Desde que comenté que quería hacer un FanFic de Warhammer 40K y Monster High me han pasado muchas cosas, para resumir, estoy compartiendo esto desde el hospital, estoy bien, pero finalmente mientras estoy aquí muerto de aburrimiento, me puse ha escribir un primer capítulo, súper cortito y nada impresionante (soy malísimo para contar los inicios de cualquier cosa) así que mañana lo publicaré y lo pasaré por aquí, por si alguien quiere leerlo y decirme que soy más feo que un Tiranido y tonto como Lorgar xD

There’s been some talk recently(-ish) of making a Venlil conlang. I haven’t yet taken part in the discussion (because I’ve got no time lol), but this is something that does interest me quite a bit.
Now, I won’t be making a Venlil conlang. I’m not that masochistic... But I feel as if certain aspects of what we do know about their language that have been sidestepped in favor of discussing things like how their mouth and vocal tract would work and would interact with how they communicate. While that is indeed very interesting, I won’t be touching that because I know basically nothing about it. I’m instead, going to focus on the few pieces we have about the Venlil’s language: names.
I’m only going to use canon names, because I want to stay as close to what SP intended as possible. A great part of the name-collecting labor has been done by u/cruisingNW’s post, which I greatly appreciate. His posts about this topic are very interesting, though I won’t be following them.
I’m going to use a ton of lingustics terminology, and I sincerely apologize if nobody understands what I’m saying lol.

The names themselves

For completion’s sake, here are all the Venlil names that we know:
Main Story
Slanek, Tarva, Glim, Kam, Cheln, Haysi, Volek, Mulnek, Ilja, Thima, Carliva
Venlil Foster Program
Callsi, Jimek, Kaulin, Vana, Remsi, Tibek, Cylek, Nalva, Stram, Lashi
Human Exterminators
Rauln, Nam
Kalsim’s Trial and Sentence
Mynek
Predator Disease
Derva, Sialsi, Nulin, Mollsi

