Battle Language.

When I started this blog I meant to write down some ideas on battle-language. I never got around to it. A friend just rattled my cage about this, so some initial thoughts:

Vocabulary. Vocabulary will be specialized and rather small, which will make the language easier to learn. Battle-language will be used in noisy and chaotic conditions so clarity is a priority. Each word will be distinct and there will be no homophones or other sources of confusion.

To facilitate learning, many words will have common roots. For example, the word for “mortar”, “mortar-operator” and “using a mortar” will have a common root. There will be specific words for different types of threat. An airborne threat will have a different noun to that from a ground vehicle or dismounted individual.

Subject. Subject, object and verb will be distinctive so there is no confusion what function a word is performing. This allows considerable flexibility in the order of words in a sentence.

Object. A noun used as an object will used the same word as used for the subject, but will have some form of marker or affix to indicate its status. In many sentences the object will be a target, so there may be a marker specifically for targets, and another for more general objects.

Verbs. Verbs will have a distinct form. There are likely to be many verbs meaning “to-shoot”, one for each class of weapon. Thus selecting the correct verb informs the listener what weapon the speaker wishes to be used. Many verbs will have a dative and ablative form. For example, one form will be an order to shoot at something, the other a warning about being shot at from something. There is also likely to be a wide choice of verbs for movement. A third group of verbs will describe more general actions such as “rest a short while”, “search”, “track”.

Modifiers. A number of adjectives and adverbs will be needed for descriptive clarity. The speaker may want to specify that the target is the red-house, tall-house, large-house and so forth.

Many of the words in battle-language will have hand-sign equivalents, allowing users to communicate information silently when needed.