Appendix 1: The language of The Wall

There is no name for this language, or its people, in English, as by the time of the story, English isn't even a language anymore, and the last survivors of Desolate Rrth, at the time of its demise some millenea earlier, were speaking its evolutionary derivative Freelish, a rather impoverished language lacking words for a lot of things, and highly resistant to the introduction of new words and especially any new concepts they could bring.

The people of The Wall themselves simply call it "The Language" since it is the only one they are aware of, and the idea that someone (such as the approaching aliens) would use an entirely different language is initially a revelation, though obvious in hindsight as many things are.

Likewise, their civilisation is so small and homogeneous, without any real sense of 'other', that they don't have a well-defined word to describe themselves as a people. The closest they have is their equivalent of 'homo sapiens' which is as much of a mouthful in their own language as the genus term for human is in English, and is likewise rarely used outside of a biological-sciences context. There is "The People of The Wall", of course, but this is a description rather than a name, even in their language.

So for this appendix, I will be calling them, rather clumsily, Wallians, and their language Wallanese.

Word Construction

Wallanese is an analytic language, meaning it consists of a number of short word-roots which are concatenated to form longer words containing more complex meanings. A general meaning of a complex word can almost always be inferred by breaking it back down into its roots, though a precise meaning often relies on a certain amount of context, and even metaphor.

All word-roots are of the form CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant).

Written Wallanese is represented alphabetically, with twelve consonants and three vowels. As such, there are 12x3x12=432 possible roots, most of which are in common use.

This is a relatively low number of roots, approximately half of what is considered the minimum for expression in Human languages. It manages to work in Wallian society because both the civilisation and its natural environment are themselves rather sparse.

For example, there are less than half-a-dozen types of edible fruit on the entire planet, each a distinctly different colour, so the Wallanese word for fruit, fuc only requires a single prefix, usually one of the eight colour roots, to describe all fruit within the Wallian experience.

Root-words tend to be allocated such that during root-concatenation, commonly-used-together roots join at double-consonants with natural 'glides' between them. Less common compound words generally involve harsher-sounding consonant-joins that don't merge so well. Identical double-consonants between roots are pronounced as a single sound and are usually written as a single letter, though retaining the double is sometimes a stylistic choice, and is a valid alternative spelling.

The alphabet is (using the closest symbols available in unicode):

No regular words begin or end in a vowel, and none are solely consonants. This is important to note, as such combinations are used to denote special usages, as described further below (numerics, proper nouns).

There is also a 'quirk' in the language that roots spelt backwards often mean their opposite, though this is not always expressed as-naively-expected since what constitutes an 'opposite' is not always consistent or immediately obvious itself:

The 'spelled-backwards' quirk does not apply to whole compound words, although the occasional coincidence in this regard can sometimes trick the astute mind into trying to determine additional patterns where none are intended. Likewise, root-ordering within a compound word is not a direct indicator of meaning, and it is generally best to simply rote-memorise the common compounds and their meaning(s).

Finally, uncommon compound-words can get a bit, frankly, wild! Often this is done deliberately for literary (and in the extreme, humorous) effect and in more formal writing, such compounding is generally avoided. When done without skill, it results in the language equivalent to 'purple prose' in English.

Pronunciation

Wallians are capable of vocalising a similar range and variety of sounds to humans. Like most humans, they only use a subset of the available sounds in their language, however.

With only 15 letters, the sounds are quite broadly-spaced. Voiced and unvoiced versions of consonants are considered the same, and which version is used is largely determined by what fits most naturally with surrounding sounds in a word, and can also vary a little with regional or family-line accent. All close-variants of a sound are considered 'correct'. Likewise with similar-sounding vowel sounds.

For translation to English, the wider available range of consonants and vowels are used to reflect the specific pronunciation common within Wallanese for particular words, especially names.

Numerics

Numbers, in their short form, use the same written symbols as the consonant letters. This works because there are no consonant-only words in Wallanese, so any time a 'word' is seen that contains no vowels, it is immediately recognised as a string of digits, not a pronounceable word. Vowels have distinctly different visual form to consonants, making sight-recognition of their absence a quite quick and accurate task.

When spoken, numbers have their own whole-word representation, which may also be written whole ('long-form') where it makes stylistic sense to do so.

Long digit-strings are often written in groups of four, with a space separating the groups. Occasionally groups of two are used. This is a stylistic convention that varies with context and sometimes the preference of the writer. Likewise, groupings may be padded out with leading zeros, depending on numeric context.

