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| The writing system combines phonetic and symbolic components, similar to Japanese, but much simpler. (It uses symbolic characters for a few of the most common words including pronouns and grammatical markers; for a total of 149 graphemes exclusive of punctuation.) Augmented-related input devices use hand-movements in free space to enter text. The required hand movements for Standard Imperial text input, performed in a somewhat more emphatic and visible way than when they are used for text entry on computing devices, are a ''de facto'' sign language which is almost universally known - a boon to spacers on EVA with radio trouble. | The writing system combines phonetic and symbolic components, similar to Japanese, but much simpler. (It uses symbolic characters for a few of the most common words including pronouns and grammatical markers; for a total of 83 graphemes.) Augmented-related input devices use hand-movements in free space to enter text, including movements for the standard characters and 'high grade' gestures for whole-word entry. The required hand movements for Standard Imperial text input, performed in a somewhat more emphatic and visible way than when they are used for text entry on computing devices, are a ''de facto'' sign language which is almost universally known - a boon to spacers on EVA with radio trouble. |
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| ||Fricative || f v || s z || sh zh || x || h || | ||Fricative || f v || s z || sh zh || h || x || |
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| ||au||ei||ia||ie||io||iu||ua||ue||ui|| | ||au||ai||ei||ia||ie||io||iu||ua||ue||ui|| The language uses pitch-accent, but is not a tonal language. |
Standard Imperial is the official language of the Allied Worlds.It might be compared to Neo-Latin. Taking this analogy further, the original imperial language would have been analogous to Latin (in the West) and the various planetary languages of the Twelve Worlds as analogous to the Romance Languages. However, this analogy should not be pushed too far, and some widely used languages in the Twelve Worlds have no strong relation to Standard Imperial, only taking some vocabulary items from it.
Few people speak Standard Imperial as a native language, though the planetary languages of some worlds are quite close to it.
Standard Imperial derives its vocabulary mostly from the languages of spacefairing nations on Earth. Grammatically, it is an analytic language similar to Chinese. There are no inflections and word formation is rather regular. Phonetically, the language contains few uncommon sounds and has only a few simple consonant clusters, having apparently had a selectional pressure throughout its existence to be an easy-to-learn second language. That being said, it is not a trade pidgin nor an auxiliary language; high literature was often written in it and during the Imperial era it had billions and billions of monolingual native speakers. There was an Imperial Academy of Language, but Standard Imperial was not an artificially constructed language.
The writing system combines phonetic and symbolic components, similar to Japanese, but much simpler. (It uses symbolic characters for a few of the most common words including pronouns and grammatical markers; for a total of 83 graphemes.) Augmented-related input devices use hand-movements in free space to enter text, including movements for the standard characters and 'high grade' gestures for whole-word entry. The required hand movements for Standard Imperial text input, performed in a somewhat more emphatic and visible way than when they are used for text entry on computing devices, are a de facto sign language which is almost universally known - a boon to spacers on EVA with radio trouble.
Phonetics
Presented here with a writing system using the Roman alphabet (which SI does not use.)
|
Labial |
Dental |
Retroflex |
Palatal |
Velar |
Plosive |
p b |
t d |
|
|
k g |
Nasal |
m |
n |
|
|
ng |
Affricate |
|
|
|
c j |
|
Fricative |
f v |
s z |
sh zh |
h |
x |
Approximant |
w |
|
r |
y |
|
Vowels (per approximately their IPA values):
a |
e |
i |
o |
u |
Diphthongs:
au |
ai |
ei |
ia |
ie |
io |
iu |
ua |
ue |
ui |
The language uses pitch-accent, but is not a tonal language.