Oh, and as to dialect, hmm. I can see dialect developing if settlers from D'ni inhabited ages, away from the cavern and other speakers. But they weren't known to do this - workers and slave-keepers (who, sadly, existed, we learn in Teledahn) who had business in other ages may have created hybrid languages from the influence of any local ones. It's possible even that the districts in D'ni which were separated by financial situation could have had slightly different forms of speech - but they wouldn't have been that far apart. It's always eminently possible that the whole kit and kaboodle, so to speak, had changed a lot from the D'ni spoken by Ri'neref - except for the fact that, in the Book of D'ni, when Atrus and the D'ni went to Terahnee, they found people there, a long sundered society, spoke almost exactly the same.
I'm going to say that our human languages are a poor example of the kind of evolution D'ni went through, simply because we're different - we live for a much shorter amount of time, traditions are less adhered to, and we are less careful for that reason. In fact, given the care with which the D'ni approached every aspect of life, I think it's safe to say that they kept their language from devolving, and their orthography quite phonetic.
Andrew
_________________ Silence. Introspection. The weighing of possibilities. Inking the pen, eyeing over the Elements.
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