| Earth | Fire | Air | Water | |
| Gender | Male | Both/Indeterminate | Neither | Female |
| Matter | Solid | Plasma/Energy | Gas | Liquid |
| Verb tense | Static/Unchanging | Present | Future | Past |
| Verb form for "fortify" dumed | Earth-form dumedur | Fire-form dûmed | Air-form dumëd | Water-form lidumed |
As speechless as I am about the valiant effort of this project, it did come up a while back. In curiosity, I emailed Toady to see his response.
To him, linguistics is one of those things that he'd rather do himself for... well, it's fun. The same reason why these threads come up is why Toady wants to do it himself- it's fun to do.
As speechless as I am about the valiant effort of this project, it did come up a while back. In curiosity, I emailed Toady to see his response.This doesn't mean we can't work on it.
To him, linguistics is one of those things that he'd rather do himself for... well, it's fun. The same reason why these threads come up is why Toady wants to do it himself- it's fun to do.
I am speechless....Besides the last thing, that's not the point of this project. Besides dwarves are born literate in their language by blessing of Armok, as are gnomes to faciliate their (un)holy works. The point of this project is for players to become literate in Dwarven. For the sake of making amazing fan-projects. However! It'd be great if these things all did come to fruition in the game!
This is the most epic idea I have ever seen.But what about the other languages?The current language system of DF only seems to affect names and nothing else.If Toady and ThreeToe really want to improve that system they could add a lot of stuff like:
-How will the different races communicate with each other?A dwarf probably wouldn't understand a single word of the elvish language and so on.So brokers need to be educated in every single language or otherwise you will not be able to trade with the other races.
-A whole system about education and reading.Players would need to educate the fortress children otherwise they will grown illiterate and dumb.So you better stop trowing them in those holes filled with traps you maniacs.
-Adventure confusion.The Reader skill finally would have purpose:Adventurers who have low reading will never understand a book written in a foreign language to them.This means you may be not capable of talking with a dwarf if you are a human unless you actually know one.The books should contain actual text that you can read.
-Toggle between English and Dwarfish:just in case the player wants to read stuff in dwarven language instead of English.
I totally support this idea.
Mm, I was thinking V-O-S maybe? XD "light the forge Sakzul". " listen to me little kid." Very authoratative and such. In English it would sound weird for non-commands, but maybe not in Dwarven. I don't think it'll catch on, but it's an idea. I like the hard/soft thing, but not directly related to gender, due to the equal badassery of male and female dwarves. How much gender even factors in Dwarven is debatable. Also, I'm for regular conjugation based on the base word with only a few exception.As speechless as I am about the valiant effort of this project, it did come up a while back. In curiosity, I emailed Toady to see his response.
To him, linguistics is one of those things that he'd rather do himself for... well, it's fun. The same reason why these threads come up is why Toady wants to do it himself- it's fun to do.
Well there goes that I guess...
Would be quite interesting to see how dwarven culture would affect its language (culture to language not the other way around, afterall), like 20 different words for stone or dirt.
EDIT: While we're on the topic though, I like a non-irregular conjugation system for verbs. The verbs would be generated from root words which are already implemented (adjectives and nouns). There would be no ambiguity or multiple ways to say something (i.e for tenses, there is only one way to indicate a specific tense) since Dwarves are economical (though of course there could be many words for the same thing, i.e synonyms). S-V-O should work out fine, and we should stick to it strictly. I hope there isn't gender involved (because its rather arbitrary), but if there is it should follow a "dwarven" system. The 4 elements system outlined above sounds cool. I'd like to see something like "Hard" and "Soft" genders which are then reflected by changes in sound (dumed ->thumed) but that might be too much...
I imagine Dwarven to be a very isolating (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolating_language)/analytic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language) language; that is, I would see them not changing their words much for any given situation, instead using particles, prepositions and word ordering to get their meaning across (similar to English or Chinese). This would fit perfectly with the information that we are given about the language: just a huge list of words. We would simply need to make up the rules for syntax, word ordering and add a few particles so that it makes sense.
I like the idea of V-O-S word ordering; it gives a businesslike verb focus that fits the industrious dwarves. Adjectives (and other modifiers) should go before the noun, as they do in the game, with no preferred order for those adjectives (big red balloon/red big ballon both being fine). I would be fine using the same punctuation system as is used in English; it's almost universal, easy to understand, and covers everything necessary. As for pronunciation, I wish I had a clue what Toady meant by those diacritics, but for the basic phonemes, I would imagine mainly sticking to the IPA, with a few English digraphs (like th → /θ/ or sh → /ʃ/).
Finally, there is a somewhat glaring lack of pronouns and verbs in the vocabulary that we have already. We will need to either make more, or be exceptionally creative...
Compound words could be used to eliminate ambiguity and in place of more complex syntax. For instance, a steel sword could be delerdastot; essentially, using compound words instead of our (extremely limited) adjectives/adverbs. Some example sentences with these kinds of rules (with gloss):
Gethdôbar zandelerdastot onolbomeshtân.
Past-create artifact steel sword mountain-home smith.
The smith of the mountain-home created an artifact steel sword.
Nanothgamil dákudos.
Never-trust tree-man.
Never trust elves.
Gomathubmosus gethub.
Legendary-dine-room past-dine.
(I) dined in a legendary dining room. [No first person pronoun. Perhaps dwarves are just that selfless?]
As for pronunciation, I wish I had a clue what Toady meant by those diacritics, but for the basic phonemes, I would imagine mainly sticking to the IPA, with a few English digraphs (like th → /θ/ or sh → /ʃ/).
Though I agree that the different vowels differentiate the meanings, there are some words that appear to be intentionally similar.As for pronunciation, I wish I had a clue what Toady meant by those diacritics, but for the basic phonemes, I would imagine mainly sticking to the IPA, with a few English digraphs (like th → /θ/ or sh → /ʃ/).
Well, we cannot know the exact phonetic values of those diacritics without consulting Toady, but it's easy enough to find out whether they signify different phonemes, or allophones of the same phoneme.
I fiddled with regular expressions for a bit, and it turns out there are quite a few cases in which the change of a diacritic causes a significant change in meaning.
For example, here's a list of minimal pairs involving the different versions of the "a" letter:Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Someone remarked in an earlier thread that the creation of a language should begin with the phonetics, and I'm inclined to agree.
[T_WORD:BLOOD:nazush]
[T_WORD:BLOODY:nashon]
[T_WORD:HAND:otad]
[T_WORD:HANDY:oddet]
PTW.I'm a persistent forum bumper and thread necromancer and I think that alone will sustain this project. ( At least until I am struck with another strange mood and withdraw from society. ) At any rate, we've already made promising progress, in my opinion.
Although all these projects have died in the past without making much progress, I shall remain hopeful.
...
If we're going in with an analytical approach, then could we use intonation shifts or suffixes for certain adjectives: colours, or relative numbers?
...
Final paragraph of this post: I see no reason not to go with the IPA chart in the OP until told otherwise, but if someone wants to ask ToadyOne or ThreeToe, please do! :)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Also, frankly I don't understand bahihs's system, like at all. Mind trying to explain again in a different way?
... Adjectives (and other modifiers) should go before the noun, as they do in the game, with no preferred order for those adjectives (big red balloon/red big ballon both being fine).
No.QuoteAlso, frankly I don't understand bahihs's system, like at all. Mind trying to explain again in a different way?Basically the idea is: we eliminate verbs. That's it.
The only thing that astounds me more than this game, are the people that play it. That is awesome (as in awe-inspiring) work Miuramir.Yes.
Also, I think that it's justifiable that there's separate words for sorcerer and sorcery. Some other cases too. That said, I have no problem with ditching some things in favour of compound words.
Expressing such a complicated attitude in speech would be daunting. Probably more subtle body-language than actual sound, and the kind of thing that a non-native speaker would getwrongkilled for. Repeatedly.
I see the quality marks as an interestingly dwarven form of punctuation. The double-angle quotes act as delimiters between modifiers, to make it abundantly clear what "level" to which the quality refers. Representing punctuation in speech is a bit tricky, but fortunately we are mostly interested in the written language.For the purposes I'm looking at, that's far too complex and I think such usage would only enter play as "jargon" of bookkeepers and elite merchants ( such as brokers ). I'm looking more into the Dwarven liberal arts: Poetry, history, "music". That said, that seems to lean more towards focusing on the spoken, but with all the ambiguity of what the diacritics notate... Perhaps a heavily simplified version could be used in the vernacular?
The equivalents in English are Capitalization and scare quotes. It used to be fairly common to capitalize a Thing to demonstrate that it was Important. This usage has persisted in proper names, but atrophied for common nouns except for comedic effect. It's usually voiced as emphasis that seems out of place in that sentence. Scare quotes are more like a poor-quality mark and indicate disagreement. They are usually voiced with a mocking tone, a hand signal for air quotes, or both.