Phonology

I.e., what sounds a language can have.
I heavily recommend reading the Wikipedia article for the International Phonetic Alphabet. I’ll be using the IPA because it allows one to be more precise in describing and explaining sounds (and because the letter-sound correspondences are standardized, that way you won’t have to guess what I mean when I write a letter). The article also explains a lot of terminology, so it’ll definitely help you understand what I’m saying, haha.
We don’t know what sounds a Venlil can vocalize, but for my sanity’s sake, let’s just assume they’re the same a human mouth can make.
I’m also going to assume that what we have are reasonable romanizations of their actual names, that is, there are no weird English/Latin quirks like c = k = q and that each letter (or combination of) has a unique sound.
First, I’ll be trying to figure out what are the possible sounds (=phonemes) the Venlil language has (its phonemic inventory). Then I’ll be talking about how these sounds can be put together and interact with each other (its phonotactics).
As I’ve established, I’m assuming each letter has a distinct sound.
Most letters, I assume, will make the same sound as they do in English. Else it wouldn’t be romanized that way. There are, however, a few things that seem intriguing to me.
Firstly, it’s the distinction between c and k. In English, they make the same sound. But, considering that they have been transliterated as two different letters, it must mean that there are two different sounds. What these two sounds are exactly, we cannot know, since we have no recordings (this’ll be a recurring thing in this section), but we can guess. They must have a similar sound to their English equivalents, so I’m guessing a few possibilities. The first one is that they have the same sound as their IPA equivalents, so c = [c] (kinda like k but a bit forward in the mouth, in the palate, like in skew) and k = [k]. Another possibility is that, considering that c seems to be more common than k, it must represent a more “prototypical” sound, so something like c = [k], and then k = [c], or perhaps something further back, like the uvular [q]. I’m ruling out a Central/Eastern European-like [t͡s] for c because it would’ve probably been romanized as ts, and something like [t͡ʃ] is somewhat improbable as well because we’ve also got ch, which is probably [t͡ʃ] (as in English cheese). Then again, ch might be a Yiddish or Scots-like [x] (as in loch), which is plausible considering English speakers have some level of familiarity with these languages’ words (and so it’d be a reasonable way to transliterate that sound). However, most of the times [x] is romanized as kh, so I’m doubtful that ch = [x] in Venlil. Going back to c and k, considering that ch already occupies the palatal space, and that [c] and [t͡ʃ] are acoustically similar, I think the most plausible solution is c = [k] and k = [q].
There’s also the curious case of ll. It only appears before s, so it might just represent a “special version” of l before s (an allophone), but we also have very few names, so ll might appear in more places and we just haven’t seen it (and Sialsi disproves this, as l appears before s, which means that ll is not a “special pronounciaton” of l before s, but its own phoneme). I’m imagining it must represent a lateral sound like l, but which sound exactly is, again, unknown. Perhaps l is a “plain” or “clear” lateral [l], and ll is velarized or “dark”, as in Albanian [lˠ], or maybe it represents a palatalized l, like in Catalan or Spanish [lʲ]~[ʎ]. It could just as well simply represent a geminated (lengthened) version of l, [lː].
The Venlil language also doesn’t seem to have w. This is common, as most European languages, for example, only have v (if you listen to, say, German or Slavic people, you’ll notice they have problems distinguishing and pronouncing v and w). I imagine that the Venlil language goes the same way, since it only seems to have v (and it seems to be quite a common sound, as well). Considering that this v has nothing to contrast with, I’m guessing it has a more approximant pronunciation [ʋ] rather than a fricative one [v]. V also doesn’t seem to appear in the coda (the post-vocallic part of a syllable), and my guess is that, should it underlyingly appear in the coda, it would surface as a (semi)vowel [u]; which seems to be the case in the -au- dipthongs of some names like Kaulin and Rauln. A similar thing occurs in languages like Ukrainian.
Another sound that could be interpreted as vocalizing in the coda could be j, which most probably represents the same sound as ch but voiced, [d͡ʒ] (as in English jam); which would vocalize to y [i] in the coda, as in names like Haysi. However, this is a bit of a stretch in my opinion (though a similar thing occurs in certain dialects of Spanish). I’ll also later comment on the -ay- in Haysi, since it confuses me quite a bit.
This leaves us with no voiced fricatives. Now, in the future, SP might write a name with z in it and ruin my argument but, for the time being, the Venlil language doesn’t seem to have any phonemic voiced fricative. This can leave us with two options: it just distinguishes voicing in its stops (which is nothing weird; Spanish, for example, does this), or what is written as t d actually represents a different distinction, like aspiration: [tʰ t] (like in the Mandarin Chinese romanization, Pinyin). Alternatively, the Venlil language could have a three-way distinction with d t th, distinguishing both voicing and aspiration: [d t tʰ], like in many Indian languages (or like in Ancient Greek), which going back to our c/k conundrum, would resolve it really nicely, leaving us with a trio of j c ch [d͡ʒ t͡ʃ t͡ʃʰ], with k being just [k]. Though, to be honest, even if this “aspiration solution” does leave the consonant space much more neatly organized, I don’t think this is actually the case. My bet is that the Venlil language just plainly distinguishes voicing, and that’s it; with th and ch being pronounced just like in English, [θ t͡ʃ].
