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Dwarf Fortress => DF General Discussion => Topic started by: Solitarian on February 17, 2019, 04:53:43 pm

Title: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on February 17, 2019, 04:53:43 pm
Here is the obsolete video counterpart to this post. As the language's codification is ongoing, I will only update the video once more things have been finalized: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ybwE7BTc4s&feature=youtu.be

Here is a link to the Dwarven Dictionary. Many thanks for VABritto for assembling it!

ALL ENTRIES DONE.

You can check out all the entries already published at Dwarven Dictionary A to L (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094) and Dwarven Dictionary from M to Å (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005410#msg8005410)

I wanted to make fortress names more interesting, so I decided to give the in-game dwarven language a little grammar. Then I gave it more... and more... and eventually it was almost a whole language, and I post the result of my effort here. This is my attempt at codifying Dwarven. This necessarily involves some linguistics mumbo-jumbo, but I will try to explain it or not rely on it so much so everyone understands. I hope that Dwarven can become the secret code of all DF players, our little Esperanto! Also, I probably forgot some bits of grammar, so I am relying on you to notice my mistakes and gaps.


1
Introduction

One very frustrating aspect of this endeavor was the limited lexicon (total vocabulary) of language_DWARF. I needed to invent many words. For example, Dwarven didn’t have a word for dwarf! I hope that you will help invent words and amend the lexicon, as I really don’t want to create thousands of words alone. Furthermore, language_DWARF contains only a few hundred adjectives, nouns, and verbs. There were no other kinds of words like prepositions, adverbs, or conjunctions, and there was no hint of grammar. My only clue was the fortress names, so I used one of those as the basis of the whole language. The name was:

Kuletmeng Zutashustoslibashemar Mabdug
Abbeylashed the Ancient Angry Axe-Animal of Ale

Yes, the words begin with A. I couldn’t be bothered to scroll down the list. From this name we can tell that Dwarven is agglutinative (it has many compound words, which are larger words comprised of conjoined smaller words, e.g. rainbow). We can see some syntax (word order) too: adjectives precede nouns, and the noun being modified is placed at the end of the compound word. We can also see that Dwarven does not have articles (“the” and “a” and “an”) or prepositions (words that express direction, position, etc.: of, between, beyond, beside, on, under, over, and so on). The “the” before “ancient” is not in the Dwarven name, just as the “of” isn’t. Latin also does not have articles, and it has only sparse prepositions. In Latin, articles and prepositions are often implied by context and syntax, so I supposed that Dwarven was like that too.

The file language_DWARF also shows that Dwarven is mostly an analytic language, but first I should explain what that word means.

Analytic means that the language conveys meaning through helper words and syntax. This is the opposite of a synthetic language, which conveys meaning through changing the forms of words. Most languages are mixed, i.e. a little analytic and a little synthetic. English is like this too. For example, the verb eat can be changed to convey meaning. Eats means it is in the present and singular. From that one word, we know that the action is happening now and only one actor is doing it. The form of the word was changed, in that an S was added. A helper word is usually added too, in this case a pronoun (a word that takes the place of a noun) such as he. That pronoun tells us that one man is performing the action. So, the sentence he eats is both analytic (it uses the helper word he) and synthetic (it changes the form of the verb).

In language_DWARF and language_words, we can see that the forms of words are never changed to convey meaning. For example, the base form of the verb deb (eat) is the same as its “changed” form deb (eats). Similarly, singular nouns are not changed to make them plural. In English, an S is added to make something plural: ale becomes ales. This is synthetic. In Dwarf Fortress, mabdug (ale) is the same as mabdug (ales). So, Dwarven is quite analytic.
That was more or less everything I could glean from the game’s presentation of Dwarven. From that, I had to develop or invent everything. Now, I present the grammar of Dwarven. As I describe things, I will give more detailed example sentences and context.


2
General Characteristics

Because Dwarven is analytic, syntax is very important. The word order is strictly controlled, as sentences’ meanings could change drastically if the order changes. For example: the dog ate the food is different from the food ate the dog. Dwarven’s word order is this: subject, verb-tense, direct object, indirect object, extra information.

The subject is the doer, the verb is what the subject is doing, the direct object is what the subject is doing to action to, and the indirect object is the object of the direct object. For example: I gave a ball to the dog. I-subject, gave-verb, ball-direct object, dog-indirect object.

Before you put anything in that last “extra information” category, think about whether it really belongs there. It probably belongs in one of the other categories instead. The word order is very strict, and the categories can only be left blank if filling them is unnecessary and does not confuse the meaning. The subject, verb, and direct object must always be clearly identifiable!

Because the forms of words never change in Dwarven, I had to rely on affixation, i.e. sticking words and sounds to the beginnings and ends of existing words to make new words. Almost all words end in consonants. There are no pronouns, so everything is third-person. There are no linguistic genders. First person (I / we) is usually conveyed with the noun Kutam (speaker), but not always. One always talks about oneself in the third person, so whatever one is is how one refers to oneself. Second person (you) can be marked with Ùâmid (listener).

Because Dwarven only ever appears as text in-game, there are no rules about pronunciation, as it doesn’t matter. Speak it however you like. However, the phonetics of the language are under discussion and will likely be codified sooner or later.


3
Nouns

As mentioned, nouns have no genders, never change their forms, and are agglutinative. This makes them extremely simple, hence the brevity of this section. One could convey plural with the adjective shámman (many) or by using a number as an adjective. When standardizing the orthography (writing) of Dwarven, I decided that all nouns are capitalized, like in German. This makes them much easier to differentiate from the other words in the sentences. Other words can be capitalized to make them nouns, even adjectives and verbs.

Compound words are very common. The word "zod(en)" can be used to mark a location, as it means "house". So "Nelzod" (bake house) means "bakery".

To refer to the performer of a verb, ù is added as a prefix. It is an abbreviation of Udos (man). So, amal (teach) becomes Ùamal (teacher). The suffix -lod (one) can also be added to indicate a person, and this can be used to make distinctions between something that performs and something that is. For example, Dosîm means wisdom, Ùdosîm means a performer of wisdom (such as a philosopher), and Dosîmlod means "wise one". To indicate an abstract concept (teaching), the prefix mik- is added. Thus, Mikamal means teaching. One could also use Amal as a noun to mean teaching, but this could be confusing.

4
Adjectives

Adjectives, like nouns, never change their forms and are agglutinative. The most important adjective is placed first, followed by the next most important adjective, and so on. Nouns can also be used as adjectives if they are not capitalized. This helps fill Dwarven’s many vocabulary gaps. For example, Ustos means anger, but ustos means angry. Because the entire compound word functions as one big noun, its first letter is capitalized, even if that letter is part of an adjective. Here are some examples:

Ustosonol – angry mountain (ustos + onol)
Onolustos – mountainous anger (onol + ustos)
Oronolustos – large mountainous anger (or + onol + ustos)

As you can see, word order is important. The noun being described is always at the end, and the preceding stuff is all adjectives. This system can easily be used to make words that English doesn’t really have. For example:

Ustoszutash – angry ancientness (ustos + zutash)

“Ancientness” is technically a word, but it is awkward.

Comparative adjectives are marked with the extra adjectives etag (more) or gekur (less):

Etagustosonol – angrier mountain / more angry mountain (etag + ustos + onol)
Gekurustosonol – less angry mountain (gekur + ustos + onol)

Superlative forms are marked with the extra adjectives tel (most) or gudos (least):

Telustosonol – angriest mountain / most angry mountain (tel + ustos + onol)
Gudosustosonol – least angry mountain (gudos + ustos + onol)


5
Verbs

As always with everything else, verbs’ forms don’t change. Instead, tense (time) markers are added. Verbs can also be capitalized to make them nouns. For example: deb (eat) can become Deb (eating, one occasion of eating). However, this would preferablz be marked with the prefix mik, so Mikdeb unambiguously means eating. Nouns and adjectives can be used as verbs too, so long as they are put in the correct place according to the strict syntax. Example: Babin (friend) - babin (befriend / be friends with).

The tense markers are:
geth – past
udiz – present
zalud – future
shoveth – hypothetical
ver - passive
zilir – imperative

deb-geth = ate
deb-udiz = eats
deb-zalud = will eat
deb-shoveth= might eat, would eat
deb-ver'geth = was eaten, became eaten
deb-ver'udiz = is being eaten
deb-ver'zalud = will be eaten
deb-zilir = eat!

Here are some example sentences:

Urist deb-geth Shokmug.
Urist ate cheese.

Urist deb-zalud Shokmug.
Urist will eat cheese.

Notice the syntax. The subject (the doer of the action) is always the first word of the sentence, and the subject is always followed by its verb, which is always accompanied by a tense marker, which is always followed by the direct object (the thing being acted upon).

The tense markers can also be mixed with apostrophes to show multiple times. For example:

Urist deb-geth’udiz Shokmug
Urist ate and is eating cheese.

The marker shoveth is used for conditional or hypothetical meanings. For example:

Urist deb-geth’shoveth Shokmug
Urist might have eaten cheese. / Urist possibly ate cheese.

Urist deb-zalud’shoveth Shokmug
Urist might eat cheese later.

6
Adverbs

Adverbs are the adjectives of verbs, hence their name. Just like adjectives describe nouns, adverbs describe verbs. For example: I quickly drive a fast car. Fast describes the car and is an adjective, while quickly describes the driving and is an adverb.

In Dwarven, adverbs precede the verbs they modify. Adverbs and adjectives are usually the same and only marked as one or the other by whether they are describing a noun or a verb. This means that any word becomes an adverb if it is used to describe a verb. However, the suffix -ak can be added to signify something as an adverb, if you want to really stress that. I had to invent some adverbs, as none were given in language_DWARF. Other words can be made into adverbs too. For example: alod (day), alodak (daily). The -ak suffix is not obligatory, though. For example: Urist onoldeb-geth Shokmug (Urist mountainously ate cheese. Whatever that means). Here are some useful adverbs that cannot be formed from adjectives:

eshob(ak) - always
geng(ak) - enough
sarum(ak) - also, too, as well, additionally
asdob(ak) - never
foz(ak) - almost
shoveth(ak) - sometimes, maybe
tang(ak) - here
dog(ak) - there
ashok(ak) - now
geth(ak) - then
slis(ak) - finally
mulon(ak) - every, all

Here are some example sentences:
Urist buketdeb-udiz Shokmug.
Urist quickly eats cheese. (Urist quickeat-present cheese)

Urist fozdeb-geth Shokmug.
Urist almost ate cheese.

Urist fozbuketdeb-geth Shokmug.
Urist almost quickly ate cheese.


7
Passive Voice

The passive voice is when the doer of an action is not indicated by the verb. For example: "Urist eats the cheese" is active, while "The cheese is eaten" is passive. Who is eating the cheese in the second sentence? We don’t know. Probably Urist.

In Dwarven, the passive voice is indicated by the verb ver (become) used as a tense marker. For example:

Shokmug deb-geth'ver.
Cheese was eaten. (cheese eat-past'become)

When using the passive voice, you can still indicate the doer as the direct object:

Shokmug deb-geth'ver Urist.
Cheese was eaten by Urist.


8
Possession

Possession is marked by the suffix –long (meaning “belonging to”) attached to a noun and followed by the possessor. For example:

Shokmug-longUrist
Urist’s cheese

Urist deb-geth Shokmug-longMosus
Urist ate Mosus’s cheese.


9
Question Words

All question words (who, where, when, etc.) have an –ag ending and are placed at the end of the sentence, as the beginning of the sentence is always where the subject is, and nothing else can ever be at the beginning of the sentence. Here are the question words:

vadag      what
vasag      where
udosag           who
-longudosag   whose (belonging to who)
vanag      when
hivag              why
nigag              how
vilkag      which

Example sentences with some more words:

Whose job is it to mine?
Avuziseth-longudosag
(miningquest-belongstowho)

Where is Urist   ?
Urist var-udiz vasag
(Urist be-present where)

Who was Urist?
Urist var-geth udosag
(Urist be-past who)

Which cheese is Urist's?
Shokmug-longUrist var-udiz vilkag
(cheese-belongstoUrist be-present which)

Why is Urist angry?
Urist var-udiz ustos hivag
(Urist be-present angry why)

Who ate my cheese?
Shokmug-longKutam verdeb-geth udosag
(cheese-belongstospeaker becomeeat-past who)

Why is there no cheese?
Shokmug asdobvar-udiz hivag
(cheese notbe-present why)

Where are we ?
Kutam var-udiz vasag
(speaker be-present where)

When will we attack the goblins?
Kutam rashgur-zalud Omergedor vanag
(speaker attack-future goblin when)

How will Urist live?
Urist thunen-zalud nigag
(Urist live-future how)


10
Numbers

Numbers seem to be annoying in every language. I tried to make Dwarven counting very straightforward. It is based on the first ten numbers.

0 asdob (this also means no, not, none)
1 nir
2 nob
3 mez
4 vor
5 fim
6 gät
7 zun
8 ått
9 nag
10 zez

The rest of the numbers are all just those previous numbers mixed. Hypens (-) mean addition, while the letter i multiplication. For example:

11 zez-nir (10+1), 12 zez-nob (10+2), 13 zez-mez (10+3)
20 nobizez, 21 nobizez-nir, 22 nobizez-nob, 23 nobizez-mez
30 mezizez, 40 vorizez, 70 zunizez

For the large multiplications of 10, there are abbreviations:

100 zezbog, 1000 zezton, 10,000 zezgurn, 100,000 zezmal, 1,000,000 zeztük

I don’t think numbers bigger than one million are necessary. Here are some larger example numbers:

257 nobizezbog-fimizez-zun
864 åttizezbog-gätizez-vor
1739 zezton-zunizezbog-mezizez-nag
17,841 zezgurn-zunizezton-åttizezbog-vorizez-nir

Approximate numbers (20ish, around 20, approximately 20) are indicated with the adjective shoveth. Example:

Shovethnobizez - approximately 20, 20ish

Ordinal numbers (first, second, third, etc.) are just the numbers used as adjectives with a -t ending. Nir is the exception to this rule, as its ordinal form is "uthar". This is the only ordinal number in language_DWARF, so the rest had to be my inventions. Examples:

Fimtonol
(fifth mountain)

Zuntarkim
(seventh dwarf)

Utharshokmug
(first cheese)

Meztarkim deb-geth Noborshokmug.
The third dwarf ate two large cheeses.
(three-ordinal-dwarf eat-past twolargecheese)


11
Particles

“Particle” is a term that refers to any word that persnickety linguists can’t put in one of their many categories. These are typically special words with special uses. The only ones I cared about for Dwarven were yes and no.

eshob – yes
asdob – no

These are formed from eshon (good) and asdos (bad).


12
Conjunctions

Conjunctions join parts of sentences. Here is a list with some handy lines to make it "easier" to read. Commas are not used in Dwarven lists, so you need to put a conjunction between each item in the list ("Urist and Mosus and Etur" instead of "Urist, Mosus, and Etur").

og   because
get----------before
zal   after
ud       during, as
lok-----------and
ad   but
nat-----------or
gat      until
mit-----------in order that
des      therefore
shug---------unless
kul      whether
git----------since
gad   that
zis---------than

Example sentences:

Urist deb-udiz Shokmug lok Mabdug
Urist is eating cheese and ale (“eat” refers to any kind of ingestion)

Urist deb-geth Shokmug des Urist var-udiz asdobfokásh
Urist ate cheese, therefore he is not hungry. (Note that Urist must be stated twice. No pronouns!)
(Urist eat-past cheese therefore Urist be-present nothungry)

Urist musar-udiz gad Lolumevon rashgur-zalud
Urist knows that elves will attack
(Urist know-present that elf attack-future)

Urist deb-geth Shokmug zal Urist rashgur-geth Omergedor
Urist ate cheese after he attacked goblins
(Urist eat-past cheese after Urist attack-past goblin)


13
Prepositions

As we learned from language_DWARF, Dwarven has no prepositions. However, I could not think of any other way to convey that information, so I turned to Latin and found... postpositions!

Postpositions are like prepositions, except they are placed at the ends of words instead of before them. Here’s a list of postpositions, and they are always affixed to a noun with an apostrophe. I tried to make the list as small as possible and reduce redundancy. For example, there is only one postposition for over and above, as those concepts are very similar. I probably forgot some, though.

'esh       with
'il-------before (in front of)
'at   behind
'er------beyond, past, on the other side of
'ishob   toward, into, until
'em-----away from, out of, off, off of
'urt   below, beneath, under
'ag------on, on top of, over, above
'osh   beside, next to, along
'üf------through, across
'ok   within, inside, in, at
'un-----near, by
'ahd   on behalf of, for the benefit of
'ud------because of, due to, as a consequence of
'ist   against
'iz-------around, during
'üb   about, concerning (topic)
'avor---before (time)
'ach   after (time)
'ish -- between
'osh   like (similar to)
'ol------as, pretending to be
'utan   without
'ar------from, of (origin)

Example sentences with more words I had to invent:

Urist read a book for Mosus.
Urist thîkutnitem-geth Thîkut Mosus'ahd
(Urist read-past book Mosus’onbehalfof)

The fortress is in a mountain.
Geshud var-udiz Onol'ok
(fortress be-present mountain’within)

Urist is eating without socks.
Urist deb-udiz Seshoz'utan
(Urist eat-present sock’without)


14
Appositions

Appositions are descriptive phrases. For example: Joe and Bob, the sons of Elizabeth, are very nice. In that example, the sons of Elizabeth is an apposition describing Joe and Bob. In Dwarven, appositions are marked by apostrophes and immediately follow the things they describe. They do not break the rigid syntax because they are considered part of the nouns they modify. In Dwarven, appositions are also used to introduce more information without starting another section of the sentence. Examples:

Urist lok Mosus ‘udos onol’ar’ var-udiz ustos.
Urist and Mosus, men of the mountain, are angry.
(Urist and Mosus ‘man mountain’of’ be-present angry)

Urist nitem-geth nikot ‘Mosus mak-geth’.
Urist saw what Mosus did.
(Urist see-past action ‘Mosus do-past’)


14
Conditional or Hypothetical

This is indicated either with the conjunction nos (if) or kul (whether). Usually the verb marker –shoveth is also involved. Here are longer and more complex example sentences with more words and combinations of all the grammar so far:

Urist will eat cheese if Mosus arrives
Urist deb-zalud Shokmug nos Mosus un-zalud
(Urist eat-future cheese if Mosus come-future)
(-un as a postposition means near, and as a verb is means to near, i.e. come closer, approach, arrive)

If Urist had known the elves would attack, he would not have left.
Urist asdobgalthor-shoveth'geth nos Urist musar-shoveth'geth gadt Lolumevon rashgur-geth
(Urist notdesert-hypothetical'past if Urist know-hypothetical'past that elves attack-past)

I wouldn't do that if I were you.
Kutam asdobmak-shoveth nikot 'Ùâmid mak-udiz' nos Kutam var-shoveth Ùâmid
(speaker notdo-hypothetical action 'hearer do-present' if speaker be-hypothetical hearer)

If Urist would just go home, then he wouldn't be in so much trouble.
Urist asdobvar-shoveth'udiz shámmankezat'esh nos Urist estmov-udiz bom'ishob
(Urist notbe-hypothetical'present manytrouble'with if Urist smallgo-present home'toward)

I will kill the elves if I see them.
Kutam vag-zalud Lolumevon nos Kutam nitem-shoveth'zalud Lolumevon
(speaker kill-future elf if speaker see-hypothetical'future elf)

Kill the elves if you see them!
Thîkutnitem vag-zilir Lolumevon nos Thîkutnitem nitem-shoveth Lolumevon
(reader kill-imperative elf if reader see-hypothetical elf)

Urist doesn't know if the elves will attack
Urist asdobmusar-udiz kul Lolumevon rashgur-zalud
(Urist notknow-present whether elves attack-future)


15
Family

Family members are marked with familial titles (sister, brother, father, etc.) that are abbreviated and agglutinated. These are:

Um = Urem (father)
Bor = Bobrur (mother)
Ad = Alud (brother)
Ar = Anir (sister)
Suth = saruth (girl / daughter)
Äd = ärged (boy / son)

Family members from many generations ago are marked with ordinal numbers. Vortum = fourth father, great great grandfather.

Examples:

Umbor = father's mother, i.e. paternal grandmother (Urem + Bobrur)
Borbor = mother's mother, i.e. maternal grandmother
Borädud = mother's brother's son, i.e. cousin
Umarsuth = father's sister's daughter, i.e. cousin

16
Directions

The directions were made by making some postpositions into nouns or adverbs (with the exceptions of inush and seth, which otherwise mean righteousness and falsehood, respectively).

Inush      right (n)
Inushak   rightward (adv)
Seth      left (n)
Sethak   leftward (adv)
Urt      down (n)
Urtak      downward (adv)
Ag      up (n)
Agak      upward (adv)
Em      back (n)
Emak      backward (adv)
Il      front (n)
Ilak      forward (adv)

17
Examples Examples Examples

That is all the Dwarven grammar I made! Here are many more example sentences. If you think you understand, try working through this paragraph I translated. It contains many words I had to invent, as they did not exist in language_DWARF, so refer to the English version below it and the list of extra words if you are confused. This is the “Strike the earth!” paragraph seen when one starts a fortress.

Ùâmid un-geth. Danmanromekmov-longÙâmid slishlushôn-geth Romekmov’ach Onolbom’ar Nistomrist’ishob Onol’er. Zunarkimtomêm-longÙâmid veryemt-udiz utstazaban Anil’ahd-longmulonKuletmabdug. Asdobtzak fozvar-udiz ad Debgol unstaz-udiz Ifinérith. Ùâmid ekast-zilir Arkim-longÙâmid alåth’esh nat ivom’esh nat kahk’esh. Ùâmid yemt-udiz Tzakasmel ‘estun-zalud get Akath ostar-zalud Ùâmid’ ad Ashok var-udiz Bekom. Ashok var-udiz geng mit Ùâmid kan-udiz’zalud bomaban get Etägidar ver-zalud fokásh. Irleitashok-longArkim tangakritan-udiz ‘Urdimthocit’. Ùâmid abod-zilir ber!

You have arrived. After a journey from the mountainhomes into the forbidding wilderness beyond, your harsh trek has finally ended. Your party of seven is to make an outpost for the glory of all of (government name). There are almost no supplies left, but with stout labor comes sustenance. Whether by bolt, plow, or hook, provide for your dwarves. You are expecting a supply caravan just before winter entombs you, but it is spring now. Enough time to delve secure lodgings, ere the (predator name) get hungry. A new chapter of dwarven history begins here at this place, (fortress name). Strike the earth!

do – mak
can - kan
want - vunsh
allow - durf
must - havt
move - mov
go – rud
remain - staz
un – near (become near, approach, arrive, come)
accompany – unstaz (literally:near remain)
give - giv
read - thîkutnitem (literally:book see)
kill - vag
be - var
have - hav
become - ver
mistake - fehl
supply - tzak
food - debgol
hook - kahk
enough - geng
part - leit
goblin - omergedor
dwarf - arkim
human - shukarishen
elf - lolumevon
destroy - förstör
await – yemt (expect)
outpost - utstaz
build - aban
more - etag
yes – eshob
no - asdob
journey - romekmov
see - nitem
sock - seshoz

Urist eats his cheese.
Urist deb-udiz Shokmug-longUrist.

Urist eats his old cheese.
Urist deb-udiz Egarshokmug-longUrist.

Urist eats his old cheese in the fortress.
Urist deb-udiz Egarshokmug-longUrist Geshud'ok.
(Urist eat-present oldcheese-belongstoUrist fortresswithin)

Urist eats his old cheese in the fortress because he is hungry.
Urist deb-udiz Egarshokmug-longUrist Geshud'ok og Urist var-udiz fokásh.

Urist eats his old cheese in the fortress because he is hungry after fighting goblins.
Urist deb-udiz Egarshokmug-longUrist Geshud'ok og Urist var-udiz fokásh zal Urist bardum-geth Omergedor.

Urist eats his old cheese in the fortress because he wants to fight. ("to fight" is the direct object of the verb "wants" and is a verb, not a noun, so it is not capitalized)
Urist deb-udiz Egarshokmug-longUrist Geshud'ok og Urist vunsh-udiz bardum.

Urist eats his old cheese in the fortress because he wants to fight goblins.
Urist deb-udiz Egarshokmug-longUrist Geshud'ok og Urist vunsh-udiz Omergedorbardum. ("to fight goblins" is one big direct object)

Urist eats his old cheese in the fortress because he wants to fight goblins before they destroy the fortress.
Urist deb-udiz Egarshokmug-longUrist Geshud'ok og Urist vunsh-udiz Omergedorbardum get Omergedor förstör-zalud Geshud.

Urist eats his old cheese in the fortress because he wants to fight goblins before they destroy the fortress and build their own fortress.
Urist deb-udiz Egarshokmug-longUrist Geshud'ok og Urist vunsh-udiz Omergedorbardum get Omergedor förstör-zalud Geshud lok Omergedor aban-zalud Geshud-longOmergedor.

Urist gives cheese to Mosus in the fortress.
Urist giv-udiz Shokmug Mosus Geshud'ok.

Urist gave cheese to Mosus inside his fortress. (whose fortress?)
Urist giv-geth Shokmug Mosus Geshud'ok-longMosus (longUrist?).

Urist gave cheese to Mosus in the fortress called Abbeylashed the Ancient Angry Axe-Animal of Ale.
Urist giv-geth Shokmug Mosus Geshud'ok 'Kuletmeng Zutashustoslibashemar Mabdug'.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Superdorf on February 17, 2019, 08:42:01 pm
This... this is...

Thank you.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Dragonsploof on February 20, 2019, 08:51:01 am
This is very impressive.








Solitarian codified DWARF it was inevitable.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on February 20, 2019, 01:31:30 pm
I'm glad you like it! I'm not so sure it was inevitable. The game has existed for quite a long time, and no one has attempted this (as far as I know). Maybe no other language nerd would have done this if not for me. Regardless, I hope the language makes sense to everyone. I have already recognized some weaknesses and bits of grammar that I forgot, though the language more than suffices for its simple in-game uses. I am trying to make a complete lexicon of the entire language, but that is intensely boring, as it involves typing thousands of words into an Excel spreadsheet. Still, once it is done, I (and others) will be able to parse and amend the lexicon very easily.

Does anyone have any problems with the language? I thought the postpositions thing might be tricky for many people, as they are relatively uncommon. I suppose Finnish speakers would be overjoyed that I made the language that way, though.

I guess I could codify the other languages, but meh. Who cares about that sub-dwarven filth?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on February 20, 2019, 01:51:04 pm
I am also considering making a video or two which introduce and explain the language. Does that sound useful? It might be better than reading this long post... or maybe not?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: PlumpHelmetMan on February 20, 2019, 03:56:58 pm
This is really cool. Do you have any plans to codify the other languages in the game?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: FrankVill on February 20, 2019, 05:24:21 pm
Kutam suthan-geth Il'utan.
(I ran out of words!)

On a first impression, your post seems really intimidating. Although if somebody were a little interested in general Language structure, he could found it very instructive.
I am really not a fan of languages, specially when they are fictitious, so probably I won't write and read in Dwarven, but I have learnt a lot about concepts that you exposed. Besides, you explain it very well and in entertairning way.
I wanted to make a Dwarven sentence by myself for dedicating to you because of your hard work. It was very difficult to me and it made me to apreciate the merit that there is behind your post.

My sister has studied German and told me who nobody is able to notice when a question sentence is  or not a question one until finishing to read it completely. She also told me what some long words are really sentences because they are composed. For that reason, Dwarven remembers me to German.

(Sorry for my bad English, I'm Spanish and a bad English student).
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on February 20, 2019, 05:51:30 pm
This is really cool. Do you have any plans to codify the other languages in the game?

As I joked in my last post, I'm not very interested in codifying them. The in-game naming system is actually the same for every language, so the constructed grammar for all the other languages would have to be very similar to match the naming system. Since the dwarves are by far the most popular race and the namesake of the game, I think they are the only ones that merit codification.

Kutam suthan-geth Il'utan.
(I ran out of words!)

On a first impression, your post seems really intimidating. Although if somebody were a little interested in general Language structure, he could found it very instructive.
I am really not a fan of languages, specially when they are fictitious, so probably I won't write and read in Dwarven, but I have learnt a lot about concepts that you exposed. Besides, you explain it very well and in entertairning way.
I wanted to make a Dwarven sentence by myself for dedicating to you because of your hard work. It was very difficult to me and it made me to apreciate the merit that there is behind your post.

My sister has studied German and told me who nobody is able to notice when a question sentence is  or not a question one until finishing to read it completely. She also told me what some long words are really sentences because they are composed. For that reason, Dwarven remembers me to German.

(Sorry for my bad English, I'm Spanish and a bad English student).


Hmm... I'm not sure what you meant in Dwarven. Suthan? Did you mean ruin? Speaker ruin-past before-without?

I was worried that it would seem intimidating. That is why I am considering making a video. I probably will do that and put a link to it at the beginning of the post. Since I constructed the language, I know exactly how it works and can explain it rather quickly. I'm glad you learned about linguistics from this post! I tried to explain everything, even things that linguistics people would find too simple to merit explanation. Learning different grammar structures (even in fictitious languages) helps us understand language and grammar in general. Those noises we make with our mouths are strange indeed! Dwarven is a mix of English, German, Swedish, Finnish, Mandarin, and some Polynesian language I forgot the name of (that's where that "-long" construction for posession originated).

I speak German, so my choices of construction probably reflect that. In Spanish, the question marks are at the beginnings and ends of sentences, but in Dwarven there are no question marks at all! You have to see the "arg" at the end to know it's a question.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Hanslanda on February 20, 2019, 07:04:20 pm
This is intensely awesome.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: FrankVill on February 20, 2019, 07:29:47 pm
He he. In Spanish we usually say "Me he quedado sin palabras" for showing surprise. That's the reason why I was trying to say "I've get out of words" or "I'm Speechless" in Dwarven. But I had some problems when I couldn't found `to have´, `to get´, `to speech´, etc... So I tried to make Dwarven sentence with this another one: "I ran out of words".
Ah! ok, I just saw my mistake:
- First, I found `to ruin´ (Suthan) in DF Wiki and used it instead of `to run´(Rur).
- In other hand, I thought that found the word `word´ when actually was `wordy´(II). Mm, maybe I could take `noum´(kab) as synonym of `word´.
Let me try again:

Kutam rur-geth kab'utan
(I ran out of words)

Better, isn't it?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on February 21, 2019, 04:33:37 am
This is intensely awesome.

