Truenaming and spell-like abilities

[Kornaki]

I'm a bit confused by truenaming. Hahaha. OK seriously though, the ability "Utterances" of the Truenaming class is labeled (Sp). This is the ability that grants you the ability to speak utterances. So what exactly happens when you try to utter? First you need to have the ability, which apparently requires a standard action and provokes attacks of opportunity like a spell. At that point I have the ability to utter, but for how long? Because I need another standard action to do the actual utterance (which is also a spell-like ability). If a spell-like ability doesn't specify a duration is it forever and that gets around standard action shenanigans, or is a truenamer stuck using his Utterance ability and crying softly in the corner?

I realize the RAI isn't like this, but is this how it works by RAW?

[prufock]

What? Each time you speak an utterance it is a use of a spell-like ability. Having the ability doesn't require any action, using the ability does. And each utterance specifies its duration.

[Kornaki]

Having the ability doesn't require any action.

The class feature that gives truenamers utterances is itself a (Sp) ability, which should imply that it takes a standard action to activate (the ability itself, not the utterances it gives you access to). Which as far as I can tell means that a truenamer walking around has a spell-like ability called "Utterance" which grants the ability to do utterances for some unspecified length of time.

[Psyren]

The "Utterances (Sp)" abiliity is constantly active as it has no duration. Even if you go with the general rule that SLAs take a standard action to activate, you can simply assume that your truenamer activated it once during training, and it stayed on for the rest of his life.

And yes, I know this question came out of the epic contortionist exercise that was JaronK's special abilities thread.

[Harrow]

Just make the Utterance ability Extraordinary and call the individual Utterances Spell-Like. Honestly, when working with the Tome of Magic, just do whatever makes sense and don't look too closely at the exact wording. As far as I can tell, the book was written by about 5 different committees with no contact between them, then each one only got half done editing and revising it. That is the only rational explanation for that trainwreck of a book. I love the stuff in it, but the RAW is just so terrible...