Iotic

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Iotic is also a fictional language in the Saga of the Skolian empire books by Catherine Asaro.

Iotic is one of the fictional languages used and referred to in the science-fiction book The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Iotic is spoken in A-Io, a superpower of the planet Urras, one of two settings of the story (the other one being the sister planet Anarres, where Pravic is spoken).

In contrast to Pravic, Iotic is a natural language, and as such probably exhibits many irregularities and complications, but the reader is not informed of them in the book.

Judging by what we have (and unless the transcription is misleading), Iotic words tend to be relatively simple in phonetic structure, with few consonants, only a few consonant clusters, and many vowels often strung together. The book contains many names that show this: personal names like To, Atro, Saio Pae, Leia Asieo Odo, Vea, Doem, Oiie, Dearri, Tuio Maedda, and place names like A-Io, Ieu Eun, Nio Esseia, Drio. Names with final consonants, like Efor and Rodarred, seem rare.

The Ioti society is highly stratified, and accordingly Iotic is reported to have two registers or sociolects: one for the upper class, also used in some media ("the telefax" is mentioned), and one low register for the working class, the so-called Nioti. This "Low Iotic" is characterized (according to the narrator) by a reduction of verbs to the present tense.

According to one of the (upper-class) characters in the book, the Iotic employed in popular newspapers, to be read by the Nioti, is of very low quality, as well as the information provided therein (probably implying sensationalistic content).