I'm glad you think so!


Kutam rur-geth kab'utan
(I ran out of words)

Better, isn't it?

It's grammatically better, but it doesn't mean what you are trying to say. In English, "run out of" doesn't mean that one literally runs from someplace by foot; it means that one has exhausted a supply of something. However, your Dwarven sentence uses "rur", which means run (as in a footrace, running with your feet). So, you said "speaker run-past name'without". This means "I ran without a name". I think you need to find some other way to say what you mean, like "I had no more words" "I found no more words" "There were no more words" "I used the entire supply of words" "I couldn't find the right word", etc.

Also, the video is being made. It's an informal discussion of the language that lasts about an hour. I wonder if that is also too intimidating.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Miuramir on February 21, 2019, 08:29:34 pm
Impressive and quite nifty.  I don't have either the time or skill to comment in detail, but wanted to make a few comments regarding numbers that I have thought about in the back of my head for a while. 

* Based on what we know about the way the bookkeeper keeps track of inventory, DF dwarves have a reasonably functional concept of significant figures and/or precision.  Dwarves have in game (and thus need a way to distinguish in their language) a difference between "2000" meaning "exactly 2000", meaning "anywhere from 1995 to 2004", meaning "anywhere from 1950 to 2049", and meaning "anywhere from 1500 to 2499".  Given the info we have, it is more likely that this is a following word or suffix meaning "approximately" rather than a word or suffix meaning "exactly"; and that it has a rounding / sig fig component.  Logically these would incorporate the words or endings for 1, 10, 100, 1000, and 10000 with some other word, possibly one related to skill, accuracy, precision, or length of work. 

* Current dwarves seem to mostly use base 10, but there are hints that "old dwarven" was based on base 8-with-zero (ie, values from 0 to 7, octal), as seen in things like water / magma depths, 7 dwarves being a "full team", and so on.  This *might* mean that the words for 9 and 10 are a bit different, being less ancient, and perhaps originally having been octal 11 and octal 12.  Compare from English which has gone the other way, "eleven" and "twelve" being different than "(foo)teen", hints of old systems based on 12, 60, and 360 still present in our modern languages and measures. 
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on February 22, 2019, 12:19:36 pm
I thought about making the number system not base ten, though I did not consider 7 specifically (I didn't even think about the depth of water and magma). I considered base 12, but I ultimately thought that would be too confusing for too many people. I'm terrible at math, and I'm certain there are many people who are even worse. Our current system is base ten, so I decided to just make the dwarven one like that too so people might actually use the language.

That point about "old Dwarven" being base 8 is very cool. However, I don't have a way to make the words "less ancient", as they are all my arbitrary inventions. This language is rather obviously constructed, as its grammar is too straightforward and its words have no etymologies. Ten is zez because I thought that sounded distinct, not because the language developed over hundreds of years. Perhaps we could excuse this by saying that the dwarven gods transferred the language to the first dwarves on tablets which perfectly preserved the language as the gods originally made it.

The significant figures idea is also cool and one I had not considered. Again, I think that would complicate the system too much, though I should probably add a word for "approximately" to the lexicon. I'm afraid of dissuading people from using the language. That would be like saying 20ish in English. I guess I could use the ever-useful "zott" word as a prefix or suffix. Zottnobizez = approximately 20. That sounds good. To the lexicon!
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: DwarfMines on February 23, 2019, 11:46:42 am
A simple question, why "stark" for "dwarf?"
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on February 23, 2019, 06:11:27 pm
I don't know. It sounded dwarfy, I guess. Like many words I invented, I had no planned pattern. Most of my chosen vocabulary seems to be vaguely Germanic, so maybe that is why it sounded appropriate.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Bumber on February 23, 2019, 08:30:09 pm
Old Norse term is "dvergr" (plural: "dvergar".)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Xantalos on February 23, 2019, 09:50:13 pm
My my, this is impressive! Leaving a post here so I can find it later.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: DwarfMines on February 23, 2019, 10:51:44 pm
Old Norse term is "dvergr" (plural: "dvergar".)

That would be cool.  :)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on February 24, 2019, 07:29:02 am
Old Norse term is "dvergr" (plural: "dvergar".)

Oooh. I like it. Armok has used his time powers to change the word for dwarf. It was never "stark". We have always been at war with Oceania!
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Bumber on February 24, 2019, 09:02:56 pm
Old Norse term is "dvergr" (plural: "dvergar".)

Oooh. I like it. Armok has used his time powers to change the word for dwarf. It was never "stark". We have always been at war with Oceania!
Not sure it fits their word style, though. Maybe just "dverg", or "dwerg".
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Schmaven on February 25, 2019, 08:48:07 pm
A simple question, why "stark" for "dwarf?"

Game of Thrones?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on February 26, 2019, 05:25:45 am
It's the German word for strong.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Sanctume on February 27, 2019, 05:16:43 pm
PTW.  This is interesting and masterful.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on February 28, 2019, 04:32:30 pm
I'm glad you like it!

Does anyone think I should edit the DF wiki page for the Dwarven language to include a reference to my codification? That seems a bit arrogant to me, but maybe my perspective is skewed.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Sanctume on February 28, 2019, 04:59:28 pm
I think it's good content and a unique opportunity for your specialty to add to DF.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Superdorf on March 09, 2019, 07:06:42 pm
So about the whole word-for-dwarf situation... I stumbled on an old thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=172226.0) discussing the topic. Might have some ideas worth stealing.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Loam on March 09, 2019, 07:33:22 pm
A link to the last of these type threads, for anyone interested. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=147824.0) I haven't worked on that project for a while, though, but FWIW my suggestions are there.

So, first: congratulations on your foray into "conlanging"; this your first one? It's reasonably complete (more complete than mine usually get), and simple enough to be picked up easily - though perhaps a bit too simple for its own good! That aside, it's an impressive amount of effort to put in, and you ought to be proud of your accomplishment.

I do, however, have a few problems with your construction of Dwarven. These have little, I think, to do with opinion (I personally prefer more synthetic languages myself, but I'll keep such suggestions to myself); these are problems that I think weaken your language and may ultimately undo it, on a structural level.

First - and this possibly strays into the realm of opinion - your appeal to the in-game use of language to find clues as to its construction. As you found out, there aren't (m)any. This is because the only thing the language is used for in-game is names, which (as I've said before) often follow unique conventions unrelated to the grammar/semantics of the language; if you expect to come up with a complete grammar for, say, Latin based on the names of Roman towns and rulers alone... well, you can see that wouldn't work. This also explains the paucity of the lexicon (language_DWARF): one doesn't often find prepositions and pronouns in names, so it's no surprise that they don't show up here. We might expect an analytic language to use a lot of pre-(or post-)positions/other function words; and as for pronouns... I don't know of any language that lacks them, certainly not 1st and 2nd person. I would suggest, if you're willing to invent a word for "dwarf," you can invent a word for "I" and "you" as well, whether or not it appears in the raws.

Second - you rely over-much on orthography to make meanings clear: capitalization of nouns, use of apostrophes to combine verb tenses, hyphens for combined numerals, and especially marking appositives with apostrophes. None of these would be viable in a real language for the simple reason that languages are spoken: if something doesn't sound different, it can't be distinguished from other things.
    Now you might think that, since no one's going to try to speak this language, that doesn't matter. I suppose that's true enough - but do you want to make a secret code for forumites, or an actual language that makes sense in the context of the world? Dwarves speak to each other after all - I doubt Dwarven is purely a written language.

Third and most important - you have not paid the least attention to Dwarven phonology! which is actually the easiest study to perform on the present lexicon, and one in which we can make some relevant observations, unlike in Dwarven onomastics.
    You say (to my chagrin) that pronunciation doesn't matter because the language only appears as text. Leaving aside my above comments on language vs. secret code, you needn't worry: phonology is not primarily concerned with the actual sounds produced (that's phonetics), but with the system of sounds in a language - what phonemes are understood? how do they work together? what are the constraints? These investigations ought to come before any suggestions of morphology or syntax: after all, you need to know what sounds are possible and meaningful before you can string them together. Again, we're not worried about pronunciation, which we can't discover anyway since we have no spoken samples, and no existing related languages to compare to. But we can still answer some phonological questions by turning to the lexicon...

Sparse as it is, language_DWARF actually does a good job of revealing Dwarven phonology. There are some 2,000+ lexemes listed, quite enough to make reasonably certain claims about all of Dwarven - at least in terms of what sounds appear where, and how often. As for what those sounds are... well, that's another (very interesting) question.

Let's start with some basic assumptions. We ought to assume a priori that 1) each letter (in some cases two letters, see below) corresponds to a distinct phoneme - there are no "silent letters," and no orthographic difference is made between merely allophonic sounds; 2) one letter does not represent two distinct phonemes, like Modern English c; 3) Modern English orthographic conventions have been applied where needed. Thus I submit that sh and th be taken as their English equivalents, as in sheep and thought respectively. We'll talk about ng later.
    Without these assumptions we couldn't really begin, and besides they seem reasonable enough. Let's move on.

Out of ~2,000 lexemes not a single one ends in a vowel. It would seem that Dwarven consists solely of closed syllables: we can see in the lexicon VC and CVC types, but no *V or *CV. We can take that as a phonological rule: all syllables must end in a consonant.

Dwarven phonology consists of 17 consonants:
    b  t d  c k g
    f v  th  s z  sh
    m  n  ng*
    l  r
  (*ng is of suspect value; see below)

Most common to least: s r l t n m k g d th b sh z ng v c f

Points of interest:
    1) no p to go with b. This is strange if b, d, g represent voiced stops, and t, k voiceless, as in English.
    2) actually, there's no voiced pair for c, th, or sh (sh isn't so surprising: that was the case in English for a long time).
    3) of voiced-voiceless pairs (again, based on English orthography) only k, g have similar distributions. s is almost 3x as prevalent as z, and t, v are ~1.5x as common as d, f.
    4) what is c anyway? It's not paired with anything else, and we already have k. Maybe an affricate, like English ch?
    5) the low occurences of v, c, f seem to be partially due to the fact that these consonants never appear finally.

What about consonant clusters? It seems anything is permissible at the syllable boundary (mab-dug "ale", as-dos "bad", nok-zam "battle" etc.); but as for "true" consonant clusters, I can only find one: <st>, attested both as syllable-initial (stalkòb "boil") and final (gast "cleave") [other instances like zustash are at syllable boundary: zus-tash].
    Geminates (doubled consonants) are attested, but only at the syllable boundary: they never begin or end a syllable. Gemination is possible for all consonants except c, f, v, th, and ng.
    ng could be a cluster (n + g, as English "finger"), or a single sound (as English "sing"). Evidence for the latter would be that ng appears initially and finally, but there are no comparable clusters *mb, *nt, or *nk (or *nc) in those positions, as we might expect. Evidence for the former would be the relatively low frequency of ng compared to other nasals (102 instances vs. n = 524, m = 518) and the lack of an attested geminate *ngng.


Now for vowels (25 phonemes):
    a â á à ä å
    e ê é è ë
    i î í ì ï
    o ô ó ò ö
    u û ú ù

Most common to least (by series/base glyph): a  o  i  e  u

Assuming each of those glyphs represents a distinct (if related) vowel sound, as I've said we should (why would they mark something that wasn't significant?), that's an immense vowel inventory. The basic glyphs (without accents) seem pretty regular; what could the accents mean, though?
    Unaccented glyphs vastly outnumber accented forms. We see 874 instances of unaccented a, compared to 130 instances of all accented a-forms combined. For each vowel "series", the unaccented form is ~88% of the total vowels, while accented forms make up just 12% (u is an outlier, with 91% accented and 9% un-, probably due to the smaller number of variants).
    As we can see, all vowels have the circumflex (â), acute (á) and grave (à) accents; a, e, i, and o have the diaresis (ä); and only a has the ring (å) (suggestively, perhaps, this averages to five forms per series - maybe å ought better to be ü, but that doesn't appear on the ASCII tileset?).
    The distributions of these accent marks are fairly regular: circumflex, diaresis, and ring hover between 3-4% of total series instances (high outliers are î at 4.7%, û at 4.5%). Acute and grave hover around 2%, a little more than half as common as the other accents (á and à are low outliers at 1.8% and 1.4% resp. - possibly their proportions are driven down by the (suspect) presence of å).
    What could these accents represent? I can't possibly answer that right now. That they could be tonal markers, as has been suggested, seems unlikely given how uncommon they are. More probably they represent regular alterations of the base vowels - prosodic features? length? pitch? - possibly conditioned by phonological environment or etymological origin. More study is needed, especially on what kinds of environments these glyphs appear in, but I'm not sure we'll ever know what they really represent.

What's the upshot of all this? Mostly, you should re-align your linguistic creations to match what we can glean about Dwarven phonology. We know syllables can't end in geminates, so we can't have *morr (more), *zott (hypothetical), *-akk and *-obb suffixes, etc. We only have one allowable cluster, st, so *shlis, *-arg, *sjun, *mfogz, etc., can't be Dwarven - and, unfortunately, neither can *dvergr.

NOW: none of that wall-o'-text was said (written?) to dishearten you - rather, to push you towards even more thorough investigations and compositions! If you pay more attention to the phonology, and largely ignore the very flat and un-linguistic way the language is used currently, I think you can come up with something not just fun to use, but a systematic element of a complete, coherent, and consistent world.


So about the whole word-for-dwarf situation... I stumbled on an old thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=172226.0) discussing the topic. Might have some ideas worth stealing.
I believe my suggestion was arkim "race (of people)"; a lot of ethnic groups IRL just call themselves "people," so the Dwarves could do that too. And if there's no singular/plural distinction in Dwarven, arkim can also mean just "person" - i.e. Dwarf.

The real question is: what do they call anyone else? "The tall ones" (humans)? "Green(-skins)" (goblins)? "Firewood" (elves)?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Superdorf on March 09, 2019, 08:50:53 pm
I do like "arkim". Nice sound, nice logic. It works.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Dragonsploof on March 10, 2019, 08:57:06 am
PTW
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on March 10, 2019, 11:11:09 am
I didn't know that other people have already collaborated on a similar project. Thanks for the link! What does FWIW mean? At first I was worried that my effort had been needless, but now I realize that there can be many codifications of Dwarven; each codification can be a "dialect". Perhaps Dwarven can be like "Chinese", in that it isn't really one language, but a group of closely related languages. I was hoping for community feedback to help improve the language. I was particularly aware that my invented words were unimpressive (I really liked mfogz, though!). Yes, this is my first attempt at inventing a language. I am not familiar with the term "conlang", though.

I know that names are not the best resource to use as a foundation, but they are the only one available for Dwarven. I wanted to make the codified language clearly identifiable with its in-game counterpart, so I used what was available to me. I recognize that the lack of pronouns is unusual, but I decided that it would just be a quirk of Dwarven. Everything being third-person is kind of fun, I think. Of course, I am familiar with only a few languages, but I'm sure there's something like this somewhere in this big world. As mentioned in the post, Kutam and Fmid work well enough as pseudo-pronouns.

My intent with this language was indeed to make a secret code for the DF-savvy, much like knowledge of what "candy" and "HFS" are. When composing its rules, I never even thought about phonetics or pronunciation. Now that you mention it, I agree that my codification is a bit too reliant on orthography. This isn't something I merely invented, though, and I disagree with you about things needing to sound different. German capitalizes nouns too. That's how one knows the difference between grün (green) and Grün (greenery, flora, plant life). Context is necessary to understand whether a noun or verb is meant when speaking, and the strict syntax of Dwarven serves as that context. The issue with appositions is clear to me, though. I'm not happy with what they became, and I wasn't sure how to incorporate them into sentences. The inability to include extra bits of information without starting another clause would make the language far too unwieldy, I think. I think pronunciation could clarify these things as well. Appositions might be spoken at a lower pitch or something like that. Maybe apostrophes are marked by a glottal stop.

You are right, I did not heed phonology. I know very little of phonology, so I could not have done it anyway. As I mentioned, I wasn't happy with my invented words, and I was worried they wouldn't sound sufficiently "dwarfy". I did notice that all the words ended in consonants, so I continued that trend. I am impressed by your knowledge of phonetics and your analysis of the data available from language_DWARF. I think you would be much better at inventing words than I, given your phonetic finesse! Dwarven lacks some very important concepts like "be" and "go", so some invention is necessary. I'll have to rework the suffixes, then. Do you have any suggestions for what to replace them with? I made double letters at the ends of grammar words to clearly mark them as such. I think conjunctons should be especially obvious. Perhaps I could just remove the repeated letters? That seems too simple.

Perhaps Dwarven has so many vowels because every vowel sound gets its own letter. If all of English's vowel sounds had their own letters, then it too would have many more letters for them than the current 5. Admittedly, 25 is still a very high number. Perhaps this also includes the possibility of dialectical variants? I did not assume that each letter was its own sound; I thought that some combinations were possible. For example, I imagined the "sj" in "sjun" as being pronounced like the second g in "garage". Still, I will fix the excessive consonant clusters. Again, I know very little of phonetics, so most of this never even occurred to me while codifying the language.

Also, I have made some words for the races. I like Arkim as dwarf. I looked in language_DWARF and made some compound words that seem appropriate. Omergedor (green evil) = goblin. Lolumevon (wood lover) = elf. Shukarishen (tall passion) = human.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Loam on March 10, 2019, 01:59:43 pm
FWIW = for what it's worth; conlang = constructed language, the usual term for these endeavors.

I probably got a bit carried away with my critique; linguistics is one of my few areas of semi-expertise, so I'm always excited when I have an opportunity to blather on about it. And sorry for jumping down your throat about phonology; I find Dwarven phonology fascinating (what's up with those vowels?) and I had a lot of info on-hand about it.

All third-person (or better yet, no marked person) is interesting, but if you want to keep it, I'd suggests dropping the pseudo-pronouns altogether. It just strikes me as unbelievable that a language would think it important to distinguish when the subject was the speaker/hearer, yet not have designated words for these subjects. Unless "speaker" and "hearer" were in the process of being "pronominalized" - perhaps a reduced form kut or kum would be in order? Frankly, stranger things have been known to happen with pronouns: the Old Norse indefinite pronoun nǫkkurr comes from a phrase meaning "I know not what kind": smiðr nǫkkurr "some smith/a certain smith (= I known not what smith)".

My issue on the orthography was, now that I think about it, really just with the appositives. German does, as you say, capitalize its nouns - so did English for a while, German just continued the practice; but even so that's not really a linguistic feature but an orthographic convention. However, as you point out, context serves to distinguish the meanings, and I think it's a good idea for words to be, in a certain sense, "malleable" - eshon could mean "good" or "goodness" depending on its place in the sentence, or somesuch. English does the same with many words (eg. "love"), though that's usually between nouns and verbs, not nouns and adjectives. We don't have as many substantives (adjectives used as nouns) in Modern English, but we used to - Beowulf, for instance, is often called se goda "the good (man)". We can still do this for abstract concepts ("the true, the good, and the beautiful") or collectives ("land of the free, home of the brave"), but not so much for single, concrete things.

On the issue of sentence structure generally: you might run into problems if the structure is too rigid. Even English is more fluid than people think; it sort of needs to be to be generative, especially in regard to phrases, subordinate and relative clauses, etc.
    Consider these arrangements of "The hero killed the dragon" (S=subject, V=verb, O=object):

        SVO: Hero kill dragon
        SOV: Hero dragon kill
        VSO: Kill hero dragon
        VOS: Kill dragon hero
        OSV: Dragon hero kill
        OVS: Dragon kill hero

SVO is, of course, the norm. VOS (killed the dragon, the hero did - Yoda-speak!) is understandable, if odd. SOV, I'd say, is understandable enough for an English speaker (the hero the dragon killed), but may cause confusion; at least the subject still comes first. VSO and OSV are maybe intelligible, but not as much: "killed, the hero, the dragon" sounds jumbled, while "the dragon the hero killed" is confusing. OVS is right out - "the dragon killed the hero" means the exact opposite of what we want it to.
    From this, I can see Dwarven having several different possible word-orders: SVO/SOV for the most used (these are the most common word orders IRL, across all languages, by some huge margin, like 90%), which probably means indicative, active, declarative sentences. VOS probably next most common (for emphasizing the action?); then maybe OSV in some rare constructions. VSO and OVS are probably too confusing to use without auxiliaries. That allows you 3-4 intelligible word orders, each of which could have a distinct grammatical meaning - this was the basis of my last attempt at Dwarven, so maybe I'm biased to the idea...
    This is, of course, assuming Dwarven has no case-markings whatsoever, even on pronouns (if there are pronouns). English can use potentially any one of these forms with pronouns, which mark subject or object: SOV "the hero him killed"/"he the dragon killed"; OSV "him the hero killed"/"the dragon he killed"; OVS "him killed the hero"/"the dragon killed he". These sound weird, but they are intelligible, thanks to case-marked pronouns. That's not saying you need cases or pronouns; just be aware (as you probably are) that simplicity in grammar comes at a cost of structural malleability - Dwarven poetry's gonna be hard.

I added some words of my own to Dwarven: "to be" was in, short and simple as it ought to be; "to go" was rud. Mostly some rules for word-creation would be 1) remember the phonemes/phonological rules, 2) avoid homophones, 3) try to fit the length/complexity of each word to the concept - a 12-letter word for "be" doesn't seem reasonable, since it's such an essential concept. Honestly the current lexicon is rather silly - why is there a unique word for "god-forsaken" in all four languages? - but that's what we've got.

As for the grammatical suffixes, you could probably just take off the doubled letter; but if you want to make new ones, I'd suggest giving language_DWARF a good look and maybe seeing what you can create from what's already there. IRL prepositions have some fascinating etymologies, so you can let your imagination run. Maybe, for instance, we can use a reduction of lînem "face": lîn or lîm "in front of (in space)" i.e. "facing" --> "in front of (in time)" i.e. "before"; possibly also --> "opposite" (one wall facing another), and thus --> "against" (if two people are fighting, they are usually facing each other).
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on March 10, 2019, 03:13:23 pm
I am glad that you became excited about the language; your critique is helpful, and I like encountering other linguistically minded people.

Yes, I would forget the pseudo-pronouns too. I do not recommend using them, but I realize that English speakers will want there to be some analogue with English rules, so I suggested Kutam and Fmid as possibilities. In a few of my examples I refer to the second person as reader instead of listener, so there is malleability there. I imagine that the language would eventually develop pronouns anyway (like with your example from Norse), and a word like Kutam would likely be one of the ones to become a pronoun. My codification is the language as handed to the first dwarves by the gods. What mutations come after that are none of my divine concern! The gods do seem pretty aloof, after all; all they do is curse statue-disturbers occasionally.

I really like that Dwarven words are not declined as verbs, nouns, etc. Like with my examples with Onol, there can be many fun possibilities. Urist onol-geth Mosus. Urist mountained Mosus. What does that mean? I don't know, but it probably wasn't good! I don't know what to do about appositions, though. They are currently quite awkward, albeit comfortably analogous to English appositions. What do you think could be done about them?

I thought about syntax a lot. I chose SVO because it was vaguely implied by the in-game nomenclature and because (this was the primary reason) English speakers would likely find it more comfortable. I did not want Dwarven to be so foreign that people would become dissuaded by its dissimilarity to English. I realize that most people are not linguists. Still, I understand your concern about excessive rigidity. I think SOV is actually possible, given how obvious the verb is with its tense marker and adverbs. "Urist deb-geth Shokmug" and "Urist Shokmug deb-geth" are both clear, I think, provided that the subject remains at the beginning. Still, this would face the German problem of verbs at the ends of clauses being confusing when the clauses are longer. Perhaps this abnormality could be saved for poetry. I reference German frequently because I deal with it frequently, and those cases are too much. There need not be six ways to say "the"! I gladly make Dwarven free of cases and pronouns.

I like rud as go. I'll adopt that. I think I'll keep var as be, though. I think it is more recognizable (beginning and ending with consonants, assuming the Dwarven R isn't too funky) and appears to be etymologically related to ver (become), which makes sense sematically. Yes, the complexity of a word should reflect its concept. I don't even like that my words for yes and no have two syllables, as that seems somewhat too complex for words that would be spoken so frequently, though this is far from unknown in real languages. Yes, the lexicon is rather silly. I suspect that it was somewhat arbitrarily and inconsistently produced, given that it is sometimes inconsistent and overly specific in certain areas while leaving other (far more important) concepts unmentioned. Further evidence of my suspicion is the fact that language_DWARF is alphabetical for a while, but then has many, many more words after Z that are not so organized.

I thought about doing something like that with postpositions, but I also wanted them all to begin with vowels, as they are affixed to words that end in consonants. I also wanted them to all be one or two syllables, meaning that I would have to trim other words so much that the etymology would no longer be apparent, making the effort pointless. I did take inspiration from the lexicon, though. For example, 'ist means against and is a part of Urist. We can imagine some kind of etymology there. I like your idea of developing those meanings from the word for face, but I think that would make the postpositions a bit unclear, as is sometimes true in English ("before" can mean "in front of" or "at an earlier time", so the sentence "I ran before him" is unclear and relies on context). I wanted to avoid such confusion by not combining the meanings unless they were very similar. Swedish has this problem too, as "i" and "på" have virtually identical (and very broad) meanings but are arbitrarily assigned to different (and not-so-different) contexts.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Taffer on March 10, 2019, 11:21:29 pm
In regards to the lack of vocabulary: have you seen GoblinCookie's Expanded Dictionary (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=172037.0)?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Loam on March 11, 2019, 02:55:14 pm
Okay, I've looked through your propositions again, and I have a more developed critique.

This started by trying to find a good way to do appositives. Here's my suggestion: do them like English, and just put them directly after the noun (subject or object) that they describe:
   Urist Obur vagúshgeth Måmgoz Arkimlur
   Urist hero kill-PAST dragon  dwarf-foe
   "Urist, the hero, killed the dragon, enemy of dwarves"
I'd say that's easily understandable. For clarity in writing we can put commas around them -- Urist, Obur, vagúshgeth Måmgoz, Arkimlur. -- but remember orthography =/= grammar. If something can't be understood when spoken, it shouldn't really be in the language.

This structure, however, necessitates some changes. Chiefly, unmarked dative (i.e. indirect object) won't work -- we had it following direct objects, but with the above appositive structure that would cause confusion (the hero killed the dragon for the enemy?). Similarly, unmarked genitives (possessives and "of ___" constructions) would no longer work as they do in DF names, by simply following the noun, for the same reason (Urist of the hero? The dragon of the enemy?).

My suggestion for both of these: again, do like English, and use some pre- or postpositions. You pretty much already do this with the possessive -long, so it's clearly not out of the question.

With that said, I'll submit the rest of my critique, following the order of your OP:


Nouns:
   Subject and (Direct) Object will be easy to identify in SVO order if the verb is always clearly marked, as currently it is (with tense, mood etc.). See the above example. SOV might also work, haven't tried it much.
   I already mentioned my genitive/dative suggestions.
   No number (singular/plural) is fine, can be marked by adjectives (many-, few-, etc.) or ignored.
   Re: nouns from verbs, I feel that agents and verbals (teach-er vs. teach-ing) should be distinguished (although language_words disagrees with me here), just for clarity's sake.


Adjectives:
   Names show adjectives are agglutinated to nouns; the head noun should always be the right-most element:
      [ADJ]+[ADJ]+[ADJ]+[HEAD NOUN]
   names also show that nouns can be appended like adjectives:
      libash-emar "axe-animal"
      this is probably a good way to make "genitives"
      such nouns go after all the adjectives; so, a Dwarven compound looks like:
         [ADJ]...+[NOUN]+[HEAD NOUN]
      datan-dastot "iron-sword" > "an iron sword"
      emen-datan-dastot "strong iron sword"
      emen-datan-råsh-dastot "strong iron death-sword"
   Problems:
      compounding could make it hard to use comparative forms marked with prefixes:
         tel-emen-nashon-dastot > "very strong" or "very bloody"?
      unless:
         emen-tel-nashon-dastot > "strong, very bloody sword"
   Adjectives probably follow an implicit order, like English: we don't say *"the green big tree" but "the big green tree". We aren't taught this order but we know it instinctively. I'll have to look up what it is.


Verbs:
   Marking tense will clearly mark verbs, which helps intelligibility with our strict word-order;
      if S and O are always separated by V+tense we can tell them apart
   Verbal babin ought to be "be friends with" rather than "befriend" - stative rather than transitive
   In your suggestion, the verb-phrase is like:
      [ADV]...+[HEAD VERB]+[TENSE]+[MOOD]
      this could work, but it might be better to keep the head verb in a designated position, like nouns are: left-most or right-most
         I say left-most: verb always begins the verb-phrase
         in which case, more important info should be closer to the verb; as you go outward it gets less "essential"
            so perhaps VERB-tense-mood-etc... (adv?)
   Adverbs are a notoriously difficult to classify: they're not really the "adjectives of verbs"; some adjust entire phrases rather than just the verb... It may be better to keep adverbs separate, since verbs have so much else going on.
      Adverbs also tend to be rather simple compared to adjectives
      I think using a suffix, like -ak, is simple and effective (if a bit boring)
   Passive Voice:
      could just be like English: to be + past participle
         varudiz deb(geth?)
         how are past participles formed? (predicate) adjectives...?
      but there's other options: maybe a verb "slot"? like:
         Shokmug debvergeth
         cheese  eat-PASS-PAST
         "Cheese was eaten"
         
         Shokmug debvergeth esmulak
         cheese eat-PASS-PAST full-ADV
         "The cheese was completely eaten"


Possessives: another problem with genitive constructions
   obviously Uristshokmug (Urist-cheese) is confusing: how do we know its not "dagger-cheese" (sharp cheddar)?
   -long could work, but I might put it on the possessor, not possessed:
      Shokmug Uristlong debvergeth
      "Urist's cheese was eaten"
      
   but some languages (Hebrew for one, I think) have a "construct state" that the possessed noun is put in, while the possessor is unmarked:
      Queen [of Sheba] / [Sheba's] Queen vs. [Queen of] Sheba / Sheba['s Queen]
   Something like this could yield:
      Mosus debgeth Shokmuglong Urist
      "Mosus ate Urist's cheese"
   Which is close to your suggestion. Your way is probably fine.
   But I think we need to address the broader question of how to mark genitives generally. Pre/postpositions are probably the best bet.