I think three levels is about the maximum possible that could enter common usage in a language. The innermost quality is for the bracketed phrase, the next quality is for the embellishments of that phrase, and the outermost for appropriateness of the context/surroundings. So a ☼««goblin prisoner»»☼ would be one suffering a particularly fitting punishment, and at least for some players an ≡««elven caravan»»≡ is bathing in magma.
If we want to add the complexity of nested quality, the inner delimiter should be ‹ and ›, though for game text that reduces to < and >. This would allow for ≡«*«+‹-«☼steel☼»-› battle axe+»*»≡ which is made from masterfully-made steel that has been decorated well (perhaps with bluing) fashioned into a finely-crafted battle axe menacing with superior spikes of silver, that is in the hands of someone who has skill with a battle axe and prefers silver.
Expressing such a complicated attitude in speech would be daunting. Probably more subtle body-language than actual sound, and the kind of thing that a non-native speaker would get wrong. Repeatedly.
Yes. Also what I said above. If someone were to say of a dwarf that he was "sai onul" instead of "såh onul", ( meaning to complement him saying that the dwarf has/is a +soul+ ) it could be taken as an insult in the form of any of the following:QuoteExpressing such a complicated attitude in speech would be daunting. Probably more subtle body-language than actual sound, and the kind of thing that a non-native speaker would getwrongkilled for. Repeatedly.
This explains dwarven psychotic rage perfectly....
Picking out a system for genders isn't going to be particularly graceful.
MAN:udos
BOY:ärged
WOMAN:aral
GIRL:saruth
BABY:åm
I could eyeball that and say that -s and -d sound "masculine" to dwarves, -l and -th sound "feminine" and -m sounds indeterminate. Four of them have leading vowels, but the s- on girl either breaks the idea of a leading vowel indicating a personal noun, or enters as some strange irregular case. Probably best to ignore the leading vowels for now.
If we go with the four theme, the dwarven genders would be male, female, both/indeterminate, and genderless.
Perhaps it's more to do with harvesting delicacies, such as rat tripe or various fish roe...Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Perhaps it's more to do with harvesting delicacies, such as rat tripe or various fish roe...
Also, explain the last comment about the 'linguistic gender'.
This thread sounds very interesting, but in my opinion the dwarven language (Is it called Dwarven?) lacks on naturality. There is no (visible) relationship between words with similiar meaning, like e.g.I believe the language was created with a program, so that accounts for the rather shaky relationships between words. I approach them, mostly, as "approximate translations": tesum is not linguistically related to egul, but semantically a tesum is the same as an egul-er.
Control: egul
Controller: tesum
It seems "genders yea or nay" is always the major hang-up for these threads, what with people mixing biology and sociology and linguistics in ways they aren't meant to be combined. I think, personally, that it's jumping the gun to say "dwarves don't care about gender" - or "dwarves think X, Y, and Z" about anything - when the game isn't even half finished: just last year dwarves had maybe five emotions, and now they've upwards of 190. Besides, the game is all about playing however you see fit: oughtn't the language and other metagame elements to be the same way? If it can be done, shouldn't the language be made malleable enough to make sense for as many different player conceptions of dwarven society and culture as possible (since currently about 80% of dwarven culture is nonexistent, and in the future it's likely to be procedural anyway)?I guess? Well, right now we're looking at deriving a language from what exists and what we can work with and use in and in conjunction with the game. So it would make sense that it would evolve as the game does. "It is inevitable." Currently gender is only functionally sex, so a better thing to do would be design our language as "gender not yet". That is what I've wanted is to use gender only in terms of biological sex for breeding purposes, as in the raws and the most common ( from what I can tell out of this thread ) speculation. If someone else wants to tag everything with gender identifiers as-is, that's their business and it could be settled in argument as " This set of dwarves has a different culture". As per cultural differences being procedurally generated, there are certain core ethics that are nigh-universal. Arguably in irl humans too, but especially in most fantasy interpretations of dwarves. That said, you're right. Everything's up for debate. I started this to have a reasonable extension of the dwarven language sufficient to use in the in-game menus and Dwarven-language "histories" and "myths" based on the game. Can we at least get to that point before the thread devolves into a quasi-philosophical, psuedo-sociological
I personally like genders as a concept but I've left them out, largely for the reason someone mentioned earlier about not having an obvious pattern. Perhaps a consensus to table the issue, in the interest of making some headway, is in order?
(Although really, there's going to be debate over every aspect of the language; there's only so much you can "prove" when, as I said, the game is half finished. That's one reason I decided to work solo)This thread sounds very interesting, but in my opinion the dwarven language (Is it called Dwarven?) lacks on naturality. There is no (visible) relationship between words with similiar meaning, like e.g.I believe the language was created with a program, so that accounts for the rather shaky relationships between words. I approach them, mostly, as "approximate translations": tesum is not linguistically related to egul, but semantically a tesum is the same as an egul-er.
Control: egul
Controller: tesum
Although there are some juicy similarities. My favorite is between nil "hammer" and ùnil "hammerer." I used this to derive an ù- agentive prefix (in this case, "one who hammers").
It helps knowing the words were generated randomly. Personally I chose the four gender thing to address real problems in English (like the dreaded he/she, or uncontroversially revealing the gender of a professional) without going all-in with a Romance-style with o's and a's at the end of most words.As per the four genders, I don't even think it should be called gender. I know I'm banging the same old drum, but still. I think it would be more of an aspect thing. As per gendered words with vowel changes, I'm pretty much voting against that. With the clear and distinct, albeit randomly generated, words for male and female, I'm pretty much thinking that it would be an adjective-like modifier. That way it can only be called when necessary rather than enforced. Besides, with Dwarven vowel systems being the complex and randomly generated mess they are, I highly doubt there's anyway to do it with vowel changes.
I imagine dwarves don't memorize linguistic genders for every word, and would speak in the indeterminate gender most of the time unless there was a specific point to be made. So, to abuse some English suffixes, a seamstress would be a seamstrer in casual conversation, and only a seamstrer, seamstress or seamstroid when pertinent.
As per the four genders, I don't even think it should be called gender.Note that I fixed a typo in the post you quoted. The linguistic term is gender, but the dwarves would probably refer to it as sex (there are a couple long threads around here about the difference). Most of the time, the sex is unimportant and would be using the "indeterminate" or basic form. English's analytic treatment of the seamstress (with the male "tailor" being a completely different word than the female "seamstress") probably stems from very long ago when trades were incredibly narrow. Back then, tin-miner was a completely different profession from copper-miner, so it makes sense that men's-clothes-maker would be a completely different profession than a women's-clothes-maker. We linguistically aggregated the miners, but not the tailors.
I feel like we're all making the same point but for whatever reason we feel the need to make it in long posts citing a lot of apocrypha when noone's actually in disagreement.As per the four genders, I don't even think it should be called gender.Note that I fixed a typo in the post you quoted. The linguistic term is gender, but the dwarves would probably refer to it as sex (there are a couple long threads around here about the difference). Most of the time, the sex is unimportant and would be using the "indeterminate" or basic form. English's analytic treatment of the seamstress (with the male "tailor" being a completely different word than the female "seamstress") probably stems from very long ago when trades were incredibly narrow. Back then, tin-miner was a completely different profession from copper-miner, so it makes sense that men's-clothes-maker would be a completely different profession than a women's-clothes-maker. We linguistically aggregated the miners, but not the tailors.
The decision of sex-vs-gender comes up in a specific context that probably isn't important to most players, but is to some. How do you refer to a feminine man or a masculine woman? If we go by gender, a masculine woman has a masculine modifier on the word for woman (literally, "manly woman"). If we go by sex, a masculine woman has the female modifier on the word for man (literally "female man"). It will make sense after you read it a couple times. Every indication from Toady and most indications from mythology is that dwarves don't care a lick about gender... but they do have a practical appreciation of categorizing things by sex. This also leads to the lazy use of modifiers unless it's important to the point being made.
So, the "seamstroid" construct would only come up if the speaker was being specific that this was a golem (or other genderless thing) performing the clothes-making role.
I feel like we're all making the same point but for whatever reason we feel the need to make it in long posts citing a lot of apocrypha when noone's actually in disagreement.Right, was just trying to make the point that "gender" is a technical term in linguistics, but dwarven scribes probably wouldn't think of "gender" when penning the rules of their language. They'd likely have something to say about the sexes of animals, but not ascribe the sexes of mythical beings to common objects.
Okay, so based on what you're saying, it is very imperative that there comes forth a number system, right? If plural is implied or found in a modifying word, then numbers would play heavily into nearly everything that isn't a singular object/entity. ( Of note, there are already words for one, two and three. Lod, nob, mez. )I agree, but for now we can just use numerals until everyone has a better "feel" for the language. Dwarves have 10 fingers and 10 toes, and the game presents everything in decimal, so there's no need to go crazy about number systems.
