I've started reading Jennifer Roberson's Tiger and Del series after discovering it as an incorrect answer to a story-ID question. An important theme in the worldbuilding is the huge cultural divide between Northern and Southern people, each of whom use many words that are not understood by the other. For example:
Southern words: bascha (lovely), valhail (heaven), hoolies (hell), hyort (tent), cumfa (lizard), borjuni (bandit), shodo (sword-master), shoka (chieftain), alia (a soothing plant), shukar (sorcerer), chula (slave), ...
Northern words: an-ishtoya, ishtoya (student?), kaidin (sword-master), jivatma (sword), an-kaidin, sulhaya, ...
I'm only halfway through the first book so far, but I guess it won't be spoilerous to ask about the real-world inspiration behind these words and/or languages. Apart from a couple of obvious ones (valhail = Valhalla, alia = aloe), I'm wondering if there's any common thread connecting them to one or two particular real-world languages. Many of the Northern words sound (to my European ear) somewhat Japanese, and I'm wondering if the Southern words might be inspired by words from Arabia (like the desert) or from the Indian subcontinent (like the name of the desert, Punja sounding very much like Punjab).