Question Words: let's wait on these - questions are wierd, and these involve pronouns


Numbers:
   The numerals are fine
   For numbers over 10:
      10+# = -teen: zeznir 11, zeznob 12 etc.
      #+10 = nobzez 20, mezzez 30, vorzez 40 etc.
      this is just like you have it, but without - and i (again, I'm trying to reduce purely orthographic distinctions).
      by this token, zezzez 100 (but maybe we need a special word for this)
      and so on...
   this, however, could cause confusion with compounding:
      Nob-zez-nir-ustos-arkim
      two-ten-one-angry-dwarf
      "Twenty-one angry dwarves" - I guess it's clear enough
      #s should always be the first adjective(s) in a compound
      
   ordinals: just -t will create unacceptable clusters (*nirt, *zezt), but something like -it could work; perhaps the -i- could be "fleeting" and disappear if not needed, as in:
      Nirtonol "first mountain" - -onol takes the -t- to make correct syllable onset
      but Niritdastot "first sword" - -dastot refuses -t- as syllable onset, so -i- needed
   that's probably too confusing, though


Particles and Conjunctions:
   only thing I'd say here is: these don't need endings to "make them particles/conjunctions" - they should be their own semantic category
   (most should be monosyllabic as well)


Example Sentence: deliberately convoluted, trying to stress-test:

urist arkimobur telemendatandastotesh nogleshak vagúshudizzilir nobzeznirustosomerlur kodoravor

Urist dwarf-hero most-strong-iron-sword-with savage-ADV kill-PRES-"must" two-ten-one-angry-green-foe dawn-before

"Urist, the dwarven hero, with his very strong iron sword savagely must kill twenty-one angry green enemies before dawn."

(NB: I used -zilir imperative as a "must" mood, designating obligation)
Note the lack of orthographic markings to distinguish nouns, verb tense/mood, postpositions, etc. I think it's clear enough without these, which is good. But they can easily be put back in for extra (written) clarity:

Urist Arkimober Telemendatandastot'esh nogleshak vagúsh-udiz'zilir Nobzeznirustosomerlur kodoravor.

Doesn't look (or sound) too bad.


Now, what we've got here is almost an English-cipher; I think there's much more we could do to make Dwarven more unique without straying into the realm of "too weird for non-linguists to want to learn". Mostly stuff with verbs; then there's idiomatic constructions to account for, etc. But this is good so far. What'd'ye think?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Sanctume on March 11, 2019, 04:44:15 pm
I speak Tagalog which is a dialect in the Philippines. 
My best friend wanted to practice speaking, and asked about how verbs are transformed.

Then without really knowing how I knew, I deciphered something in the language at least when it came to verbs.

Example the word "eat" (English) | ka-in (Tagalog, 2 syllables without the dash) | debgeth (Dwarf)

Eat. | Kain. | Debgeth
English: "You eat."  or "Eat." - a command to act, implied to who the speaker is speaking to (you).
Tagalog: "Kain." or "Kain ka." - ka is word for you.
Dwarf: "Debgeth." or "You degbeth."

Past tense, I observe was adding "um" between first letter and second letter.
Ate | Kumain | Dumebgeth
English: "I ate."
Tagalog: "Kumain ako." - ago is work for me.
Dwarf: "I Dumebgeth."

Future tense, I observe was prefixing the first syllable to the word.
I will eat.
Kakain ako.
I deddebgeth.

Present tense, I observe was prefixing with (the first syllable twice with "um" between first letter and second letter.)
I am eating.
Kumakain ako.
I am dumeddebgeth.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on March 11, 2019, 05:18:02 pm
I note that some of your suggestions are already in the codification.

Appositions can be like surnames! That occurred to me as I was reading your suggestion. John Smith = John the smith, John who is a smith. I like where you put it syntactically, but I think an orthographic distinction is necessary, otherwise syntax becomes confusing. Commas or apostrophes are fine. The way I originally codified it is ok, then. Besides, I think these could be marked in speech with a pause and tonal shift. That seems reasonable.
I think you example was a bit needlessly confusing, though. Arkimlur could mean dwarven foe, as "arkim" could be taken as an adjective of "lur". I would say either 1) Lur-longArkim (foe belonging to dwarves) or 2) Lur, Arkim'ist, (foe against dwarves). I agree that this could be marked with postpositions, and it can be so marked with the ones I supplied.

I think an unmarked dative object is fine, as it actually is marked with postpositions most of the time. That would be necessary anyway, and people would want to do that to clarify meaning.

The problem with agents seems unsolvable, given how inconsistent language_DWARF and language_words are. Some of the words defy codification. Perhaps we could treat those as exceptions to the rule. Perhaps we could mark agents with an -ark ending as a shortened form of arkim. So Amalark (teach person) is teacher. Does that sound good?

Yes, adjective order is important, as I noted. The first adjective is the most important, and the last adjective is the least important. "tel" is placed before whatever it modifies. I think the verb position needs to stay as I have it, as it becomes too confusing otherwise. Sometimes adverbs are just the adjectives of verbs, so they should be treated like the adjectives of nouns. I think the - before the tense marker would be pronounced as a pause or glottal stop, so orthographically representing it is sensible. Adverbs that aren't merely the adjectives of verbs can either go into that "extra information" area at the end of the clause or be agglutinated onto something if that is really necessary.

The passive construction needs to remain the same as the adverb construction, so verdeb-geth needs to be correct, not debver-geth. "Debver" would be eat-become, the become of eating. To me that implies that eating causes some kind of transformation. When I am hungry, I can use pizza to eat-become full.

Meh, babin can be either, depending on context. It is vague anyway. Like with Onol as a verb, context is necessary to understand what it is supposed to mean.

-long being on the possessor or possessed makes no difference, I think, given that they remain together in the word and the syntax is unaffected. Shokmug-longUrist and Shokmug-Uristlong are both intelligible and almost the same, so I don't think it matters. The postposition 'ar means of / from, so it and -long can be used to mark possession / genitive things.

The -i- in numbers is not purely orthographic; it is pronounced. Furthermore, the - is necessary to distinguish powers of ten. Each - is a step down. Without it, reading numbers becomes very confusing, as there is just a big jumble of nobzeznirzeznobzeznobfim. Also, there is a word for 100: zezbog! I made it for exactly that reason. Why are nirt and zezt unacceptable? Why can there be to t before dastot? Just enunciate; finish saying the t, then say the d. I think the variable -i- is definitely too confusing. Swedish does something like that with its numbers: trettio = 30, trettioett = 31. In trettio, the o is pronounced, while in 31 it is not pronounced... sometimes. It is inconsistent and confusing.

I think you're right: conjunctions should be monosyllabic. Mine are too long, and I realized that they can never be agglutinated, so their status as tiny words by themselves would make them obvious enough. I will change them. I like eshob and asdob, though. I think eshob is easy to say and is believable as a yes word. I imagine that either the s or d in asdob would disappear at some point.

Also, tel is a superlative marker, so telustos does not mean "very angry", but rather "angriest / most angry". I do not like your deliverately difficult stress-test because it breaks the syntax. All the extra information belongs at the end of the sentence, after the object. Also, imperative forms necessarily can only be second-person, so using it as "must" seems weird to me. I think must should be its own word. My "havt" is arbitrary, though. I think we could develop something better than that.

To Sanctume:

I don't like that suggestion because it is declination, which Dwarven doesn't do. Also, Dwarven words never end in vowels, so that system would produce many awkward consonant clusters. With the current agglutinative system, your Tagalog suggestion would make verbs very difficult to read.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Loam on March 12, 2019, 11:48:12 am
I note that some of your suggestions are already in the codification.
Yeah, they were really just notes I was taking as I read, so I was just hashing some things out.

Quote
I think you example was a bit needlessly confusing, though. Arkimlur could mean dwarven foe, as "arkim" could be taken as an adjective of "lur". I would say either 1) Lur-longArkim (foe belonging to dwarves) or 2) Lur, Arkim'ist, (foe against dwarves). I agree that this could be marked with postpositions, and it can be so marked with the ones I supplied.
You're spot-on about Arkimlur, thanks for catching that. It ought to mean "a foe who is a dwarf," in fact; Arkimetar "dwarf-king" = "king who is a dwarf (or at least rules dwarves...?)". That just goes to show why a well-marked genitive is important. Your suggestions are both good.

Quote
I think an unmarked dative object is fine, as it actually is marked with postpositions most of the time. That would be necessary anyway, and people would want to do that to clarify meaning.
Well, yeah, it would be marked (with prepositions), and therefore not "unmarked." It doesn't need a case-ending, if that's what you mean; it just needs to be differentiated from DO or S by something other than position (if we do appositives in the above way). So this is fine.

Quote
The problem with agents seems unsolvable, given how inconsistent language_DWARF and language_words are. Some of the words defy codification. Perhaps we could treat those as exceptions to the rule. Perhaps we could mark agents with an -ark ending as a shortened form of arkim. So Amalark (teach person) is teacher. Does that sound good?
This is the reason I choose to ignore the way words are actually used in-game, because it just makes no sense. But yeah, exceptions to a rule sounds good. Marking agents is fine, but (and I'm gonna get phonological again) we can't use -ark because -rk is not an allowed cluster in final position (remember, attested Dwarven only allows -st). -ar could work (and sounds like English -er), but we might take some inspiration from the lexicon here. Note that "hammer" is nil, while "hammer-er" is ùnil - does this suggest Dwarven uses a prefixed ù to mark agents (maybe ùn if the noun begins in a vowel)? On the other hand, since "hammerer" has strong cultural connotations to Dwarves, perhaps this is only a survival of an old, no longer productive agentive prefix?

Quote
I think the verb position needs to stay as I have it, as it becomes too confusing otherwise. Sometimes adverbs are just the adjectives of verbs, so they should be treated like the adjectives of nouns. I think the - before the tense marker would be pronounced as a pause or glottal stop, so orthographically representing it is sensible. Adverbs that aren't merely the adjectives of verbs can either go into that "extra information" area at the end of the clause or be agglutinated onto something if that is really necessary.
Whether or not adverbs are "adjectives of verbs," verbs are not nouns: there is no morphological reason that verbs should be modified in the same way as nouns, and in fact (in my opinion) there is morphological reason to modify them in a different way - to help distinguish verbs from nouns. But, it's not really a big deal. We can keep them on the front of the verb.
I have thoughts about the "other information" area that I'll give below.

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The passive construction needs to remain the same as the adverb construction, so verdeb-geth needs to be correct, not debver-geth.
I disagree. Passive voice is not adverbial: "becomely eat" does not mean the same as "become eaten." Why not use another verb "slot" like I suggested: we already have tense and mood, why not voice?
    [ADV]... + [VERB] + [TENSE] + [VOICE] + [MOOD]  or something like that.
You could mark these with orthography if you want, but I think the meaning is clear even without that.

Quote
"Debver" would be eat-become, the become of eating. To me that implies that eating causes some kind of transformation. When I am hungry, I can use pizza to eat-become full.
I think you misunderstand what I'm doing. I'm proposing different systems than you did; in this case I was 1) not appending adverbs to the front of verbs, 2) using -ver- solely as a passive-voice marker. There would be no confusion; saying there would be confusion in your system is beside the point, because I'm not talking about that.

Quote
-long being on the possessor or possessed makes no difference, I think, given that they remain together in the word and the syntax is unaffected. Shokmug-longUrist and Shokmug-Uristlong are both intelligible and almost the same, so I don't think it matters. The postposition 'ar means of / from, so it and -long can be used to mark possession / genitive things.
All good.

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The -i- in numbers is not purely orthographic; it is pronounced. Furthermore, the - is necessary to distinguish powers of ten. Each - is a step down. Without it, reading numbers becomes very confusing, as there is just a big jumble of nobzeznirzeznobzeznobfim. Also, there is a word for 100: zezbog! I made it for exactly that reason.
Yeah, I knew it was pronounced, I just wanted to see if we could do without it. It's fine, though; I just wouldn't say it expresses "multiplication" just because I don't think languages work like that - would mezivor mean twelve? It seems better to use it just to mark multiples of ten: nobizez, mezizez, vorizez, etc.
I just wanted to avoid orthographic markers if at all possible, for the reason (which I'm sure you're tired of hearing) that, IMO, things need to be understandable by sound, not sight. Orthography can help clarify written things, but it can't be the sole source of distinction. I think the hyphens could (and probably should) be kept in, as they do help clarify, and in spoken Dwarven there'd still be little/no confusion: we readily say "one thousand two hundred fifty three" and understand it well.
I meant a word for 100 that wasn't related to the word for 10 (zez), like "hundred" in English. Just for clarity's sake.

Quote
Why are nirt and zezt unacceptable? Why can there be to t before dastot? Just enunciate; finish saying the t, then say the d. I think the variable -i- is definitely too confusing. Swedish does something like that with its numbers: trettio = 30, trettioett = 31. In trettio, the o is pronounced, while in 31 it is not pronounced... sometimes. It is inconsistent and confusing.
Phonological reasons, again. Nirtdastot produces a three-consonant cluster, -rtd-, and we know that the only three-consonant clusters Dwarven allows are -st+C- or -C+st-, because -st is the only true cluster allowed. Cf. selsten "bother" and thestkig "conflagration" (Unless we count ng as a cluster: shungmag "disgust"). Yes, you and I can enunciate -rtd-, but it would seem that the Dwarves can't.
And yes, the variable -i- is confusing; I only suggested it for fun.

Quote
Also, tel is a superlative marker, so telustos does not mean "very angry", but rather "angriest / most angry".
Superlatives can mean "very" sometimes, like in Latin, especially if they're not used in comparisons. Besides, I didn't want to come up with another word for "very" on the fly. I think it works fine.

Quote
I do not like your deliverately difficult stress-test because it breaks the syntax. All the extra information belongs at the end of the sentence, after the object.
Again, I wasn't using your syntax; in fact I was trying to show that you didn't need all the "extra information" to come at the end in order for the sentence to be understandable. I think it's extremely useful to have parts of the sentence - prepositional phrases, phrases of time, etc. - appear in different places depending on emphasis or somesuch. In my suggestion Telemendatandastot'esh "with a very strong iron sword" and kodor'avor "before dawn" could be shuffled around to emphasize different aspects:

     Kodor'avor Urist vagúsh-geth Omerlur Telemendatandastot'esh.
     Here the emphasis is on when the action occurred ("before dawn").

     Telemendatandastot'esh Urist vagúsh-geth Omerlur Kodor'avor.
     And here, on the manner or by what means the action occurred ("with a very strong iron sword").

     Kodor'avor Telemendatandastot'esh Urist vagúsh-geth Omerlur.
     And here, on both.

All of these example, I submit, are just as understandable as Urist vagúsh-udiz Omerlur Kodor'avor Telemendatandastot'esh, following your syntax, because the prepositional phrases are clearly marked (with 'avor and 'esh); they cannot be confused with the subject (Urist) or object (Omerlur), which are unmarked; and these cannot be confused with each other, so long as they stay on either side of the (marked) verb. Appositives, being likewise unmarked, would also not cause confusion.

Again, I stress, I was not using your syntax; I was trying to demonstrate a different (and I think better) way that sentences could be arranged without causing confusion. This really doesn't differ from your suggestion all that much: I have merely used your post-positions to free up parts of the syntax I found needlessly restrictive. As long as something's function is marked morphologically, there's no reason for it to be marked syntactically as well.

Now, one might say that "proper" Dwarven prefers such "extra info" at the end of a sentence; that's okay. But it doesn't need to be there.

Quote
Also, imperative forms necessarily can only be second-person, so using it as "must" seems weird to me. I think must should be its own word. My "havt" is arbitrary, though. I think we could develop something better than that.
Again, I was adjusting your suggestions to meet my own needs. It occurred to me that, rather than an imperative "form," Dwarven could have a form expressing necessity or obligation - hence "must" - that, when used with an unstated "you" could function as an imperative:
     Deb-zilir Shokmug! "Eat cheese!"
With no other stated subject, this sentence wouldn't be confused with any other form.

However, it's not important. I was just making an off-the-cuff example, and rather than come up with a new word for "must" I just used your imperative. I'm not attached to the above usage, I just thought it up on the spur of the moment. Now that I think about it it has some issues, so probably a distinct imperative is in order.

(and havt couldn't work for, again, phonological reasons; plus, /h/ isn't in the Dwarven consonant inventory. kast might do.)


@Sanctume: while I love infixes myself, they don't work if we take Dwarven to be an agglutinating, mostly analytic language. Also, most forumites (presumably English-speakers) would find them strange, and the idea was to keep Dwarven approachable for everyone. A good suggestion nonetheless.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on March 12, 2019, 01:52:14 pm
I'm glad that we agree on so much. I don't think I need to respond to a lot of it, given that I agree.

I still just don't understand the consonant cluster thing, but I trust that you know what you mean. At the boundaries between the components of compound words can be almost any combination, so Dwarves could clearly pronounce these clusters. There are plenty of funky in-game names, after all. The "ark" in arkim can be pronounced at the beginning, so why not at the end? I don't mean to say that you are wrong; I mean that I don't understand. The ún prefix seems ok, though. However, I think many people would not know how to type ú.

Ah, I see what you are saying about the passive voice now. Yes, using ver like a tense marker makes more sense to me. Let's do it that way. Urist deb-geth'ver Shokmug. Urist became eaten by cheese. Perfect! I did not realize you were using syntax outside of my rules. Now that you mention it, I suppose these other constructions make sense, and I like your idea that they would be possible, but not "proper". Much like how "The dog a ball I gave" is intelligible but strange. Such constructions would be reserved for poetry or orators, I think. Changing word order for emphasis seems like something a poet would do anyway, even if the syntax were rigid.

I guess we could make a word not based on ten for "hundred". After all, the English word hundred has a pretty funky etymology. Suggestions?

Sure, let's remove havt and make some other way of expressing "must". I feel like we could either make it its own verb or a tense marker. Maybe all the modal verbs could be tense markers instead of verbs, though I think that might be too confusing.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Loam on March 12, 2019, 03:38:07 pm
Okay, I'll try to explain the consonant clusters in more depth:

Dwarven syllables are of two types: VC and CVC, where C and V represent a single consonant/vowel each. We can see these in monosyllabic words: ím "bread", cog "boot".
The only time we find monosyllables that begin or end with two consonants, those two consonants are st: stal "bust", ùst "breach". Thus, we can say that C can also be st, but not any other cluster - because no others are found in the lexicon (again, this depends how you analyze ng; I take it as a single consonant).

Of words with two syllables we find these types: VC-VC, VC-CVC, CVC-VC, and CVC-CVC. These are all the possible combinations of the two attested syllable types. Thus ok-on "burden", eb-sas "candy", sal-ul "skin", min-baz "enchant". Note that sal-ul, not *sa-lul, because *CV is unattested.
Now, at first glance a word like minbaz may seem to contain a cluster: -nb-. But look at the syllables: min-baz = CVC-CVC. This kind of clustering happens only at the syllable boundary. You can look through the lexicon and see for yourself. The ark- of arkim is the same way: ar-kim.
So, Dwarven allows any cluster (of two consonants) at syllable boundaries, but nowhere else. As we said, st can be used for C in either of our syllable types: so we can even have est-stek "flea" with four consonants in a row, but that's as much as we get.

The position of a cluster is important. Think about English: a word like expose contains a medial -xp- cluster. And we can pronounce that no problem. But we don't have words like *xpas or *laxp; and maybe we can pronounce these, but we find it hard, hard enough to keep such clusters, in initial or final position, out of our language. French and Spanish really didn't like initial st-, sp-, or sc-, hence words like escuela for "school", Esteban for "Stephen", and our borrowed especial for "special". The e- was added to change the syllable boundaries, making these clusters easier to pronounce. And other languages are extremely intolerant of clusters: in Japanese the only syllable types are CV or CVn; you might get a -nts- cluster medially, but no Japanese word starts or ends with that.

So yes, Dwarves can pronounce -rk-, and many, many other clusters, but only at the syllable boundary. In initial or final position -- that is, wherever there's a C in the above syllable diagrams -- only one cluster is allowed: st. This can all be observed in the lexicon, I made none of this up. It seems weird to us, but we're not Dwarves.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on March 13, 2019, 02:46:51 am
I never would have noticed any of this, given my lack of knowledge about phonetics. I recognize that languages have patterns, and I wil try to heed the Dwarven patterns when making words. Still, there are many words in real languages that don't match the patterns. German has so very many anglicisms that do not follow German phonetic patterns, yet are still in the langauge. The "th" sound does not exist in German words, yet it is still spoken in German. I think phonetic boundaries are more "soft" restrictions than "hard" restrictions, in that they can be exceeded, though it is recognizably foreign. Anyway, I'll think about this when making words, though I probably will still accidentally break the rules occasionally.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Loimulohi on March 14, 2019, 03:46:54 am
Huh. I found a lot of Swedish but I didn't find the Finnish despite it being my mother tongue. That's weird :D
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Miuramir on March 25, 2019, 10:55:19 pm
...
The only time we find monosyllables that begin or end with two consonants, those two consonants are st: stal "bust", ùst "breach". Thus, we can say that C can also be st, but not any other cluster - because no others are found in the lexicon (again, this depends how you analyze ng; I take it as a single consonant).

Again, not an expert, but does that imply that in some form of Dwarven, "st" was / is a ligature, digraph, or additional character? 
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on March 27, 2019, 03:50:19 pm
If we assume that every sound has its own letter, but we don't really know if that's the case.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Loam on March 27, 2019, 05:25:18 pm
Again, not an expert, but does that imply that in some form of Dwarven, "st" was / is a ligature, digraph, or additional character? 

Not necessarily, it's just a phonemic cluster: it's not actually one sound. It's not even an affricate, like ts or ch (tsh), but rather two distinct sounds pronounced together, just like it is in English.
My explanation above was extempore and not very accurate: technically we should say Dwarven allows a syllable (C)(C)VC(C) -- but, since the only onset/coda (i.e. not at the syllable boundary) cluster allowed is <st>, it seemed easier to paraphrase, to avoid confusing anyone.

As far as orthography: we can't know for certain, having no samples, but it does seem odd that Dwarven allows just this one cluster. Perhaps it had some phonological significance, enough to be written with a single character. But that's all conjecture.

Another question is: how do we analyze <st> when it appears at the syllable boundary? E.g. in dastot "sword" -- is that dast-ot (with cluster) or das-tot (without)? This affects our understanding of the frequency of individual phonemes.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: therahedwig on March 30, 2019, 01:52:07 pm
I am pretty sure the only reason the languages are agglutinative right now is because it is the easiest to code, so just keep that in mind when trying to decipher/construct an extension for Dwarven language.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: LordBalkan on April 11, 2019, 07:31:44 pm
Posting to Watch Read
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on April 12, 2019, 09:24:47 am
I'm rather satisfied with the language at the moment, and people don't seem to be that interested (with the notable exception of Loam and his phonetic knowledge), so I imagine it will be in stasis unless it finds some use or popularity.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Superdorf on April 12, 2019, 09:46:33 am
Oh, I'm extraordinarily interested. I just haven't had anything to say! It's all been so over my head... I'm no linguist.

Is there anything in particular you want the playerbase here to do? What's left to investigate?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on April 12, 2019, 10:32:08 am
I don't know. Use it, I guess. The language seems mostly functional. I assumed that people would try to use it and quickly find problems. "Hey, I coulnd't find a way to say X." I think it really only has much use in role playing threads and things like that. Maybe Kruggsmash could say a sentence or two of it in a video.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: voliol on April 13, 2019, 03:30:55 pm
Let's see what we can do!

Mistêm hav-geth estnebïn
Razes-long nebïn var-geth volal nekikudar'osh
Nos Mistêm berdan-shoveth mosus'ishob   
Nebïn berdan-shoveth dogak

Nebïn oltud-geth Mistêm turelmafol'ishob niralodak
Toral okab-geth-ver
Tilat kal-geth lok titthal-geth
Nitem nebïn turelmafol'ok

Mistêm have-past little|lamb
Hair-gen. lamb is-past white cold|rain'as
If Mistêm walk-hypothetical room'into
Lamb walk-hyp. there

Lamb stalk-past Mistêm learn|chamber'into one|day|adv.
Law break-past-passive
Child smile-past and play-past
See lamb learn|chamber'in

Mary had a little lamb
Whose fleece was white as snow
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go

It followed her to school one day
Which was against the rules
It made the children laugh and play
To see a lamb at school

From this attempt at translating "Mary had a little lamb", I had one main problem, pronouns.
Not having any pronouns is tricky, not because you could save a few syllables by writing mono-syllabic pronouns instead of "Mistêm" and "nebïm", but because you can't really refer things such as clauses. "Toral okab-geth-ver"(Law break-past-passive) is an active clause in the original. Also, not having words for "anywhere" or even "any" forced me to rewrite those lines. It's still possible, most of this, but it feels limiting not being able to refer back onto what has been written earlier.
I am sorry for the bad usage of proper orthography.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Laterigrade on April 25, 2019, 01:44:06 am
This is incredible! Although, considering the player-base and the people who frequent this forum, Fmidnikot-geth-zilir.

(D’you reckon that’s right?)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on April 25, 2019, 09:27:14 am
Voliol: I like the attempt! I'm not sure if "Lamb walk-hyp. there" is a way to translate "that lamb was sure to go", as the original text states that the lamb will definitely go, while the translation means that the lamb might go. If there isn't a word for "certainly" or "surely", then we could probably just make one by turning an adjective into an adverb. Still, I like that you tried to use it! I especially like your attempt to translate "snow". I think we could just invent a word for that, as I can't imagine Dwarven lacking a word for something so basic. Yes, the lack of pronouns forces you to structure things differently. That's the point! It can't just be an English analogue. If things could be translated word-for-word, then it would hardly feel like a different language. I also am uncertain on how to translate "which was against the rules". Dwarven isn't very syllabically concise.

Laterigrade: Heareraction-past-imperative? I don't understand. I like that you think it's incredible, though!

Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: voliol on April 25, 2019, 01:12:35 pm
Oh, I couldn't find any way to write "the lamb was sure to go", so I rewrote the whole sentence. Notice the conditional "if" at the start of the row above.
If Mistêm were to go somewhere, then the lamb would go there (as well). The hypothetical is there because we're talking about a hypothetical situation, and as this language has a hypothetical mood I thought it be best I used it.
Though I might be confusing hypothetical mood (which wikipedia defines as "didn't happen but could have") with conditional mood ("if a certain condition is met"). Note that conditional moods are sometimes expressed in both the "if" and the "then" statements.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Laterigrade on April 25, 2019, 07:35:49 pm
Laterigrade: Heareraction-past-imperative? I don't understand. I like that you think it's incredible, though!
I was trying to create ‘it was inevitable’ — would past-imperative work for ‘was inevitable’? Maybe Geth-zilir could work, if we capitalise Geth, making it past(ly)-imperative (or, imperative in the past — inevitable) rather than past-imperative. And Fmidnikot-geth works pretty well for ‘it was’.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Brutaka001 on April 28, 2019, 10:39:41 pm
Honestly, I have been searching for pre-made languages for my D&D sessions. I didn't want to use any of Tolkein's because everybody would know it and it's source. The fact that this is not as well-known but even shows the rules on how to speak and right it it AMAZING.

The only qualm I have with it all is the lack of a script. But because of it being represented to us non-dorf humans, it has to be romanized for us to understand so I can understand why it doesn't have one. Because of the fact that the dwarves in game have the tendency to carve pictures of their history instead of a generalized libraries, makes me think that the actual language itself has no script. The numbers would need some though just to show the book keeping part for trading.

Since their writing medium would be stone, because paper comes from trees and they are NOT elves, carving would be obvious. Hard, straight lines would be almost always dominant with almost little to know curves. Runic scripts it is lol
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: voliol on April 29, 2019, 02:22:17 am
Honestly, I have been searching for pre-made languages for my D&D sessions. I didn't want to use any of Tolkein's because everybody would know it and it's source. The fact that this is not as well-known but even shows the rules on how to speak and right it it AMAZING.

The only qualm I have with it all is the lack of a script. But because of it being represented to us non-dorf humans, it has to be romanized for us to understand so I can understand why it doesn't have one. Because of the fact that the dwarves in game have the tendency to carve pictures of their history instead of a generalized libraries, makes me think that the actual language itself has no script. The numbers would need some though just to show the book keeping part for trading.

Since their writing medium would be stone, because paper comes from trees and they are NOT elves, carving would be obvious. Hard, straight lines would be almost always dominant with almost little to know curves. Runic scripts it is lol

Dwarven civs definitely have libraries with books in them, and considering they tend to prefer underground farming, most non-imported books should be made of pig tail paper. Stones carvings are equally likely to have some kind of script, considering dwarves carve slabs in addition to their crafts and engravings.
Really, it depends on how long the dwarves have been using either method, and where they got them from. They could use their own runes for carving, and human letters for writing, or identical runes for both carving and writing, or different versions of their own runes adapted after the materials, with more shortcuts/curves being used in the writing.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on April 29, 2019, 03:53:40 am
You want to use this for D&D? Great! Yes! Please do that! Indeed, there is a lack of a script. I like to imagine that dwarves have a system like the ancient Egyptians: fancy hieroglyphs for carving and painting + simpler scribbles for ordinary bookkeeping. Also like ancient Egypt, I expect that almost no dwarves would know the writing system, as it is only useful for the recordkeepers and nobility. Ordinary dwarven farmers and smiths probably would be illiterate and rely on carved pictures, hence their proclivity for etching.

If you want a script for Dwarven, I recommend using Anglo-Saxon runes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_runes

ᚢᚱᛁᛋᛏ ᛞᛖᛒ-ᚷᛖᚦ ᛋᚻᚩᚳᛗᚢᚷ.
Urist deb-geth Shokmug.
Urist ate cheese.

Interestingly, I needed to render the "sh" in "shokmug" as two sounds instead of one, as Old English did not have our "sh" sound, apparently. So the S and H are pronounced separately. I think that sounds better, actually. Instead of saying Shokmug with the SH sound, say it with the S sound followed by the H sound.

