There is something strange about halflings. The Race does not have a speaking language. It's probably a testament to the race's adaptability that the race has no racial speaking language. It's also strange. The actual Halfling Language, the one spoken in the Lemurian Chalcolithic Age, died out. The language is a dead language, no one speaks it any more. All halflings in the empire unilaterally adopted Hellenic as their spoken language of choice. And it's the same no matter where a community of Halflings go. Where they settle, they spend time to learn the language of commerce and everyday use. One would think, though, to lose a language is to lose a culture. Well, the Halfling culture isn't entirely lost.
The Halflings' Written Legacy[]
The halflings have a living script which they adapt to their new languages. The result is an ever changing, complex script. The Halfling script can be divided into Pictograms and Written script.
Halfling Symbols and Pictograms[]
The hebrew pictograph chart has symbols in common with the Halfling pictograms.
Halfling pictograms are universally understood by all halflings, and are properly taught to children in order as to their understanding. These include runes, marks, and symbols that are used to identify territory, property, and bands. The pictogrammical part of the script is easy as there is about 30 different common pictograms. These are carved in wood, stone, or painted on different surfaces, or woven into cloth.
Written Script[]
The written script is a lot like Qohenje. Except there is a cursive version of the script for quickly writing. Like Qohenje, the Halflings have developed a writing system where the vowels are dominate and the consonants are subordinate. Its the opposite of modern Hebrew, where everything is a consonant except for dots that signify vowels. This script has been adapted to all languages and is used for intra-halfling commerce. Halflings who specialize in commerce in the world would use the scripts used for commerce (in the case of the Hellenes, the Greek Alphabet). The result is a complex written form that takes years for a philosopher or sage to figure out. Infact, it's so complex, that an individual Halfling (language) skill must be specified when a PC takes linguisitics.