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By inherent design, Kendane͡ivash is not a spoken language, but an encoded one. It's more comparable to UTF-8 Japanese characters than it is comparable to the rendering of said characters. Indeed, glyphal alphabets for Kendane͡ivash vary from place to place, and pronunciation often starkly differs between cultures, where Kendane͡ivash is spoken at all. It's just as likely someone might encode Kendane͡ivash into light pulses or gestures.

If the mode of communication is not clear, the person initiating a conversation will begin with a recital of the Kendane͡ivash numerals until the other party acknowledges (or the initiator begins to suspect the mode of communication chosen is so unclear that the other party isn't even aware that communication is being attempted (or the communication attempt is outright invisible to their sensors)).

There are 21 “consonants” in Kendane͡ivash and 11 “vowels”; these have separately defined alphabets.

The standard Latin transcription used by the author consists of all standard Latin characters, plus the extra character s̈ and minus c, w and x.

In other words, these Latin letters are used:

The consonant alphabet is transcribed as follows:

• f is more often rendered as ph
• k may be optionally rendered as c (such as in Valcen's name), usually when the author feels that using k would make the word look too much like someone slipped and fell into German.

The vowel alphabet is transcribed as follows:

Plural nouns are denoted using the suffix -a or -'a, e.g. vahra or vahr'a would be worlds.

There are three inflections on personal pronouns: Possessive, reflexive and honorific.

• -i for the possessive form, for example sai means my.
• e replaces the last letter for the accusative form, for example se means me.
  Not an exception: The accusative form of e is still e. That being said, some dialects might render it as y instead.
  Exception: The accusative form of na'a is ne'a.
• -'ik for the reflexive form, for example sa'ik means myself.
• -qa or -qua (compound word usually capitalised) for the honorific form, for example Nakwa would be an honorific form of you.
• -qi or -qui (compound word usually capitalised) for the honorific possessive form, for example Naqi would be an honorific form of your.

Note that zetu inflects as Zetakwa and Zetakwi rather than as Zetuqa and Zetuqi - though someone would definitely still be understood if they used latter. e inflects as a for the possessive form, but otherwise behaves normally (Eqa, Eqi).

There are also two common contractions:

• -'n as a contraction of the pronoun and “to be”, for example sa'n means I'm.
• -'s as a contraction of the pronoun and “should” or “ought to”, for example sa's means I should.

• -'ar denoting “more -”, e.g. temi'ar for warmer.
• -'arar denoting “most -”, e.g. khalei'arar for craziest.
• -'aos̈ denoting “too (much of) -”, e.g. bantor'aos̈ for too vulnerable.
• -'ini denoting “less -”, e.g. ashee'ar for less pleasant or unpleasant.
• -'inin denoting “least -”, e.g. dejek'inin for least afraid or courageous.
• -'ios̈ denoting “too (little of) -”, e.g. temi'ios̈ for too cold.

All base forms of verbs end in a vowel and an s. The 's' is dropped for tense and person inflections (e.g. kas̈uie is the future second person of kas̈us).

• future II (present conditional)
  • sa -so
  • e -no
  • na -o
  • na'a -io
  • ka/ra/zetu -to
  • va -sol
• future
  • sa -saye
  • e -naye
  • na -ie
  • na'a -ye
  • ka/ra/zeto -taye
  • va -sayees
• present tense
  • sa -s
  • e -n
  • na -
  • na'a -i
  • ka/ra/zetu -t
  • va -sis
• factual past tense
  • sa -ses
  • e -nes
  • na -es
  • na'a -ies
  • ka/ra/zetu -tes
  • va -sises
• speculative past tense
  • sa -st
  • e -sin
  • na -si
  • na'a -isi
  • ka/ra/zetu -sit
  • va -sil

Two other inflections exist:

• das̈'- to imply that the action described by the verb is expected (ought to, shall do, should do)
• ze͡i'- to imply that the action described by the verb is probable (could do, may do, might do)

Nouns can be turned into adjectives with a simple suffix:

• -'is, meaning “having the attributes of -”, e.g. adaryr'is would be nightmarish.
• -'ei, meaning “not having the attributes of -”, e.g. aiit'ei would be optionless.

Nouns can be turned into different, related nouns with some suffixes or prefixes:

• -'iij, meaning “a group that has (or is) -”¹⁾, e.g. valcee'iij might be used to describe a particular group of warriors (“a group that has strength”).
• iku'-, meaning “virtual -” in a sense of abstraction, simulation, anything electronic or digital, but without any connotation of non-existence, e.g. iku'preeth might be a blog.
• ji'-, describing connected space between two or more of the base noun, roughly equivalent to the English prefix inter-, ji'los̈a could be “interplanetary space”. To get only the adjective “interplanetary”, one would apply an adjective modifier: ji'los̈a'is.

Verbs can be turned into nouns with suffixes placed before their vowel-s ending:

• -em, meaning a person doing the action described by the verb, e.g. donas (to accuse) becomes donem (accuser)

Verbs can be turned into different, related verbs with some suffixes or prefixes:

• passive negation, -'va, not doing something; sras̈as'va would be “not to plead”. Verb inflection happens before the 'va, e.g. ne͡ivat'va is third person form of ne͡ivas'va.
• active negation, ta'-, doing the opposite of something; ta'kas̈us might be “to wake up”.
• repetition, tsu'-, doing something again / once more, resuming something; tsu'qanos would be “to live again; to resurrect”.

Adverbs can be created from adjectives using the suffix -ma.

This does not usually stack with 'is (unless it's necessary to remove ambiguities). For example, szamhama is securely (from the noun szamha, security, synonymous with and reduced from szamha'isma), and khaleima is crazily (from the adjective khalei).

Threadwielders immersed in cultures tend to be multi-lingual, but since they cannot expect other Threadwielders to have the same background, their language tends to be maintained as a lingua franca between them, and they fall back to it whenever they visit one another for the first few times.

As such, the language is mostly used by Threadwielders themselves, though some words may sneak into sapient languages on worlds seeded by Threadwielders, because of their involvement.

The most notable users of the language are the kavkema, for whom - due to Evenatra's extreme presence during their cultural genesis - the language was something of a baseline and now continues to be used as a form of 'weakest encryption': While regular conversation is usually in the lingua franca of the Nayabaru (Naya), conversing in their “ancient tongue” (formally called Kendane͡ivash) can, in a pinch, buy them a few minutes head-start while someone struggles to translate on-the-fly.

That this “ancient tongue” is still actively expanded by them (causing there to be a slew of kavkem-specific Kendane͡ivash words) does not make them refer to it as anything else. The Nayabaru may sometimes call it kavkemic, though. Or, you know, “the language those terrorists use”.

See also: kavkem glyphs

<fc #ff0000>WARNING</fc>: The following material has not yet had a chance to become canonical.

Some Draconic subcultures use Kendane͡ivash, especially when interacting with Threadwielders (i.e. almost surely Zalaagra), but knowledge of the language is much more spotty than it is with kavkema, as it is usually not the main tongue of the respective culture. In most places that are aware of Kendane͡ivash at all, the language shares a status broadly comparable to Esperanto with humans.

In the Threadwielder tongue, new words are created chiefly by drastic portmanteauing of composite words. In so much as it's possible, pronounceable and not too outlandish, words are occasionally outright folded into each other, as long as the composite word can still strongly insinuate its base words.

An extreme example: The name “Evenatra” stems from evenatar, as the composite of evenar and venat, forming 'grace of the sky'. Most portmanteauing is not that extreme - names are more frequently reduced to this form as an aesthetic exercise more than a fundamental attempt at brevity.

Think of it like poetry.