I think those would look good in some D&D material, and they are different enough from Latin letters to not be immediately recognizable. Moreover, they were actually used by real people for centuries, so they seem more authentic than something wholly fabricated by some nerd at a computer.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Brutaka001 on April 29, 2019, 09:08:53 pm
I actually JUST found that the Dwarves in D&D have their own set of runes, but no actual language other than a cypher for DMs to use with their group. Now that I have all these rulings, I can use both to actually flesh out the race alot more than the game has at default.
A link to the runes are here: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Dethek

Because of the way that modern languages work, [th] sound as in "think" and [th] sound as in "this" are extremely rare. So i "think" that those sounds should be omitted from the phonology of Dwarven if it is included, I honestly can't remember (there was alot).
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Carfter on May 01, 2019, 09:43:26 pm
Just posting because i find this incredibly interesting. Thanks for taking the time to do this and i wish you all the best in creating a sort of "lexicon" for reference.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Superdorf on May 01, 2019, 09:54:19 pm
DF humans, elves, and goblins do nearly as much writing as dwarves, and tend not to engrave stuff. I expect dwarves would use runic on stone surfaces and whatnot, but they might plausibly borrow the script of another race for books and paperwork.

Concerning literacy (or lack thereof): In Fortress Mode, all dwarves will read and understand books and scrolls in a library, regardless of actual reading skill. Maybe they learn as children? I dunno. At any rate, most everybody appears to be at least somewhat literate from an early age.

------------------------------

So, random question: by this codification, how would y'all translate the proverb "This too shall pass" into Dwarfish?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on May 02, 2019, 01:59:49 am
Because Dwarven lacks pronouns, you would need to specify what "this" is. Perhaps "Mulonbidok lushôn-zalud" could work. It means "All acts will end". There apparently isn't a Dwarven word for "thing" or "object". Perhaps I should invent one. There also is no word for also, additionally, too, as well, etc. I should add such a word to the list of adverbs.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Miuramir on May 10, 2019, 04:45:10 pm
DF humans, elves, and goblins do nearly as much writing as dwarves, and tend not to engrave stuff. I expect dwarves would use runic on stone surfaces and whatnot, but they might plausibly borrow the script of another race for books and paperwork. ...

In our world, the prototypes of the major scripts were spread by either expansionist seafaring traders (Phoenicians with the proto-Latin script), or by large continental empires where it spread along rich river trade systems and with additional religious impetus (proto-Chinese, various proto-Indian Brahmic scripts).  Presumably some of this will, or at least may, be modeled / modified by the advanced myth world gen upcoming (e.g. "god X hands down Writing to society Y"). 

In a "typical" current DF world, the trade contact between the caravan-launching races is high enough at an early point in history that I'd guess they would have a common writing system unless each started with a divinely-granted different one (a distinct possibility).  First-mover advantage is quite high for writing. 

That said, it is entirely possible for there to be two (or more) different script systems coexisting for different purposes; old Roman cursive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_cursive) vs. Roman square capitals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_square_capitals) being an obvious example set that comes from the same time period and culture, but different purposes and materials.  Of course, the Roman square capitals designed for engraving evolved into the Rustic capitals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rustic_capitals) over years of people using them with pen on papyrus or parchment, and faded into being a header / display font over time. 

One possible way to game this is to have two base scripts, a brush/pen optimized "cursive" and an engraving-optimized "runic".  Dwarves tend to use runic for most things, elves tend to use cursive for most things, and humans tend to use runic on buildings, proclamations, and formal documents while using cursive for everyday use, poetry, and songwriting. 
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Pvt. Pirate on May 16, 2019, 11:52:36 am
i watched the video and my first thought was "it had to be a german - only we can focus so precisely on such seemingly irrelevant matters"
now i want to learn dwarven.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: DerMeister on May 16, 2019, 11:54:46 am
Make other in-game languages. Especially goblin! Kobold language is nonsense names or glossolaly.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Pvt. Pirate on May 16, 2019, 01:07:15 pm
Make other in-game languages. Especially goblin! Kobold language is nonsense names or glossolaly.
I second this request
Pvt. Pirate Usen IsethlongDerMeister
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on May 16, 2019, 01:36:20 pm
I'm glad you like it! The video is a bit obsolete due to a few linguistic reforms, but it is still mostly accurate. The first post of this thread is the official codification with the most updated rules.

I explained earlier in this thread that I will not codify the other languages because 1) the other races are not nearly as popular as dwarves and 2) the game's word creation system is the same regardless of language. I based Dwarven grammar on in-game names, so I would do the same for the other languages. However, the other languages follow the same rules for name creation, so they would be the same as Dwarven.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Pvt. Pirate on May 16, 2019, 02:14:17 pm
so all it is lacking are some words you added and the same syntax- and grammar-rules would be applied to them?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on May 16, 2019, 02:52:02 pm
The video? Some of the vocabulary of the video is obsolete, as are some conjunctions and postpositions. All the basic stuff is the same, which is why I have not replaced the video. Refer to the post for the official list of grammar. Dwarven's lexicon also needs to be expanded, as it lacks many words for important things. It has no word for "snow", for example. However, I don't want to sit and invent words, so I rely on the community to present words for approval. If I like them, I will add them to the lexicon.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Gabrote42 on July 13, 2019, 07:56:14 am
Wow. This is most exciting and worthy of being my first PTW. I love it! Now I gotta figure out how to quote.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Superdorf on July 13, 2019, 04:33:07 pm
Wow. This is most exciting and worthy of being my first PTW. I love it! Now I gotta figure out how to quote.

Ah, you can just click the "Quote" button on the top-right of other posts. It'll create for you a post with the relevant quote inserted in BBC format, or insert the quote into the post you're writing.

Welcome to the forums! :)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Loam on July 15, 2019, 11:50:55 am
Well, Solitarian might not codify the other languages, but that doesn't stop someone else from doing it! I probably won't do it... but if someone was minded to, I have PHONOLOGICAL DATA on the other langs to share, since I apparently had nothing better to do:


Elvish:

Structure: exact opposite of Dwarvish - all syllables are open, meaning they all end in a vowel (V and CV)

Consonants:
   p b       t d   c ç k q g
   f v   th  s z
   m         n 
   w         r l    y ÿ

   In order of occurence:
   r l n m th c f v d s t y w b p ÿ [q z k ç g]

   
   Points of interest:
   1) q, k, ç, g, & z all have extremely low incidences (47, 17, 14, 10, 19; compare with y: at 106!) This may suggest scribal conventions rather than actual phonemes.
      a) q, as in English, always precedes u: the sound is probably [kw], and written <qu> is merely an allograph of cw
      b) k could easily be an allograph of c -- cf. Latin, which used <k> mainly in words borrowed from Greek
      These, and the high incidence of c, suggest that Elvish <c> is the base phoneme, probably always a "hard c" - Elvish cebela is pronounced kebela, not *sebela
      c) ç may also be scribal, but I have no idea what for. It could just be a rare phoneme.
      d) Now, if g and z were scribal, it would disrupt the voiceless-voiced pairs we see in the rest of the consonant inventory (p/b, t/d). Therefore, it's probably best to treat these as rare phonemes also.
   2) A single th phoneme also disrupts the voiceless-voiced pairings; th also has a fairly high incidence (466) compared to other fricatives. I wonder if <th> isn't used for two phonemes, voiced and voiceless, just as in English...
   3) What is ÿ? It's not much less common than y (104 vs. 141 occurences), so it's probably a separate phoneme - maybe a velar or uvular glide?
   
   Clusters: Elvish has only two clusters: qu and sl. The latter is exceedingly rare, with only 10 occurences.
      Due to the strict open-syllable rule, no clusters are possible at syllable boundaries.
      
Vowels (in order of occurence):
   a e (é è) i (í ì) o (ó ò) u (ú ù)
   
   Points of interest:
   1) a, though the most common vowel, lacks the accented forms seen in the other vowels. Does this suggest a is a very weak vowel, perhaps a schwa?
   2) o and u have very low occurences (451 and 193 respectively - compare with i at 1398!).
   3) The accented forms are roughly even in distribution, making up ~8-10% of each vowel's occurence. What they represent is anyone's guess - as with Dwarvish, there's not much way to tell.
   

Human:

Structure: Human allows both open and closed syllables

Consonants:
   p b      t d       k c q g
   f v  th  s z  sh  h
                j?      x
   m        n     ñ   ng
   w        r l    j?
   
   In order of occurence:
   s t r l m d k th p c b n g sh h z ng q w ñ j v f x
   
   Points of interest:
   1) q is, again, only found as qu, and therefore probably allographic.
   2) Both k and c are found in respectable proportions (316 and 255 occurences resp.), so both may be phonemic; however, c may very well be an allograph of k, which would make the /k/ phoneme rank just below /r/ in the order - which wouldn't surprise me, since /k/ is a very common phoneme IRL.
   3) As with Elvish th, Human th (and sh) seem to disrupt the pattern of voiceless-voiced pairings. h is not a problem in this case, since a voiced h would be almost indistinguishable from a vowel.
   4) What is j? Under the assumption of English orthography it should be an affricate (as in "jewel"); but it might also be a glide, making a y-sound as in German (Johann etc). The latter placement would fit nicely into the pattern, opposite w. Less likely is French pronunciation, as the voiced pair of sh.
   5) I am assuming ñ is pronounced as in Spanish, something like n + y.
   6) j, ñ, and q(u) never appear word-finally.
   
   Clusters: other than qu, a cursory look shows the following:
      sm, st, sl, sp, str, thr
   There are, of course, other clusters at syllable boundaries, as in Dwarvish.
   
Vowels (in order of occurence):
   a (á) o i e u
   
   Aside from a (1000+) the other vowels fall in the 700-800 occurence range in pretty even distribution.
   á is the only accented character, and occurs 48 times. Again, not much to go on. It could just be a fancy scribal a.
   Human vowels are pretty boring.
   

Goblin:

Structure: Goblin allows both open and closed syllables.

Consonants:
   Now, Goblin consonants are interesting. Let's start with just basic phonemes:
   p b   t d   k g
          s z
            x
    m    n   ng
          r l
               th?

   
   A pretty small, standard-looking inventory. Other than outlier x everything is nicely paired up and symmetrical. th has so few occurences (only 6!) that I think it best to treat it as an allograph of t, not a separate phoneme.
   
   And in order of occurence:
      s t m n l r k ng z d g p b x [th]
   with s standing out at a whopping 1523 occurences; the next highest, t, has only 650. x has 262.
   
   BUT: Goblin has an immense amount of clusters, all involving s: sp, st, sm, sn, and sl. Together these clusters involve a quarter of all consonants in the Goblin lexicon. If we count these clusters as individual "sounds", our list looks like this:
      r st k ng z m n t d s g sp b l sm x sl sn [th]
   r has 384 occurences; sn has 165. That's only a 220-point range, so the consonants (& clusters) are pretty evenly distributed. Note also that p disappears: it only occurs in the cluster sp.
   
   Based on this, it seems clusters are fundamental to the Goblin consonant system. I don't know what that means, phonologically, but such an overwhelming prevalence can't be ignored.
   
Vowels:
   u (û) o (ö ô) a (å â ä) e (ë ê)
   
   u and o predominate at ~1300 occurences each. a has ~700, and e has only ~350. There is no i.
   The accented forms are fairly uniformly distributed.
   
Wierdly, Goblin seems to have the most regular and evenly-distributed phonology of all the languages. You'd think it's be more... chaotic.


Kobold:
Wait, isn't kobold-speak just jibberish? Well yes, but it's interesting jibberish, at least from a phonological point of view.
Since Kobold has no lexicon, I had to draw from kobold names.
   From my inquiries, it seems kobold words (or at least names) are made up of 2-3 parts: an optional PREFIX, a ROOT, and an ENDING.
   Every name has a ROOT + ENDING, each of which is a single syllable; thus, the shortest kobold name is two syllables, e.g. Jlalmer, Thorsnin, Kaymin.
      The ROOT is characterized by one of several vowels: simple vowels o, i, a, u; or uniquely ROOT vowels ay and ee. The ROOT seems always to be a CVC syllable, where C can be any consonant/cluster.
      There are only four possible ENDINGs: -in, -is, -us, -er. Every kobold name ends with one of these.
   I suspect the ROOT bears primary stress, and the ENDING takes secondary. ROOT vowels may also be long (at least ay and ee).
   The PREFIX is not nearly as structured, but still shows some patterns:
      It can be 1, 2, or 3 syllables in length
      All syllables begin with a consonant/cluster* and end with a vowel (CV)
         *The first syllable may begin with a cluster, but no subsequent syllables may - only single consonants.
      Every syllable in the PREFIX has the same vowel: a, e, u, or o.
      
   The PREFIX seems to be the most "glossolalic" part of the name, a kind of ecstatic "introduction" to the meat of the word, the ROOT-ENDING. The ROOT-ENDING is structured enough where it probably has actual meaning - I especially suspect the ENDINGs have specific meanings, probably relationships or other descriptors.
   
   Due to the lack of an easy wordlist I haven't examined kobold phonemes (yet).

   And here's a short list of kobold names, in case anyone wants to check my data:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)



That's about as far as one can get with the available data. Everything else needs to be made up, pretty much.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on July 15, 2019, 01:32:02 pm
Bravo! I should note that you are not analyzing phonology, but rather orthography. Because these languages have no pronunciations, all we can do is examine how they are written. We cannot know what these letters are supposed to represent, if anything. Unless Tarn or Zach gives us hints, of course...  You are correct that I will not codify the other languages, and I applaud your effort here. I am satisfied with Dwarven's current codification, despite its flaws. Because the language would only ever be used for simpler sentences anyway, I think this is acceptable. I think if different people codified the different languages, that would make more interesting linguistic variation. For example, I don't like words that end in vowels, so I avoid them. If someone who likes vowel endings codified Elven (Elvish?), then he would make a language different from what I would make. Maybe Elven could be made a declination nightmare like Latin. So if anyone wants to work on the other languages, then please do!

I would be particularly impressed by a codification of Koboldish... Koboldic... Kobold-talk. I think it only appears to be gibberish, while it actually follows rules that can be codified. Now that I think about it, Koboldian might be the easiest language to codify because it has no lexicon that the codification must match. It can be much more freely invented, so long as it matches the orthographic structures you mentioned.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Superdorf on July 15, 2019, 01:44:12 pm
You people make me so happy. :))
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Loam on July 15, 2019, 04:15:13 pm
I should note that you are not analyzing phonology, but rather orthography. Because these languages have no pronunciations, all we can do is examine how they are written. We cannot know what these letters are supposed to represent, if anything.

Sort of. Phonology isn't about the sounds per se, but about the system of sounds. True, we can't "know" what the letters represent, but that doesn't much matter if we have a few basic presumptions:
    1) every letter will represent the same phoneme everywhere, at least in one language -- so, <k> won't be [k] in kulet but [p] kel
    2) every letter will, where plausible, represent the closest English equivalent -- so, <k> won't represent [p]
       (I say English because I expect that's Tarn and Zach's native language, and they probably transliterated sounds/characters into a close approximation)
       (I should probably say closest IPA equivalent since that's, well, international)
With these presumptions (barring a few exceptions) we can reconstruct a phonological system, albeit a crude one. It's far from complete (cf. accented vowels everywhere), but it's enough to start us off. More importantly, if we don't make these presumptions, then we can't even begin, so I think it's fair to assume.

Anyway, that's a very minor point and not really worth arguing.

On the other languages, I had some ideas:

Elvish, with its strict open-syllable structure, puts me in mind of Japanese or some Polynesian language -- none of which I am familiar with. I'd say, however, that structurally it'd work well as a polysynthetic language, as tiny (C)V morphemes could be tacked on ad infinitum without making the words too hard to pronounce: cacame awemedinade monipalothi comes to mind...

Human... many ways you could go. Inflections are near-and-dear to my heart, so I'd be all for an Indo-European-style case/conjugation system. Structurally Human is pretty unremarkable, so it's easy to work with.

I haven't really given much thought to Goblin, except that it should be something alien. Do Underworld creatures have the same ideas we do about language? Do they interpret signals/symbols in similar ways? It's also possible that the Goblin "clusters" aren't clusters at all, but crude human attempts to represent utterly alien phonemes -- maybe strange quasi-fricatives or glides?

Kobold would be cool as a sort of semi-jibberish, an off-the-cuff language with a few guiding principles and the rest supplied by individual speakers emotions or personalities or whatnot. I strongly doubt any human language is analogous, but that's why it's a fantasy world for goodness' sake...
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Superdorf on July 15, 2019, 10:11:54 pm
An analogous language for kobold-speak eh? How about Finnish, but crazier? Ever-expanding and ridiculously specific compound words invented on the spot, all based off a relatively simple root lexicon. "I wonder if I should run around aimlessly" becomes, oh, "filichibugaslubeegidubis" or something.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Pvt. Pirate on July 16, 2019, 04:30:20 am
I should note that you are not analyzing phonology, but rather orthography. Because these languages have no pronunciations, all we can do is examine how they are written. We cannot know what these letters are supposed to represent, if anything.

Sort of. Phonology isn't about the sounds per se, but about the system of sounds. True, we can't "know" what the letters represent, but that doesn't much matter if we have a few basic presumptions:
    1) every letter will represent the same phoneme everywhere, at least in one language -- so, <k> won't be [k] in kulet but [p] kel
    2) every letter will, where plausible, represent the closest English equivalent -- so, <k> won't represent [p]
       (I say English because I expect that's Tarn and Zach's native language, and they probably transliterated sounds/characters into a close approximation)
       (I should probably say closest IPA equivalent since that's, well, international)
With these presumptions (barring a few exceptions) we can reconstruct a phonological system, albeit a crude one. It's far from complete (cf. accented vowels everywhere), but it's enough to start us off. More importantly, if we don't make these presumptions, then we can't even begin, so I think it's fair to assume.

Anyway, that's a very minor point and not really worth arguing.

On the other languages, I had some ideas:

Elvish, with its strict open-syllable structure, puts me in mind of Japanese or some Polynesian language -- none of which I am familiar with. I'd say, however, that structurally it'd work well as a polysynthetic language, as tiny (C)V morphemes could be tacked on ad infinitum without making the words too hard to pronounce: cacame awemedinade monipalothi comes to mind...

Human... many ways you could go. Inflections are near-and-dear to my heart, so I'd be all for an Indo-European-style case/conjugation system. Structurally Human is pretty unremarkable, so it's easy to work with.

I haven't really given much thought to Goblin, except that it should be something alien. Do Underworld creatures have the same ideas we do about language? Do they interpret signals/symbols in similar ways? It's also possible that the Goblin "clusters" aren't clusters at all, but crude human attempts to represent utterly alien phonemes -- maybe strange quasi-fricatives or glides?

Kobold would be cool as a sort of semi-jibberish, an off-the-cuff language with a few guiding principles and the rest supplied by individual speakers emotions or personalities or whatnot. I strongly doubt any human language is analogous, but that's why it's a fantasy world for goodness' sake...
:D reminds me of the finnish words like "kalsarikännit" a verb meaning "drinking home alone wearing underpants"
or that other word which means the distance a reindeer can run without havin to pee :D
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Imic on July 17, 2019, 04:48:36 am
This is... Incredible. I’d love to learn to speak this, just for the sheer hell of it, but I wouldn’t have the time. Thank you.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on July 24, 2019, 11:23:03 am
This is awesome! I will try to write things in it and see how it works lol
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Superdorf on July 30, 2019, 11:49:19 am
'Ey Solitarian, you've been wiki'd! (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Language#Vocabulary_2) :D
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on July 30, 2019, 12:02:30 pm
I'd obviously like to thank some people. I'll keep it short. I want to thank Charlie Crighton for doing the plot with me and Jamie and Kevin for writing their part. I would like to thank Michael Palin for changing the scene numbers. I'd also like to thank John Comfort, Jonathan Benson, Roger Murray Leech, Avel Pethock, Glenn Palm Smith, Cynthia Kayla, Maria Aitkin, Jonathan Aitkin, Lord Beaverbrook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jack Cousteau and his wife Minnie, Soren Kierkegaard, Sunny Liston, and Hayden Jones and her husband Pip, Gregor Mendel (the founder of the science of genetics), my tailor, Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin), the Sydney Symphony Orchestra brass section, mother, Bismarck, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Birds, Basil Smallpeace, Saint Francis of Assisi, Diana Ross, Earl Hayde, Wile E. Coyote, Mother Theresa, Herb Albert and his Tijuana brass, Hermann Göring, Agatha Christie, the planet Saturn (and of course all of its rings), Jeremy Collins, the publicity department of Turkish Airways, the unknown soldier, Tammy Winnette, and last but of course not least: God.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on July 30, 2019, 04:06:26 pm
I'd obviously like to thank some people. I'll keep it short. I want to thank Charlie Crighton for doing the plot with me and Jamie and Kevin for writing their part. I would like to thank Michael Palin for changing the scene numbers. I'd also like to thank John Comfort, Jonathan Benson, Roger Murray Leech, Avel Pethock, Glenn Palm Smith, Cynthia Kayla, Maria Aitkin, Jonathan Aitkin, Lord Beaverbrook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jack Cousteau and his wife Minnie, Soren Kierkegaard, Sunny Liston, and Hayden Jones and her husband Pip, Gregor Mendel (the founder of the science of genetics), my tailor, Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin), the Sydney Symphony Orchestra brass section, mother, Bismarck, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Birds, Basil Smallpeace, Saint Francis of Assisi, Diana Ross, Earl Hayde, Wile E. Coyote, Mother Theresa, Herb Albert and his Tijuana brass, Hermann Göring, Agatha Christie, the planet Saturn (and of course all of its rings), Jeremy Collins, the publicity department of Turkish Airways, the unknown soldier, Tammy Winnette, and last but of course not least: God.

Gad vargeth kinem...
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on July 31, 2019, 12:58:33 am
Were you trying to say "that was beautiful"? "Gad" is a conjunction, not a pronoun. Dwarven has no pronouns, so there is no word for "that". You need to use a noun instead. Perhaps "writing belonging to Solitarian"? Except Dwarven has no word for "writing"... oh, that limited lexicon is annoying.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on July 31, 2019, 06:24:11 am
Were you trying to say "that was beautiful"? "Gad" is a conjunction, not a pronoun. Dwarven has no pronouns, so there is no word for "that". You need to use a noun instead. Perhaps "writing belonging to Solitarian"? Except Dwarven has no word for "writing"... oh, that limited lexicon is annoying.

I could merely say "vargeth kinem" and leave it up to context maybe? Lol

If I needed to be clearer we could use Tathur (scribe) as a verb to write and then writing.

So a bit clearer would be "Tathur vargeth kinem" and even clearer would be TathurlongSolitarian vargeth kinem, though for most intents and purposes people would usually stick to simplicity (like how the Japanese in common speech rarely use pronouns simply because they are unwieldy). Could be good to make something that differentiates writing from to write. There is already a prefix used to create agents from non-agent words (ù[n]- as in Ùnil) There could be something like that which would differentiate a word from an abstract concept derived from it. Something like English -ship, -hood and -ity.

Maybe Mïk- as in Mïkstal (Ownership). I chose Mïk- because it is only found in Ownership at the beginning of a word and -stal doesn't mean anything else (so it could be a more formal word for "to own" (contrasting with sanreb). So you can say Urist sanrebgath Shokmug or Urist stalgath Shokmug and it means the same thing. I thought of other prefixes like Az- (because of Azmol and Azoth), but -oth already means something completely unrelated to Azoth. They COULD of course be homophones but I prefer not to create confusion in the language unnecessarily unless you want to make some rules to explain it. For example, you could make that when you attach the Az- to the word the main vowel changes, so Azoth would come from, for example, óth and not oth. But that's kinda unnecessary and we could simply explain it by saying Azoth is just an irregular word that doesn't use Mïk-

The phrase would then be: Mïktathur vargeth kinem (Writing, aka Scribeship, scribecraft, etc).

That can be used for our favorite phrase too: Mïkrigòtharkim Craftsdwarfship. So the phrase "All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality" would be something like: "Mïkrigòtharkim mulonak varudiz teleshonmïkkoth'ok" lit. [Abstract concept]+craft+dwarf all be+[Present] [superlative]+good+[abstract concept]+to analyse quality+in or Craftsdwarfship all is in best quality. I made up the word for to analyse something's quality as koth and with it made Mïkkoth, Quality. You can change it if you want lol koth could also mean to appraise and appraisal when a noun. Ùkoth could mean appraiser. Could also be a word for to inspect and Ùkoth also mean Inspector. So a person who sees if regulations are being kept (Össekùkoth) or a person who makes sure taxes are being collected (Stettadùkoth), while also being used for someone who appraises what jewel one has and its worth (Kadôlùkoth). A police inspector could be a Toralùkoth. Words that could be used with Mïk:

Mïketar - Kingship, the office of being King
Mïkerar - Leadership
Mïkellest - Kinship

It could also serve in a similar fashion as our -ism :

Mïkemär - Animalism

Another suggestion is to create place names using Zoden (house). It could also be shortened to -zod (there are currently no word in Dwarfish that ends in -zod so it wouldn't cause confusion). As in:

Nelzod(en) - Bakery, also called Ímzod
Imkethzod(en) - Court-House
Fidgamzod(en) - Congress house
Eshtânzod(en) - Smithy
Baroszod(en) - Funeral home
Rakustzod(en) - Cemitary
Turelzod(en) - School
Thîkutzod(en) - University or another word for School (Library already exists as a seperate word) Bookstore could be Thîkutrilbet
Mishthemzod(en) - Laboratory
Koshzod(en) - Slaughter House
Lokastzod(en) - Butchery
(Tel)saràmzod(en) - City Hall (the Mayor's office) Telsaràm could mean mayor (it means Greatest and is pretty much an etymological translation of Mayor which came from Major, in other words "Very Important" or "Greatest") and his office be either the "Great House" (Saràmzod) or the "Mayorial House" (Telsaràmzod). Another word for mayor could also be Serarkim (Head dwarf), or just Ser. And the word for City Hall be Serzod
Idräthzod(en) - Treasury
Duthnurzod(en) - Guardhouse
Ezarzod(en) - Garrison
Âmzod(en) - Auditorium
Ralzod(en) - Bank (there is a word for bank in Dwarfish, Gérig, but I STRONGLY advise using it only for geographical features like riverbank because we don't have a seperate word for that and it is much easier to form a word for (money) Bank than (river) bank)
Kinemzod(en) - Salon, beauty parlour
Duradzod(en) - Barbershop. I imagine there being dwarves completely specialized in only doing beards and making them as great as dwarvenly possible. A Kinemzod would be less specialized and thus cheaper.
Zustzod(en) - Dormitory
Lanlarzod(en) - Aviarium. I'd call bird-houses Lanlarbom, emphasising it as a place where they live.
Bobrurzod(en) - Maternity house
Ikûlzod(en) - generic term for a coop (chicken coop for example). The word Ikûl can be substituted for the word for chicken or peacock or turkey depending on specialization (whenever those words enter the vocabulary lol)
Bisólzod(en) - Elderly Home, Hospice Home, Asylum (place).
Gidurzod(en) - Museum
Zalstomzod(en) - Pharmacy
Ikalzod(en) - Hospital, in poetry also called Ilonzod
Cilobzod(en) - an above ground house, what humans usually mean when they say "house"
Dákzod(en) - those monstrocities elves live in
Ibrukzod(en) - Ashery
Inodzod(en) - Gatehouse
Ivomzod(en) - the room where you keep your farm plots. Given that dwarves mostly farm indoors it is natural that there is a word for it.
Kadôlzod(en) - Jewelry shop
Kalurzod(en)  - Throne room
Kegethzod(en) - storage room
Maszod(en) - grainery
Tathurzod(en) - Scriptorium
Lolorzod(en) - Post Office
Lolumzod(en) - Carpentry shop
Mugshithzod(en) - Torture room
Namàshzod(en) - Brewery
Ramtakzod(en) - Execution room
Ngitkarzod(en) - Fishery
Ninurzod(en) - Probably a more lowkey word for Brothel. How posh people would call it
Nishzod(en) - Generic word for "shop" or "store"
Nitomzod(en) - Observatory, Planetarium, also called a Vîrzod
Olmulzod(en) - bathhouse
Orshetzod(en) - Crematorium
Rafarzod(en) - Kitchen
Sebïrzod(en) - Tannery
Vucarzod(en) - Columbarium
Âlzod(en) - Gym (just in case such a thing ever appears lol)
Åmzod(en) - Nursery
Ódadzod(en) - Tavern

I imagine Dwarves would not use the word house the same way we do given they mostly live in connected underground rooms inside fortresses. So a house would just be a collection of rooms that are part of a whole or a room that is independent. All the rooms of a tavern would be part of one house for example. A room designated for workshops would be a house. A "room" would be a room that is part of a bigger whole (i.e. the individual rooms inside a tavern). Many of the words in the list could have -mosus at the end of them instead of -zod depending on the place's layout, for the reason I just said
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 01, 2019, 11:35:10 pm
I have been working for a while on the Annals of a Kingdom in one of my DF worlds. I basically just write in the form of Annals every event I find interesting. I made its opening lines in Dwarfish and I had to make up some words and some grammar shananigans. Can you tell me if this is acceptable Dwarfish?

ÎDTHÎKUT-LONGULTÈRZEFON

Havudiz Zunarkimosor. Ådosor kôrudiz'ver Emosor-longTetóthfikod lok Sitalosor-longSazir Arist, Irolosor-longUrvad Ked, Migrurmonom lok Timnärducim lok Lalosor-longMafol Gesis lok Titthalaban. Ådthîkut varudiz Îdthîkut-longUltèrzefon 'Onolbom-longTitthalaban' Ashok'ar-longTorishselor-longEtur Ûthirlolor Etar lok Dôbar-longUltèrzefon Ashok'ishob-longSolon Orsistiden Ärged-longMelbil Etar 'Etur-longMadir Adrïth'lug'.

See if you can understand it without the translation in hand. The vocabulary is underneath. Here is the translation:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Vocabulary:
kôr - to call
Åd- This, these determiner (needs noun), used for things close to the speaker
Ùd - that, those determiner (needs noun), used for things far from both the speaker and the listener
Òk - that, those determiner (needs noun), used for things far close to the listener but far from the speaker

Torishselor - Coronation Ceremony
Madir - Descendent, I took this from Midor (Power), because of how in ancient Greek poetry the descendents of Hercules are called his 'power'.
Adrïth - Heir, inspired from Idräth (treasure)
'lug - And, like the conjunction lok but used primarily when talking of things that naturally go together, like "brother and sister", "husband and wife", "king and country" etc.