As for vowels, a e i o u must represent the plain “continental” values, just like in Spanish. There’s, however, a sixth vowel y, whose sound isn’t that quite clear. It could have the same value as its IPA equivalent, the front high rounded vowel [y] (doesn’t appear in English, but it sounds like French u or German ü). Though, considering that there are no other front rounded vowels (and they usually come together, either you have multiple or you have none), I don’t think this is the case. I think y represents a more central value, something like Polish or Welsh y [ɨ̞], or perhaps just a schwa [ə] (like in about). Considering that u has already stood for a vowel and a semivowel in the dipthong -au-, I’m wondering, then, if the -ay- in Haysi is actually a dipthong with this central y vowel (so, something like [aɨ̯]), and not a combination of a vowel plus the yod ([aj], like in ice). Curiously, that’d leave the Venlil language without the palatal approximant [j] (the yod, like in year), or at least without a phonemic yod. One could argue, however, that the combination -ia- in the name Sialsi isn’t bisyllabic, but an example of the vowel i becoming a semivowel near another vowel (something that happens in Welsh and the Romance languages), so the -ia- would actually be just one syllable, pronounced [ja] (like in German Ja).
The sound represented by h is also somewhat uncertain; it could just be a glottal fricative [h], just like in English, but there are also languages in which h represents a “stronger” sound, like the velar [x]. I’d wager, though, that it’s just a glottal [h]. Perhaps the pronunciation would vary from speaker to speaker, or depending on the sound’s position in the word/sentence?
Finally, something I’ve noticed is that it seems to only have one labial stop, b. This isn’t actually that weird – Arabic, for example, famously has b but no p. It does seem weird to me, however, that it distinguishes b and v, two sounds which are quite acoustically similar (though I might be biased as a native Spanish speaker, as Spanish speakers famously have a hard time distinguishing b and v). But, weirder things have been witnessed in real languages’ phonologies, so this isn’t really something to lose sleep over. The Venlil language also seems to lack f.
If I had to make the language’s phonology chart, it’d look something like this:
https://preview.redd.it/cffqnzr4s51b1.png?width=753&format=png&auto=webp&s=b271036548847466f80d738e5450df2059e5560f
This chart is, of course, optimized for space. / might not actually be an approximant [ɹ] (like the highly-characteristic English r), it might just as well be a tap [ɾ] (like Spanish single r, as in pero; or like in certain English dialects in butter) or a trill [r] (like Spanish double r, as in perro); the lateral consonants are also approximants; and one of h’s possible pronunciations, [h], is neither velar nor uvular, but glottal. In parenthesis I’ve put phonemes whose existance is dubious.
It also leaves some things to comment, as well. K /q/ does not have a voiced equivalent, but this is nothing weird. Most languages with /q/ don’t have its voiced equivalent, [ɢ], as phonemic (an example of this would be Arabic). Another thing, though, is that /θ/’s existance is really weird, since it just looks off in the table (it would be much neater without it), and it’s really strange that it hasn’t shifted to the labial [f], to which it is very acoustically similar and which is also much more distinctive and easier to pronounce (see also: th-fronting in certain London dialects). This makes me think that maybe I was right with my earlier theory of a three-way stop distinction, which would leave the table like this:
https://preview.redd.it/b33qsa8mo71b1.png?width=639&format=png&auto=webp&s=b856766c55a6b40c0f15ff2f473076283b87794c
I’m putting kh in parentheses because it hasn’t appeared (yet?), and so its existance is unconfirmed. I should also mention that it’s common for a language to not have a distinction in all of its places of articulation; Navajo, for example, distinguishes aspiration for all of its stops, except for the labials, in which it only has an unaspirated b /p/. If so, the Venlil language having /k/, /g/ but not /kʰ/ wouldn’t really surprise me; same thing with only having a voiced /b/ but not /p/ or /pʰ/.
While this interpretation would make more sense than the original, I don’t like it because pronouncing Callsi as “Challsi” just doesn’t jibe with me. I’ll let you judge for yourself, however.
And, for completion’s sake, here’s the vowel system:
https://preview.redd.it/79k15pzbs51b1.png?width=401&format=png&auto=webp&s=d22ca042d70fa65bb7af3cf151ae93b7b34ada8d
The actual realisations may vary, i.e. e might range from mid-high [e] to mid-low [ɛ], as vowels tend to do. But this is a pretty simple 6-vowel system, definitely nothing much compared to English’s 14-20-vowel system (the actual number of vowels depends on the dialect).
Dipthongs, or simply vowel combinations, don’t seem to be individual and indivisible units, unlike in English or other Germanic languages. Rather, the Venlil language seems to follow a more Romance-like approach, where dipthongs are simply two vowels in the same syllable. Thus the -au- in Rauln is not its own phoneme, but the phonemes /a/ and (unlike in English mouse, where /au/ is its own unit and not simply /a/+). Combining this with the -ia- in Sialsi, I imagine, then, that any high vowel can combine with a non-high vowel in the same syllable.

