Pentapolitan Argot: Difference between revisions

The Argot enjoys full legal recognition in the Pentapolis, where it is the only language that is official across all five cities. It has almost no speakers and consequently no official status within Hendalarsk outside of the Cities, however, and it is not a working language of either the Great Chamber or the Forum of Nations, a fact which is a source of some political tension. Within the Cities, the Argot is considerably more widely-spoken than Standard Hendalarskisch itself; the majority of the citizens of [[Wrzeczsz-Kokoszki]], for example, do not speak anything but the most basic Standard Hendalarskisch but are fluent in both the Kokoszkian dialect of Lagyar and the Argot, with both possessing equal status in the city. Even the other more traditionally Gothic cities of the Pentapolis use Standard Hendalarskisch in a distinctly secondary capacity, with the Argot hegemonic in politics, administration and culture alike. Many other mercantile communities around the Vandarch littoral are home to Argot speakers, in the form of both emigrants from the Pentapolis and locals who speak the Argot in order to better communicate with Pentapolitan traders. It has, however, proven difficult to estimate how many speakers of the language exist outside the Pentapolis, with some estimates suggesting that almost 95% of the language's speakers live within the Pentapolis itself. The Argot has in recent decades become somewhat fashionable among sailors of the Hendalarskara Navy and the Hendalarskara merchant marine, as distinct from their Pentapolitan equivalents, but while it is unofficially recognised that there are benefits to two formal navies sharing one working language, it is officially frowned upon and Standard Hendalarskisch remains the sole official working language of both Hendalarskara fleets.