Khalisk, literally "under-speech" or "pain-speech", was a Caverealm language spoken primarily by Khali drow.

When the dark elven people underwent the Recreance, they decided to forgo all their old ties. They went into great efforts to produce a new race, biologically, culturally and religiously. The Khalisk language - which had previously been used solely for incantations concerning Lolth - was adapted to and adopted by the young Khali people.

Etymology

Khalisk had arcane origins. Its first form, called Proto-Khalisk to avoid confusion, was developed in the early years of the Spider Movement, when priestesses first learned to properly deal with Lolth's fugue. Naturally, it had a rather convoluted sentence structure not at all adapted to common speech and a very limited and esoteric lexicon. A sentence such as "I go home" had to be phrased as "By the power of the Spider Queen, of her great shifting power over the praying subject, shall be inspired to the cove". To note, there was no way to define a subject or object in the usual sense, and all verbs had to be constructed as a reflection of Lolth's action.

The Khalisk that emerged out of the Recreance still had strong roots in the arcane. The words were considerably expanded, and a "colloquial" form with a more reasonable sentence structure was introduced. The resulting language was a patchwork. There was also a vast disparity in complexity: while some grammar that could be adopted from the arcane speech was extremely complicated, nuanced, and ambiguous, other parts - those that were newly constructed - were much simpler, had clear consistent rules, and were quite similar to other elven languages.

There always remained a clear distinction between "proper" Khalisk, with its extremely convoluted phrases that only high priestesses and matron mothers could use, the "colloquial" Khalisk of the masses, and "informal" Khalisk - which the clergy even tried to eradicate - that did away with nearly all arcane grammar, instead using standard elvish structures, and was used by the lower male class and some non-drow slaves.