Two Crows Watch from the Gallows Tree (part 3)

"Nortung," he replied promptly. "It's not elegant, but that's what I like about it. There's more throat and mouth to it than nose; it's similar to one or two of the Southern languages in that respect."

(Nortung is like a weird mix of German and Norwegian, I guess you could say. It's very harsh-sounding with a lot of consonants and rolling r's.)

(Ooh, interesting! What languages do you think would be realistic for Ky to know? I feel like she'd be familiar with most of these but I am not aha)

Ky nodded, understanding. "The language in my township was very guttural... it felt nice to speak... took me a bit to un-learn the accent, though."

(She'd probably know most languages in the South if Aleth wanted her to, except for a few tribal dialects. She'd also know the two major Eastern languages: Moon Speak and Kelar. She'll know Upper Tongue and maybe a scraping of Nortung?)

"Why would you have to unlearn your accent?" Ana asked, frowning at her.

(Ooh okay cool! Thank youuuu)

"Oh, I, uh," Ky had ventured into waters she hadn't meant to. Now, how to redirect without lying. Or admitting her previous situation. "Found it helpful to be able to learn new languages without having to fight with my accent on top of it all."

That, and Aleth had been absolutely fierce about beating it out of her. She hadn't had as much of an accent as most people did, since Papa had raised her bilingual and also didn't have a Southern accent himself -- but the accent she did have hadn't served her well as a stable boy, and it was positively dangerous around Aleth. He thought Southerners sounded stupid. He wouldn't tolerate a stupid-sounding assistant.

"Well, there's no shame in an accent. I could tell you that." Ana had an accent similar to Sara and Anneke. "It betrays class sometimes, sure, but it's a part of who you are."

"Yes, ma'am." Ky nodded. That made sense. Aleth had tried to strip every last part of her away, bit by bit, methodically. And he was succeeding. To an embarrassing degree. "I imagine I'd slip back into it if I was speaking the language again. But for now, this accent feels most familiar to me. Even though it was learned later in life."

"What language was it, specifically?" Gaius asked her, leaning forward. He wondered if he knew it.

(Do you have one in mind or should I say what I call it in cannon? lol)
(Also would politics work out in the South for it to be a banned language in this world? aha)

(If she was in the South of the South then it would be an Austrakan dialect, which is where Rickard was from. The South probably wouldn't ban a language since there are so many spoken in that Realm.)

(So should she just say Austrakan? Or is there more of a subdivision that Gaius would be looking for?)

(Up to you! Austrakan has several dialects: Standard Austrakan, Aikha, Rahim, and the tribal language of Ur.)

"Austrakan," she replied instinctively. She didn't get the question often, but when she did, she knew no one actually cared where she was from or what language she knew. But then, Ash had attention to detail. And he'd asked for specifics. And seemed oddly interested. So she tacked on, "Aikha, in the township; but my father's--" It felt so weird to call him that, but she was feeling progressively more childish to continually refer to him as Papa. Even Oscar didn't call Tomhas Papa. "-- native language was Standard, so I grew up with both."

"Fascinating," Gaius mused, and Sara nudged him. "It's impressive, I mean, that you spoke two dialects. That's often difficult."

"Thank you." She remembered not to add the 'ma'am' this time -- improvement. Ky dipped her head with a humble smile. "Papa--" Well, now she'd gone and done it again. "-- could only read and write Standard so that's what I knew when I was a kid. I learned to write Aikha only recently."

"Aikha is one of the more difficult dialects I've encountered," Gaius said. "It's a subtle language compared to the Standard Dialect. Similarities to it, and very large differences as well. It's hard to keep track of, but I liked the challenge."