Bonus vocabulary:
Sturem - Grandfather, ancestor. Made it by putting Gost + Urem (Arch Father) and then removing the Go-
Stobrur - Grandmother, ancestor, Gost + Bobrur
Nobsturem - Great-grandfather
Mezsturem - Great-great-grandfather
Stärged - Grandson
Staruth - Granddaughter
Stilat - Grandchildren, grandchild
Gostmer - Grand-uncle
Stermis - Grand-aunt
Ludär - Paternal Nephew, from Alud+ärged (brother's son)
Nirär - Maternal Nephew (sister's son)
Ludsar - Paternal Niece (brother's daughter)
Nirsar - Maternal Niece, from Anir+Saruth (sister's daughter)
Ludtil - Paternal Nephews (including nieces)
Nirtil - Maternal Nephews (including nieces)
Stirär - Grand-maternal-nephew
Studär - Grand-paternal-nephew
Studsar - Grand-paternal-niece
Stirsar - Grand-maternal-niece
Studtil - Grand-paternal-nephews (including nieces)
Stirtil - Grand-maternal-nephews (including nieces)
Ellest - besides meaning kin, Ellest could more specifically mean someone who is related to you. A generic term for kinsman basically.
Osel - patrillinial cousin or kinsman, from udos+ellest
Alel - matrillinial cousin or kinsman, from aral+ellest (I imagine these very detailed kinship terms would be amply used given how long lived dwarves are. Why did I detail the gender origins of uncle-nephew relations but not grandson-grandfather? Because the relationship between a descendent and an ascendent tends to be that of reverence, or at least respect, while that of more collateral relations seemed a lot more tenuous and needing to be defined. They might want to know if the person is patrillinially or matrillinially related to them)

Grammar notes:
I used the verb to have (hav) also as the word for "there be". We have that in portuguese and I think it is effective. But if you think it might cause confusion I can try to make a word up specifically for that. I put the title after the name (Etur Etar for King Etur) because if I put the title before the name it would sound like "Royal Etur" which can be used poetically but isn't exactly what the person said. I also used Boy instead of Child when speaking of King Solon's father because I am roleplaying that the word child is mostly used to speak of children (in the plural) of mixed gender. This is so that they can meticulously trace their patrillinial and matrillinial lines through the words Boy and Girl. The surname Orsistiden is not the surname he has in the game. It is actually a combination of the first half of the surname of his oldest recorded matrillinial ancestor (Orsist-) and his oldest recorded patrillinial ancestor (-iden). In my story, males are considered part of their male clan while females are part of their female clans and both clans are part of a tribe (basically a tribe is the male descendents of a common male ancestor + the female descendents of a common female ancestor to which both sides are direct descendents.)

Example of the kinship system:

Etur and Edëm have two sons and two daughters. The sons are Urist and Solon. The daughters are Geshud and Ïngiz.
Solon has a son named Tulon and a daughter named Iden. Geshud has a son named Rigòth and a daughter named Rîsen.
Urist has a son named Avuz.
Ïngiz has a daughter named Mistêm.
Tulon is Urist's Ludär. Iden is Urist's Ludsar. Rigòth is Urist's Nirär. Rîsen is Urist's Nirsar. Tulon is Avuz' Osel. Rigòth is Avuz' Ellest (kin, generic). Mistêm is Rigòth's Alel (because they are matrillinially related).
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 02, 2019, 02:56:51 am
I like mik-, but that doesn't appear in other Dwarven words. I wanted to make rules to match existing Dwarven. Ducim means work, so maybe Ducimrigotharkim or Ducim-longRigotharkim (the work of a craftdwarf) would be acceptable, but that's a bit unwieldy. I am ambivalent about Mïk-. I think differentiating between the noun and its abstract concept is good, but I'm afraid of doing something that does not match the in-game text.
I would say "mulonak mikrogotharkim", as "all" is describing "craftsdwarfship". Zatthud is judge, so I would use that as a verb for "evaluate".

I think the doer of action should be marked by udos (debudos = eater), except no existing words do that. As such, I like Ú being an abbreviation for Udos (man). Údeb would be "eater", then. I like that. The problem is that Dwarven is not consistent about that, so no rule can be applied generally. The in-game the words for teach and teacher are the same, so should they not be the same here too?

Zod(en) being added is good. I like that. nelzod = bakehouse. very good! I will add that to the codification.

Where should we write all the extra words of the lexicon? I think we should just append language_DWARF so everything is in one place.



ÎDTHÎKUT-LONGULTÈRZEFON means the annals belonging to Ulterzefon. This just means that Ulterzefon owns the annals, but the annals might not describe Ulterzefon. Use the postposition üb (about, concerning), so ÎDTHÎKUT ULTÈRZEFON'ÜB.
I'm not sure what îd in îdthîkot is.
I like a subjectless "hav" meaning "there are", though such passive constructions can be avoided by finding a subject. Perhaps this "hav" construction could just be poetic.

This and that are relative pronouns. Dwarven does not have pronouns. I made tang (here) and dog (there) to be used to mark the concept of nearness or farness, so your words like Åd cannot be in the language.
"kab" is name. I would use that as a verb for "call". I am called Solitarian = Kutam kab-udiz'ver Solitarian.
Emosor-longTetóthfikod means the eastern kingdom belonging to Tetothfikod. This means that tetothfikod is not the eastern kingdom, but rather its owner.
Commas are not used in lists, so "Urvad Ked, Migrurmonom lok Timnärducim..." should be "Urvad Ked lok Migrurmonom lok..."
Remember shámman can mark plurality, though it isn't strictly necessary. Shámmanomor = many kingdoms
Onolbom = mountainhome. very good. You also correctly used the apposition construction. You are good at this!

Ashok'ar-longTorishselor-longEtur Ûthirlolor looks good to me, except I'm not sure what "elor" means. Did you mean "selor" (rite)? Torishselor would be the rite of crowning, and I think that is a perfect word to describe a coronation.
Perhaps the reign of king Etur could be Ashok'ar-longEturtorish (of the time belonging to etur crown. the name Etur becomes an adjective describing the crown. very poetic, like Edwardian or Georgian or Elizabethan)
What is Dôbar?
I dislike 'lug. That would only be for collocations.
"Madir" as "descendant" is ok, but there is already a word for child (tilat).
I think the Swedish style would make sense for Dwarven. Mor = mother, Mormor = grandmother, Mormormor = great grandmother, etc. We could use ordinal numbers for longer ancestries, like Nagturem (seventh father, i.e. 7 generations ago).

Etur Etar makes sense to me. It could be translated as "Etur the king".
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Inarius on August 02, 2019, 04:46:23 am
This is very impressive. There were many attempts to create "something" about dwarven language, but i think this is the best attempt so far. I hope Toady will read you ! (Maybe you should try ? or have you already ?)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 02, 2019, 05:34:09 am
Given that this thread is now in the wiki, I have no doubt that Toady is already aware of it.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 02, 2019, 09:07:54 am
I like mik-, but that doesn't appear in other Dwarven words. I wanted to make rules to match existing Dwarven. Ducim means work, so maybe Ducimrigotharkim or Ducim-longRigotharkim (the work of a craftdwarf) would be acceptable, but that's a bit unwieldy. I am ambivalent about Mïk-. I think differentiating between the noun and its abstract concept is good, but I'm afraid of doing something that does not match the in-game text.

I used Mïk- from Mïkstal (ownership) and imagined it coming from an abstract-word element before the -stal. I understand the fear that it becomes too dissimilar from in game dwarfish, but I have a fear that if we don't innovate here we will make the language too unwieldy as you rightly pointed out. Ducim works, but Ducim makes the word bigger than Mïk- (by one syllable, but this is accumulative because other stuff will in the end be placed on a word because of the agglutinative nature of Dwarfish so I try to make all my innovations very short and make full use of the myriad of vowel possibilities to make more differentiations.

I would say "mulonak mikrogotharkim", as "all" is describing "craftsdwarfship".

Understood! Will remember that.

Zatthud is judge, so I would use that as a verb for "evaluate".

Makes sense, so evaluation would be Mïkzatthud (if you still think of using my system) or Ducimzatthud (if you use the Ducim system you mentioned). I differentiate that from the proposed Koth word (for appraise) because you can end up confusing Quality with Evaluation. (You don't want to call someone to a Quality, but to an Evaluation, so it is good that these words be clearly differentiated). But languages have a lot of ambiguity so if you feel like it must be one word that isn't too much of a problem. People would just have to get what it means by context.


I think the doer of action should be marked by udos (debudos = eater), except no existing words do that. As such, I like Ú being an abbreviation for Udos (man). Údeb would be "eater", then. I like that. The problem is that Dwarven is not consistent about that, so no rule can be applied generally. The in-game the words for teach and teacher are the same, so should they not be the same here too?

It would be Ù and not Ú, but I agree it could be seen as a leftover from Udos! Makes a lot of sense. Regarding it not being consistent in Dwarfish: We only have a few thousand words in Dwarfish, those could basically be ALL the irregular words in the language and the regulars carry Ù like Ùnil.

Where should we write all the extra words of the lexicon? I think we should just append language_DWARF so everything is in one place.

Makes sense. You are also making a dictionary right? You could simply make a few posts in this thread and link to them in the OP with all the words in alphabetical order (like the Magic System suggestion thread does). That way it is easily accessable and well organized. Remember to make the vowels clear because they can change the meaning of a word Completely (like in Âm, Åm, speech and baby respectively)

ÎDTHÎKUT-LONGULTÈRZEFON means the annals belonging to Ulterzefon. This just means that Ulterzefon owns the annals, but the annals might not describe Ulterzefon. Use the postposition üb (about, concerning), so ÎDTHÎKUT ULTÈRZEFON'ÜB.

Ok! I changed it here. I am starting to learn better how to use the language. Thank you!

I'm not sure what îd in îdthîkot is.

It is Îd as in Year. So Îdthîkut means Year Book, Annals. A book that stores information in a yearly pattern.


This and that are relative pronouns. Dwarven does not have pronouns. I made tang (here) and dog (there) to be used to mark the concept of nearness or farness, so your words like Åd cannot be in the language.

I anticipated this and made Åd Ùd and Òk determiners and not pronouns. A pronoun takes the place of a noun, a determiner qualifies the noun. So you cannot say Åd Ùd or Òk alone. They need to be "adjectivized" to a noun, thus bypassing the pronoun rule and keeping the same level of clarity. So "Ådthîkut" would mean This book, but "Åd" alone would mean nothing because it doesn't exist alone. Kinda like how in English "Dog's" means Of a dog, but " 's " alone doesn't exist.

"kab" is name. I would use that as a verb for "call". I am called Solitarian = Kutam kab-udiz'ver Solitarian.

Makes sense, I will change this in the Annals!

Emosor-longTetóthfikod means the eastern kingdom belonging to Tetothfikod. This means that tetothfikod is not the eastern kingdom, but rather its owner.

How should I word it then? Just Emosor Tetóthfikod?

Commas are not used in lists, so "Urvad Ked, Migrurmonom lok Timnärducim..." should be "Urvad Ked lok Migrurmonom lok..."

So kinda like latin right? Ok, I am changing it in the Annals to fit these rules. It would be good to write it in the Grammar.

Remember shámman can mark plurality, though it isn't strictly necessary. Shámmanomor = many kingdoms

Yes, I tried not to use it deliberately here for poetic appeal (I imagine given Dwarfish's agglutinative nature that short concise wording is seen as more refined and poetic) but I will definitely use it when the Annals start being more matter-of-factly (this opening is more poetic because it is the opening verses of the Annals. Afterwards they will use a more bookish manner of speech).

Onolbom = mountainhome. very good. You also correctly used the apposition construction. You are good at this!

Thank you very much! I am loving Dwarfish so far. It is very fun to work with lol

Ashok'ar-longTorishselor-longEtur Ûthirlolor looks good to me, except I'm not sure what "elor" means. Did you mean "selor" (rite)? Torishselor would be the rite of crowning, and I think that is a perfect word to describe a coronation.

Exactly! Crown Rite = Coronation! ^^

Perhaps the reign of king Etur could be Ashok'ar-longEturtorish (of the time belonging to etur crown. the name Etur becomes an adjective describing the crown. very poetic, like Edwardian or Georgian or Elizabethan)

The word for reign is Ikud in Dwarfish, but I thing using Torish this way as a poetic expression is very good!

What is Dôbar?

In Dwarfish it means Creation so I used it to mean Foundation as well since we have no word for that.

I dislike 'lug. That would only be for collocations.

I took the idea from latin -que (as in Senatus Populusque Romanus, the Senate and People of Rome). I find it very poetic and gives an impression of symmetry to certain phrases. Father and son. Mother and daughter. Ship and Crew. King and Country. I like the idea of having a specific word element that shows this more "weighty" and. But if you dislike it I can take it out. I will wait for your final judgement before removing it though, because I like it a lot xD

"Madir" as "descendant" is ok, but there is already a word for child (tilat).

You are right! But it could create confusion when you want to make sure someone understands you are not talking about someone's direct one generation child (the text is trying to emphasize that Solon is a far off descendent of Etur, to show lineage). It could be that Madir is a more specialized word used more by genealogists while most people just say Tilat even for their grandchildren and greatgrandchildren and so on?

I think the Swedish style would make sense for Dwarven. Mor = mother, Mormor = grandmother, Mormormor = great grandmother, etc. We could use ordinal numbers for longer ancestries, like Nagturem (seventh father, i.e. 7 generations ago).

The problem is that mother is Bobrur and it is a big word. Bobrurbobrur would be grandmother and Bobrurbobrurbobrur would be great-grandmother. Remember also that dwarves live A LONG TIME. A Swede would mostly not have a living great-grandmother. A Dwarf might have a living Great-great-great-grandmother. So words need to be short and clear. That is why I made new ones with only two syllables (following the general dwarven pattern of two syllable words). But you are right to add the -t- in the middle, I forgot about that! So Seven times great grandfather would be (if you agree with my system) Nagtsturem. Hum... Most people would probably just say Nagsturem though because the -t- becomes a bit unwieldy before -st. But I don't think that is a problem. What do you think of my reasonings?

What did you think of my other kinship terms?


Etur Etar makes sense to me. It could be translated as "Etur the king".

Exactly! Kinda like Hebrew. David HaMelech (King David, David the King).

The current version of the Annals of Ultèrzefon:

ÎDTHÎKUT ULTÈRZEFON'ÜB

Havudiz Zunarkimosor. Ùdosor kabudiz'ver Emosor Tetóthfikod lok Sitalosor Sazir Arist lok Irolosor Urvad Ked lok Migrurmonom lok Timnärducim lok Lalosor Mafol Gesis lok Titthalaban. Ådthîkut varudiz Îdthîkut Ultèrzefon'üb 'Onolbom-longTitthalaban' Ashok'ar-longTorishselor-longEtur Ûthirlolor Etar lok Dôbar-longUltèrzefon Ashok'ishob-longSolon Orsistiden Ärged-longMelbil Etar 'Etur-longMadir Adrïth'lug'.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I am still not happy with Dôbar-longUltèrzefon because it is not the Foundation belonging to Ultèrzefon, but the foundation OF Ultèrzefon, but I don't know any other way to express it as of now :/

Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Inarius on August 02, 2019, 09:58:37 am
@Solitarian : i wouldn't be too sure. I don't think Toady reads so much the wiki, let alone last paragraph about "language". Maybe you should green something here, or ask about it directly in fotf.

(as a bonus : it may attract more people to this. After all, i only found this topic yesterday, even if i come nearly everyday on this forum and even if i'm very interested by the topic !)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 02, 2019, 11:10:51 am
Inarius:
Really? Well, I suppose I could try. I don't know what "green" as a verb means, though.

VABritto:
My moratorium on Mïk has ended. I think it is important enough to include, so I will add it to the codification. Could we maybe change it to Mik, though? I imagine that most users will find typing an ALT code (as it does not appear on English keyboards) for that letter every time to be annoying, so making it a normal i would be easier. Linguistic utility is more important than adherence to in-game text if we want this language to be useful. Moreover, language_DWARF is only used for names, and names are often exceptions to rules. A place in France might have a French name which was inherited from the medieval Frankish name which was inherited from the ancient Latin name which was inherited from the more ancient Celtic name which was inherited from some pre-Indo-European language, so that name would be weird due being processed by all those languages.

Yes, Ù is the proper prefix, not Ú. I forget sometimes because they look so similar. I have just added everything to the end of a copy of language_DWARF to make a "dictionary". I suppose I could type everything into an Excel spreadsheet, but that sounds like a huge amount of work for little gain, as we already have a list. You can just CTRL-F to find whatever you seek. One major problem with this, however, is that language_DWARF does not render some Dwarven letters properly. That I why I could not find îd, as it appears as something else. I suppose making our own list would be better, but I feel a bout of "I don't feel like it" overcoming me.

I still don't like the determiners. Because of Dwarven's modular nature (nouns can be used as verbs, verbs can be nouns, etc.), I fear that people would rapidly become attached to those determiners and use them as nouns to take the place of pronouns. I guess they would become propronouns.

Emosor Tetóthfikod would be fine if you make one of those an apposition. Tetóthfikod 'Emosor' makes sense to me, as it means Tetóthfikod the eastern kingdom. Perhaps that could be used for titles too. Etur 'Etag' = Etur the king, Etur who is king.

I dislike 'lug because it guarantees collocations, which I expressly avoid. Collocations like "king and country" or "lo and behold" become linguistically frozen and retain antiquated elements ("lo" appears in no other context), and the meaning is held by the phrase, not the separate words. I want all words to be meaningful, so establishing collocations which must always be recited the same way each time does not appeal to me.

Mother being Bobrur is no problem. This is just like in Swedish, as the full word for mother is "moder". However, moder becomes abbreviated as "mor". Similarly, "fader" (father) becomes "far". Mormor = mother's mother, farmor = father's mother. Bobrur could thus be shortened as Bor. I suppose urem could be shortened as ur. Borbor = mother's mother, Urbor = father's mother. I think your terms for genealogy sound poetic, but I think they would be confusing elsewhere. I think a system of agglutinating numbers and abbreviated familial titles (father, mother, brother, etc.) is simpler.

I like your annal text now. The problem with Dôbar-longUltèrzefon is understandable, but I think context makes the meaning clear. I suppose you could pick a postposition to abstractly mean what you intend. Pre/postpositions are finicky anyway. For example, in English one says "I am interested *in* that", but in German one says "Ich interessiere mich da*für*" (I interest myself *for* that). The same idea is being expressed by both phrases, but for whatever reason different prepositions are chosen.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 02, 2019, 12:24:24 pm
My moratorium on Mïk has ended. I think it is important enough to include, so I will add it to the codification. Could we maybe change it to Mik, though? I imagine that most users will find typing an ALT code (as it does not appear on English keyboards) for that letter every time to be annoying, so making it a normal i would be easier. Linguistic utility is more important than adherence to in-game text if we want this language to be useful. Moreover, language_DWARF is only used for names, and names are often exceptions to rules. A place in France might have a French name which was inherited from the medieval Frankish name which was inherited from the ancient Latin name which was inherited from the more ancient Celtic name which was inherited from some pre-Indo-European language, so that name would be weird due being processed by all those languages.

Surely, I have no problem with that. Mik- it is ^^

Yes, Ù is the proper prefix, not Ú. I forget sometimes because they look so similar. I have just added everything to the end of a copy of language_DWARF to make a "dictionary". I suppose I could type everything into an Excel spreadsheet, but that sounds like a huge amount of work for little gain, as we already have a list. You can just CTRL-F to find whatever you seek. One major problem with this, however, is that language_DWARF does not render some Dwarven letters properly. That I why I could not find îd, as it appears as something else. I suppose making our own list would be better, but I feel a bout of "I don't feel like it" overcoming me.

I'll make a dictionary here and post it. Then you can copy it all and post in your own post (for easy editing). Then just keep it up to date and link to it on the OP.

I still don't like the determiners. Because of Dwarven's modular nature (nouns can be used as verbs, verbs can be nouns, etc.), I fear that people would rapidly become attached to those determiners and use them as nouns to take the place of pronouns. I guess they would become propronouns.

Makes sense. But isn't that how languages naturally evolve? I can imagine some people using it as pronouns (wrongly) and it be seen as uncivilized while proper dwarfish does not do so. But I understand your apprehension and I have no problem if you don't include it in the language. Could you then write in the grammar the proper way of saying "this X" or "that X"? That would help a lot.

Emosor Tetóthfikod would be fine if you make one of those an apposition. Tetóthfikod 'Emosor' makes sense to me, as it means Tetóthfikod the eastern kingdom. Perhaps that could be used for titles too. Etur 'Etag' = Etur the king, Etur who is king.

That could work aye but it is rather taxing because we use such things a lot. One solution I tried while translating my Annals was simply to keep it unedited beside the word. So instead of Emosor-longTetóthfikod I wrote Emosor Tetóthfikod. Would that cause confusion?

I dislike 'lug because it guarantees collocations, which I expressly avoid. Collocations like "king and country" or "lo and behold" become linguistically frozen and retain antiquated elements ("lo" appears in no other context), and the meaning is held by the phrase, not the separate words. I want all words to be meaningful, so establishing collocations which must always be recited the same way each time does not appeal to me.

Understandable. I will remove it then.

Mother being Bobrur is no problem. This is just like in Swedish, as the full word for mother is "moder". However, moder becomes abbreviated as "mor". Similarly, "fader" (father) becomes "far". Mormor = mother's mother, farmor = father's mother. Bobrur could thus be shortened as Bor. I suppose urem could be shortened as ur. Borbor = mother's mother, Urbor = father's mother. I think your terms for genealogy sound poetic, but I think they would be confusing elsewhere. I think a system of agglutinating numbers and abbreviated familial titles (father, mother, brother, etc.) is simpler.
To keep it consistent shouldn't father be Um? Mother's mother Borbor, father's father Umum? I like the system. It is simple and easy enough. Can you make similar names for paternal-uncle's son and so on? Given that my dwarves are clan affiliated I wanted to make sure they actually knew what side of the family everyone was.

I like your annal text now. The problem with Dôbar-longUltèrzefon is understandable, but I think context makes the meaning clear. I suppose you could pick a postposition to abstractly mean what you intend. Pre/postpositions are finicky anyway. For example, in English one says "I am interested *in* that", but in German one says "Ich interessiere mich da*für*" (I interest myself *for* that). The same idea is being expressed by both phrases, but for whatever reason different prepositions are chosen.

I changed it to simply Dôbar Ultèrzefon. Would it cause confusion?

The current text:

ÎDTHÎKUT ULTÈRZEFON'ÜB

Havudiz Zunarkimosor. Osor kabudiz'ver Emosor 'Tetóthfikod' lok Sitalosor 'Sazir Arist' lok Irolosor 'Urvad Ked lok Migrurmonom lok Timnärducim' lok Lalosor 'Mafol Gesis lok Titthalaban'. Thîkut varudiz Îdthîkut Ultèrzefon'üb 'Onolbom-longTitthalaban' Ashok'ar-longTorishselor-longEtur Ûthirlolor Etar lok Dôbar Ultèrzefon Ashok'ishob-longSolon Orsistiden Ärged-longMelbil Etar 'Etur-longMadir lok Adrïth'.

Nirtîd. Eturnirtîd. Etur Ûthirlolor 'Ärged-longNabasdan "Daros lok Nadakavum'"' dôbargeth Ineth Ultèrzefon Etur-longSolam'esh Laladek'og-longShámmanonol musarudiz'ver Raz Ograd. Etur kabgeth'ver Etar-longOsor Titthalaban Etar-longKalur'esh Ultèrzefon'ok lok Dastot Asteshseng Aral Singeth'ver Etar'ud Ultèrzefon-longNirtïlulsaràm gat Ïlulsaràm abodgeth'ver Îdlushôn'ok Etäg'ud 'Onsmost Egulsavot Lisigzatthud'. Îton Etarshorast Aral Singeth'ver Etar'ud Osor'ol-longGärem. Gärem nótongeth'ver Gätizeznirîd Dôbar Ineth'avor. Etur Etar havgeth Åtizeznobîd van Etur vergeth Etar. Inenbom Adilshalig dôbargeth'ver Led Ïngizudil Aral'ud 'Dôbar Ïngiz Thedak' nikotudiz Shed'urt-longEtur Etar dural Gidur-longKironïlulsaràm.

Translation:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Vocabulary:
Sin - to choose
Ùsin - Chooser (He who chooses)
Aral - It means woman but here I use it to mean Mrs. because my dwarves in particular follow their lineages from both the male and female line and in the Annals I try to make clear who is female and who is male because it defines how their surnames are transmitted in this particular civilization, the matrillinial surname element being translated transmitted by the mother as the first half of the surname. It could be just a regional thing.
Etäg - It means big but I am using it alone to mean Giant. Could be contextual.
Van - I used Van to mean When because this isn't a question so it can't be vanag so I just removed the question element -ag and put van in the beginning. If this is wrong please correct me.
Inenbom - Hillocks. Hill + Home.
Dôbar - As a noun I am using it to mean founder or creator.
Shed - In Dwarfish it says shed means "ordered". That didn't make sense to me so I am assuming it just means "to give an order" or "order" as in command.
Kiron - Kiron means Holy but I am using it as a tactful and respectful way of referencing a deceased person. Like how we say "the late X".

Notes:
I am mostly substituting the pronouns for the Titles of the people in question. I figure that would be respectful. So instead of saying Îton was born I say The General was born when I mean to say She was born. I used the word hav instead of is when speaking of age because being a certain year is strange and writing "years of age" seems convoluted in Dwarfish so I prefered just "King Etur had 82 years". I also eliminated the "long" whenever I saw an "of" phrase that didn't make sense with long. Specially name phrases. I used " " when something is a clarification inside a clarification. So basically, double ' '. The dates are given first from the founding of the city and second the King's regnal year.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Inarius on August 02, 2019, 01:15:09 pm
@Solitarian : If you want to speak to Toady, you generally use Lime green as a text color (look at Future of the Fortress topic).
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 02, 2019, 01:19:13 pm
Inarius:
I did not know that. Maybe I'll find some place to squeeze that in here. Though he would need to see the thread to see my green text, meaning he would need to be aware of the thread anyway, which would defeat the purpose of trying to tell him about the thread here.



VABritto:
Sure, here's an example to show a proper way to say this x / that x. Tangshokmug (here cheese, the cheese that is here, this cheese). Dogshokmug would then be there cheese, the cheese that is there, that cheese.

If you want to make a dictionary, then please do! Maybe it could be a file on DFFD?

Would Emosor Tetóthfikod cause confusion? Possibly, but I think context would make the meaning clear. I suppose you would use an apposition only when you want to emphasize it for clarity.

Sure, Um works as an abbreviation for urem.
Brother = alud, which could be abbreviated as ad. Sister = anir, so let's make that ar. Girl is saruth, so let's make that suth. Boy is urged, so let's mak that ud.
Umarud = father's sister's son, i.e. cousin. Borar = mother's sister, i.e. aunt. Zeztumadsuth = tenth father's brother's daughter, i.e. a cousin from ten generations ago.

Dôbar Ultèrzefon means "creation Ultèrzefon"... that works, I suppose. It could be like Latin and imply a pre/postposition. I would be confused if I saw that, though. Maybe you could make it all one big compound word like Ultèrzefondôbar?

Eturnirtîd = Etur first year? I think Etur the first would be Nirtetur (first etur) or Etur 'nirt' (Etur who is first).
An apposition within an apposition! Fancy! Your text mostly looks good.
What is 'og? I don't see that in the list of postpositions. Do you mean "because"? The postposition for that is 'ud. Og is a conjunction.
Remember to write hypens in the verbs. dôbar-geth, not dôbargeth. That might seem pedantic, but it makes the text easier to read, as verbs become more obvious so syntax is easier to follow.

"Shed" would mean ordered as an adjective, i.e. orderly, in good order. I like your poetic flair, as that personalizes the language and makes it seem real. Moreover, different players could establish different "dialects" with varying patterns of speech. Kiron being used to refer to dead people makes sense to me. I think using titles as pronouns is sensible. "King Etur had 82 years" sounds great! I like it! You are much more poetic than I am, you wordsmith! I expected people to eliminate superfluous longs and udizs and so on because they would become cumbersome and annoying due to repetition. I like your workarounds! I was considering making udiz as a tense marker optional, so Urist deb Shokmug would mean Urist eats cheese. Udiz is implied there, sort of like how "Soy Solitarian" and "Yo soy Solitarian" are the same in Spanish, as "soy" implies "yo".

musar-udiz'ver meaning "is known as" makes sense to me, though I think of musar as meaning to know as in knowing a fact. I would write that the mountains are called something instead of being known as something, but your writing is not wrong.
Raz Ograd refers to a mountain range, and each mountain is a tooth (figuratively), so plurality is implied. Very good!
Using Aral as a sort of title makes sense, though I would mark it as an apposition: Led Ïngizudil 'Aral', Led Ïngizudil the woman / who is a woman.

I would not use "van" to mean when in the sense of "at the time of", as you can form that with the current grammar: the conjunction ud (during / as). So it could be "Etur Etar hav-geth Åtizez-nobîd ud Etur ver-geth Etar". Etur the King had eighty-two years as Etur became king.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 02, 2019, 02:10:03 pm
Sure, here's an example to show a proper way to say this x / that x. Tangshokmug (here cheese, the cheese that is here, this cheese). Dogshokmug would then be there cheese, the cheese that is there, that cheese.

I changed the text to reflect this. Please revise it for me when you can!

If you want to make a dictionary, then please do! Maybe it could be a file on DFFD?

That would be good. First though I am just gonna make it a post here in this thread and will update it. I think it is more accessible that way. I will follow this model:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173189.0

Would Emosor Tetóthfikod cause confusion? Possibly, but I think context would make the meaning clear. I suppose you would use an apposition only when you want to emphasize it for clarity.

Makes sense. People would use it when the text needs clarification.

Sure, Um works as an abbreviation for urem.
Brother = alud, which could be abbreviated as ad. Sister = anir, so let's make that ar. Girl is saruth, so let's make that suth. Boy is urged, so let's mak that ud.
Umarud = father's sister's son, i.e. cousin. Borar = mother's sister, i.e. aunt. Zeztumadsuth = tenth father's brother's daughter, i.e. a cousin from ten generations ago.

