Hey, my Squids!
Dropping the last work in progress for page 3 of Chapter 3! In this one, there’s a couple cool little things added that I want to mention that you might appreciate if you’re into the world building going on in Taliah.
Jaixia has several massive hypertransit stations like the one we saw at the end of Chapter 2. Typically, these are entry and exit points for the city, so millions of people filter through them daily. They take people all over the country and into other countries like Warukem, Shehroz, and more. Think of them more like major airports in our world (air travel exists in Taliah but it’s expensive because of what’s involved).
However, for day to day commuting in and around the city, there are thousands of smaller hypertransit stations. Each district has no less than ten and there are roughly 120-150 districts in Jaixia. Most people don’t use cars when traveling because almost everything is in walking distance or a hypertransit away. While Leira does have a car, she usually just walks to the hypertransit station down the street and takes it to work in the center of Jaixia.
The one in Glensprings, which is known as Little Abarogue, is plastered with Abaroguian and Procolish language. It isn’t mandatory that you speak Abaroguian in the district but most Abaroguians choose to live there because it “feels like home.” With that said, here’s a fun little Abaroguian language lesson for those who care about such things: the difference between “ì” and “à”. These characters exist in languages in our world but they have different uses and sounds depending on the language. For Abaroguian, if you see a “ì,” it links two words together but doesn’t denote ownership. For instance, a train ticket/train card you would use to get on a train is linked together with a ì in Abaroguian: locae ì charado or locomotive card. However, if you wanted to say “Your train card,” denoting the ownership of the card, you would use à: douto (you/yourself) à locae ì charado or Your locomotive card.
Speaking of Abaroguian language lessons, another fun one is greetings and goodbyes. Abaroguians have multiple ways of greeting each other depending on level of familiarity or formal/informal/slang. Leira greets someone on the street by saying “Alooa” which is a greeting you would use if you were familiar with someone (or you were answering your phone, regardless of familiarity). In this way, the panel is telling you that she knows this person, whether it’s a neighbor, someone she’s seen and talked to before, etc. However, if you don’t know the person, you would say “Haloo.” For slang, as in “What’s up” you would say “Keh uri,” which is literally “What up” but leaves out the question signifier of “deh” at the end. And to say goodbye, a shortened form than the longer one presented in Chapter 2, you would say “Ajadan.” If you’re wondering what the long version is in Abaroguian, I’ll refresh what it is in Procolish: “Let (may) the winds carry you and the mountains embrace you home.” The Abaroguian words are: “Pemitor tah aritivo traspacares ei tah monhtahs ebracitoes douto à caisah.”
Anyway, hope you enjoyed this little look into the Abaroguian language and why they use some of the words or phrasing that they do! More to come later.
Enjoy!