As per your verb conjugation, it seems like a good system. Though it does ignore the possibility of vowel ending verbs. It also doesn't take into account the imperative form of a verb. ( Which is very important for delivering commands and I think should be grammatically differentiated as the inem-nikot ( "required action") with its own conjugation rules. )I noted above somewhere that no Dwarven word has a base form that ends in a vowel, which dramatically simplifies the creation of rules.
I think also that there still need to be noun-modifying conjugates. At very least one to create an adjective&/adverbal form and one to create a plural. Possibly all three. As a totally arbitrary example set that I don't much like nor am I suggesting,How is nilr to be pronounced? The randomly generated words seem to be built from every-letter-is-pronounced-separately with a few additional diphthongs like /th/ and /st/. It could be possible to differentiate simply with stress of one kind or another. So nil is hammer is nil' is hammer essence. The stressing could be volume as in most languages, an inflection as is tonal languages, a lengthened pronunciation ("nniill"), a circumfix pause, or some kind of distinct body language (widened eyes, etc.).
nilr - "Hammer essence", sort of a super-noun version. The metaphysical property/existence of the hammer. It's quite possible, given the lengths that are used to describe objects in game, it's not beyond belief that they could have religious, philosophical, or metaphysical connotations/meanings. Especially the hammer, due to its factoring in Dwarven capital punishment. With dwarves becoming more complex, I feel like this should at least be tossed in for consideration.
nilar - "Hammerly", adverb form. For example Urist imike shèrel nila rîthol. "Urist threw [the/a] rabbit [at the/a] noble hammerly." ( Literally rendered "Urist chucked bunny hammerly noble."** )
enil - "Hammer-like", adjective form. For example, Såkzul sanrebe* enil emen. "Såkzul [has; lit. "owns"*] hammer-like strength."
danil - "the hammer" - For when a specific hammer is being talked about and the article cannot be inferred from context.
And, I'm still advocating the same plural system as before, so:
nila - "hammers" - Urist ulengetha*** nila nina. - "Urist dropped hammers [on his****] toes.
*modified with Dirst's conjugation system for the persistive state.
**Yay! New issues! How do we note that something is being directed at something else? ( I guess, I'm asking: how do we render prepositions and prepositional phrases. )
*** Ulengeth: Place holder for "drop" that compounds "uleng" - lost, with "kegeth" - hold. Another alternative: ozkakungèg, or a contracted ozkunèg, which is "carry-fail"
**** Possessives will need to be standardized in some way or another.
Also! We need a way to denote proper nouns and common nouns. Especially considering most dwarven names are common nouns. Is there anything beyond capitalization? Is anything beyond capitalization necessary? Do we want a way to note that a noun is a name given to a particular dwarf?Capitalization would be completely sufficient if we don't capitalize the beginning of a sentence. Most fictional Dwarven looks like runes which don't have proper capitalization anyway, so it wouldn't even look strange. A "capitalized" letter for a proper noun would be a somewhat enlarged rune.
I agree, but for now we can just use numerals until everyone has a better "feel" for the language. Dwarves have 10 fingers and 10 toes, and the game presents everything in decimal, so there's no need to go crazy about number systems.Mmmm... That's true, but it's also too bad. We've been studying number systems in class and I thought if could be fun, but even on Bay12 that's not always justification! :p Base 10 then? Look into the Mayan numeral system though, it's a contender.
Of the numbers we have, "one" can be a stand-alone word lod or a prefix nir. "Two" and "three" are only prefixes. I think the prefixes are like mono-, bi- and tri-.
I noted above somewhere that no Dwarven word has a base form that ends in a vowel, which dramatically simplifies the creation of rules.I could swear I'd found one... * shrugs *
My initial thought was to have an implied subject for imperatives, but that's a bit too English-like. An inem-nikot conjugation could be the vowel directly opposite on Loam's chart. Opposite seems appropriate since it is not happening.
Urist matonë -> Joke, Urist!
Lanlar ikûlä -> Nest, bird!
Rîthol gumùré -> Just keep on doing what you're doing, noble. *sigh*
How is nilr to be pronounced? The randomly generated words seem to be built from every-letter-is-pronounced-separately with a few additional diphthongs like /th/ and /st/. It could be possible to differentiate simply with stress of one kind or another. So nil is hammer is nil' is hammer essence. The stressing could be volume as in most languages, an inflection as is tonal languages, a lengthened pronunciation ("nniill"), a circumfix pause, or some kind of distinct body language (widened eyes, etc.).A quick unvoiced consonant shift that's merely approximated with an r? It's an augmentation of the last consonant, which might actually be better approximated by an h. But to be honest I'm well in favor of ditching it.
Yeah. Maybe an underline? I think there are non-English languages that use something like that to a similar purpose? But that can't really be rendered in-game.
If the language truly is runic, transliteration would bring across all letters as capitals, and we'd distinguish proper names with a doubled first sound or a specific lead punctuation mark like ^. In that case, URIST is a dagger and ^URIST is a hermit-dwarf.
Edit: I think the capitalization method is more readable.
I could swear I'd found one... * shrugs *I'll double-check when I get a chance.
Yeah. Maybe an underline? I think there are non-English languages that use something like that to a similar purpose? But that can't really be rendered in-game.The letter might be circumscribed with a box or something. And transliterated with a capital letter :)
The thing that always bothered me about the RAW language, is that there are no words for any creatures. Creatures defined in the raws get no specific word in the language, so there is no word for "Elephant" or "Carp" in the language. This just seems wrong to me.Yeah, I understand that... It might be a bit of an issue to make words for them though. You're welcome to give it a shot, I guess.
More sophisticated pronunciation guides, ones that take into account stressed syllables, intonation, and how exactly the sounds are grouped in each syllable of the existing words. ( For example, the Dwarven word for abbey is "kulet" is that "ku-let" or "kul-et" and is which syllable is more prominent. Yadda-yadda-yadda. )
More sophisticated pronunciation guides, ones that take into account stressed syllables, intonation, and how exactly the sounds are grouped in each syllable of the existing words. ( For example, the Dwarven word for abbey is "kulet" is that "ku-let" or "kul-et" and is which syllable is more prominent. Yadda-yadda-yadda. )
There's a system in swedish which deals with just this:
A vowel followed by a single consonant is considered a 'long' vowel, and is pronounced differently from a vowel followed by a double consonant which is considered a 'short' vowel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_phonology#Vowels
Finnish has a similar system, but is a lot more straight-forward:
A single vowel is a 'short' vowel and a double vowel is a 'long' vowel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_phonology#Vowels
Dwarven standard vowels(aeiou(åäö)) could be considered short(meaning kulet is pronounced ku-let), whereas the supplementary vowels(âáà, êéè, îíì, ôóò, ûúù) are 'long' vowels (meaning k/û/ú/ù/let is pronounced kul-et(â ê ô could even be used as the long vowels of å ä ö).
They are pronounced differently. :P To give a close approximation, it's like the difference between "cool it" and "coolant". It changes where the stress falls and what phonemes are voiced and when.More sophisticated pronunciation guides, ones that take into account stressed syllables, intonation, and how exactly the sounds are grouped in each syllable of the existing words. ( For example, the Dwarven word for abbey is "kulet" is that "ku-let" or "kul-et" and is which syllable is more prominent. Yadda-yadda-yadda. )
There's a system in swedish which deals with just this:
A vowel followed by a single consonant is considered a 'long' vowel, and is pronounced differently from a vowel followed by a double consonant which is considered a 'short' vowel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_phonology#Vowels
Finnish has a similar system, but is a lot more straight-forward:
A single vowel is a 'short' vowel and a double vowel is a 'long' vowel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_phonology#Vowels
Dwarven standard vowels(aeiou(åäö)) could be considered short(meaning kulet is pronounced ku-let), whereas the supplementary vowels(âáà, êéè, îíì, ôóò, ûúù) are 'long' vowels (meaning k/û/ú/ù/let is pronounced kul-et(â ê ô could even be used as the long vowels of å ä ö).
Sorry to have been inactive for a while. My real-life embark decided to turn into a terrifying glacier :(
I couldn't find any doubled vowels in Dwarven, but there are occasional double consonants. In at least one case the doubling differentiates a word (azin "watch" versus azzin "livid"), but that is not a general pattern.
My preference for phonetics would be a what-you-see-is-what-you-say system that minimizes the combinations that could change pronunciation, which seems justified given the huge number of vowel symbols in use. For example, this means that an "i" is pronounced the same no matter what letters are around it. I'm not sure that ku-let and kul-et are detectably different if the vowel sounds are identical.
Dwarven would probably have its own glyphs for what we translate as digraphs (ng, sh, th), so whatever rules we come up with should consider those as if they were single letters. This isn't how English works ("singer" has a short i sound as if ng was two letters).
