The Imperial language is the lingua franca of much of takma civilization on avishraa. It is a member of the Imperial language family, which is named for it.

The use term Imperial language, in this sense, is very broad, covering the language's variations over a wide span of time, space, and usage. This reflects the use of the term by most of its speakers, who do not readily acknowledge the complexity of linguistic reality. The major varieties that might be identified by a more rigorous approach are described below.

The language of the Imperial heartland in the time before and immediately following the Wars of Righteousness, from the late Ancient Era, through the Nest and Dawn Eras, and into the Glory Era. Due to the relative sparsity of surviving material, this stage of the language is not well attested, and little-known to modern scholars.

The language of the Sixfold Empire as it was used as the official language of administration and record. It developed during the middle and late Glory Era, as contact with, and subjugation of, new lands brought an influx of vocabulary and other influences from different languages. It began to solidify during the Sky Era, as local vernaculars began to diverge both from it and from each other. By the end of the Storm Era it had essentially ceased to reflect daily use in the home, but remained in use for official purposes for the remainder of the Empire's existence.

It remains widely known among the collective leadership of the imperial_religion, and particularly in its written form remains in heavy use among scholars and lorekeepers. There is a widespread perception, particularly in the heartlands and surrounding areas of the cerulean_tangle, that Classical Imperial is the language of sophistication and wisdom, the pinnacle of proper language from which all others have fallen.

As early as the Steel Era, as Classical Imperial spread beyond the Empire's borders as a language of trade, it slowly but steadily changed to meet the needs of communicating with people with no other exposure to Imperial civilization. The process accelerated during the Vigil and early Cloud Eras, as use and knowledge of the classical language contracted and the underpinnings of its dominance were pulled away.

The result, over time, was contemporary Imperial, a collection of dialects characterized by a high proportion of loanwords and regularized grammar; an argument could be made that it constitutes, as Earthly linguists might put it, a strongly Imperial-based creole language. Its deviation from the classical language has marked it as less prestigious, but for much of the Cloud Era it has been the language of trade and of the less formal sorts of international communication.

The migratory habits of males, and their typical responsibilities in raising children once they've settled, means that knowledge of Contemporary Imperial is now widespread; as an invaluable tool in communicating with different speech communities, most males find it useful to know, and can readily spread its use to fellow bandmates or to children. There are settled communities for which Contemporary Imperial is the daily tongue, mostly around the lower reaches and estuary of the Sahvarr, but also scattered along much of the southern coasts of sekhaa, facing Uvuun's Reach. It is widely known and understood throughout southern Sekhaa, as well as in the takma-inhabited portions of the Brightness.

In recent cycles, the role of Contemporary Imperial has been slowly eroded by the maritime prowess of the Abethine cities, whose languages have begun to supplant it; this is particularly true in areas such as the coastal eastern Brightness and the lands of Enarri and Talmat across the Dawn Sea, large-scale sea trips to which are made almost exclusively by Abethine ships.

A shorthand term for any and all of the Imperial-descended languages that remain the daily speech of takmar in the Sahvarr watershed and the western Tangle.

The various forms of Vernacular Imperial are mutually unintelligible with Classical Imperial, Contemporary Imperial, and in the broad sense, also each other. Many speakers, however, are conscious of their particular language's historical connection to the Empire and will identify it - if not simply as “the speech of [X]”, X being the place where it is spoken - as Imperial, if perhaps not proper Classical Imperial. While even the upper classes will speak a vernacular rather than Classical Imperial as their daily tongue, their speech tends to incorporate classicisms in vocabulary and idiom compared to that of lower social strata.