Binerii Lapraak Khal!

[robject]

Speak Trade Vilani!

Trade Vilani (Khal) comes in two major varieties, both relatively straightfoward to write.

Pidgin

One uses a simple positional grammar with uninflected Vilani words. Call it a Vilani-Solomani (not necessarily Anglic) pidgin. Word order may be just about anything, but is consistent within a dialect sphere. There may be a "Vilanic" word order, with the verb first, the subject, and then the object; it may be Anglic (subject - verb - object); it may be Romantic (adjectives following the modified thing).

An example is "[You] Speak Trade Vilani!". You is /Binerii/, speak is /Lapraak/, and Trade Vilani is /Khal/. There's little to no conjugation, so many elements must be gathered from context, and it's easy for sentences to be ambiguous (for example, is "you speak trade vilani" a command, a suggestion, a question, or a statement of fact?).

Cipher

The other uses a "Your Name in Vilani" algorithm to encipher English sentences into text that looks like Vilani. In this case the word order is exactly that of the enciphered language.

 

[FreeTrav]

There's extensive information, semi-pseudo-deuterocanonized, on Vilani at http://eaglestone.pocketempires.com/lang/vilani/

 

[FreeTrav]

...but you know that already; I didn't realize that you were THAT Rob...

 

[robject]

Yay! Yes that's me. The grammar on that site is, as you say, semi-pseudo-deuterocanonized. If you've got one of Marc's patents of nobility, and you are weird enough to translate the text, you'll see it's the same grammar. So you can call it "fully deuterocanonized".

This is just another layer on top of "real" Vilani, for people like me who want a faster, if looser, way to use Vilani in the game.