In case you guys haven't seen it:Thanks. :)
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Dwarven_language
I realize that Dwarvish does not have double vowels, this was more or less two examples of how to deal with phonetics(without having to resort to a second alphabet). It's more that I see the additional letter variations as the solution. The letter ê, for example, should probably be pronounced differently from the standard e and since ä(a vowel in both Finnish and Swedish) is already in the game, ê could be a phonetic variation to the regular ä.More sophisticated pronunciation guides, ones that take into account stressed syllables, intonation, and how exactly the sounds are grouped in each syllable of the existing words. ( For example, the Dwarven word for abbey is "kulet" is that "ku-let" or "kul-et" and is which syllable is more prominent. Yadda-yadda-yadda. )
There's a system in swedish which deals with just this:
A vowel followed by a single consonant is considered a 'long' vowel, and is pronounced differently from a vowel followed by a double consonant which is considered a 'short' vowel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_phonology#Vowels
Finnish has a similar system, but is a lot more straight-forward:
A single vowel is a 'short' vowel and a double vowel is a 'long' vowel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_phonology#Vowels
Dwarven standard vowels(aeiou(åäö)) could be considered short(meaning kulet is pronounced ku-let), whereas the supplementary vowels(âáà, êéè, îíì, ôóò, ûúù) are 'long' vowels (meaning k/û/ú/ù/let is pronounced kul-et(â ê ô could even be used as the long vowels of å ä ö).
Sorry to have been inactive for a while. My real-life embark decided to turn into a terrifying glacier :(
I couldn't find any doubled vowels in Dwarven, but there are occasional double consonants. In at least one case the doubling differentiates a word (azin "watch" versus azzin "livid"), but that is not a general pattern.
My preference for phonetics would be a what-you-see-is-what-you-say system that minimizes the combinations that could change pronunciation, which seems justified given the huge number of vowel symbols in use. For example, this means that an "i" is pronounced the same no matter what letters are around it. I'm not sure that ku-let and kul-et are detectably different if the vowel sounds are identical.
Dwarven would probably have its own glyphs for what we translate as digraphs (ng, sh, th), so whatever rules we come up with should consider those as if they were single letters. This isn't how English works ("singer" has a short i sound as if ng was two letters).
Not that I'm against it, but why/how so?
:o So guys, how many of you were aware that there is a Dwarven word for "messiah"?He will come to clense the Earth of sinners and elves!
(( Also bump and I'm still discussing with ToadyOne. ))
I know at this point it's considered near cliche, but are we going to base the Dwarven writing system on Scandinavian runes? ( Alternatively, there is also Phonecian, both provide the same benefits and we're probably going to have to start with one or the other as a base. )Since there are 25 vowels and 15 consonants, I was going to make a system of runes that suggested positions along a gear. The vowels would suggest points around Loam's star, and the consonants points along the five spokes. Just haven't had time to spend in front of GIMP to make it happen. So basic vowels like /\ for I and |/ for A and \| for O with doubled lines to indicate the accented character immediately next to each point, double both likes to indicate the ^ form. Tricky part is the hybrids half-way between points.
Since there are 25 vowels and 15 consonants, I was going to make a system of runes that suggested positions along a gear. The vowels would suggest points around Loam's star, and the consonants points along the five spokes. Just haven't had time to spend in front of GIMP to make it happen. So basic vowels like /\ for I and |/ for A and \| for O with doubled lines to indicate the accented character immediately next to each point, double both likes to indicate the ^ form. Tricky part is the hybrids half-way between points.I'm leery of having runes look so similar, but I'll reserve judgement until I see the finished product. Here's the ones I came up with:
Note there's actually 17 consonants (sh, th, and ng counted as one each, and h doesn't count since it never occurs except in sh and th)I noticed that after I posted, and weirdly st is also a letter, so there are 18. In trying to group the consonants, I found two "holes" that I filled with values that would sound distinct to dwarves but happen not to be in their language. Presumably other consonants would be confusingly similar to them (p sounds like b to dwarven ears, j sounds like g, and so on).
I think I like your consonant clusters better, though we probably want to separate v and f as a special case.Agreed.
Fortunately the runes don't care what sounds they represent, so it wouldn't be hard to re-assign them.
I like Dirst's vowel runes, but think his consonant notation is confusing and easily misunderstood in practice. Though I think Loam and Dirst both have developed well the consonants. Out of a quick curiosity, if "st" is in the dwarven alphabet as a distinct phoneme, is "ts" also?Dwarven has a limited number of digraphs (two-letter combinations) that can occupy a slot that usually has a single consonant in it: ng sh st & th. It's pretty obvious that ng sh & th represent distinct sounds. A letter for st would be odd but not impossible (English uses x for a ks sound). If it is just a pairing of normal consonants then st is the only such pairing allowed within a syllable. We've all seen this combination... in Urist.
Yes. I like this rune system, it looks nice.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Let's see if this one works better. By omitting three of the potential consonants, we can make it look a bit less formulaic.
Thanks for the feedback. In case there was any doubt, this was composed on a computer :)Let's see if this one works better. By omitting three of the potential consonants, we can make it look a bit less formulaic.
My initial impression is that these seem a bit on the "fiddly" side, on two counts: as an epic incised font I'm uncertain how well some of those corners would work when carved in stone; and I'm suspecting that scribes actually using this to write with for everyday use would very quickly simplify or adjust for better flow.
In short, it looks like a font designed by and for use on a computer, not by and for scribes working with chisel or turkey-quill pens. (It's been a while, but I think that with dip pens in particular, some of these forms have too many "pen up / pen down" required. In some senses, the square forms look almost constructed as more like brush forms, which tend to have a lot more short crossing strokes than quill users; but made far more rigid than you would actually be able to draw efficiently with a brush.)
The vowels are all zero or one pen lifts, or two to four lines with a chisel. They are considerably less fiddly than anything the Mayans or Egyptians carved into stone, but the DF time period should allow for some drift toward efficient forms. Look at some of the convoluted Phoenecian runes that eventually became Latin letters, and these damnable consonants can probably serve as a basis for something that can be used in routine writing.
Just throwing out an idea I got: Since dwarves are very industrial and like chemistry, and have been doing both since the beginning of time, wouldn't it make sense for them to incorporate chemical states into their language? Past-Present-Future could be replaced with Solid-Liquid-Gas, because the future is solid and can't be changed, the present is liquid and runs freely, the future is a mist that no one can see through.Functionally speaking, I only see this being a factor in a few instances. We've also kicked around this idea twice. The only thing that I think Dwarves would observe in three states is water and alcohol and even if we could get away with Ice being "past-water", water being " present-water", and steam being "future-water", which may well make sense from the point-of-view of a medieval (al)chemist, could we really get away with calling boiled alcohol "future-booze"? ( Admittedly the poetic connotations are nice, what with the past being solid and immutable, the present being liquid and ever flowing by, and the future being ephemeral... ) Even so, the effective functionality of a system isn't really that much, ie this all would exist in mental abstraction, whereas the word tenses would still be past, present, future.
Also, they should probably have associated minerals with attributes and use these to describe things; if Iron has the 'dwarven' attribute for example, then opening the flood gates to let magma pour unto the unsuspecting elves would be a very 'iron' thing to do.
Edit: Minerals could be their primary colouring system as well.
Iirc Old English marked objects by putting a short "objectifying" word in front of it, but modern languages seem fine just using position.Basically he told me what he's probably told everyone else: "We haven't decided anything, I'd like to try myself, and anything that is made would have to be taken as a suggestion." :/ That said, he probably wouldn't be opposed to the system yoy suggest.
Things would be much simpler if we had prepositions, then at worst we could make up a pseudo proposition (roughly meaning "upon") for direct objects. If we are actually in touch with Toady, a good suggestion for propositions would be stand-alone single vowels. Any combination between a preposition and another word would require a mandatory dash.
I'm on a phone and probably won't be on an Internet-enabled pc for a while, so I can't get a good look at Captain's simplified runes, but maybe this will help: to prevent the lots if mirror images, I arrang any dangling endpoints into an imaginary line that swoops from upper left to lower right (though I missed two in the last column).Ah. I'm afraid I don't follow with the "dangling endpoints into an imaginary line" thing, and would probably have to see that demonstrated. So if you get the chance, or if anyone else can understand, please demonstrate.
As for appropriate shapes look at Latin (designed to be carved in stone) and Greek (designed to be penned on paper), especially the minuscule/lowercase letters. There just seems to be something undwarven about curved elements, and this makes it hard to come up with 40 distinct glyphs.
One runic element I'd like to keep is a lack of upper and lowercase symbols. A "capitalized" letter would likely be bigger, and I imagin it would extend below the line rather than above it. I'd like to avoid the ambiguity that comes from capitalizing the first letter in a sentence.
The vowel runes were designed to be full-height letters, and would be hard to distinguish as small overscripts. They could be modified to be distinct at that size, but then it starts getting a little too close to Middle Earth elvish.