Wallians use an octal counting system, though it is notable that the language, with twelve consonants, could support up to a dozenal base. Dozenal counting is acknowledged as an alternative, mostly used for amusement among mathematics hobbyists. Octal is recognised as preferable due to its easy translation to and from the binary used by The Wall's computer systems, as well as allowing whole-number division by two down to the unit value. Decimal counting has never been considered as a useful numeric base to use as it lacks any advantages at all over octal or dozenal systems.

Fractional amounts are usually represented with an 'octal point', being a comma-dot '.' between the whole and fractional parts: 24∙75

Alternatively, 'divisional fractions' are also in use for some things, with the two numeric components separated by a colon: '4:5'. This form is generally used more casually, except in specific branches of mathematics where exact precision is required in fractional representation where positional representation of fractional numbers is unsuitable.

Negative numbers are represented by a dash '–' immediately preceding the number, with no space between.

Long-form numbers use octal exponents where the exponent is represented in brackets: 4∙273(4) means 4.273 times eight to the power of four, or 4 2730 (in octal).

Base-16

In computer applications, sometimes base-16 is used as a Wallian-legible short-hand for binary strings, which are often packed into 8-bit lengths which can more be easily represented by two bi-octal digits. In bi-octal, the upper eight digits are their lower equivalents with a horizontal bar mark through them, representing the 4th bit, with the number representing the lower three.

Even in general computer use, digits above the 7 are often reserved for special cases, so the general population doesn't necessarily see or need to type them: computer-network addresses are represented in bi-octal, however all addresses containing barred numbers are obscured network resources within The Wall's data systems and not normally directly-accessed from the user-facing terminals and input/output devices which only use addresses with range 0-7 numbers. As a result, only programmers and network technicians are likely to encounter network addresses containing barred numbers in their daily use of The Wall's data system.

Bi-octal is only used as a binary-short-hand and Wallians do not use this numeric base for any mathematical operations in the normal course of their lives.

Punctuation

There are a small number of punctuation symbols:

There are also a number of 'punctuation words' such as the words for 'begin-quotation' and 'end-quotation', often joined with a root to indicate the way in which the quoted words are expressed, such as 'exclaim', 'question', 'whisper' and so forth.

The quotations words are immediately proceeded or preceded by a bracket, without any space, making it visually clear where the referred-to information begins and ends.

Mathematical operations are also often represented this way, with the operateor followed by the bracketed operands: add(1∙∙4)

Proper Nouns

People's names are always two end-truncated syllables, of form CVCV, for example: viki, sara, joni, rita, noni, cira, lili.

With 12 consonants and 3 vowels, there are (12x3)^2 = 1296 possible names.

It is common for a person to use their mother's first name as a second name when a more unique identification is needed. This serves as a single-generational 'family-name' of sorts, but of course cycles out after that generation. The location of residence, or workplace in some contexts, is an alternate differentiator, in the form [name] of [place]. Databases always sort on first name, and usually use a single flat field of adequate length for all variations, including spaces, for name storage.

When a mother chooses a name for her newborn, it is very common to pick two word-roots of desirable meaning and chop off the last letter of each to form the name. This process is non-reversible as there are potentially twelve possible source-roots for any given two-letter name-part. Name-source words, while not exactly secret, are generally only socially shared with family and close friends, and someone telling you their 'name-source' is an indication of a strong feeling of trust. It is likewise a social faux-pass, or even a minor betrayal of trust if done maliciously, to reveal another's name-source to a third party without permission.

Place names are formed in a similar way, but use three source roots to form a six-letter name in the form CVCVCV. The source roots are generally references to characteristics of the place being named. Unlike personal names, the name-source of a place is public record, and can even be a source of regional-identity pride. Some commonly-referenced place names in the story have been translated to appropriately-descriptive equivalent English words for ease of reading:

A four-part CVCVCVCV name is not standard, but with the recent encountering of an alien species, usage of this new form for describing a whole species is finding usage. The four-short-syllable name for the Wallanese people in their own language is still a mater of public debate, mainly over which four roots best describe themselves, with two major divergent opinions being for pragmatic-descriptor versus aspirational-metaphor.

The pragmatic descriptor group is currently in popular favour, arguing that aspirations tend to change over time. Their most internally-popular choice is word roots alluding to concepts of pragmatic, sapient, a third yet to be agreed on, and wall.

Local Slang

Inies and Outies are people who choose to live on an inside or outside curve of The Wall's tightly-meandering loops. Neither term is derogatory in intent.

Innies tend to be more socially-inclined liking having people around them, visible throughout the loop culvert their living spaces face.

Outies tend to be more solitary, though not usually antisocial, and prefer the unpopulated views of The Jungle beyond The Wall available from living spaces on the wall-sections on outside loops.