Phonotactics

I.e., how the sounds a language has can be put together.
In the syllable onset (that is, the part of the syllable that comes before its nucleus, the vowel), it seems like there can only be at most three consonants, like in the name Stram. The other complex syllable onsets we’ve seen are in Slanek and Glim. I’m tempted to say that the str- in Stram is actually underlyingly /s, with an epenthetic t (a consonant added for ease of pronounciation; in English this occurs sometimes with people saying “hampster” instead of “hamster”). Therefore, it seems like it actually only allows clusters of two consonants. The second consonant cannot be any kind of consonant, it seems to be restricted just to liquids (r and l, perhaps ll as well).
The syllable nucleus seems to only allow vowels. This is nothing weird, most languages only allow vowels in their syllable nuclei. Names like Cheln or Rauln might dispute this, however, as they might be interpreted as bisyllabic, with a syllabic n: Che-ln, Rau-ln (compare button, also with a syllabic n, [ˈbʌtn̩]). I don’t think this is the case, however, and that -ln is one of the few permitted coda consonant clusters.
Speaking of the syllable coda, it also doesn’t seem to allow that many consonant clusters. The only one we’ve seen is -ln. I’m tempted to say that -ln is the only allowed coda consonant cluster and leave it at that.
However, complex onsets and codas only seem to be permitted in the start and end of words, respectively. All word-internal consonant clusters we’ve seen seem to be split between syllables, and they’ve been clusters of only two consonants. Moreover, what kind of consonants are allowed to cluser seems to be restricted, like with the onset clusters I’ve mentioned earlier. The clusters we’ve seen are -rv-, -ln-, -lj-, -rl-, -lls-, -ms-, -lv- and -ls-. Again, it seems that the Venlil language likes having clusters only with continuants (“soft” sounds, liquids being a subclass of them, but also including things like nasals); in this case, it seems that the first consonant must be a continuant – m, n, v, r, l, ll, with v vocalizing to u as already mentioned before – with the second one being any consonant.
All in all, the Venlil language has a much less complex and more orderly syllabic structure than English. I doubt that stuff like [ŋkθs] as in strengths or [ksθs] as in sixths is allowed.

Morphology (and morphophonology)

I.e., how new words are derived made from other words, how prefixes and suffixes work, and how they interact with the sound system.
What we see in names is that we’ve got a few common suffixes, mainly -va, which seems to be a femenine suffix, and -ek, which seems to be a masculine one, but I haven’t checked if -va names are exclusively females’ and -ek are exclusively males’. There’s also a -si suffix, also apparently femenine.
The -va suffix actually shows us a bit of morphophonology, i.e., how these suffixes interact with the language’s phonology. There seems to be an -a suffix in names like Thima and Vana, but I think this is the same one as -va, with the v being deleted due to euphony: it seems like the language doesn’t like -mv- and -nv-, and so it just deletes the v. So Thima is underlyingly thim + -va.
The -ek suffix also seems to be actually -nek, with names like Mynek being myn + -nek, with -nn- being reduced to just -n-, so the language must not allow geminates. Same thing with Jimek: -mn- is just reduced to -n-, so we can deduce that it also doesn’t like two nasals being together. However, the names Volek and Cylek put this in question, because -ln- is already established as a legal cluster.
What the -va, -nek and -si suffixes mean is, however, unknowable, but we can guess. Perhaps they’re just obligatory suffixes every word must have, like with Latin -us, -a, -um, -is, etc. Considering they’re personal names, maybe one of these suffixes is an agentive suffix (denoting the doer of an action), or perhaps it’s the inverse and is a patientive suffix (denoting the reciever of an action). Hypothetically, then, tar would mean “to love”, with tarva meaning either “lover” or “beloved”, and the given name Tarva comes from that. This is just one possible option, however.

Conclusion

I’m not going to make a Venlil conlang, as that’d be too much work for me. However, I hope that with this post, I’ve established a base for whomever decides to do so. Just with a few bits and pieces of language – in this case, given names – one can deduce many things. If we had just one sentence (and its translation), one could deduce many more things. Hell, even if you aren’t making a Venlil conlang, if you’re just a fanfic writer, this post would be useful to you as well, since I’ve established what kinds of sounds are allowed, allowing one to create plausible Venlil names.
However, I should also mention that many of the things I’ve mentioned are speculative. Nothing is 100% confirmed. I also doubt that SP was thinking this deeply when making Venlil names, as most authors aren’t making entire languages just to name a few things in their stories. But, hey, extrapolation is fun...
And, my sincerest apologies if you’ve understood nothing, as I’ve perhaps used too much linguistics terminology for the average layman to understand. Thank you for reading my rambling about Venlil names, haha.