Boy is ärged so that would be äd. Thus umaräd = father's sister's son. You have no idea how much I loved this system you made lol

Dôbar Ultèrzefon means "creation Ultèrzefon"... that works, I suppose. It could be like Latin and imply a pre/postposition. I would be confused if I saw that, though. Maybe you could make it all one big compound word like Ultèrzefondôbar?

Good idea! I changed the text to reflect this.

Eturnirtîd = Etur first year? I think Etur the first would be Nirtetur (first etur) or Etur 'nirt' (Etur who is first).
An apposition within an apposition! Fancy!

The idea is it being "The Eturian First Year" or "the first year of Etur". The next year will be the second year of Etur. Two dating systems are used in these Annals, a running system that goes from the founding of the city of Ultèrzefon to the present year and another system (the one common people and the government beaurocracy uses) that counts the years of the Monarch's reign. If there was a second King Etur, his first year of reign would probably be written as Nobteturnirtîd "The first year of Etur II" or "the first Etur-the-Second-ian year" lol

What is 'og? I don't see that in the list of postpositions. Do you mean "because"? The postposition for that is 'ud. Og is a conjunction.

It was supposed to be 'ag lol I fixed it. Sorry

Remember to write hypens in the verbs. dôbar-geth, not dôbargeth. That might seem pedantic, but it makes the text easier to read, as verbs become more obvious so syntax is easier to follow.

It isn't pedantic, you are right lol I fixed it.

"Shed" would mean ordered as an adjective, i.e. orderly, in good order.

Makes sense, I was looking at the adjective meaning by mistake. It's noun meaning is Order (concept) so it seems my use in this text is ok.

I like your poetic flair, as that personalizes the language and makes it seem real. Moreover, different players could establish different "dialects" with varying patterns of speech. Kiron being used to refer to dead people makes sense to me. I think using titles as pronouns is sensible. "King Etur had 82 years" sounds great! I like it! You are much more poetic than I am, you wordsmith! I expected people to eliminate superfluous longs and udizs and so on because they would become cumbersome and annoying due to repetition. I like your workarounds!

Thank you very much! I like to imagine how ettiquete would work in the language and how dwarves would deal with it's form in a way that isn't cumbersome to them. I'm glad you are liking my ideas! And yes, I can imagine many mutually intelligeable dwarven dialects forming based on use. It would be fun to see that happen. I should specify this text then as being very specifically a book made in Ultèrzefon, Capital of Titthalaban in the world called Athira Adela, being thus a very specific dialect of a very specific dwarven people. But I will try to make it as 'standardized' as humanly possible so as to give people a good example on how to use the language :)

I expected people to eliminate superfluous longs and udizs and so on because they would become cumbersome and annoying due to repetition. I like your workarounds! I was considering making udiz as a tense marker optional, so Urist deb Shokmug would mean Urist eats cheese. Udiz is implied there, sort of like how "Soy Solitarian" and "Yo soy Solitarian" are the same in Spanish, as "soy" implies "yo".

I can understand the elimination of superfluous longs but I think Udizes are harder to eliminate because we don't have any infinitive marker. As of now I am using the unmarked verb as an infinitve as you can see with the word "dural" (to honor) in the end of my first phrase. "Soy" is different because "soy" actually includes inside it the information that is being omitted (yo is the only pronoun that can be used with soy, making yo superfluous). Udiz actually carries independent information because it differentiates a conjugated present tense verb from an infinitive verb.

musar-udiz'ver meaning "is known as" makes sense to me, though I think of musar as meaning to know as in knowing a fact. I would write that the mountains are called something instead of being known as something, but your writing is not wrong.

I used it to imply that it is known by people. As in, this is the name people know it is called. I think it expresses popular knowledge. If I said it is called this it sounds more like I am giving its proper name that is internally its own. When I say it is known as this it implies it could be known as other things as well and this is only its dwarven name. That's how I saw it at least lol

Raz Ograd refers to a mountain range, and each mountain is a tooth (figuratively), so plurality is implied. Very good!

Thanks! Workarounds galore! XD

Using Aral as a sort of title makes sense, though I would mark it as an apposition: Led Ïngizudil 'Aral', Led Ïngizudil the woman / who is a woman.

I edited the text to comply with this.

I would not use "van" to mean when in the sense of "at the time of", as you can form that with the current grammar: the conjunction ud (during / as). So it could be "Etur Etar hav-geth Åtizez-nobîd ud Etur ver-geth Etar". Etur the King had eighty-two years as Etur became king.

I edited the text to comply with this.

I also corrected some Possessive case mistakes I was making (I swapped possessor with possessee a lot)

Please correct it if there is anything wrong. Here is the new edition:

ÎDTHÎKUT ULTÈRZEFON'ÜB

Hav-udiz Zunarkimosor. Dogosor kab-udiz'ver Emosor 'Tetóthfikod' lok Sitalosor 'Sazir Arist' lok Irolosor 'Urvad Ked lok Migrurmonom lok Timnärducim' lok Lalosor 'Mafol Gesis lok Titthalaban'. Tangthîkut var-udiz Îdthîkut Ultèrzefon'üb 'Onolbom-longTitthalaban' Ashok'ar-longTorishselor-longEtur Ûthirlolor Etar lok Ultèrzefondôbar Ashok'ishob-longSolon Orsistiden Ärged-longMelbil Etar 'Etur-longMadir lok Adrïth'.

Nirtîd. Eturnirtîd. Etur Ûthirlolor 'Ärged-longNabasdan "Daros lok Nadakavum"' dôbar-geth Ineth Ultèrzefon Solam'esh-longEtur Laladek'ag-longShámmanonol musar-udiz'ver Raz Ograd. Etur kab-geth'ver Etar-longOsor Titthalaban Etar-longKalur'esh Ultèrzefon'ok lok Dastot Asteshseng 'Aral' Sin-geth'ver Etar'ud Nirtïlulsaràm-longUltèrzefon gat Ïlulsaràm abod-geth'ver Îdlushôn'ok Etäg'ud 'Onsmost Egulsavot Lisigzatthud'. Îton Etarshorast 'Aral' Sin-geth'ver Etar'ud Gärem-longOsor'ol. Gärem nóton-geth'ver Gätizeznirîd Inethdôbar'avor. Etur Etar hav-geth Åtizez-nobîd ud Etur ver-geth Etar. Inenbom Adilshalig dôbar-geth'ver Led Ïngizudil 'Aral''ud 'Dôbar Ïngiz Thedak' nikot-udiz Shed'urt-longEtur Etar dural Gidur-longKironïlulsaràm.

Translation:
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Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 02, 2019, 02:11:37 pm
ILTHÎKUT ARKIMTALUL'ÜB 'UTHARTHÎKUT'
(Dwarven Dictionary, Book One - From A to L)

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Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 02, 2019, 03:42:39 pm
Great idea with the dictionary! You have accepted a mighty task, though (assuming you will add all the words in language_DWARF, that is). Typing all those thousands of words will surely tax you. Anytime you want to ask whether a word is ok, just let me know!

I didn't make this familial title system; I just copied it from Swedish.

I would write Nirteturîd, because the first adjective is the most important. The order of the elements reflects importance. It is the first (1) Eturian (2) year (3). However, Etur is the king and probably doesn't want his name to be a subsidiary element, so perhaps it could be Nirtîd-longNirteturikud, the first year of Etur I.'s reign. Meh, that's quite cumbersome. Your idea is better. I like this idea of having two calendars, though. It makes sense and fits real history.

You mean you want it as standardized as *dwarvenly* possible! Lucky for you, those dwarves are awfully chaotic.

You are right about udiz not being like soy. Soy is synthetic, as it is a conjugated verb, while udiz is purely analytic and has no other forms. The infinitive form would have to be the markerless verb, so I suppose the markers are not so easy to remove. Perhaps there could be colloquial contractions, just as English has "gonna" (going to) and "whatcha doin'" (what are you doing).

That "his descendent and heir" at the end confuses me. Etur-longMadir lok Adrïth means Etur belonging to Madir and Adrïth. Who are Madir and Adrïth? Did I misunderstand something? Laladek'ag is fine, though I would use 'osh instead of 'og, but that's a very fine distinction and doesn't change the meaning. Etar-longKalur'esh does not make sense to me. King of with the throne? Differentiating names is rather difficult, I've found, as the names are all taken from the word list. In real languages most names are specifically names and do not function in any other context (though there are exceptions). I suppose that's just another quirk of Dwarven! Sin-geth'ver is "was chosen"? Sin should not be capitalized, as it is a verb and not a noun. However, I am not certain where "sin" is in the lexicon. There is no word for "choose". You use 'ud (because of) to mean by... interesting. That makes sense figuratively. I thought about adding another postposition for that, but 'ud works here. Etäg as giant makes sense to me. Gärem-longOsor'ol confuses me. General belonging to the kingdom as? The postposition should be after Gärem, I think. Gärem'ol-longOsor (as general of the kingdom). I like that you use 'ol. That's a tricky one. Shed'urt doesn't work because Shed refers to the concept of order, as in the counterpart to chaos. If it is under the orders of king Etur, then you should use a word like Utthat (direction). Is there supposed to be a special character at the beginning of that word? It's not displaying properly on my screen. Utthat (or útthat or whatever it is) as a verb means to direct, so as a noun it must mean direction. Utthat'urt is better. I think dural by itself is strange and ungrammatical. I would change that to Mikdural'ahd-longKironsaràmïlulgidur (for the benefit of the honoring belonging to the holy (i.e. deceased) great lord's memory). That very long compound word is poetic, right?

Otherwise your text looks good to me.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 02, 2019, 08:22:45 pm
Great idea with the dictionary! You have accepted a mighty task, though (assuming you will add all the words in language_DWARF, that is). Typing all those thousands of words will surely tax you.

It will be, but I can do it in my spare time lol

Anytime you want to ask whether a word is ok, just let me know!

When I finish writing everything down I will submit my words officially lol

I didn't make this familial title system; I just copied it from Swedish.

It is a great system lol

I would write Nirteturîd, because the first adjective is the most important. The order of the elements reflects importance. It is the first (1) Eturian (2) year (3). However, Etur is the king and probably doesn't want his name to be a subsidiary element, so perhaps it could be Nirtîd-longNirteturikud, the first year of Etur I.'s reign. Meh, that's quite cumbersome. Your idea is better.

The main issue with that is that it creates confusion (is it the first Eturian year or the first year of the first Etur?). Is there a way to know for sure without making it overly complicated? A rule of prominence of sorts.

I like this idea of having two calendars, though. It makes sense and fits real history.

I find it fun to do and it makes the world seem more alive.

You mean you want it as standardized as *dwarvenly* possible! Lucky for you, those dwarves are awfully chaotic.

Pretty much XD I'll do my best and it is good to know the standards are low lol

You are right about udiz not being like soy. Soy is synthetic, as it is a conjugated verb, while udiz is purely analytic and has no other forms. The infinitive form would have to be the markerless verb, so I suppose the markers are not so easy to remove. Perhaps there could be colloquial contractions, just as English has "gonna" (going to) and "whatcha doin'" (what are you doing).

Definitely. I believe the speech of the lowly serf would be irrecognizeable. Just remember that Spanish, Portuguese and Italian are basically broken Latin :P I can imagine a lower class dwarf saying something like "ab-uiz" instead of "hav-udiz" for example. It can pretty much become irrecognizeable after a while.

That "his descendent and heir" at the end confuses me. Etur-longMadir lok Adrïth means Etur belonging to Madir and Adrïth. Who are Madir and Adrïth? Did I misunderstand something?
The correct would be Madir lok Adrïth-longEtur, the descendent and heir of Etur. I wrote it wrong. And Madir and Adrïth are words I made up to fill the void of "descendent" and "heir" remember? I explain all vocabulary I made up in the Vocabulary section of my previous posts (with details in the Notes).

Laladek'ag is fine, though I would use 'osh instead of 'og, but that's a very fine distinction and doesn't change the meaning.

I thought of using 'osh as well but I chose 'ag deliberately because 'osh has also the meaning of "along". It made me think of something that is spread through a place. Like a bunch of houses along the southern side of the mountain range. But that wasn't what I wanted to say. I wanted to describe a city that was punctually located in a place on the southern side. So I used 'ag to show that this city isn't spread out but a walled area in a specific location.

Etar-longKalur'esh does not make sense to me. King of with the throne?

It is because I wrote it wrong lol The full phrase is "Etur kab-geth'ver Etar-longOsor Titthalaban Kalur'eshlong-Etar Ultèrzefon'ok". Etur was named King of Titthalaban with ('esh) his (-longEtar) throne (Kalur) at ('ok) Ultèrzefon.

Differentiating names is rather difficult, I've found, as the names are all taken from the word list. In real languages most names are specifically names and do not function in any other context (though there are exceptions). I suppose that's just another quirk of Dwarven!

Yes, that does take some getting used to. I think it is very very context sensitive.

Sin-geth'ver is "was chosen"? Sin should not be capitalized, as it is a verb and not a noun. However, I am not certain where "sin" is in the lexicon. There is no word for "choose".

I will remove its capitalization. Sin is a word I made up for to choose. I specified so in the Vocabulary section of a previous post lol

You use 'ud (because of) to mean by... interesting. That makes sense figuratively. I thought about adding another postposition for that, but 'ud works here.

Yes, I think the postpositions you already invented are very versatile and I sincerely think it is unlikely we would need any more since they can pretty much be used differently depending on context.

Gärem-longOsor'ol confuses me. General belonging to the kingdom as? The postposition should be after Gärem, I think. Gärem'ol-longOsor (as general of the kingdom).

Yes, you are right. I will change it now!

I like that you use 'ol. That's a tricky one.

I had to be creative at times, but like I said, your postpositions are very resilient and can adapt well to situations.

Shed'urt doesn't work because Shed refers to the concept of order, as in the counterpart to chaos. If it is under the orders of king Etur, then you should use a word like Utthat (direction). Is there supposed to be a special character at the beginning of that word? It's not displaying properly on my screen. Utthat (or útthat or whatever it is) as a verb means to direct, so as a noun it must mean direction. Utthat'urt is better.

It is Ôtthat. And I agree. I will chang eit to Ôtthat'urt.

I think dural by itself is strange and ungrammatical. I would change that to Mikdural'ahd-longKironsaràmïlulgidur (for the benefit of the honoring belonging to the holy (i.e. deceased) great lord's memory). That very long compound word is poetic, right?

It is pretty poetic aye lol but I think my phrase is grammatically correct (based on your rules) because I am not writing Dural (Honor) but dural (to honor, infinitive form).

The phrase is "Inenbom Adilshalig dôbar-geth'ver Led Ïngizudil 'Aral''ud 'Ùdôbar Ïngiz Thedak' nikot-udiz Ôtthat'urt-longEtur Etar dural Gidur-longKironïlulsaràm." The Hillocks (Inenbom) of Adilshalig were founded by ('ud) Mrs. ('Aral') Led Ïngizudil, founder (I changed from dôbar to Ùdôbar just now because I forgot the Ù xD) of the Ïngiz Clan, acting (nikot-udiz) under the orders (Ôtthat'urt) of (long) Etur Etar (King Etur) to honor (dural) the memory (Gidur) of (long) the late (kiron, holy, deceased) lady (ïlul) mayor (Saràm, look at the first vocabulary I made with -zod(en), there I explain why of Saràm beinf used for Mayor). The title isn't Great Lady but Lady Mayor. Your form is also valid, but I don't understand why mine is not grammatically correct. Isn't the unmarked verb the infinitive?

Otherwise your text looks good to me.

I have entries going to the year 1052. It will be fun to write it all lol

Current:

ÎDTHÎKUT ULTÈRZEFON'ÜB

Hav-udiz Zunarkimosor. Dogosor kab-udiz'ver Emosor 'Tetóthfikod' lok Sitalosor 'Sazir Arist' lok Irolosor 'Urvad Ked lok Migrurmonom lok Timnärducim' lok Lalosor 'Mafol Gesis lok Titthalaban'. Tangthîkut var-udiz Îdthîkut Ultèrzefon'üb 'Onolbom-longTitthalaban' Ashok'ar-longTorishselor-longEtur Ûthirlolor Etar lok Ultèrzefondôbar Ashok'ishob-longSolon Orsistiden Ärged-longMelbil Etar 'Madir lok Adrïth-longEtur'.

Nirtîd. Eturnirtîd. Etur Ûthirlolor 'Ärged-longNabasdan "Daros lok Nadakavum"' dôbar-geth Ineth Ultèrzefon Solam'esh-longEtur Laladek'ag-longShámmanonol musar-udiz'ver Raz Ograd'ol. Etur kab-geth'ver Etar-longOsor Titthalaban Kalur'esh-longEtar Ultèrzefon'ok lok Dastot Asteshseng 'Aral' sin-geth'ver Etar'ud Nirtïlulsaràm-longUltèrzefon gat Ïlulsaràm abod-geth'ver Îdlushôn'ok Etäg'ud 'Onsmost Egulsavot Lisigzatthud'. Îton Etarshorast 'Aral' sin-geth'ver Etar'ud Gärem'ol-longOsor. Gärem nóton-geth'ver Gätizeznirîd Inethdôbar'avor. Etur Etar hav-geth Åtizez-nobîd ud Etur ver-geth Etar. Inenbom Adilshalig dôbar-geth'ver Led Ïngizudil 'Aral''ud 'Ùdôbar Ïngiz Thedak' nikot-udiz Ôtthat'urt-longEtur Etar dural Gidur-longKironïlulsaràm.

Translation:
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Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 02, 2019, 10:09:55 pm
ILTHÎKUT ARKIMTALUL'ÜB 'NOBTTHÎKUT'
(Dwarven Dictionary, Book Two - From M to Å)

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Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 03, 2019, 01:18:36 am
You're right, there would be confusion about whether it is the first Eturian year or the first year of the first Etur. In this case both work, but if there were two Eturs that would be confusing. I suppose we'll keep your original idea.

Embarrassingly, I forgot about your invented words! Yes, after checking your neologisms, I was much better able to understand your writing.

No, your last sentence is not grammatical because the "acting" in "acting under the orders of  Etur to honor" begins another clause, as does "to honor", so more verbs and objects are needed. You either need to begin another sentence or make that an apposition to say "who was acting". I would write: she acted under the directions of Etur in order that the mayor's memory was honored = Led Ïngizudil nikot-geth Ôtthat'urt-LongEtur Etar mit Gidur-longSaràm dural-geth'ver.

Indeed, the postpositions are quite versatile. I might even be able to trim one or two, depending on whether their meanings can be integrated into other ones.

Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 03, 2019, 08:16:32 am
Are you familiar with Diggy Diggy Hole, the very dwarfy song by the Yogscast? I translated it! I'm not completely satisfied, as a few lines feel a bit awkward, but overall I am happy with the result. Here it is! Sing it in the shower! Its Dwarven name is Osaleshim - the song of freedom (literally "singing freedom"). Here is the 8-bit-esque music for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vB5l6Dths4


Avuzalud fazís-zilir               (mine brothers celebrate)
abod osal'ol                        (strike as a song)
lilum tekkud lok isdenrir         (hoist pick and watchful ear)
taron osal'ol                        (yell as a song)
istam'utan lok thol'ishob        (without light and into the deep)
telzugobidräthnâzom             (grandest treasure dream)
doren sedur lok lamstesok      (diamonds emeralds and stony moltenness)
var-udiz tangonol'ok             (are here in the mountain)


dolush ber'urt                      (bear under earth)
telekurkirunkosak                  (mightiest mushroom drinkers)
bâl unom'ok                         (growth within darkness)
emenekast lok tholmurak        (strong safety and deep boldness)
datansalul                           (iron skin)
delerosod                            (steel bones)
avuz emen-udiz arkim            (mines strengthen the dwarves)
etas-zilir osaleshim               (join the song of freedom)


ekurarkim dôbar-udiz avuz      (the mighty dwarves create mines)
ïssunteltholavuz                    (everlasting deepest mines)
ïssunteltholavuz                    (everlasting deepest mines)
ekurarkim dôbar-udiz avuz      (the mighty dwarves create mines)
ïssunteltholavuz                    (everlasting deepest mines)
ïssunavuz                            (everlasting mines)


adistam tangasdobùst           (the sunlight breaches here not)
thol thol avuz'ok                   (deep deep in the mine)
ïlon tangasdobgirust              (the moon never scintillates here)
arkim var berdok                   (dwarves are earthen hegemons)
esmul-zilir ucatôfid                (fill a beer cup)
fazís'ok deb lok nastid            (in the celebration eat and cavort)
dogzust var arkimadbok          (that bed is a dwarven sponge)
nâzom onolgeshud'ok             (dreams within the mountain fortress)


dolush ber'urt                       (bear under earth)
midorbol lambobrur'ok             (powerfully grow inside stone mother)
arkimarban var ber                 (the dwarven cradle is earth)
rakust var onollolok                (the tomb is mountainous granite)
bardum arkim'ist var râsh        (a fight against dwarves is death)
mulonashok                          (every time)
nist'utan abod onol                (without fear strike the mountain)
avuz var asdobágthol             (the mines are never overly deep)


ekurarkim dôbar-udiz avuz       (the mighty dwarves create mines)
ïssunteltholavuz                    (everlasting deepest mines)
ïssunteltholavuz                     (everlasting deepest mines)
ekurarkim dôbar-udiz avuz       (the mighty dwarves create mines)
ïssunteltholavuz                     (everlasting deepest mines)
ïssunavuz                             (everlasting mines)


ekurarkim dôbar-udiz avuz       (the mighty dwarves create mines)
ïssunteltholavuz                     (everlasting deepest mines)
ïssunteltholavuz                     (everlasting deepest mines)
ekurarkim dôbar-udiz avuz       (the mighty dwarves create mines)
ïssunteltholavuz                    (everlasting deepest mines)
ïssunavuz                             (everlasting mines)


dolush ber'urt                       (bear under earth)
telekurkirunkosak                   (mightiest mushroom drinkers)
bâl unom'ok                          (growth within darkness)
emenekast lok tholmurak        (strong safety and deep boldness)
datansalul                            (iron skin)
delerosod                             (steel bones)
avuz emen-udiz arkim             (mines strengthen the dwarves)
etas-zilir osaleshim                (join the song of freedom)


ekurarkim dôbar-udiz avuz       (the mighty dwarves create mines)
ïssunteltholavuz                    (everlasting deepest mines)
ïssunteltholavuz                     (everlasting deepest mines)
ekurarkim dôbar-udiz avuz       (the mighty dwarves create mines)
ïssunteltholavuz                    (everlasting deepest mines)
ïssunavuz                             (everlasting mines)


ekurarkim dôbar-udiz avuz       (the mighty dwarves create mines)
ïssunteltholavuz                     (everlasting deepest mines)
ïssunteltholavuz                     (everlasting deepest mines)
ekurarkim dôbar-udiz avuz        (the mighty dwarves create mines)
ïssunteltholavuz                     (everlasting deepest mines)
ïssunavuz                             (everlasting mines)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 03, 2019, 10:13:16 am
No, your last sentence is not grammatical because the "acting" in "acting under the orders of  Etur to honor" begins another clause, as does "to honor", so more verbs and objects are needed. You either need to begin another sentence or make that an apposition to say "who was acting". I would write: she acted under the directions of Etur in order that the mayor's memory was honored = Led Ïngizudil nikot-geth Ôtthat'urt-LongEtur Etar mit Gidur-longSaràm dural-geth'ver.

Makes sense! I will change the text to reflect this format.

Indeed, the postpositions are quite versatile. I might even be able to trim one or two, depending on whether their meanings can be integrated into other ones.

If I were you I'd wait until we have more texts in the language. It would give you a better idea of what is superfluous and what isn't (people might find uses to certain postpositions that you didn't anticipate).

Current version:

ÎDTHÎKUT ULTÈRZEFON'ÜB

Hav-udiz Zunarkimosor. Dogosor kab-udiz'ver Emosor 'Tetóthfikod' lok Sitalosor 'Sazir Arist' lok Irolosor 'Urvad Ked lok Migrurmonom lok Timnärducim' lok Lalosor 'Mafol Gesis lok Titthalaban'. Tangthîkut var-udiz Îdthîkut Ultèrzefon'üb 'Onolbom-longTitthalaban' Ashok'ar-longTorishselor-longEtur Ûthirlolor Etar lok Ultèrzefondôbar Ashok'ishob-longSolon Orsistiden Ärged-longMelbil Etar 'Madir lok Adrïth-longEtur'.

Nirtîd. Eturnirtîd. Etur Ûthirlolor Ärged-longNabasdan 'Daros lok Nadakavum' dôbar-geth Ineth Ultèrzefon Solam'esh-longEtur Laladek'ag-longShámmanonol musar-udiz'ver Raz Ograd'ol. Etur kab-geth'ver Etar-longOsor Titthalaban Etar-longKalur'esh Ultèrzefon'ok lok Dastot Asteshseng 'Aral' sin-geth'ver Etar'ud Nirtïlulsaràm-longUltèrzefon gat Ïlulsaràm abod-geth'ver Îdlushôn'ok Etäg'ud 'Onsmost Egulsavot Lisigzatthud'. Îton Etarshorast 'Aral' sin-geth'ver Etar'ud Gärem'ol-longOsor. Gärem nóton-geth'ver Gätizeznirîd Inethdôbar'avor. Etur Etar hav-geth Åtizez-nobîd ud Etur ver-geth Etar. Inenbom Adilshalig dôbar-geth'ver Led Ïngizudil 'Aral''ud 'Ùdôbar Ïngiz Thedak'. Saràm nikot-geth Ôtthat'urt-longEtur Etar mit Gidur-longKironïlulsaràm dural-geth'ver.

Nobtîd. Eturnobtîd. Olin Becorlikot 'Udos Ùdôbar Likot Thedak' ver-geth Nobtïlulsaràm-longUltèrzefon. Ïlulsaràm var-geth Thimshur-longÎton Etarshorast Gärem 'Ùdôbar Etar Thedak' lok Ïlulsaràm nóton-geth'ver fimizez-nobîd Inethdôbar'avor. Semortilat-longDan aban-udiz Etarlikot Meden. Etur Etar thimshur-geth Edëm Adildostob 'Ùdôbar Adil Thedak'. Semordan aban-udiz Adillolor Meden. Led Ïngizudil Saràm-longAdilshalig thimshur-geth Monom Oshoshrîsen 'Udos Ùdôbar Rîsen Thedak'. Semordan aban-udiz Ïngizrîsen Meden.

Translation:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Vocabulary
Aban - Aban means construct, but I am using it as a verb here to construct or form. It would be the word to form when related to something that is formed by seperate pieces.
Thimshur - I'm using this for a generic word for husband and wife (they can specify it more when needed by saying Udos and Aral). As a verb I am using it for to marry
Tilat - I used Tilat instead of Madir for descendent purposefully because Tilat is more inclusive (Madir gives the impression of a descendent after the person's children. It indicates lineage. While Tilat means children, so it includes the first generation descendents more)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 03, 2019, 10:20:54 am
Are you familiar with Diggy Diggy Hole, the very dwarfy song by the Yogscast? I translated it! I'm not completely satisfied, as a few lines feel a bit awkward, but overall I am happy with the result. Here it is! Sing it in the shower! Its Dwarven name is Osaleshim - the song of freedom (literally "singing freedom").

I never heard of this before! Very nice lol
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 03, 2019, 11:04:51 am
Updated the dictionary to include D words.

Link:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Superdorf on August 03, 2019, 01:11:35 pm
Are you familiar with Diggy Diggy Hole, the very dwarfy song by the Yogscast? I translated it! I'm not completely satisfied, as a few lines feel a bit awkward, but overall I am happy with the result. Here it is! Sing it in the shower! Its Dwarven name is Osaleshim - the song of freedom (literally "singing freedom").

This is wonderful! Let's set it to music. :D
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 03, 2019, 01:29:21 pm
Are you familiar with Diggy Diggy Hole, the very dwarfy song by the Yogscast? I translated it! I'm not completely satisfied, as a few lines feel a bit awkward, but overall I am happy with the result. Here it is! Sing it in the shower! Its Dwarven name is Osaleshim - the song of freedom (literally "singing freedom").

This is wonderful! Let's set it to music. :D

For that we need to establish the sounds of certain letters, but it is definitely doable!

One sound I propose is that C has the sound of /t∫/ (aka the sound of ch in church or the sound of C in Italian Cesare). The vowels will be the more complicated part because each should be distinct (since they actually differentiate words)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: voliol on August 03, 2019, 01:40:10 pm
Are you familiar with Diggy Diggy Hole, the very dwarfy song by the Yogscast? I translated it! I'm not completely satisfied, as a few lines feel a bit awkward, but overall I am happy with the result. Here it is! Sing it in the shower! Its Dwarven name is Osaleshim - the song of freedom (literally "singing freedom").

This is wonderful! Let's set it to music. :D

For that we need to establish the sounds of certain letters, but it is definitely doable!

One sound I propose is that C has the sound of /t∫/ (aka the sound of ch in church or the sound of C in Italian Cesare). The vowels will be the more complicated part because each should be distinct (since they actually differentiate words)

Loam's posts could/should be used as the foundation for this. (link 1 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg7941045#msg7941045)|link 2 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg7996111#msg7996111))

It would be nice to see a voice synthesizer reading dwarven at some point; it might actually make it easier with the vowels as finding a singer able to pronounce that many (possibly tonal) vowels might be difficult on an English-based forum.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 03, 2019, 01:43:13 pm
I agree entirely. I agree with him that C should be a fricative like ch. I also agree that ng is actually one thing (maybe something like Spanish ñ, Portuguese nh or French and Italian gn). I also support the theory that å is actually ü because it maintains the symmetry of the vowels.