And the usual tonal example:Quote from: Shī shì shí shī shǐShíshì shīshì Shī shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí, shì Shī shì shì shì.
Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
Shì shì shì shì.
Meaning in spoilers.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Here I tried to "modernize" the consonant runes a bit to make them suitable for a quill pen. The vowels could get a similar treatment (closing the loop between the chevron and the internal accent mark), but this set uses curve = consonant and angle = vowel.Well, there's no denying your runes are cleaner, but I'm not sure about easier to write. On the otherhand,
(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a28/8gon/Alphabet4-1.png)
The flag on Spoke 1, Rune 2 ought to be concave but that makes it too similar to the next rune... and there is no rule that the scribes need to be militantly consistent with the pattern anyway. Spoke 1 is a pain in the ass in general because I used up all of the nice border combinations with Spokes 2 through 5. I suppose I could use top-and-bottom for that Spoke (think of an H on its side) but then we're back into many pen strokes per letter.
Edit: Very small correction to one of the runes.
Timeless Bob,
I would like to see some gestures and stances incorporated into the language, but a written language needs to be relatively unambiguous (even if it relies on knowledge in the reader's head such as filling in vowels, the same series of symbols shouldn't have multiple possible meanings).
The sparse word list is because DF languages are currently only used to generate names. Importantly, every language in DF draws from the exact same set of words, so it is not a commentary on how dwarves in particular write things down. In the future I'd like to see the notion of untranslatable words, with some rough approximation listed in the other languages... but we aren't even close to that point yet.
A historical example of an untranslatable word is that Ancient Greek just didn't have a word for blue. They described the sky as "bronze colored" which doesn't evoke the same color in an English-speaker's mind at all.
Well, there's no denying your runes are cleaner, but I'm not sure about easier to write.Spokes 2 through 5 can each be drawn without lifting a pen from the paper, though it isn't always obvious which end to start with. The cursive capital I has similar issues... you have to start out drawing right-to-left which has no clearly-defined progression in English, so some people start with the tail and others start with the hook.
Yeah, but that's more a matter of colour-word development, which is something I've gone over countless times in this thread. It's not as much an untranslatable word as a word that has yet to develop... I think a more accurate example of an untranslatable word would be "chutzpah" or "schmuck", which while describable in English, just don't really have the same feel or meaning to them. ( Hence why they're gradually being borrowed from Yiddish to English, though that also has a lot to do with a considerable amount of influential Ashkenazi migrating to the US... which is something I'd kind of like to see in the language development cycle at some point, is a group of ethnically distinct but culturally influential minorities immigrating into a site and bringing with them their words and idioms. And vice versa, a group of well-established folk who spread out their language and idioms through development of a technology, a la the US. From what I gather, that's Toady's eventual goal, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it. Wow, I get off track easily. ) Now if, for example, the dwarves had not yet developed a word for green ( plausible ) and borrowed the word from Elves ( who almost certainly would have such a word), I guess that would kind of be along the lines of what you're saying. Knowing, however the (perceived) attitudes of Dwarves, it's likely that they'd just develop a word rather than borrow.I don't think anything as basic as "green" or "blue" should be left untranslatable, but Dwarven might have distinct names for "flame orange" and "magma orange" that other languages lump together. The easiest "untranslatable" concepts to code into a computer would be distinctions made in some languages that aren't made in others. One example would be the oranges I just mentioned, elves might have very different words for male and female tigers, humans might distinguish between 80 types of grain that others just call "wheat" and so on.
Hmm... Yeah, I could see that happening.Well, there's no denying your runes are cleaner, but I'm not sure about easier to write.Spokes 2 through 5 can each be drawn without lifting a pen from the paper, though it isn't always obvious which end to start with. The cursive capital I has similar issues... you have to start out drawing right-to-left which has no clearly-defined progression in English, so some people start with the tail and others start with the hook.Yeah, but that's more a matter of colour-word development, which is something I've gone over countless times in this thread. It's not as much an untranslatable word as a word that has yet to develop... I think a more accurate example of an untranslatable word would be "chutzpah" or "schmuck", which while describable in English, just don't really have the same feel or meaning to them. ( Hence why they're gradually being borrowed from Yiddish to English, though that also has a lot to do with a considerable amount of influential Ashkenazi migrating to the US... which is something I'd kind of like to see in the language development cycle at some point, is a group of ethnically distinct but culturally influential minorities immigrating into a site and bringing with them their words and idioms. And vice versa, a group of well-established folk who spread out their language and idioms through development of a technology, a la the US. From what I gather, that's Toady's eventual goal, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it. Wow, I get off track easily. ) Now if, for example, the dwarves had not yet developed a word for green ( plausible ) and borrowed the word from Elves ( who almost certainly would have such a word), I guess that would kind of be along the lines of what you're saying. Knowing, however the (perceived) attitudes of Dwarves, it's likely that they'd just develop a word rather than borrow.
I don't think anything as basic as "green" or "blue" should be left untranslatable, but Dwarven might have distinct names for "flame orange" and "magma orange" that other languages lump together. The easiest "untranslatable" concepts to code into a computer would be distinctions made in some languages that aren't made in others. One example would be the oranges I just mentioned, elves might have very different words for male and female tigers, humans might distinguish between 80 types of grain that others just call "wheat" and so on.
One famous exchange in the Bible is completely stripped of meaning in English. In English, this makes no sense:Mmmm yeah. I actually knew that... It's a very good point to bring up in demonstration. Honestly, on that subject, Modern English has lost a lot of meaning. On the other hand, it's gained a good bit in the way of communicating in a more concrete way, I suppose. ( Or analytical, or neutral, or whatever. Less is up to having to have contextual knowledge. Weirdly, it seems like it's more open to interpretations though. )
Jesus - Do you love me?
Peter - Yes Lord, you know that I love you.
Jesus - Do you love me?
Peter - Yes Lord, you know that I love you.
Jesus - Do you love me?
Peter - Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.
In Greek or Hebrew, however, the first two questions use a word for unconditional love, whereas the responses use a word for fraternal/friendship-style love. The third question switches to that version of love. With that context, Jesus isn't nagging or repeating for effect... he's just losing an argument.
I take st as just a consonant cluster (notably the only intra-syllabic consonant cluster Dwarvish permits). Also, I use c for a voiceless palatal stop (like the k in "keel"), rather than the English either-k-or-s-depending-on-context.Okay, back to getting the consonants in order. How about this arrangement?
Looking at the data, I've noticed that c, f, and v (incidentally, the three least-common sounds in Dwarvish) cannot appear in a word-final position. I wonder if we can't use that to our advantage...
Okay, here's a suggestion - it's not pretty but it's functional:
t d k g
s z c* (gh)
b* v/f* th sh
n m ng (mg)
r (rh) l (lh)
*c is a voiceless velar fricative; b is [β]; v and f are variants of the same sound.
The order is: base sound / voiced or "strong" form / velarized / velar voiced or "strong" form
First row is stops, and the system works great.
Second is fricatives, and it's not bad (we're missing the voiced velar stop)
Third is more fricatives: a [v] is "stronger" than a [β], and so goes in the voiced slot. th and sh are "backed", not exactly velarized.
Fourth is nasals, works alright - m is, of course, not a voiced n though.
Fifth is liquids - perhaps all l should be [ɫ]. rh and lh are pure fictions.
Spoke | Base | Base Voiced | Velar | Velar Voiced |
1 | f | v | th | (ch) |
2 | s | z | sh | c |
3 | t | d | k | g |
4 | (p) | b | l | r |
5 | n | m | ng | (mg) |
-snip-snip-
- The other extreme is that each represents a different tone/pitch, similar to Chinese. In this case we could assume that each mark represents a similar tone as, say, Pinyin: á (rising tone), à (falling tone), â (rising then falling tone), ū (flat tone), and ä/å (?). However, I can hardly imagine a dwarf making tones. I like to think they talk in a gruff monotone, or in some horribly off key (when singing).
i = [ɪ]
î = [i]
ï = [ɨ]
u = [ʊ]
û = [u]
o = [ɔ]
ô = [o]
ö = [ɤ]
a = [ä]
â = [a]
ä = [æ]
å = [ɑ]
e = [ɛ]
ê = [e]
ë = [ø]It still wraps around the chart, but the sounds are more understandable to English speakers, which I assume is our main audience. Tense and lax aren't qualities listed on that vowel chart, but they do exist (sort of), and maybe that's just how the Dwarves see things.The vertical position on the IPA chart (open vs. closed) is governed by the peak frequency (by volume) in a vowel's sound, which tends to be a relatively low frequency. The horizontal position (front vs. back) is governed by the second peak frequency, which tends to be a lot higher. Dwarven vowels always distinguish vertically or horizontally, never both at the same time, and the entire middle of the chart is unused (i.e., there is no schwa). We could surmise that dwarves have better hearing response at low frequencies, or that they have more difficulty than humans distinguishing the second peak. I don't think there's any reason to believe that a dwarf's mouth would be incapable of making the sounds in the middle of the chart, but those sounds would sound very mushy and indistinct to their own ears.Which seems weird, at first... but it's really not. Think about it, when surrounded by the sounds of incessant mining and hammering, you kinda kill your ability to establish sounds in the mid-range as well. So your hearing would fall to higher and lower frequencies, and as age sets in the ability to distinguish higher frequencies dull naturally, and added to the auditory assault of dwarven industry.. it's not surprising that they would have better hearing response at low frequencies. They need at least a few transcribable "alert" phonemes though, which can be heard over low frequency Dwarven machinery. ( ie the sound of stone gears grinding together, which is pretty low and constant. ) Also, the sounds of wood cutting are rather low too, but they can be loud enough to make it hard to distinguish words in lower registers, further making that a necessity. What do you think, should there just be special symbols for battle cries and alert yells, should they just be written in a descriptive sense ( "an alarming cry" ), or are we assuming all dwarves have horns at all times that they can use for that purpose instead of verbal language?
