejective fricative (łz).

The Neriaa vowels are fairly simple. 2 of them are mid vowels (e and o), while a is a front vowel and u represents a back unrounded vowel. Both long and short vowels are present in Neriaa. Long vowels are indicated using a macron, which is a bar placed over the letter.

All Neriaa words follow a CV(N) structure. This means that all consonants in a word must be followed by a vowel, unless that consonant is a nasal (like m, n, or ñ).

Grammar

Neriaa is agglutinative, much like the Terran languages Basque, Finnish, and Japanese. This means that morphemes (words) can be compounded together to form long, complex words. Each morpheme stands for a particular grammatical structure within a compound word. Indeed, word compounding is particularly important in Neriaa, for the language is oligosynthetic. That is, Neriaa speakers compound simple words to derive more advanced vocabulary. Some examples can be seen below:

kzūra "to sing" + hoen "words" => kzūra'oen "poetry"

{ima "color" + roa "thousand"} + kzatzī "wyvern" => imahroakatzī "ornate kirin" (a type of wyvern)

The above examples also illustrate the process of consonant mutation in Neriaa. Word-initial ejectives typically mutate into normal bilabials or velars, while trills are devoiced.

Neriaa verbs are much more complex than English verbs. Whereas English verbs only conjugate for subject ("I was running", "he was listening", ...), verbs in Neriaa can conjugate for subject, direct object, and indirect object. These verbs can also record more complex grammatical features, such as aspect, mood, and causality in a more concise way than English. Thus, the sentence "I gave her some tzoma (a type of dish made from ground Featherstem roots) because she was hungry" becomes: Tzoma ñalikzāihaiamu. The verb compound ñalikzāihaiamu can be broken up into several parts:

ña- first person subject pronoun "I"

-li- third person indirect object pronoun "it (Refers to the tzoma)"

-kzā- third person object pronoun "her"

-ihaia- verbal stem meaning "to give"

-m- past tense marker

-u causative suffix (Indicates that an action had a reason for happening. The reason the speaker gave the tzoma to the other Allosapiens is because she was hungry)

Verbs are so important in Neriaa that they cover the role of another part of speech: adjectives. True adjectives do not exist in Neriaa. Instead, stative verbs, verbs that describe an object's static state, are used to describe objects. So the phrase "Cockatrices are dangerous" would be translated as Atzuhran łae'ōra, where 'ōra means "to be dangerous" (łae- is the third person plural subject pronoun).

Sample Vocabulary

Word	Meaning
kzo	house
ama	water
hū	fire
kzonhrā	village ("houses land")
napze	iron
pzoñoai	dromolope
-una-	to speak
-akzinma-	to protrude one's eyestalks (akzin = eyes, ma = to extend)
uru	mother

One interesting thing to note from the above table is the word for mother. In most human languages, the word for mother is some variation of Mama, Amma, or Umma. This is because human babies find it easy to say bilabial consonants. Allosapiens hatchlings, on the other hand, find it easy to pronounce trills and rounded vowels, which explains the etymology of the Neriaa word uru.