I'd actually suggest he could attempt a suggestion of what the vowels could represent. He said he couldn't know for sure but if anyone is qualified to give a guess it is him
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 03, 2019, 02:44:40 pm
This is wonderful! Let's set it to music. :D

This music already exists.
Here is the original song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytWz0qVvBZ0
Here is an 8-bit instrumental version which I very much enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vB5l6Dths4
Here is a piano version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfl6DlLfP74

I don't know (or care, really) about the phonetics of Dwarven, so I'll leave that to you! Depending on the phonetics that are ultimately chosen, the song might need to be changed so that syllables and music match.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 03, 2019, 03:52:11 pm
Current version of the Annals:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Translation:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Vocabulary:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 04, 2019, 12:28:37 pm
I have created the first Dwarven puns and wisdom phrases:

Asdob hav-udiz Etägsaràmeshon zis Eshom

There is no greater good (Eshon) than silence (Eshom)

Dural-longArkim var-udiz Durad-longArkim

A dwarf's honor is his beard

Durad lok Dural duthnur-udiz'ver Dur'esh

Beard and Honor are guarded with [one's] fist

Etest-longEtar var-udiz miketar

The King's duty is to reign (I know there is a word for reign, but the language is flexible so people can actually use the word king for to reign)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 04, 2019, 01:16:00 pm
Added E to the dictionary

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 04, 2019, 01:32:51 pm
I love your enthusiasm!

Those sayings seem good to me, though I don't quite understand the first one.

Asdob hav-udiz Etägsaràmeshon Eshom'osh
nothing has biggreatgood beside silence

Your attempt here illustrates an interesting point that I had not considered; Dwarven has no "than" used in comparative phrases like in English. That's a conjunction (and an important one), so I can easily add it to the lexicon. I hereby add the conjunction "zis". So your phrase should now be: Asdob hav-udiz Etagsaràmeshon zis Eshom, nothing has greater good than silence.

The last saying using "etar" as a verb is interesting. We could do that in English too, I guess. Charles II. did not king well, i.e. he did not fulfill the duties of a king satisfactorily (This is not a denunciation of Charles II. He is just the first monarch who came to my mind when I sought an example). I wonder if that usage of etar is not clear enough, though. I could read that as "A king's duty is a king". Perhaps you should use that mik- prefix? Etest-longEtar var-udiz Miketar, the duty of a king is kingship / the state of being a king / doing kingy stuff.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 04, 2019, 01:44:18 pm
I edited it to reflect that!

I am adding words to the dictionary and I keep stumbling upon interesting puns so I felt like making phrases with them lol

Do you see any problem in the Annals?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 04, 2019, 02:46:35 pm
The annals look very good. The only part which seems a little odd to me is Semortilat-longDan aban-udiz Etarlikot Meden. Semortilat = child union. I see what you mean, but to me that suggests their children became incestuously married or something like that! Also, that use of "aban" makes sense, though I think of that being used more in the sense of structures. I suppose the tribe could be metaphorically considered a structure that is "built", so maybe aban does make sense here. Semordan seems redundant to me. You could just say semor or dan to refer to the married couple, right? They are a union and they are a couple. United couple just repeats that, but it is a very minor point.

Other than those tiny things, the annals are great, I think.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Pvt. Pirate on August 04, 2019, 02:55:57 pm
This is wonderful! Let's set it to music. :D

This music already exists.
Here is the original song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytWz0qVvBZ0
Here is an 8-bit instrumental version which I very much enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vB5l6Dths4
Here is a piano version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfl6DlLfP74

I don't know (or care, really) about the phonetics of Dwarven, so I'll leave that to you! Depending on the phonetics that are ultimately chosen, the song might need to be changed so that syllables and music match.
listening to it again with tears of pride - definitely want it in dorfen language, like the songs of Simon Swerwer https://www.youtube.com/user/simonswerwer which i can sing along while playing DF.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 04, 2019, 02:59:06 pm
The annals look very good. The only part which seems a little odd to me is Semortilat-longDan aban-udiz Etarlikot Meden. Semortilat = child union. I see what you mean, but to me that suggests their children became incestuously married or something like that! Also, that use of "aban" makes sense, though I think of that being used more in the sense of structures. I suppose the tribe could be metaphorically considered a structure that is "built", so maybe aban does make sense here. Semordan seems redundant to me. You could just say semor or dan to refer to the married couple, right? They are a union and they are a couple. United couple just repeats that, but it is a very minor point.

Other than those tiny things, the annals are great, I think.

Child Union would be Tilatsemor. Semortilat means United children (the adjective is semor). In Semordan I am using Semor as an adjective for 'together', to emphasis that they as a unit form this. But in the case of Semordan it is truly rather repetitive so I will change to Dan.

Current version of the Annals:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Translation:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, I added F and G to the dictionary:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 04, 2019, 04:20:00 pm
listening to it again with tears of pride - definitely want it in dorfen language, like the songs of Simon Swerwer https://www.youtube.com/user/simonswerwer which i can sing along while playing DF.

Oh yeah, I recognize those from SoundSense! I suppose I could work on "translating" those into my Dwarven grammar, but they already use DF's lexicon, so I think I can leave them as they are. Did you try to say my translation of Diggy Diggy Hole along with the music? I want the syllables and rhyme scheme to match. It works for me, but a few lines aren't great when I say them and I was wondering if other people had similar difficulties.

Now I see, VABritto. I misunderstood semor and didn't see it as an adjective. If you want to use that to emphasize the union in semordan, then I think that's fine. The repetition isn't incorrect per se just because I prefer to avoid it. If you like it, then use it! Otherwise the annals make sense to me.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 04, 2019, 04:23:28 pm
listening to it again with tears of pride - definitely want it in dorfen language, like the songs of Simon Swerwer https://www.youtube.com/user/simonswerwer which i can sing along while playing DF.

Oh yeah, I recognize those from SoundSense! I suppose I could work on "translating" those into my Dwarven grammar, but they already use DF's lexicon, so I think I can leave them as they are. Did you try to say my translation of Diggy Diggy Hole along with the music? I want the syllables and rhyme scheme to match. It works for me, but a few lines aren't great when I say them and I was wondering if other people had similar difficulties.

Now I see, VABritto. I misunderstood semor and didn't see it as an adjective. If you want to use that to emphasize the union in semordan, then I think that's fine. The repetition isn't incorrect per se just because I prefer to avoid it. If you like it, then use it! Otherwise the annals make sense to me.

I imagine people would definitely say Semordan but it would probably be seen as a sign of unrefinement. It is repetitive. Proper high class dwarfish (at least in Ultèrzefon) is concise and economic. So I still think you are right and it should just be Dan. It keeps it concise.

Also, I just defined the Letter order in my dwarven dictionary. It is A B D E F G I K C L M N NG O R S SH T TH U V Z Â Á À Ä Ê É È Ë Î Í Ì Ï Ô Ó Ò Ö Û Ú Ù Å.

I am considering Å = Ü (as suggested by Loam in his first post). I am also placing altered sounds together. So T is besides Th and S is besides Sh. I also am considering as if C = Ch (as suggested by Loam). I am also considering Ng its own thing
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 04, 2019, 04:53:19 pm
Finished letter I in the dictionary:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Pvt. Pirate on August 05, 2019, 04:57:27 am
listening to it again with tears of pride - definitely want it in dorfen language, like the songs of Simon Swerwer https://www.youtube.com/user/simonswerwer which i can sing along while playing DF.

Oh yeah, I recognize those from SoundSense! I suppose I could work on "translating" those into my Dwarven grammar, but they already use DF's lexicon, so I think I can leave them as they are. Did you try to say my translation of Diggy Diggy Hole along with the music? I want the syllables and rhyme scheme to match. It works for me, but a few lines aren't great when I say them and I was wondering if other people had similar difficulties.

Now I see, VABritto. I misunderstood semor and didn't see it as an adjective. If you want to use that to emphasize the union in semordan, then I think that's fine. The repetition isn't incorrect per se just because I prefer to avoid it. If you like it, then use it! Otherwise the annals make sense to me.
i actually don't understand how i could've scrolled past it.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Lysabild on August 06, 2019, 07:53:28 am
I tried about a million different ways to find a way to describe a plausible phonetic meaning of the diacritics and I honestly can't come up with something, except one kind of hacky approach. If you imagine that vowels in dwarven can simple be marked or unmarked, then you only have to come up with two variations, and suddenly the world is entirely open for a variety of examples, among the easiest simply having marked vowels represent long vowels.

The individual marking then doesn't mean anything, you can imagine dwarves are free to mark the vowels as they please and the ones we see in game are just the ones that ended up the most popular for the given word.

I'm curious if there's any other thoughts to this, it's easily the most obscure part of Dwarven to pin down.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 06, 2019, 08:10:06 am
I tried about a million different ways to find a way to describe a plausible phonetic meaning of the diacritics and I honestly can't come up with something, except one kind of hacky approach. If you imagine that vowels in dwarven can simple be marked or unmarked, then you only have to come up with two variations, and suddenly the world is entirely open for a variety of examples, among the easiest simply having marked vowels represent long vowels.

The individual marking then doesn't mean anything, you can imagine dwarves are free to mark the vowels as they please and the ones we see in game are just the ones that ended up the most popular for the given word.

I'm curious if there's any other thoughts to this, it's easily the most obscure part of Dwarven to pin down.

It could carry combined meaning, thus explaining the variety.

We see five varieties per vowel: e, ê, é, è, ë.

I consider å to be ü. Thus this rule would apply to every single vowel. Vowels change according to length, pitch and loudness according to Wikipedia (I know nothing about this so if anyone can take the ball from me I'd be grateful lol). We could simply say that one vowel has a short length but a higher pitch. One has a longer length and a lower pitch. The other a longer length and high pitch. The other a shorter length and low pitch. The unmarked vowel would be neutral.

Again, I'm not studied in this so I can't say for sure if this makes sense, but I believe this principle can be transfered to other ideas and it be workable (the idea that there are a variety of factors that can change a vowel and those can be combined to express the five varients)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Lysabild on August 06, 2019, 08:26:36 am
The problem with trying to encompass the variety is that some of them just happen way too little, it makes for an unsatisfying solution with some variations only appearing 13 times total.

If you combine all marked letters they actually resemble a common phoneme instead of a weird oddity.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Pvt. Pirate on August 06, 2019, 08:49:00 am
i like to think of it like in vietnamese language, where many words sound the same to european ears, but to a vietnamese, they are completely different and can even have opposing meanings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_language
it is explained in an example in the german version of that wikipedia-entry
with those six tones that change the word "Ma", one has six different meanings:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamesische_Sprache#/media/Datei:Six_tones_of_Vietnamese_language.png

a friend who studied religion and went to vietnam as a missionary explained, that it's tricky and one can easily end up greeting the villages' eldest woman as "hot young lady" instead of "venerable wise lady".
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Lysabild on August 06, 2019, 08:51:39 am
Tones have been suggested many times, but the issue is the same, they're just too rare. If the distribution was there, tone would have been the easiest solution by far.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 06, 2019, 08:55:39 am
The problem with trying to encompass the variety is that some of them just happen way too little, it makes for an unsatisfying solution with some variations only appearing 13 times total.

If you combine all marked letters they actually resemble a common phoneme instead of a weird oddity.

The problem is that it collides with the phonetic principle we have been following so far in that everything has meaning. But I understand this is just a 'last resort' explanation given the lack of explainability of the current vocabulary.

I propose another hack but that might fix this problem: Make more words with vowel markers (and assume they already exist before making them). We only have a few thousand words in Dwarven. We could assume them to be more the exception than the norm regarding vowel periodicity and simply make more words with the vowel markers. It is definitely a hack, but at least we'd retain meaning for each marker. Does this make sense?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Lysabild on August 06, 2019, 09:14:39 am
The difference between our solutions is that mine interprets and yours modifies.

I'm not taking away meaning from the diacritics, because none can be discerned anyway. There's a few words where the only difference is whether it's marked or not, but I couldn't find any words where the difference was between diacritics. If there is one or two I missed, they'd probably be explainable by context, just like right and write is.

Complicated tone and pitch/length systems would collapse, because they wouldn't actually contain any information being this sparse, and I think having to inject information to make it valid goes more against the spirit of sticking to the language file.

The people speaking the language would have no meaningful reason to maintain the systems and the casual speech would erode it very quickly.

So I think an orthographic explanation is both the most conservative and useful way to solve it. Vanilla words work, you have a way to say the words without bending your brain and it's pretty logical and common for vowels to be discerned by length.

edited a sentence for clarification
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 06, 2019, 10:13:28 am
The difference between our solutions is that mine interprets and yours modifies.

I'm not taking away meaning from the diacritics, because none can be discerned anyway. There's a few words where the only difference is whether it's marked or not, but I couldn't find any words where the difference was between diacritics. If there is one or two I missed, they'd probably be explainable by context, just like right and write is.

Complicated tone and pitch/length systems would collapse, because they wouldn't actually contain any information being this sparse, and I think having to inject information to make it valid goes more against the spirit of sticking to the language file.

The people speaking the language would have no meaningful reason to maintain the systems and the casual speech would erode it very quickly.

So I think an orthographic explanation is both the most conservative and useful way to solve it. Vanilla words work, you have a way to say the words without bending your brain and it's pretty logical and common for vowels to be discerned by length.

edited a sentence for clarification

Makes sense. Given that there is no basis for my proposal already in the files it would probably cause more problems than solve. You are right
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 06, 2019, 11:47:32 am
Another little pun phrase I made up while writing the K part of the dictionary:

Kesham var-udiz Keshan'osh, keshan-udiz Cabnul lok katthir-udiz Ùdosîm.

Curiosity is like a flame, it burns the fool and nourishes the wise.

I omitted the subject in the second and third phrases because it is implied to be the same as in the first phrase.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 06, 2019, 12:01:41 pm
I think you could improve the pun by incorporating the word for "tail" (kesh). Kesh, keshan, kesham... there's comedic gold in there somewhere!

Also, I think that should be Ùdosîm, as Dosîm means wisdom. With Ù it marks a person who performs the act of wisdom (whatever that is). It needs something to mark it as a person, as it otherwise means that flames nourish wisdom. It needs to refer to a person so it can be a metaphor for cooking (which is what I think you meant, yes?).
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 06, 2019, 12:15:13 pm
I think you could improve the pun by incorporating the word for "tail" (kesh). Kesh, keshan, kesham... there's comedic gold in there somewhere!

Also, I think that should be Ùdosîm, as Dosîm means wisdom. With Ù it marks a person who performs the act of wisdom (whatever that is). It needs something to mark it as a person, as it otherwise means that flames nourish wisdom. It needs to refer to a person so it can be a metaphor for cooking (which is what I think you meant, yes?).

Yes, it is a metaphor for cooking lol and you are right, Ùdosîm makes it clearer (without it one can't distinguish wisdom from wise man) and that is an important distinction, as you dully pointed out. I edited it in my original post

And yes! I will think up a pun with Kesh, Keshan and Kesham if I can lol think it through too and let's see who makes it first and who makes it best!
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 06, 2019, 12:26:36 pm
Keshamkun keshan-geth kesh

The curious cat burned [its] tail.

Basically a metaphor for someone that ends up sloppy because of being distracted by something out of curiosity. Imagine a cat next to a fire turning around because it heard a strange noise and inadvertently burnt its tail because it wasn't paying attention to the fire beside it. Basically a phrase that teaches a dwarf to pay attention to what they are doing and not get caught up in gossip or other distractions.

A workaround regarding long: It could be seen as standard procedure that when one is speaking of the body part of a certain subject (in this case, the cat), being said subject the subject of the phrase you can omit the possessive marker and assume the body part is that of the subject. In Portuguese we have something similar in which in formal Portuguese you don't say "my" when talking about a body part, but just "the". "I put the hand up" = I put my hand up
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 06, 2019, 01:59:17 pm
I don't see how a cat would fail to notice its tail burning (although Dwarf Fortress is known for bizarre outcomes). I think that phrase would have the same meaning as "curiosity killed the cat". This means that if you are overly curious, you might unknowingly put yourself in a life-threatening situation, i.e. you should be cautious.

Your circumvention of -long makes sense. I think Keshamkun keshan-geth Kesh-long Kun is fun to say because of the consonance, but I recognize it could be simpler. German has the same feature; you can say raise "the" hand instead of raise "your" hand. Your sentence could also mean "The curious cat burned tails", which could mean the cat was burning other cats tails for the sake of mischief. But I think the meaning is clear enough without the clarification.

Perhaps it could be "Keshamkun hav-udiz Keshankesh". The curious cat has a burned tail, i.e. the cat once was overly curious and put itself in danger, causing its tail to be burned. Maybe it could be a reference to dwarves swatting cats with burning objects or something. Although, there is already a Dwarven word for "burn" (though it isn't alliterative here).
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 06, 2019, 02:02:59 pm
I don't see how a cat would fail to notice its tail burning (although Dwarf Fortress is known for bizarre outcomes). I think that phrase would have the same meaning as "curiosity killed the cat". This means that if you are overly curious, you might unknowingly put yourself in a life-threatening situation, i.e. you should be cautious.

Your circumvention of -long makes sense. I think Kashamkun keshan-geth Kesh-long Kun is fun to say because of the consonance, but I recognize it could be simpler. German has the same feature; you can say raise "the" hand instead of raise "your" hand. Your sentence could also mean "The curious cat burned tails", which could mean the cat was burning other cats tails for the sake of mischief. But I think the meaning is clear enough without the clarification.

Perhaps it could be "Keshamkun hav-udiz Keshankesh". The curious cat has a burned tail, i.e. the cat once was overly curious and put itself in danger, causing its tail to be burned. Maybe it could be a reference to Dwarves swatting cats with burning objects or something.

The idea is not that it won't notice its tail burning, but that it could burn its tail accidently while moving if it isnt paying attention. The same way a person can burn their finger by mistake if they touch something hot while distracted. They will feel the pain. But it still happens lol So imagine a cat near a fire. It is resting near the fire. It hears something strange on the opposite direction and turns towards it without paying attention to where its tail is and it gets burned. Surely when it feels the fire it will jump, but it still got burned even if for a second lol

Regarding the possible interpretation of burning other cat's tails: that needs context to clarify. Because saying Kesh-longKun can also mean "the tails of the cats". The "many" plural marker could be used here if you really want to bring it home that this cat is burning other cats' tails, but like I said I think context pretty much dictates that well enough.

And yes, I  can imagine a lot of dwarven sayings taking full use of the flexibility of their noun-verb transformations so as to make nice sounding alliterations and rhymes when making poetry and talking poetically.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 06, 2019, 02:21:32 pm
Finished K nouns for the dictionary:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094

We now have everything from A to C (C in the dictionary going after K for consistency). 9 of 42 entries (from A to Å)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 06, 2019, 02:30:09 pm
Great work! Now that you mention it, I think rearranging the alphabet to match the phonetics makes sense. I don't like that English writing is so inefficient. For example, the letter C does not need to exist, as its sounds are expressed by K and S. As such, I hope that each Dwarven letter has a separate sound so redundancy is avoided.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 06, 2019, 02:33:01 pm
Great work! Now that you mention it, I think rearranging the alphabet to match the phonetics makes sense. I don't like that English writing is so inefficient. For example, the letter C does not need to exist, as its sounds are expressed by K and S. As such, I hope that each Dwarven letter has a separate sound so redundancy is avoided.

I agree. That is why I assumed that C was the Ch fricative sound, in line with S & Sh and T & Th. I placed thus Sh after S, Th after T and C after K. I also placed Ng after N.

Saw my further explanation of the cat saying?

I am also thinking of adding St as a seperate letter in the dictionary because it is the only combination of letters that breaks the consonant rules of the language. It might actually not be pronouced as st. Maybe it is like ancient hebrew צ. Something like a strong s. Either way I will place it after Sh

Also, I think that Fmid could be changed to Âmid since âmid means to listen, Âmid could mean listener. Fmid breaks the consonant rule so it could be best to keep it as Âmid.

I also just found out that dwarf_Language actually has already a word for One: Lod. So it might be best to change Nir to Lod since it is already in the files.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 06, 2019, 02:53:22 pm
Yes, I saw your further explanation of the cat phrase. The ultimate meaning is the same (i.e. don't be careless), so I think further refining of the phrase is unnecessary.

As before, I am no expert (or even amateur) of phonetics, and I am not so concerned about the system chosen for Dwarven. I leave that to you and Loam and other people who are more knowledgeable/interested in codifying phonetics. My only suggestion at the moment is that some letters could be given the same sound for the sake of consistency, if that becomes a problem. In German, the letter ß is often represented as SS, and both make the same sound. However, as I said, I prefer everything to make separate sounds. I trust you with it!

Also, I think that Fmid could be changed to Âmid since âmid means to listen, Âmid could mean listener. Fmid breaks the consonant rule so it could be best to keep it as Âmid.

I also just found out that dwarf_Language actually has already a word for One: Lod. So it might be best to change Nir to Lod since it is already in the files.

You're right! How did I not know that? There is also already a word for "first" (uthar). Oh dear. I have some edits to do!
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 06, 2019, 02:55:09 pm
Yes, I saw your further explanation of the cat phrase. The ultimate meaning is the same (i.e. don't be careless), so I think further refining of the phrase is unnecessary.

As before, I am no expert (or even amateur) of phonetics, and I am not so concerned about the system chosen for Dwarven. I leave that to you and Loam and other people who are more knowledgeable/interested in codifying phonetics. My only suggestion at the moment is that some letters could be given the same sound for the sake of consistency, if that becomes a problem. In German, the letter ß is often represented as SS, and both make the same sound. However, as I said, I prefer everything to make separate sounds. I trust you with it!

I edited my post a little before you posted so there is more things there to read, sorry xD
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 06, 2019, 02:55:31 pm
Yes, I saw. I edited my post too.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 06, 2019, 02:56:48 pm
Yes, I saw your further explanation of the cat phrase. The ultimate meaning is the same (i.e. don't be careless), so I think further refining of the phrase is unnecessary.

As before, I am no expert (or even amateur) of phonetics, and I am not so concerned about the system chosen for Dwarven. I leave that to you and Loam and other people who are more knowledgeable/interested in codifying phonetics. My only suggestion at the moment is that some letters could be given the same sound for the sake of consistency, if that becomes a problem. In German, the letter ß is often represented as SS, and both make the same sound. However, as I said, I prefer everything to make separate sounds. I trust you with it!

Also, I think that Fmid could be changed to Âmid since âmid means to listen, Âmid could mean listener. Fmid breaks the consonant rule so it could be best to keep it as Âmid.

I also just found out that dwarf_Language actually has already a word for One: Lod. So it might be best to change Nir to Lod since it is already in the files.

You're right! How did I not know that? There is also already a word for "first" (uthar). Oh dear. I have some edits to do!

It is why I wrote Firstborn son as Utharär in the Annals lol because of this "first". Funny enough there is no word for Second lol
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 06, 2019, 03:08:47 pm
language_DWARF has two words for "one":

   [T_WORD:ONE:lod]
   [T_WORD:ONE_PREF:nir]

I assume that PREF means prefix, so I am uncertain which I should pick to be my numeral 1. Perhaps nir is the number while lod is a nonspecific pronoun (e.g. one never knows what life may bring)? However, that would break the no pronouns rule, so that doesn't fit the codification. I'm not sure what to do with this. What do you think the difference between nir and lod should be?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 06, 2019, 03:21:05 pm
language_DWARF has two words for "one":

   [T_WORD:ONE:lod]
   [T_WORD:ONE_PREF:nir]

I assume that PREF means prefix, so I am uncertain which I should pick to be my numeral 1. Perhaps nir is the number while lod is a nonspecific pronoun (e.g. one never knows what life may bring)? However, that would break the no pronouns rule, so that doesn't fit the codification. I'm not sure what to do with this. What do you think the difference between nir and lod should be?

Now this is definitely a conundrum we got ourselves in. Let us think of what information we have:
Lod means one and is a noun.
Nir- means one and is a prefix.
Uthar means first and is a noun.

This means that in dwarven you can say "One" by itself, and it is a word on its own. But you can also say "One-[thing]" which sounds like... An adjective, but for some reason it is listed as a prefix and not an adjective. And we have First, which like English First is different from One.

This is what we have to go with...

Well, we have made it a principle of the language that words can be prefixed as an adjective. So Keshamkun means Curious cat. Nirkun would then mean One cat. Maybe Lod is used as a place holder when you want to adjectivize something WITH one (yes, kinda like a pronoun, but only used with an adjective, like Kironlod, Holy One). It is the only way I can think of to make sense of it. But I also think it can be useful so as to distinguish between someone who DOES something and someone who IS something. For example Ùdosîm could mean "Someone who makes wisdom" (which can be translated maybe as a very polished and polite word for Teacher or Author) while Dosîmlod would literally mean Wise One. Someone who IS wise. (It also permits us, funny enough, to translate Toady One's name to Dwarfish: Nodlod).
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 06, 2019, 03:36:55 pm
Finished doing the L nouns.

10 out of 43 entries done.

You can check out all the entries already published at Dwarven Dictionary (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 06, 2019, 03:49:31 pm
That just made me realize that this is how we can mark plurality! Shámman can be used or you can use a number as an adjective. Perhaps a large number could be used as a generic "many". We do this frequently. A person might say "there were a million mosquitoes outside today" to mean that there were many mosquitoes (not literally one million).

Uthar can't be a noun. "First" is an adjective, as are all ordinal numbers.

I like your suggestion, and it is better than my ideas. I kept thinking of lod as being either a pronoun or an article, but Dwarven doesn't have those! Perhaps lod is one when the number is spoken in isolation, but if it is used as an adjective, then it must be nir. So zez-lod is 11, while Nirkun is one cat. That seems like exactly the sort of pointlessly confusing distinction that a real language would have. However, your suggestion seems more useful. I'll ponder this.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 06, 2019, 03:51:11 pm
That just made me realize that this is how we can mark plurality! Shámman can be used or you can use a number as an adjective. Perhaps a large number could be used as a generic "many". We do this frequently. A person might say "there were a million mosquitoes outside today" to mean that there were many mosquitoes (not literally one million).

Uthar can't be a noun. "First" is an adjective, as are all ordinal numbers.

I like your suggestion, and it is better than my ideas. I kept thinking of lod as being either a pronoun or an article, but Dwarven doesn't have those! Perhaps lod is one when the number is spoken in isolation, but if it is used as an adjective, then it must be nir. So zez-lod is 11, while Nirkun is one cat. That seems like exactly the sort of pointlessly confusing distinction that a real language would have. However, your suggestion seems more useful. I'll ponder this.

Sorry, yes. First is an adjective xD And yes, a way to differentiate what someone IS from what they DO can be pretty useful and remove a lot of confusion.

Another example: Ùturel = Student. Turellod = Learned One (another word for Scholar).
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 06, 2019, 04:01:41 pm
An interesting word I got here is Milol. It means Messiah. I cannot possibly believe it is meant in the Abrahamic sense of The Messiah, so I imagine it actually is in the Hebrew sense of "Anointed One". Meshiach (messiah) was used in ancient times to refer to a King, Priest or Prophet that was anointed with holy oil. Usually only the first King of a line was anointed that way (according to Jewish practice) so in a way Milol could simply be a more honorable and dignified way of saying First King of a lineage (as in, who had to be anointed).
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Superdorf on August 06, 2019, 04:05:26 pm
Ooh, I like that! I wondered briefly if the language might simply use "Messiah" to mean "savior" in a generalized sense, but there's already a word for that-- "tâmol". Your interpretation works much better.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 06, 2019, 10:11:47 pm
How strange that Dwarven has some words which are oddly specific (like messiah), yet it has no word for snow.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Superdorf on August 06, 2019, 10:30:22 pm
Meta reply: When Toady set up the language files, he pretty much just created whatever words occurred to him at the time, then added more as the fancy took him. "Snow" never came up, but for whatever reason "messiah" did.

In-world reply: When you spend as much time underground as dwarves do, you don't pay so much attention to silly things like sky-ice! If dwarves need to mention snow by name, they can just call it "sky-ice" or "ice-rain" and leave it at that. :D
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: §k on August 07, 2019, 02:29:32 am
Here I offer a piece of my dialectal dwarvish.

Quoted from Urist Ginglikot:"I could do without all of those creatures and that tangled greenery."

Dwarvish: Berdannisan sartob imnir nomirmez mesmez artob nomir lertethomer.

Etymology:
Capitalized word is Proto-Dwarvish(the words that appear in in-game names).
Asterisk denotes reconstructed historical form.

berdan - go, from BERDAN(walk)
ni:  1st person affix, from *nis<*nirudos<NIR(one)+UDOS(man)
sa: verb ending, from SAVOT(stand)
n: subjunctive, from *an<ANRIZ(sky)

sartob: without, from *nasartob<NAS(un-)+ARTOB(combination)

imnir: all, every, from IM(ever-)+NIR(one)

nomir: the second one, the other, that, from *nobnir<NOB(two)+NIR(one)
mez: plural ending, from MEZ(three)

mes: creature, from MES(creature)

artob: and, from ARTOB(combination)

lertethomer: tangled greenery, from LERTETH(tangle)+OMER(greenness)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 07, 2019, 05:38:28 am
The words Nòm (god), Mishar (deity) and Nabas (divine) are interesting because they don't make a lot of sense. English has also three seperate words for these concepts, but English has them simply because it is a bastardized language (it has multiple origins and many loan words). So in English you can say Kingly (Anglo-Saxon), Royal (French), Regal (Latin) and Monarchical (Greek) and they all mean the same thing. Dwarven doesn't seem to have that, so it is curious that all three are seperate unrelated words, specially Nòm and Mishar.

One explanation to Nòm and Mishar is that they have different connotations. In English we rarely if ever refer to G-d as a deity. We refer to Him as G-d (I don't write down the o's for religious reasons but you know what I mean). Deity we usually say in an academic context to talk about gods. It is impersonal. It could be that Mishar is their word for "foreign god" while Nòm is their word for "native god". Just a possible interpretation.

Also, a hypothesis on How Dwarves name their children: I noticed Dwarves choose a kid's name semi-randomly. There are certain words in the dictionary that I never saw used as a name, but the ones that do appear tend to have strange meanings nonetheless. Mosus means room. Solon means flag. Monom means PAPER. One possible reason for this is that dwarves follow a practice (that is actually found in some real life African tribes) of naming their kids by the first thing they see after it is born. So if the mother or father see a piece of paper, well now the kid's name is Monom. If they were unlucky to see an avalanche or the result of one the kid could be called Moldath. If they were close to a crypt they could name him Momuz. Gave birth in a corridor? Meet baby Minkot! It kind of explains why some names are so weird and out of place lol
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Lysabild on August 07, 2019, 06:06:28 am
Names aren't random, words in DF are assigned to symbols and dwarven names are tied to the symbols artifice and earth, hence room, paper and so on, things that are made. The wiki is totally on top of this already.