A schwa might escape a dwarf's lips as a verbal pause (where humans use "eh" or "uh") because it wouldn't be confused with a real word.
I took it more as "base is lax, circumflex is tense." Umlauts are still "half-vowels," i.e. unrelated sounds:I don't know about it palatizing things. Could you maybe give an example of the usage in a dwarven word?Code: [Select]i = [ɪ]It still wraps around the chart, but the sounds are more understandable to English speakers, which I assume is our main audience. Tense and lax aren't qualities listed on that vowel chart, but they do exist (sort of), and maybe that's just how the Dwarves see things.
î = [i]
ï = [ɨ]
u = [ʊ]
û = [u]
o = [ɔ]
ô = [o]
ö = [ɤ]
a = [ä]
â = [a]
ä = [æ]
å = [ɑ]
e = [ɛ]
ê = [e]
ë = [ø]
As for acutes and graves, I've been playing with the idea that they palatalize the consonant either before (grave) or after (acute) them: basically, whichever way the high end of the accent is pointing, that consonant gets palatalized (or, if the vowel is word-initial, it adds a [j] before the vowel). The vowel itself is the same as the base vowel. This also cuts our vowel count down to a more manageable fifteen.
Of some note is the fact that, in the attested corpus (i.e. the RAW language files), the circumflex, umlaut, and ring accents all appear ~30 times, whereas the acute and grave accents appear ~15 times each. This suggests that they are just different variations of the same vowel (or rather sub-vowel... so they're like variants of a variant...) instead of two widely-separated sounds.
On schwas: there's always the possibility that vowels in unstressed syllables will weaken to schwas or other sounds. So they're not phonemic, but could easily be allophonic. Depends how deep into things like word stress you want to go.
Beyond that, I was thinking about numbers. I have an idea for digits, but that's only part of the issue. During DF's time period, mathematicians used a place-value system for numbers and merchants used a symbol-value system (Roman numerals). There is also an option in between similar to Chinese numbers.
I don't know about it palatizing things. Could you maybe give an example of the usage in a dwarven word?
I took it more as "base is lax, circumflex is tense." Umlauts are still "half-vowels," i.e. unrelated sounds:I think that using accents as some kind of modifier (rather than distinct vowels) will help a lot. Intuitively, I'd like an accent to do "half of a circumflex" and an accent grave to do "the other half," but I don't think that's feasible. Shorter or longer duration might work.Code: [Select]i = [ɪ]It still wraps around the chart, but the sounds are more understandable to English speakers, which I assume is our main audience. Tense and lax aren't qualities listed on that vowel chart, but they do exist (sort of), and maybe that's just how the Dwarves see things.
î = [i]
ï = [ɨ]
u = [ʊ]
û = [u]
o = [ɔ]
ô = [o]
ö = [ɤ]
a = [ä]
â = [a]
ä = [æ]
å = [ɑ]
e = [ɛ]
ê = [e]
ë = [ø]
As for acutes and graves, I've been playing with the idea that they palatalize the consonant either before (grave) or after (acute) them: basically, whichever way the high end of the accent is pointing, that consonant gets palatalized (or, if the vowel is word-initial, it adds a [j] before the vowel). The vowel itself is the same as the base vowel. This also cuts our vowel count down to a more manageable fifteen.
Of some note is the fact that, in the attested corpus (i.e. the RAW language files), the circumflex, umlaut, and ring accents all appear ~30 times, whereas the acute and grave accents appear ~15 times each. This suggests that they are just different variations of the same vowel (or rather sub-vowel... so they're like variants of a variant...) instead of two widely-separated sounds.
On schwas: there's always the possibility that vowels in unstressed syllables will weaken to schwas or other sounds. So they're not phonemic, but could easily be allophonic. Depends how deep into things like word stress you want to go.
| DF | IPA | Openness | Backness | Roundness | Open# | Back# | Round# | F1 | F2 | Pseudo-F1 | Pseudo-F2 |
| ɪ | Near-close | Near-front | No | 0.833 | 0.75 | 0 | (350) | (2000) | 347.762 | 2026.655 | |
| i | Close | Near-front | No | 1 | 0.75 | 0 | (240) | (2100) | 260.729 | 2112.970 | |
| î | i | Close | Front | No | 1 | 1 | 0 | 240 | 2400 | 261.428 | 2360.535 |
| ï | ɨ | Close | Central | No | 1 | 0.5 | 0 | (240) | (1900) | 260.029 | 1865.405 |
| ʊ | Near-close | Near-back | No | 0.833 | 0.25 | 0 | (350) | (1500) | 346.364 | 1531.524 | |
| u | Close | Near-back | No | 1 | 0.25 | 0 | (240) | (1600) | 259.330 | 1617.839 | |
| û | u | Close | Back | Yes | 1 | 0 | 1 | 250 | 595 | 195.624 | 883.428 |
| ö | ɤ | Close-mid | Back | No | 0.667 | 0 | 0 | 460 | 1310 | 432.177 | 1198.160 |
| o | Close-mid | Back | Yes | 0.667 | 0 | 1 | 360 | 640 | 369.170 | 711.314 | |
| o | ọ | Mid | Back | Yes | 0.5 | 0 | 1 | (450) | (600) | 456.204 | 624.998 |
| ô | ɔ | Open-mid | Back | Yes | 0.333 | 0 | 1 | 500 | 700 | 543.238 | 538.683 |
| å | ɑ | Open | Back | No | 0 | 0 | 0 | 750 | 940 | 779.791 | 853.415 |
| a | ä | Open | Central | No | 0 | 0.5 | 0 | (800) | (1400) | 781.190 | 1348.546 |
| â | a | Open | Front | No | 0 | 1 | 0 | 850 | 1610 | 782.588 | 1843.677 |
| ä | æ | Near-open | Front | No | 0.167 | 1 | 0 | (700) | (1900) | 695.554 | 1929.992 |
| e | ɛ | Open-mid | Front | No | 0.333 | 1 | 0 | 610 | 1900 | 609.042 | 2015.791 |
| ê | e | Close-mid | Front | No | 0.667 | 1 | 0 | 390 | 2300 | 434.974 | 2188.422 |
| ë | ø | Close-mid | Front | Yes | 0.667 | 1 | 1 | 370 | 1900 | 371.968 | 1701.575 |
Yeah, I thought that's what you meant by palatalization. I call the iotaization, but I guess that's not the correct term... That's an interesting take to bring. Whether they use palatalization or not, I'm unsure, but I guess that method of notating it would be pretty valid, if a bit limited.I don't know about it palatizing things. Could you maybe give an example of the usage in a dwarven word?
"dùstik" is pronounced [djʊstɪk] "dyuh-stick"
"sákrith" is pronounced [säkjrɪθ] "sai-krith"
It's pretty simple, really, though it's hard to do with sounds like [r]. The easy-but-not-exactly-accurate way of understanding it is to put a "y" sound between the vowel and the consonant. It's a big thing in Russian.
So, the typical way of saying "Urist" [jʊrɪst] would be spelled "Ùrist."
Incidentally, "yurist" in Russian means "lawyer." Make of that what you will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFldBVWFgWoThanks! I still haven't looked at the Model Languages resource much yet. I'll try to get back to it.
bu`t to the head!
I'm both amazed and gratified that so many conlang enthusiasts have gotten together over this - what a worthy effort so far!
From the "Model Languages" group (from way back in the AOL days before Yahoo was even around), there was this resource: http://www.zompist.com/kit.html (http://www.zompist.com/kit.html)
It may still be of some use to this effort.
This is incredible that you guys are doing this, do you have a notes version of your accepted or pending ideas so far? I ask because while I did read the entire thread, I have forgotten important bits here and there and its tedious to read the same conversation twice to try and find important bits.Yeah. Sadly, nope. We don't have a notes version and even our general consensus is kinda on a sandy foundation. However, if you care to volunteer, I can point you to some of the most important developments.