Translation Conventions (English)

Some Wallanese words are translated to English (or English-derived) words with a slight variation to meaning, in order to make understanding more fluid.

For brevity, Wallian numbers in octal (base-8) will be preceded by a lower-case 'o' and any decimal (base-10) conversion by a 'd'. Earth units are always given in decimal.

For clarity, most numbers are given in decimal, but remember numbers in Wallian society are expressed in base-8 where the numbers below are generally very 'round' with lots of trailing zeros:

Where octal numbers are used, they are preceded by a lower-case 'o'.

Measurement: Distance

Wallians use an octal-based measurement system, where the base unit is the 'pace', and is normalised to approximately 335.6mm, or 1.1 decimal-feet. Precisely, it is o10⁴⁶ (in octal, not decimal) times the Planck-length constant.

Wallian use of these units long-predates their (relatively primitive, even today) understanding of quantum physics, so the usage may indicate left-over knowledge from the Wall-Builders that predate their own civilisation, or the unit may be derived directly from The Wall itself, which has many components that conform to multiples of this unit. Or it most likely is simply because rulers and tape-measures using this length are part of the 'pre-manufactured goods' sets that fill the wall's cavities! Though that just loops back to the Wall-Builders who are presumably also the creators of these abandoned stocks of goods.

4096 (o1 0000) paces are a 'mile', equivalent to 1374.6m or 0.85 Earth miles.

Measurement: Time

Hour

Precisely, a Wallian hour is o10⁶⁴ (in octal) times the Planck-time constant (about 82 minutes in Earth time).

This is one of 8 periods into which a day is divided. People normally work 4 hours, sleep 1 hour and have the remaining 3 hours available for recreation and self-maintenance. The population sleeping and working times are spread relatively evenly across all hours. Hour alignment may be driven by an individual's work schedule, or completely free for some types of job where consistent staffing is not requisite.

Day

A period 8 hours (10.94 Earth hours).

As the world of The Wall has no day-night cycle, the length of a 'day' is actually set to be around the average circadian-cycle length of a Wallian. Going for more than o10 hours without sleep is detrimental to health if done repeatedly. For moving sleep-times it is recommended to move them by no more than one hour each day until the new desired timing is achieved.

Week

A period of 8 days. People normally work for 4 consecutive days in a week, spend 2 days in further education and have 2 days of full recreation. Which days each activity occurs on may be somewhat negotiable depending on the nature of the job being worked. Service jobs requiring fixed staffing levels are usually scheduled to a roster while less worker-presence-critical jobs are generally quite flexible.

Wallians accrue 1 hour of leave from work for every 8 hours worked. Study-time is also exempted in any week where all work-hours are taken as leave.

Sick leave of unlimited duration is available with medical certification. Sick leave is paid at the basic-income rate by the government, not the employer, though the employer must cover all other associated costs, such as replacement staffing.

Month

A period of 8 weeks, or 64 days (around 29.2 Earth days, accounting for the shorter Wallian 'day').

This is also the species' average fertility-cycle length.

The world of The Wall has no moon, so there is no astronomical significance to this time period.

Year

A period of 8 months, 64 weeks, or 512 days (around 233.4 Earth Days, 33 Earth Weeks, 7.6 Earth months, or 0.633 Earth years).

This is also the species' average gestation-period length for pregnancy.

The world is tidally-locked to its star, so there is no astronomical significance from Sunside, where people live. The orbital period of the planet is not related to this calendar 'year'.

It is also useful to note that while the speed of light (in a vacuum) is constant in the universe, the length of a year varies by planet and culture. As such, a Wallian concept of a light-year is not the same distance as the Human/Earth/English version of the same concept. If humans were saying "10.4 light-years", in decimal, and Wallians are saying "20.3 light-years", in octal, they would actually be referring to the same distance (in this case the distance between their home stars - note that these two species/civilisations are not contemporary to each other, so would not be making this reference at the same time anyway).

Octade

A period of 8 local years (about 5.3 Earth years). Derived from decade.

This is also the average time between births, due to mothering fertility being halted for this time frame by fetal hormones during the second quarter of pregnancy.

Octury

A period of 64 local years (about 42.4 Earth years). Derived from century.

Octium

A period of 512 local years (about 340 Earth years). Derived from millennium.

This is a little over the maximum Wallian lifespan, which averages at 448 local years (around 284 Earth years, though as discussed, this feels more like 380 human years of waking time due to the faster thinking speed and shorter sleep periods experienced by Wallians).

Octiad

A period of 4096 local years (about 2700 Earth years). Derived from myriad.

This is the approximate age of the current iteration of Wallian civilisation, though their recorded history only covers the second half of this time period.

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