Pnathic
Pnathic (or "Ghoul Speech", "Pnathique") is from H.P. Lovecraft's Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction), though the language is not named as such there. (The name "Pnathic" might originate from the Call of Cthulhu (RPG)?)
In the Mythos
A man... had actually made friends with the ghouls and had taught [Randolph Carter] to understand the simpler part of their disgusting meeping and glibbering.... He sent up as best he might that meeping cry which is the call of the ghoul.
— H.P. Lovecraft, Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction)
"Pnathic" or "Ghoul-Speech" is the language of the Ghouls, named by the Comte d'Erlette for the Vale of Pnath in the Underworld of the Dreamlands about which the Ghouls seem to gather. Largely a spoken language, consisting of sounds best described as a sort of "meeping", "glibbering", "hooting", or "jabbering". The language is mostly used only among Ghouls, but might be taught to trusted outsiders, including Human Cultists, Crawling Ones, and various denizens of the Underworld. The use of Pnathic among cultists and Underworlders may have been quite common in Ancient Khem, but seems to have fallen far from common use since then.
A written version of Pnathic is only described by the Comte d'Erlette in Cultes des Goules (alongside d'Erlette's dubious transcriptions of useful "Pnathique" phrases in English lettering), and is rumored to exist but rarely (if ever) actually seen; some original versions of the Ghoul's Manuscript were supposedly written in Pnathic, though reliable documentation so far records that tome as being written mostly or entirely in a debased form of English; similarly, the original version of the Scroll of Thoth is rumored to have been written in Pnathic, though no Pnathic version of this tome has been definitely confirmed to remain in existence today; it may be that the written form of the language, if it ever existed at all, has been long lost and would no longer be readable today, except by the most ancient - and thus least human - of Ghouls.
Associated Mythos Elements
- tome: Ghoul's Manuscript
- tome: Cultes des Goules
- tome: Scroll of Thoth
- setting: Hollow Earth
- setting: Ancient Khem
- location: Underworld
- location: Midian
- race: Ghouls
- race: Crawling Ones
- race: Human Cultists