Also somewhere its mention that some words you would expect to share a root dont, like sorcery and sorcerer, I think that can be explain by word drift. Wizard for instance originally came from wiseman, so maybe those two dwarven words drifted from different sources like the original word for sorcery meant something to the extent of magic or black magic and sorcerer's root word meant something like scholar. It was only in recent dwarven times that those two words drifted and changed to be what we call consider sorcery and sorcerer now.
I would appreciate it if you pointed me towards those important post and I will try to compile a notes version of what you have so far.This is incredible that you guys are doing this, do you have a notes version of your accepted or pending ideas so far? I ask because while I did read the entire thread, I have forgotten important bits here and there and its tedious to read the same conversation twice to try and find important bits.Yeah. Sadly, nope. We don't have a notes version and even our general consensus is kinda on a sandy foundation. However, if you care to volunteer, I can point you to some of the most important developments.
Also somewhere its mention that some words you would expect to share a root dont, like sorcery and sorcerer, I think that can be explain by word drift. Wizard for instance originally came from wiseman, so maybe those two dwarven words drifted from different sources like the original word for sorcery meant something to the extent of magic or black magic and sorcerer's root word meant something like scholar. It was only in recent dwarven times that those two words drifted and changed to be what we call consider sorcery and sorcerer now.
I had similar, though nowhere near as developed ideas about that. The only thing is this: How would they drift so much in that time? ( World-gen time, that is. ) Moreover, it seems the drift occurs before time itself... This has implications that will need to be addressed.
Most importantly, thank you for posting.
I'll... try to get around to it. No promises, but poke me every so often about it.I would appreciate it if you pointed me towards those important post and I will try to compile a notes version of what you have so far.This is incredible that you guys are doing this, do you have a notes version of your accepted or pending ideas so far? I ask because while I did read the entire thread, I have forgotten important bits here and there and its tedious to read the same conversation twice to try and find important bits.Yeah. Sadly, nope. We don't have a notes version and even our general consensus is kinda on a sandy foundation. However, if you care to volunteer, I can point you to some of the most important developments.
Also somewhere its mention that some words you would expect to share a root dont, like sorcery and sorcerer, I think that can be explain by word drift. Wizard for instance originally came from wiseman, so maybe those two dwarven words drifted from different sources like the original word for sorcery meant something to the extent of magic or black magic and sorcerer's root word meant something like scholar. It was only in recent dwarven times that those two words drifted and changed to be what we call consider sorcery and sorcerer now.
I had similar, though nowhere near as developed ideas about that. The only thing is this: How would they drift so much in that time? ( World-gen time, that is. ) Moreover, it seems the drift occurs before time itself... This has implications that will need to be addressed.
Most importantly, thank you for posting.
I think of it along the lines that the worlds are not created at world gen, but rather world gen is when recorded history begins. In the time before world gen dwarfs are still around speaking to each other, developing their language and causing words like sorcery and sorcerer to drift towards one another. Think of it like the neolithic and paleolithic periods for ourselves, we were certainly around then and important development were made, we just dont have any records of it.
Pssh, yeah. That mnemonic is very helpful, but I had gotten the basic idea the first time. I just am stuck pulling myself in seven directions at once to work on all of the projects I've assigned myself to and my college work, so that's why I didn't get around to responding. This project isn't dead, though and I like that system of number notation because I think it's very clean and natural. As per the stroke to make the rune unalterable, I'm thinking just one vertical stroke down the center of the rune. It's very hard to mistake and it doesn't interfere with the current setup of the rune. (Though, admittedly I'm not sure how much it helps with the issue. ) As per approximates, I see no reason why there wouldn't just be an "unknown digit" rune. There is in the actual game mechanics: "?". Granted, it can and probably will be argued that that's just a translation convention.Thanks for the feedback. The tunes are made with a quill or brush in mind. They could be carved as block letters by turning the curves into 45-degree bevels. The ending positions aren't any worse than a lot of English capitals like B, P and J. Though I guess it does happen a bit more often in the runes I posted.
As per the less accurate book keeping methods, methinks that this could boil down to number of significant digits according to the bookkeeper, e.g. 5-X if 5 is the five rune and X is a rune meaning "thousands place" with the hyphen being some kind of signifier of approximation. Basically "It rounds to 5000" or "About 5000" or "5000 and some." Which saves space and aids readability (slightly) from the bookkeeper's perspective. However, a bookkeeper could be ordered to treat all digits as significant: 5362 Barrels of Dwarven Rum is exactly 5362 and is written with a digit for each place value in stead of "5-X barrels of Dwarven Rum". ( The practicality of such simplifications is more obvious when you have hundreds of thousands. ) Though, I am still willing to posit that Dwarven bookkeepers use their own system of stenography for the purpose of rapidly taking notes and have a separate tally system that better facilitates addition rather than simple display of number value. ( In fact, bonus points if said tally system is impractical for displaying number value easily. There's a reason bookkeeping is a skill. Even real-life accountants have historically had to treat numbers differently and learn different maths than other professions. ) However, even if this is the case, it doesn't necessarily mean much linguistically as it does culturally/practically, as their records would probably still be translated into a Dwarven number system that all Dwarves can read instead of the specific bookkeeper/another bookkeeper. It's just how I visualize it and how I'd do it if I had to count everything in a fort.
Also, I'm looking at your runes and thinking to myself that they need to be simplified or at least given a cursive form. Sure they can all be written in 1-3 strokes, but those strokes look kind of awkward for a hand and don't inherently leave the hand in an optimal position to go to the next letter. ( Assuming dwarves write left-to-right, that is. ) It's not horrible, but a necromancer who was writing his fortieth biography definitely wouldn't use that, nor would any dwarf who had a lot to write, due to the extra movement increasing hand strain. In addition, the consonant runes wouldn't lend themselves very well to being engraved as of their most recent iteration. The worst offenders are the second and fourth rows, as well as special mention to the third character on the first row and the last two of the last row. ( The last of the last being more of a minor annoyance than a legitimate problem. )
Curiously, it seems like most of the number runes are actually suited to best being written by the hand that their spokes are mapped to. I'm not sure if this is relevant, but it suggests to me that a particularly skilled bookkeeper could write two at once, one quill in each hand, and potentially even take note of two numbers at once.
A solemn poetic form concerning alcoholic beverages, originating in The Lyric of Coal. The poem is divided into two distinct septets. Use of simile is characteristic of the form. Each line has five feet with atone pattern of uneven-evenstress pattern of unstressed-stressed because that's how I read it at first and my Dwarvish doesn't have tones.
The first part is intended to make an assertion.
The second part is intended to invert the previous assertion.
Wait, there's already a full grammatical system here?! That's amazing! I was literally just getting a handle for how I was starting to force a pseudo-grammar into the RAWs the last time. How does this system work? Is it intended for putting into the game itself?
I'm curious how Loam added pronouns to the language file... Are they tagged as nouns?
what words have you created though?Wait, there's already a full grammatical system here?! That's amazing! I was literally just getting a handle for how I was starting to force a pseudo-grammar into the RAWs the last time. How does this system work? Is it intended for putting into the game itself?
Well, it's hardly full, and a lot of it just borrows from English. And it's by no means intended to be put into the raws, since it just started out as a personal project for writing stuff in Dwarvish.
To actually put a pseudo-grammar into the language files... would be very difficult. You'd need to have many different entries for each word.Spoiler: RAWs pseudo-grammar (click to show/hide)I'm curious how Loam added pronouns to the language file... Are they tagged as nouns?
None of the new words are added to the language files, just to my own wordlists. Putting pronouns into the raws would be kind of silly, since you'd just get names like "The Hill of Me." But they probably would be tagged as nouns.
I'm actually working on essentially that right now. The only things I'm stuck on are how to represent it in language_SYM and the exact forms each language will use. I'm thinking of having Human use either prefixes or particles, Goblin have no definite patterns to represent how alien they and their mindset would be to the world, Elven have several conjugations and declensions riddled with irregularity, and Dwarven to stack clitics at the end. Basically Human=Austronesian, Goblin=alien, Elven=Greek or Latin, and Dwarven=Sumerian. That would be relatively easy to change though.Wait, there's already a full grammatical system here?! That's amazing! I was literally just getting a handle for how I was starting to force a pseudo-grammar into the RAWs the last time. How does this system work? Is it intended for putting into the game itself?
Well, it's hardly full, and a lot of it just borrows from English. And it's by no means intended to be put into the raws, since it just started out as a personal project for writing stuff in Dwarvish.
To actually put a pseudo-grammar into the language files... would be very difficult. You'd need to have many different entries for each word.Spoiler: RAWs pseudo-grammar (click to show/hide)I'm curious how Loam added pronouns to the language file... Are they tagged as nouns?
