LANGUAGES

Broken Dimensions is such a large project with so many different worlds that it was almost impossible for there to not be any “original” language construction happening within it! Something I’ve worked on for years now is developing a dictionary of terms and phrases for use throughout the various project, though most of what I’ve flesh out so far pertains to Tartarun languages and dialects. This page covers that in brief, and is based off a Patreon post from May 2025.

What is a Constructed Language?

I’m referencing Wikipedia’s definition of the concept, but constructed languages are, in short, languages which did not develop naturally over time but were rather devised for a specific purpose. In this case, I have developed (or begun to develop) several “conlangs” for use in varying capacities within BrDim.

Some of Broken Dimensions’ conlangs exist mostly as ciphers based on the American English alphabet, similar to the Star Wars alphabet, aurebesh, or the codex of Mandalorian script forms. Some of BrDim’s conlangs have budding concepts of grammar, their own growing dictionaries, and early pronunciation guides!

This part of the Broken Dimensions project is something I started working with (in much, much earlier forms) as a kid – I LOVED making up languages and symbols that meant things only I could understand.

The languages I’ve made and begun to make for BrDim are more complex than that and much more time consuming to work on, but I think little me would’ve been fascinated.

The Languages of Broken Dimensions

There are actually quite a few named languages in Broken Dimensions, but the ones I have words and small dictionaries for, or alphabets designed for, are as follows:

Central Aetherian – trade language spoken throughout the entire Aetherian Empire, centralized around the core world with variants and dialects that get more distant from the original the further out you travel. Has an alphabet… of sorts.
Talkian – the most developed language I work with! Has it’s own dictionary of words that grows almost weekly, can be spoken, and shares the Base Tartarun block sign alphabet with the rest of the dimension.
Base Tartarun – both a language and an alphabet! There are some words that can be understood across all of Tartarus, regardless of whether or not regional languages use different words that mean the same thing. Verdisse, the plural for “soldiers,” is one such word. So is hetarn’aika, a strong swear word/insult usually used in reference to the Seven Heathen mages post-revolution. Similarly, the BT alphabet is used across the entire dimension of Tartarus and beyond as a trade language/default script for the written word.
Old Tongue – bits and pieces of this one. A language spoken in Eras 1 and 2 that has since fallen out of use. Was once the premier language and script to be used for writing magical tomes and conducting research in, but fell completely to the wayside after Crisis 5. Ziojic is an Old Tongue word made from two other words meaning “void” and “magic.”

There are also other languages I refer to often but haven’t put much thought or development into, such as:

Alcairok – the regional language of southern Tartarus, specifically Alcairo. Only has a few words. Alphabet in development.
Aislos – the language of Hell’s Aisles. Mostly exists as a concept.
Rekahn Talkian – a variant of standard Talkian used primarily around Vadetta Heights and the northeastern coast of Tartarus. By Era 10 it’s more of a “house language” used only with family, sometimes with hyperspecific words whose meanings are passed down through family lines.
Vaali – trade language of the eastern and southeastern coast of Tartarus, used in conjunction with the more mainland
East Coast Basic – the precursor and base language for most languages spoken in the eastern half of Tartarus – extremely similar to modern Talkian.
Envarian Sign Language(Envarasil) – 1 or only 2 Tartarun sign languages (beyond field sign, which varies from region to region based on military history and dominance) to have persisted through the millennia. Envari predominantly speaks Vaali, BT, and Interdimensional Common Tongue (CT), so they had less region-specific words in their sign language. It became the default dialect to use, and is rivaled only by Enzian Sign Language, which is similar but much more broad.
- Enzian Sign Language – made up of part field sign, part CT sign, and part Adreonian sign. Has a sub-dialect that was used by the 1920s-30s rebel groups when fighting in the Era 10 Tartarun Civil War.
Ialu’kan – Trivaalian temple district dialect, mostly spoken by scholars, priests/devotees, and religious leaders in the province.
Viadexi localé – name of the island dialect spoken by some characters in The Lycanthra Syndicate.
Adreonian – very lightly used in parts of Fractal Alliances. It’s the only surviving Darekaeiin/Shade dialect, and so survivors from the region kind of cling to it.

Base Tartarun

In addition to developing these languages for use in writing, I mentioned I liked to come up with “alternate alphabets” or codes when I was a kid. So, of course I developed a similar tool for use in my visual artwork. It’s fun! Since Base Tartarun is the alphabet I have the most settled/decided on, I like to leave bits of it around sometimes! I’d like my viewership to be able to read it and look for these extra, fun little features in my work, so here’s a full info-page series on it (plus some more BrDim conlang notes)!

Included above are multiple shots of the Base Tartarun-English alphabet cipher! For my readers/viewers, feel free to save one image or the other (with the description or without) to use when you see a coded message in my artwork. This will be most common in comic pages, but I have hidden BT in illustrations before, and quite a few character design sheets for Fractal Alliances have BT scrawled onto characters’ armor plates.

(You can also use BT to write for yourself in code! I used to write notes to myself in BT as I was learning the script, and its a great time. It’s great for keeping track of things you don’t want other people to be able to understand without the code key.)

What’s all this for, then?

For fun, mostly! Little me liked making up languages, and I still do; that’s the bare bones of it.

Besides that, I’ve always felt like it would be cool to have a language only I and a few people could speak. My first experience with creating a coded pictograph language was on the playground, y’know? We made a small dictionary of symbols we could use to convey meaning to one another in class, on drawing paper, on our hands, in notes and things. It was fun!

I’ve also spent a significant portion of my life feeling as if I am speaking a language no one else understands, or being spoken to in one I don’t understand myself. This is, in some ways, an extension of that.

These languages (or concepts of languages) are always in development, and always changing. Occasionally, you will encounter bits and pieces of Aetherian or Tartarun languages in early Fractal Alliances written works, and references to Aislos or Viadexi localé in short pieces or references for Lycanthra. If you ever have any questions or need clarification or translation, feel free to reach out to me on social media!