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Introduction

The Dryadic languages are a collection of languages spoken by the Dryads, the native humanoid inhabitants of Planet Eunomia. Unlike Earth, there are no animals on Eunomia; rather, evolution within the Eukaryotic domain developed solely into Fungi, Plantae, and other non-animal, eukaryotic groups. A group of plants later branched off to form what is known as the “animaplants,” a division of animate plants that fill the ecological niches generally attributed to animals on Earth. Dryads (Dryas sapiens) are a species of animaplant, and are the only known Eunomic organisms with human-like intelligence.

The biology of dryads, unlike humans, makes it very difficult for them to live outside of specific environments even with the aid of tools and technologies. For this reason, the dryadic domain and the diversity among dryads are not as grand as they are for humans on Earth. Furthermore, the average lifespan of dryads are much longer than the average human lifespan, averaging a few centuries, and results in slower cultural and linguistic changes among their groups.

The following is an attempt to present the Classical Dryadic language as well as an overview of Dryadic evolution, biology, and civilization. The Classical Dryadic language, also called “Classic Seliath,” was the primary language spoken throughout the Seliath Grove, the largest cluster of Dryadic forests in the Dryadic domain. It is still used across many Dryadic groves as a lingua franca and as a standardized form of writing.

The grammar of the Classical Dryadic language, as well as Dryadic languages in general, is very different from that of human languages. Dryadic sentence structure is often described like a plant with roots, stems, leaves, etc. Three primary parts of speech exist: roots, stems, and foliage. Roots begin a sentence, can only be followed by either more roots or a stem, and are used to encode tense¹, aspect, mood, and emotion². Stems are used to connect the main semantic components of a sentence in some way, often encoding things such as roles (i.e. agents, patients, etc.), relations (benefactive, instrument, etc.), frames (incremental, holistic, etc.), quantification, etc. Stems can only be followed by other stems or foliage. Lastly, foliage can be subdivided into three different sub-categories—leaves, fruits, and flowers—and are the closest entities to nouns³ in Dryadic languages. The three-way distinction of leaves, fruits, and flowers exists in some form in all Dryadic languages as three distinct lexical categories, that are often non-derivative from one another and usually rely on different inflection systems. Leaves are actions and states that are active or animate in someway. Fruits are actions and states that are bound and affected by another action or state in someway. And flowers are actions and states that are unbound and affected by another action or state in someway. Foliage can be followed by a stem; however, the stem is then analyzed as connecting to the preceding stem and branching off. Complex operations exist involving roots and stems that are used for conjoining constituents and embedding clauses.

¹ It should be noted that most Dryadic languages use a system of relative tense. For example, the Classical Dryadic tense system is relative to the time of day (for immediate time) and to the seasons (for distant or general time).

² All Dryadic languages explicitly encode the emotions and attitude of the speaker in some way, as Dryads lack facial expressions and rarely rely on intonation.

³ Rather than nouns, it is best to think of foliage as “semantically-full” states or events. Dryads seem to have an innate perception of the world as being made up of unstable states and events, rather than stable, concrete entities. Rather than “this is an apple,” a Dryad would say something approximating “it is being an apple”; instead of “I am eating an apple”, a very rough English approximation might be something like, “the speaking (one) is eating, and the eaten (one) is being an apple”.

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