None of the new words are added to the language files, just to my own wordlists. Putting pronouns into the raws would be kind of silly, since you'd just get names like "The Hill of Me." But they probably would be tagged as nouns.
snipI had not actually meant to post that when I did, I was just trying to see if my formatting in a word document would be carried over to the forum post. Which is how I found out the tab key automatically post things you are working on when you hit it, so rather than indenting a line I ended up posting something that had not been checked for grammar or spelling. I fixed that for the most part and clarified what each post is talking about, so it should be good now.
Just a note on adding words to the language files. If a WORD entry exists (say, a noun for "six") it will get picked up by every language whether or not the language has a T_WORD entry (how "six" is spelled in that language). If the name generator picks a WORD for which there is no T_WORD in that language, it puts an ugly blank space in the name.I thought that symbols were hard-coded? If so, that'll make for some interesting work in explaining how word X is related to mountains. Though, given who we're talking about here, I'm sure somebody already has ideas on how to do so.
If the project is going to add WORD's to a specific language, they need to be gathered into a SYMBOL that can be culled from the civs using every other language. So we would end up with at least a DWARF_ONLY symbol, perhaps more if we need finer control. Then for example the FOREST entity will cull the DWARF_ONLY symbol from all of its names.
So this is unrelated, but I was thinking about the pragmatics of Dwarvish the other day. I feel (and maybe it's the general consensus) that Dwarves would appreciate directness in speech, rather than indirectness. In other words, a straight command like "Open the window", while it sounds rude or brusque in English, would to a Dwarf indicate respect: the speaker respects their audience enough to be direct with them and tell them straight out what they want, how they feel, etc. In contrast, the more indirect "Could you open the window?" would sound evasive, possibly manipulative, and would indicate that the speaker may not trust the audience well enough to speak straight.
However, there should be a way to be "rude" in Dwarvish, not just evasive. I think this can be accomplished with formality registers, an idea which has come up before: addressing someone with the wrong pronoun would indicate distaste or disparity. That Dwarvish would have various register of formality is somewhat suggested by their social structure, which is very hierarchical. A simple formal/informal would suffice, but we could come up with a more robust system if we wanted to: so, counts would speak to dukes and kings in formal, to other counts in informal, and to barons and commoners in inferior informal.
So I could say Guth mamgoz than, "Kill - dragon - you (formal)," which would be a respectful, direct way of telling someone to kill a dragon. Than cal guth mamgoz? "You (formal) - can kill - dragon" would not be "rude," but would indicate the speaker's unwillingness to engage the audience directly. Guth mamgoz ush, "kill - dragon - you (informal)" would be disrespectful if said to a superior or possibly to an equal, but acceptable if said to an inferior (in which case than would be generous, even prodigal depending on the circumstances).
a straight command like "Open the window", while it sounds rude or brusque in English, would to a Dwarf indicate respect: the speaker respects their audience enough to be direct with them and tell them straight out what they want, how they feel, etc. In contrast, the more indirect "Could you open the window?" would sound evasive, possibly manipulative, and would indicate that the speaker may not trust the audience well enough to speak straight.Huh. Does it? I guess I'm more dwarven than I thought.
So I could say Guth mamgoz than, "Kill - dragon - you (formal)," which would be a respectful, direct way of telling someone to kill a dragon. Than cal guth mamgoz? "You (formal) - can kill - dragon" would not be "rude," but would indicate the speaker's unwillingness to engage the audience directly. Guth mamgoz ush, "kill - dragon - you (informal)" would be disrespectful if said to a superior or possibly to an equal, but acceptable if said to an inferior (in which case than would be generous, even prodigal depending on the circumstances).Bah. I don't think so. I think if a dwarf wants to be rude, then he/she 'll be rude, by flinging direct or implied ( with all the subtlty of an anvil ) threats, insults, and lovely comparisons to horrible, horrible things. It doesn't seem in-game that much class system exists, there's simply "nobles", "skilled individuals" and "unskilled individuals". I imagaine that they all just bark orders at each other all the time based on that hierarchy and that only the nobles give a crap about the hierarchies, and only amongst nobles. ( i.e. "I am a king, you are a mere baron. Get out of my sight and go scrub something." And substitute peasant for any non-noble, except skilled individuals that have managed to impress said noble, who'll be addressed directly and complimented upon a job well done. ) I think beyond that, it'll come down to the temperment of each dwarf, and given the nature of dwarves as seen so far, I could well see a hauler cussing out a skilled individual, even an artifact-maker, if sufficiently peeved or prone to anger. I think they'll hold their tongue when it comes to nobles, simply because of the dwarves' incredible commitment to the concepts of oaths. It's been a while since last I read it, but I'm thinking something like Heorot in Beowulf in terms of most of the populous, with Dwarven greed and excess of power driving the higher nobles to act like Thorin Oakenshield from the latest Hobbit movie: Bossy, bratty, impatient, and more prone to negative emotions and paranoia. Even then, it would come down to the temperament of a dwarf and I doubt the dwarves will put as much subtlty as having syntax rules involved in insults and will more likely just insult each other, brag, and/or fight and tantrum. Again, we have all seemed to agree that they love directness and I personally see their culture as being influenced heavily by Anglo-Saxon tradition - sensible considering they're [loosely] based on the Tolkien conception of a dwarf, which is heavily influenced by an affinity for the Anglo-Saxon and Nordic traditions combined with a bit of scrutiny of Tolkien's own time. Doubtless, they'll continue to develop away from this, and with time - assuming dwarves are subject to the same foibles as humanity - they might develop such a complex, pedantic, unpleasant, and Tywin Lannister style of supreme double-edged "compliments" which quite obviously translate to "I wish you were dead and given time I might make you dead." ( Note: I hate most of the Game of Thrones series, I don't know or care if the books are better, but I'd rather not see that be taken as the Dwarven norm just because it's "popular fantasy". Cos f*** that, there's way better ways to make a dark story than that revolting mess that is King's Landing. ) Anyway, back from my digression, in summation: Dwarves prefer to stab people with swords and spears, not words. If there's any species in the Dwarf Fortress universe that does it, it's humans. Dwarves and elves are pretty much direct in their disdain or approval of things, and the little I've observed of goblin and kobold culture, they're much the same. If a Dwarf cannot bury their emotions enough to continue working dutifully, they act upon them and probably don't make a show of backhanded compliments and subtle implications of displeasure with a person. Also, if we take the fact that human cultures are most prone to being taken over by demons to be culturally indicative, I think this further supports my assertions. ( More likely, it's just cos they're living on the plains. ) So, to conclude with a point: I don't think it's necessary, prudent, or fun to develop complex formality systems in languages, as subtext is typically lost with time and formality systems in real world languages wax and wane, being at their best and most complete binary: superior and equal/inferior, which is sort of what Loam is suggesting but less complicated. And while we could develop that, it would be both a gigantic pain in the arse and totally unnecessary, at least as I see it. Sorry for rambling.
King---------------------------------------------------Allied foreign dignitaryI disagree. I think foreign dignitaries, at least non-dwarven, would be handled separately. Also, I think that hierarchy-wise, nobles are always above everyone - except perhaps legendaries and artifact makers - then it would be skilled craftsman and warriors together, with military officers only being treated as of greater rank by members of their squad, then recruits and unskilled labor. I do think, however, that military officers would be addressed by their subordinates as if they were a noble when not in the presence of a noble and when off-duty, and that all communication on-duty would be limited to completely formality-free direct speech of only necessary communication. Formality is an extravagance, and while beneficial to us humans, I think, as I elucidated above, it'd be cumbersome to most dwarves and that it would only be affected in titles and what a person is addressed by*, not in formality levels of speech. This would come into play with it requiring more "bravery" to insult a superior and a greater frequency of flattery, but that's all I see. I don't think the flattery would require different pronouns or formality levels, just convincingly lying about one's appreciation for another's skills and person.
duke-----Artifact Maker
Count----Legendary Craftsman---legendary warriors
Baron---------------------------Military Officers--------disliked foreign dignitary,
Clerks----skilled Craftsman-------Warriors---------------tradesmen
----------craftsman-------------recruits/reserve forces--------------------------Skilled other.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------other
Here is the latest incremental update to the alphabet runes. Hopefully it's starting to look like something useable.what characters does each rune correspond to again?
The curvy bits of the consonants can be replaced with diagonal lines for engraving, but plenty of the engraving-friendly Latin capital letters have curves as well.
(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a28/8gon/Alphabet5.png)
what characters does each rune correspond to again?Good question! I edited the post above.
Here are the runes arranged in the "gear" formation. If anyone here has actual artistic talent, I'll gladly turn over the GIMP files to whoever wants to make this look presentable.:D
~snip~
Here are the runes arranged in the "gear" formation. If anyone here has actual artistic talent, I'll gladly turn over the GIMP files to whoever wants to make this look presentable.:D
~snip~
I like how it looks already.