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Name

Edit: And to expand on why it isn't that weird, Dwarves value craftsdwarfship and all these things are what skilled dwarves make. So it seems pretty natural to name them after things they consider worth creating too.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 07, 2019, 06:11:46 am
Names aren't random, words in DF are assigned to symbols and dwarven names are tied to the symbols artifice and earth, hence room, paper and so on, things that are made. The wiki is totally on top of this already.

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Name

It is why I said "semi-random". There are many words in Dwarven that I do not see as names so I assumed there were included words and excluded words. It seems I was right, which is nice. But it still is semi-random in the sense that it doesn't really make a lot of sense contextually (we can get why someone would be called Alexander initially, because it means Defender of the People). Even if names now seem random and just phonetic, they more often than not came from words with meaning and that together carry a reasonable sense. And when they don't it tends to have a rational behind it. Dwarves literally name their kids Paper and Room. I was trying to illustrate that even something so bizarre could have cultural significance
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 07, 2019, 06:13:58 am

Edit: And to expand on why it isn't that weird, Dwarves value craftsdwarfship and all these things are what skilled dwarves make. So it seems pretty natural to name them after things they consider worth creating too.

That is a possibility, but I wouldn't call it 'natural'. It is pretty strange to name someone Paper or Room. There are plenty of cultures, tribes and families that pride themselves for their technological and technical achievements, yet names like Rocket, Launchpad and Airport are still rare. Heck, the West is pretty proud of their scholars and libraries, yet Book, School and University are still strange and uncommon names to give a child. You get what I mean? It is possible, but it is weird for them to name a child like this simply because they love craftsdwarfship
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Lysabild on August 07, 2019, 06:24:26 am
I mean in the western world meanings mean incredibly little for names. No one percieves the meaning behind names, they're picked based on tradition or aesthetics.

I don't find it implausible that a culture that has such a focus on crafting, strange moods and greed to name people straight up after the things they create and value as a people.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 07, 2019, 06:33:22 am
I mean in the western world meanings mean incredibly little for names. No one percieves the meaning behind names, they're picked based on tradition or aesthetics.

I don't find it implausible that a culture that has such a focus on crafting, strange moods and greed to name people straight up after the things they create and value as a people.

Like I said before, the West currently names things out of phonetics, but that is anomalous and most names in history carry meaning (including these same western names which, if taken back enough, tend to have reasonable explanations and when they don't there is a valid explanation to why). An example of such irrational names is something like Hippandros (literally Horse-Man, like... A werehorse), which is an example Aristotle gives. He explains that in Greece sons tend to be named after their father, with a part of the name going to the son and another part being new. So this irrationally named Hippandros might be the son of a man reasonably named Hippocrates (Horse Power, which can be a reference to the parent wanting the son to be as strong as a horse for example) who put forward the first half of the name when naming his son and inadvertently making an irrational name. Even in these cases things tend to make sense.

And like I said, I do not think your explanation is impossible, but it definitely is improbable. Simply because the characteristics you stated exist in our world already with cultures priding themselves for the exact same things and not making their kids Room or Corridor or Paper or Ink. This level of randomness seems more probably tied to superstition of some kind. The main issue is that Dwarven naming convention is strange as hell so whatever hypothesis proposed will be of something uncommon, but yours is based on something that doesn't really happen and mine is based on something that actually does happen, albeit rarely.

Also, what do you think of my hypothesis regarding the words Nòm and Mishar?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 07, 2019, 06:45:46 am
Finished doing the M, N and NG nouns. Self-corrected the entry for Keng (it means Steam, not Stream). If I got anything else wrong, please tell me! Strangely enough, almost all the words starting with Ng are bad or unpleasant things lol

13 out of 43 entries done.

You can check out all the entries already published at Dwarven Dictionary (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Lysabild on August 07, 2019, 07:42:05 am
Dwarves are spawned fully complete with their language when the world is created, so there's no room for names to have meaningful history.

The names are also formed such that every dwarf has 2 names, one of a single word and one of two words, and they have no connection to anything else and reference nothing but the dwarven guidelines. They don't get repeated or passed on.

And no culture in our world can really be compared to the dwarven obsession with crafting, we have no strange moods, and dwarves specifically have modifiers in the game to value crafting more than humans.

So I don't think an appeal to real names work, we've neither the history nor the environments in common.

We also just don't need it.

Like I'm not suggesting your idea doesn't work in general, I'm saying it explains something that I don't think needs an explanation, and that it doesn't reflect anything we see in game.

What we observe is that dwarves have a list of names, and that everyone gets a short and long name from that list. It's not dependent on where, when and who.

Maybe it's preference for the meaning, but we can check dwarves and see they don't have in their preferences anything the kids are named after.

Thus we're basically left with one of two descriptive explanations, that it's based on sound or that they're all just picked quickly from a list without much thought or ceremony.

You can still go with your idea, but it'll be an insertion that you have to imagine is taking place, with no support from the game in that imagination.



But to take on the historical claims aswell, crypt is a name used in ancient egypt.

As for room, considering the place words like house, city, castle, hill and so on play for most people living above ground, room being basically -everything- underground, it's really not much of a stretch.

Church/Monastery is attested, there's a turkish name meaning 'traditional marbled paper art' and so on, and so forth.

In the naming culture I know best, norse, names are incredibly focused on weapons, gods and animals. This is very different from many other cultures where there is a focus on beauty, peace, plants or other things.

So for a non-human created creature that has a fully formed language from the first day it exists to have a slightly different set of values and to do naming a bit differently is not only not a stretch, it's also just what we see.

Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 07, 2019, 07:51:35 am
We also just don't need it.

Obviously, that goes without saying O.o I'm not trying to make a rule or anything. I'm just speculating about what these things could mean in a meta sense. That's basically how most people play Dwarf Fortress. They get random information that make no sense at all and try to figure out some sense from it and make a story out of it. I'm not trying to impose how that will work in your world. I'm just saying superstition seems more likely then simple taste. Likely. As in, it could be either way but your explanation seems stranger to me.

Your explanation of how rooms are basically houses can work, though Ink and Paper are still very very weird names for someone to have and doesn't make a lot of sense that a culture would all start naming their kids Ink because they like Ink that much. Could they though? Sure. Never said the contrary.

Yes, I know this is a game and I know that if you actually dig through the data you will find a large part of it all is pretty much random. But I like to make up reasons for things, like everyone else I ever saw playing DF does. I don't really understand what your problem is regarding that O.o (i.e. you stating that this doesn't need explanation and it not reflecting anything in the game).

With that in mind, what did you think of my Nòm/Mishar hypothesis?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 07, 2019, 08:07:13 am
Finished doing the O nouns.

14 out of 43 entries done.

You can check out all the entries already published at Dwarven Dictionary (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 07, 2019, 08:28:53 am
Superdorf, dare you suggest that our lord Toady did not have a perfect plan for the language while composing the words? Blasphemy!

Teehee. I wonder if he laughs at our attempts to make sense of it.

VABritto, your Nòm/Mishar idea seems reasonable enough to me. And of course we are assigning meaning to meaningless things! That's a basic description of this codification project.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 07, 2019, 08:34:30 am
Superdorf, dare you suggest that our lord Toady did not have a perfect plan for the language while composing the words? Blasphemy!

Teehee. I wonder if he laughs at our attempts to make sense of it.

VABritto, your Nòm/Mishar idea seems reasonable enough to me. And of course we are assigning meaning to meaningless things! That's a basic description of this codification project.

Thanks! What about the Milol thing? I'm actually changing Etur Etar to Etur Milol in the Annals to reflect that reasoning lol Can I put in the Dictionary "first king of a lineage" and "Anointed One" as added possible meanings of Milol (besides Messiah lol)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 07, 2019, 08:49:48 am
Decided to do all the marked vowel nouns in one go since they are so few. Found that Åm has two entries, one for Baby and another for Yawn. Can anyone check if this is accurate or if it is a typo in the dwarven wiki? Because this is the only word I know that has a duplicate like that in the same category.

34 out of 43 entries done.

You can check out all the entries already published at Dwarven Dictionary (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 07, 2019, 09:27:41 am
Finished all the R nouns. Can Rurast (guise) be used as a word for "form" or "shape"?

35 out of 43 entries done.

You can check out all the entries already published at Dwarven Dictionary (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 07, 2019, 10:53:43 am
I think the Milol idea is a bit too obscure and specific. I imagine it is simply a synonym without much semantic difference (despite the orthographic difference).

I booted vanilla DF and tried the names Babyyawn and Yawnbaby. Yes, Åm has two entries. Perhaps this was a mistake from Toady? Oh well, I guess we have yet another quirk to add to the list. Perhaps there is a pronunciation difference, sort of like how "record" can be either a noun or verb, depending on whether the first or second syllable is stressed.

Sure, Rurast could mean form or shape. That would help fill a gap in the lexicon, so I approve!
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 07, 2019, 11:04:20 am
I think the Milol idea is a bit too obscure and specific. I imagine it is simply a synonym without much semantic difference (despite the orthographic difference).

I booted vanilla DF and tried the names Babyyawn and Yawnbaby. Yes, Åm has two entries. Perhaps this was a mistake from Toady? Oh well, I guess we have yet another quirk to add to the list. Perhaps there is a pronunciation difference, sort of like how "record" can be either a noun or verb, depending on whether the first or second syllable is stressed.

Sure, Rurast could mean form or shape. That would help fill a gap in the lexicon, so I approve!

I will revert all the Milol in the Annals to Etar then since I want Ultèrzefon Dwarven to be very standard so as to serve as a good example of the standard language.

I think Åm is the only case in the entire lexicon with two entries with the exact same form. I think it can only be interpreted as a contextual word because I can't imagine it having a different sound when it has the exact same vowel marker (with there being so many to choose from). A way to make it clear for context is to call a yawn a Åmgutid and a baby an Åm-longBobrur

Should the Dwarven language be called Arkimtalul or Ultèrtalul? Some nations instead of calling their language "[Nation adjective] Language" calls it "the common language" or something of the sort (e.g. 普通话, Pǔtōnghuà, 'the common speech', how China calls Mandarin).
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Superdorf on August 07, 2019, 11:56:18 am
I dunno about "the common language"...

The worlds of Dwarf Fortress are pretty tightly packed. Dwarves are a minority in most of them, and other peoples can cultures are often only a day or two's march away. I don't think dwarves would be so narrow-sighted as to consider their language the "common" one.

"Dwarf-language" works fine as a language name. If you were feeling poetic, you could do something like "The Old Tongue" or "The Stone-Tongue" or whatever.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 07, 2019, 11:58:58 am
I dunno about "the common language"...

The worlds of Dwarf Fortress are pretty tightly packed. Dwarves are a minority in most of them, and other peoples can cultures are often only a day or two's march away. I don't think dwarves would be so narrow-sighted as to consider their language the "common" one.

"Dwarf-language" works fine as a language name. If you were feeling poetic, you could do something like "The Old Tongue" or "The Stone-Tongue" or whatever.

I imagined it as being Common in the sense Among Dwarves. As in, there could be many local dwarven dialects (as there are usually more than one dwarven civ and many settlements) but they have a common tongue among them. But either works for me personally. Just wanted to throw it out there in case anyone had a preference. I loved the poetic ones though!
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 07, 2019, 12:43:05 pm
Arkimmasos. Dwarftalk. Maybe the second M could be removed to make Arkimasos.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Lysabild on August 07, 2019, 12:54:17 pm
Why would you remove the extra m? double consonants at syllable boundaries are not ucommon and to be expected.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 07, 2019, 01:04:12 pm
To make it easier to spell. However, I included that "maybe" because I was uncertain whether it was a good idea. I suppose we could keep the double consonant.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 07, 2019, 04:15:23 pm
To make it easier to spell. However, I included that "maybe" because I was uncertain whether it was a good idea. I suppose we could keep the double consonant.

Given the agglutinative nature of Dwarven, I think keeping the double Ms increase clarity and makes it easier to discern in case of giant string word
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 07, 2019, 04:18:49 pm
Arkimmasos. Dwarftalk. Maybe the second M could be removed to make Arkimasos.

Arkimmasos sounds very colloquial. I think it is a perfect colloquial word for Dwarven. But I think a more formal word should sound more polished, using the word for Language, Speech or Tongue for example
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 07, 2019, 10:20:28 pm
Finished all the S, SH and ST nouns. S is the most common consonant in Dwarven. I believe it might be because the letters S, SH and ST are counted seperatly in a way that S becomes disproportionately larger.

38 out of 43 entries done.

You can check out all the entries already published at Dwarven Dictionary (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Superdorf on August 07, 2019, 10:34:15 pm
That's a mighty labor you're working there! I look forward to its completion. :)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 08, 2019, 08:14:25 am
That's a mighty labor you're working there! I look forward to its completion. :)

We'll get there little by little lol I have almost finished all Nouns. After that I will move to other types of words and then I will add the non-vanilla approved ones.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 08, 2019, 08:17:07 am
Pun phrase:

Udos var-udiz Tabarlod og Udos var-udiz Tadarlod

Men are loyal because they are mortal.

Here the word -lod (one) is being used as a means to define someone as being that quality (as in Loyal One, Mortal One) etc. And like English One in this context, I understood that Lod could be seen as a singular or plural word (e.g. noble ones) so as to carry this function.

This phrase would be a cynical saying said by some as if to say that people are only loyal because they are afraid of the consequences of not being so.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 08, 2019, 08:47:00 am
I like it! That is a good pun and it sounds like something dwarves woul say. Well done!
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 08, 2019, 10:08:44 am
Solitarian, could you please send me (or write here) a list of all the non-vanilla words currently in your lexicon?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 08, 2019, 10:10:02 am
They are all in the first post. I did not invent many, as I wanted to only use language_DWARF as much as possible.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 08, 2019, 10:12:51 am
Alright then. I will only add those after the initial vanilla phase
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: dwarfhoplite on August 13, 2019, 01:41:38 am
Just commenting to say I like this project and I wish it success.

One problem I believe is very important to adress is about the alphabet and the sound system. In my opinion it would be best not to have any letters but those that English has. All phonemes (sounds) should be familiar and simple too. Otherwise the language will be practically impossible to use (to write) for most people.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 13, 2019, 02:09:53 am
No. I want to use the original language_DWARF file as much as possible, so the special characters shall remain. Moreover, I do not want it to just be English but written differently. Although I don't care much about what phonetic system is used, I am open to using non-English sounds like ä or î or ø.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Pvt. Pirate on August 13, 2019, 05:08:54 am
No. I want to use the original language_DWARF file as much as possible, so the special characters shall remain. Moreover, I do not want it to just be English but written differently. Although I don't care much about what phonetic system is used, I am open to using non-English sounds like ä or î or ø.
also most native english speakers already use all umlauts in other "words" (where they pronounce it "wörds", although it's an O )
but they suddenly cannot use them when it comes to "übertrieben" (exaggerated) although most pronounce "universe" like "üniverse" without even realising it.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 13, 2019, 05:52:52 am
No, the umlaut sounds are not in English. The o in "words" is not the same as ö. Just because they mispronounce the letters doesn't make them correct.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Pvt. Pirate on August 13, 2019, 06:15:54 am
No, the umlaut sounds are not in English. The o in "words" is not the same as ö. Just because they mispronounce the letters doesn't make them correct.
"The o in "words" is not the same as ö" yes it is.
it is pronounced the same as in "öffentlich".
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 15, 2019, 09:02:26 am
Another pun maxim, this time philosophical:

Thur var-udiz Thun-longThunen

The Universe is the Dominion of Life.

In other words, things in the world were made to be used. Basically a fancy maxim "carpe diem" style saying one should permit themselves to enjoy life.

Another one of those maxims:

Udos var-zilir Tumam og Udos var-udiz Tunom!

Be moral, oh man, for you are mortal!
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 15, 2019, 09:31:23 am
Finished all the T and TH nouns. Only U, V and Z left!

40 out of 43 entries done.

You can check out all the entries already published at Dwarven Dictionary (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 15, 2019, 09:33:03 am
Ah, very good! I like your creativity and I think those sayings are quite apt for Dwarves.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 15, 2019, 04:47:32 pm
A Grammar Issue:

How do you say We in Dwarven? My first instinct was "The same as saying I, since Dwarven has no plural, so Kutam". But that does not really make sense because Kutam means speaker and the person in question is referencing himself (the speaker) AND other people that are not speaking. One answer could be simply using their classification. As in, if the We are dwarves you can say "These dwarves" (in the workaround manner you invented for saying these). What is the current rule for it?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 15, 2019, 10:12:03 pm
Finished all the U nouns. Only V and Z left!

41 out of 43 entries done.

You can check out all the entries already published at Dwarven Dictionary (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 16, 2019, 02:56:53 am
You can say "we" however you want, so long as the meaning is clear. While Kutam might be the most common way to say I, you don't have to say it that way. Because Dwarven has no pronouns, you can use whatever third-person identifier makes sense to you.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 16, 2019, 05:07:30 am
You can say "we" however you want, so long as the meaning is clear. While Kutam might be the most common way to say I, you don't have to say it that way. Because Dwarven has no pronouns, you can use whatever third-person identifier makes sense to you.

That's what I thought. It requires a bit of workaround to stay clear, but it works nicely
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 16, 2019, 08:55:50 am
Finished all the V nouns. Now I'm going to finish the Z nouns and after that I'm going to put up the Verbs.

42 out of 43 entries done.

You can check out all the entries already published at Dwarven Dictionary (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Inarius on August 16, 2019, 10:29:16 am
that's a huge amount of work
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 16, 2019, 10:31:03 am
that's a huge amount of work

True lol but I've been doing it little by little so it isn't being that hard
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 16, 2019, 11:58:09 am
Finally finished all entries for nouns. Now I will move to verbs. The number of words exceeded post limit so I made another post. The first post is from A to L and the second post is from M to Å.

ALL ENTRIES DONE.

You can check out all the entries already published at Dwarven Dictionary A to L (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094) and Dwarven Dictionary from M to Å (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005410#msg8005410)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 16, 2019, 12:28:06 pm
Bravo! Now I can copy that into a .txt file and easily peruse the lexicon. In fact, I bet your Dwarven dictionary will be useful for mods. Perhaps it merits a separate post? Maybe not, as it contains some words which are specific to my codification. But that might make my codification used in mods, i.e. my codification would become more accepted and official!
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 16, 2019, 12:41:22 pm
Bravo! Now I can copy that into a .txt file and easily peruse the lexicon. In fact, I bet your Dwarven dictionary will be useful for mods. Perhaps it merits a separate post? Maybe not, as it contains some words which are specific to my codification. But that might make my codification used in mods, i.e. my codification would become more accepted and official!

I'm fine keeping it here personally. If you could link to it in your OP I would be grateful. What did you think of the format of the titles in Dwarven? (Ilthîkut Arkimtalul'üb A'ar L'ishob / Ilthîkut Arkimtalul'üb M'ar Å'ishob) Now I need to put up adjectives, Verbs, prefixes etc.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 16, 2019, 02:10:10 pm
Sure, I would link it but... I don't know how. How do I link a post?
I'm not sure what you're asking about the format of titles. What do you mean?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 16, 2019, 02:48:06 pm
Sure, I would link it but... I don't know how. How do I link a post?
I'm not sure what you're asking about the format of titles. What do you mean?

Quote my last post and you will see the hyperlinks to the dictionary. "Dwarven Dictionary from A to L" and "Dwarven Dictionary from M to Å". Those link up to those two segments of the dictionary. If you could copy and paste these links to the OP it would be good because then people can immediately find them.

What I mean by format of titles is that I translated "Dwarven Dictionary from A to L" as "Ilthîkut Arkimtalul'üb A'ar L'ishob" and I wanted to know if this looked good to you.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 16, 2019, 03:04:04 pm
Finished all the Verbs from the marked vowels.

20 of 43 entries done.

You can check out all the entries already published at Dwarven Dictionary A to L (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005094#msg8005094) and Dwarven Dictionary from M to Å (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.msg8005410#msg8005410)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 16, 2019, 03:48:55 pm
Linked!

I think your titling of the dictionary is a bit awkward because you use the letters as nouns, though I understand that is the most sensible title. Maybe you could call the first post the "first book" of the dictionary. This seems more lore-friendly to me anyway, as many of the early real life dictionaries/encyclopedias/etc. were separated into several books.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 16, 2019, 03:50:22 pm
Linked!

I think your titling of the dictionary is a bit awkward because you use the letters as nouns, though I understand that is the most sensible title. Maybe you could call the first post the "first book" of the dictionary. This seems more lore-friendly to me anyway, as many of the early real life dictionaries/encyclopedias/etc. were separated into several books.

Makes sense, will do that then!
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 16, 2019, 11:57:41 pm
One question: has anyone tried to codify the other languages yet? (e.g. Elven, Goblin etc)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 17, 2019, 02:44:19 am
I don't think so.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Superdorf on August 17, 2019, 07:29:49 am
They're pretty similar, though. Just different vocabularies for the exact same words.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 17, 2019, 09:27:20 am
They're pretty similar, though. Just different vocabularies for the exact same words.

Aye, and different phonetics. But it would be cool if someone made them grammatically different. I'm actually thinking on doing something like that if anyone was interested in helping me. I think Elven looks aesthetically pleasing
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 19, 2019, 12:34:57 pm
I think I figured out who, in universe, would be the compiler of the Dwarven Dictionary in my world. I was looking through the scholars of Olonmebzuth (a Fortress in my world that holds the Kingdom of Titthalaban's Library of Rovol Lûk). It is a pretty multiethnic place with scholars from all over the world. Its founding member was an elven lady philosopher called Sidaya Famimeimici from the Forest Retreat of Fayobaelale. She independently discovered in the 31st year of the reign of King Lokum Etur's son (109 years after the founding of the city) the concept of Language Dictionaries. Given that she is still alive to this day (1051 years after the founding of the city), being a whopping 1234 years old, I figured she'd be the author of the first Dwarven Dictionary. But I will look through all the other scholars in the Kingdom's history to be sure if that seems more likely or not.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 19, 2019, 01:15:47 pm
I like to imagine that Armok gave the first dwarves a dictionary at the beginning of the world, and since then the dwarves have (not) merely followed its instructions.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 19, 2019, 01:20:08 pm
I like to imagine that Armok gave the first dwarves a dictionary at the beginning of the world, and since then the dwarves have (not) merely followed its instructions.

That's a good view too lol I'm just making it up for my world in particular and sharing. I love how DF is detailed and I notice you can get a surprisingly vast amount of information just by rummaging through the logs. For example I just found out that Sidaya's master Liceÿi Themualino of Thitíaritha discovered language dictionary as a technology almost two decades before Sidaya. It's pretty interesting that we actually have that. We can actually find out who first discovered writing for example. So I like to imagine who actually made these things in my world :P
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Inarius on August 19, 2019, 05:16:48 pm
One day, i made a world, and there were only 4 library in the whole world. I played as in adventurer and visited all of them :)
I love the fact that they exist, it's really unique in a game.

I didn't know writing was in the "invented" things, though ?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 19, 2019, 05:36:37 pm
One day, i made a world, and there were only 4 library in the whole world. I played as in adventurer and visited all of them :)
I love the fact that they exist, it's really unique in a game.

I didn't know writing was in the "invented" things, though ?

I think it is but I might be wrong. I have yet to find someone who invented it, but I am still just in the beginning of my "research" in my world. But if anyone can confirm or not that this is a thing I'd be grateful
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 23, 2019, 12:52:28 am
I was looking up Sumerian and I find it rather funny that it looks A LOT like Dwarven.

Here's a lesson on the language: https://youtu.be/rrsIW0akb6o
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Pvt. Pirate on August 23, 2019, 01:35:52 am
it's very interesting that the "letters" can have a meaning by themselves.
So my brother found that JHWH (i don't want to discuss its pronounciation here :D) already means "Hand", "Hands raised for prayer", "Nail", "Hands raised for prayer" - which leads to the conclusion that god introduced himself to the people with a name pointing to the crucification a thousand years before Christ.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Inarius on August 23, 2019, 02:05:13 am
If it's like egyptian, most vowels aren't written.

Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on August 23, 2019, 04:05:15 am
Ah, Digital Hammurabi! I know of them. They make many informative videos and cooperate with other Youtubers.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 23, 2019, 07:20:27 am
Ah, Digital Hammurabi! I know of them. They make many informative videos and cooperate with other Youtubers.

I found it interesting that Sumerian doesn't have gender, doesn't have necessarily a plural and has verbs that work similar to Dwarven lol EDIT: It's also agglutinative like Dwarven
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Inarius on August 23, 2019, 04:06:17 pm
Could you post a translation of the first article of the human rights ? It's usual when you have a language (on wikipedia, at least).

" All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

What does this give in Dwarven ? (you can use "dwarves" instead of "human" !)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 23, 2019, 04:55:31 pm
Could you post a translation of the first article of the human rights ? It's usual when you have a language (on wikipedia, at least).

" All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

What does this give in Dwarven ? (you can use "dwarves" instead of "human" !)

I had to make some stuff up, but here is my take (explanations are in the NOTES) :

Mulonarkim nóton-udiz'ver Eshimlod lok Tinöthlod Zengod'ok lok Kìrar'ok. Arkim rurast-udiz'ver Ograd'esh lok Unolmisttar'esh lok nikot-zilir'shoveth Mulonlod'ish Aludubal'esh.


All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood

NOTES:

Mulon - Mulon(ak) is used as an adverb for all or every, but we needed an adjective so I am using it as such for All/every dwarves.
Rurast - means guise, but I also use it to mean form or shape. Rurast as a verb thus would mean to form or shape. To be formed, to be shaped here is the direct translation and I am using it in the sense of "to be endowed" because I do not think the meaning here is to be "given", but that they are naturally like that.

Unolmisttar - Unol means Soul, Misttar means knowledge. In other words, Soul-Pertaining Knowledge would be a word for Conscience. Had to make that up because there isn't even a word for "Self" in dwarven.

-zilir'shoveth - -zilir is the imperative. -shoveth is the hypothetical. I put both together to make an instructing state of 'should'.
"Lod'ishob lok Lod'ishob" - I am using this "Towards one and towards one" as an expression, one and one being used as One and another. As in mutually so.
Aludubal - Brotherly Spirit
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Inarius on August 23, 2019, 05:19:00 pm
Impressive...most impressive.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on August 23, 2019, 05:39:05 pm
Impressive...most impressive.

Thanks lol Solitarian will most likely find many errors and will bring it into proper dwarven standards when he sees it though. We'll have to wait and see. I tried to do what I could xD

EDIT: If I could I'd have used an expression like "Self Knowledge" or "Self Reflection", but alas they don't exist yet.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Inarius on September 05, 2019, 03:46:32 am

Reply from Toady to my question :

Quote

Quote from: Inarius

    Have you seen the "Dwaven Language Codifier" here ? And if yes, what are your thoughts about it ?

    (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173289.0)


Quote
Yeah, I've seen it!  I think it's a cool project.

Since some of the analysis applies to all the languages (since they are underspecified but have a lot of similar characteristics), it's important to note that we're going to end up having to blow a lot of stuff up with procgen, if we can get it to work.  Though I've been wanting to do that for years and haven't had time.  And as with the myth stuff vs. the creature types etc., I really don't know precisely what 'default' is going to mean, or what sorts of vanilla language notions will remain intact.  Presumably, with the editor examples etc., there might even be a more and more fixed version of things.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on September 05, 2019, 05:23:15 am
Huh, I just now saw the translation of the human rights thing. Odd. How did I not notice that two weeks ago? Anyway, the translation looks good, though that -zilir'shoveth thing seems odd to me. It works grammatically, and I can't think of a better translation for "should", so I think it is acceptable. I think Unolmisttar is a great translation for "conscience". The word science comes from the Latin verb "scire", which means "to know", so "soul knowledge" is not far from the English word. I don't like Lod'ishob lok Lod'ishob, though. To me that seems awkward. Maybe Mulonlod'ish (between many ones) is better?

Toady likes it! Hooray! I'm not sure what you're talking about, though. Blow up with procgen? What does that mean? Myth stuff vs. the creature types? I don't know what you're referencing.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on September 05, 2019, 08:04:55 am
Huh, I just now saw the translation of the human rights thing. Odd. How did I not notice that two weeks ago? Anyway, the translation looks good, though that -zilir'shoveth thing seems odd to me. It works grammatically, and I can't think of a better translation for "should", so I think it is acceptable. I think Unolmisttar is a great translation for "conscience". The word science comes from the Latin verb "scire", which means "to know", so "soul knowledge" is not far from the English word. I don't like Lod'ishob lok Lod'ishob, though. To me that seems awkward. Maybe Mulonlod'ish (between many ones) is better?

Toady likes it! Hooray! I'm not sure what you're talking about, though. Blow up with procgen? What does that mean? Myth stuff vs. the creature types? I don't know what you're referencing.

Thanks mate! Changed it to reflect that. I have some problems to deal with these days that need my immediate attention so I've not touched the dictionary much for a while. But I will be back to it as soon as this clears up
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Inarius on September 06, 2019, 06:21:04 am
@Solitarian

It's not *my* reply, but his.

So I don't know, i suppose you should ask him :)
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Rhyagelle on February 03, 2020, 08:19:09 pm
This is a wonderful topic! I've been looking for something like this for a long time! Thank you for providing it! One thing I'd like to ask though, is how would you go about saying something like "My brothers/sisters"? I noticed "alud", but how do you form the plural?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Solitarian on February 04, 2020, 12:26:58 pm
In my Dwarven, nouns are not declined in that way. The singular and plural forms are the same. You can add the adjective "many" to stress plurality, or you can imply it via context.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Criperum on January 15, 2021, 03:32:10 pm
Is the project dead?
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: VABritto on January 15, 2021, 05:20:11 pm
Is the project dead?

After Toady announced that Dwarven will be procedurally generated too later on the line, I think it took a bit the wind out of this project, at least for me.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: Criperum on January 15, 2021, 07:51:38 pm
I see. I hoped we'll have it.
Title: Re: The Dwarven Language Codified
Post by: crunchyFrog on October 30, 2021, 12:48:29 pm
As they say in French: "je m'incline devant un tel génie"  I bow before such knowledge

I mean really... what other game generates this level of investigative reporting?
Walk tall, fellow dwarfer, you've earned it.