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DF Suggestions / Re: Dorwaf and how to speak it
« on: December 05, 2018, 06:42:32 pm »I have seen that you sort of went the semitic way of non-consecutive morphology (vowel alteration), like Tolkien did with Khudzul in LOTR . . .Having some callbacks to Tolkien was intentional, but any echoing of the Semitic languages was not. As you're probably aware, Tolkien noticed/created several parallels between dwarves and Jews, to the point that the former starts to be little more than a racist caricature of the latter. I don't know about you, but I for one am soundly disinterested in perpetuating negative stereotypes, so I won't be making any deliberate steps toward making the dwarf language(s) seem Semitic in feel. (I also won't be making them Scottish, as I see no logic in that trope either.)
Granted, it's a nice enough idea: Give the elven, dwarven, human, and goblin languages a more palpably different feel by giving each one hallmarks from a different real-world language family--ideally ones that aren't related at all--so humans' speech could be based on the Germanic languages (As most DF players speak English, which is a Germanic tongue, it would make sense that human players should feel the most familiarity with what the in-game humans speak), while the speech of elves is more like Mandarin Chinese. But which language family should I use as the basis for goblin words and grammatical structure? Which group of millions of people do I wish to offend?
Happily, there are plenty of ways to make the various languages visually & phonetically distinct without patterning them after real-world languages, so that's the path(s) I'll be taking.QuoteAre you open to collaboration, if the project is even alive?I am open to collaboration, but you seem to have very different goals than I do: In addition to the Semitic connection, you mentioned cases and conjugations, and non-standard pronunciations, three things that I personally want to stay as far away from as possible. My intention was to make Dorwaf, and then the procedurally-generated languages based on Dorwaf, to be as extremely simple as an actual language could possibly be and still work for communication. (This has to be so simple that a computer can speak it, after all.) Heck, if you really absorbed the "How to speak Dorwaf" posts at the start of this thread, your fluency would be about equal to a 1st- or 2nd-year foreign language student. And yet if you printed those posts out, there's only enough text to cover about nine sheets of paper (double sided). Compare those 9 sheets of paper with your average Spanish 1 textbook. That's how simple Dorwaf is, and I'm hoping to carry that tradition forward.
Yes, the project is still alive, but my progress has been largely halted lately because a) Real Life has gone its usual route of sticking its big fat ass right in my way, and b) The way I have the language organized, everything depends upon the root tables: The list of one-syllable words that stand for the simplest concepts, the foundation of everything else. As the game gets updated, new and very fundamental elements get added, which means I have to overhaul the way that certain words are related to what other words (and how closely they're related, etc), which is a real pain, and very intimidating. I will get to it, but . . . slowly.QuoteThe vowel system might be also reduced, unless tone is introduced, otherwise we end up with what seems like a whooping 25 monophthong system, unless some of the vowels are actually diphthongs . . .Yes, Dorwaf is tonal. The dwarven vowels are, hopefully, the only instance in which I will use nonstandard pronunciation--that is, I use the diacritical marks as an indicator of the pitch given to the entire word, not for the shape of the actual vowel itself. So the dwarves actually have only 5 vowels--though the other races will doubtless have more, and in those languages, the diacriticals will stand for actual different monophthongs: a as in grape, â as in hat, ä as in father, etc.
My rough intentions for the other languages:
Human languages will be noticeable for their preponderance of consonants: Whereas almost every dwarven syllable is C-V-C, humans will go as far as C-C-C-V-C-C. (Hence their ability to say "dwarf" as one syllable, whereas dwarves themselves have to use two, "dorwaf".)
Elves, meanwhile, play fast & loose with their vowels: They're the only race that uses diphthongs, and the ratio of vowels to consonants is nearly 1:1. Most all of their vowels, however, are of the I, E, and A families, largely eschewing O and U.
Lastly, goblins make frequent use of the Eng (ŋ) and the glottal stop, almost never use the I or E sounds (all of their vowels are U, O, and A), and have the smallest vocabulary--and thus hardly any need for polysyllabic words.DF doesn't currently have sound, so a text-to-phonetics screen would be needed to convey these differences in pronunciation.The prospect of DF actually being able to "speak" these languages is a tantalizing one indeed, even if it's just the one genderless voice synthesizer, used regardless of who's doing the talking. But what do you mean by language evolution? If future versions of DF are going to hold to the current time model (where world-histories longer than 1000 years are all but unheard-of), I see little need to give even a token nod to evolution of any kind.
. . . phonetics are needed to have a natural language evolution . . .It could be used in adventure mode to create more immersion, atmosphere, realism. Creates enormity in the world, distant worlds. With my human player I go to the land of the dwarves and they speak their language. If my human player has read the book he wrote sixofspades he will simply see the dwarf text with the translation, otherwise he will not get it and he will not understand anything unless you bring an interpreter.That's pretty much exactly what I intend. I will spell out which roots are related to which other roots, and which roots are joined to create which polysyllabic words--that won't change (at least until Toady changes it). But, how each root is actually spelled/pronounced, that will be procedurally generated and will vary from game to game, and most likely even from civ to civ in the same game. So, if you're a citizen of one dwarf culture and travel to a different dwarf culture, you'll still be speaking with the same grammatical structures, but the words themselves will be different. (Perhaps civs that are geographically close together will have more similarities than those on opposite sides of the map.)
Adventurers that have learned more than one language would probably have the option to choose which language to speak . . . perhaps even code-switching in the middle of a conversation, thus themselves taking on the role of interpreter.Quote. . . if the project is moving forward as a full conlang rather than a proof-of-concept, maybe put it in the General Discussion forum.Hm, I feel it's appropriate here, as it is indeed a demonstration of what I intend to do myself if Toady doesn't beat me to it. But I do see your reasons for putting out in General Discussion . . . just as I understand ido66667's desire to take on the project--not least because I seem to be dragging my feet on it. Why don't *I* keep Dorwaf here, while ido66667 spearheads a more collaborative project in G.D.?
Connections between actual languages and fantastical conlangs need not have any real connotation to anything. I started toying around with a Semitic-Like Dwarven tongue and what came out is something that is more Arabic/Akkadian than Hebrew, with some inspiration taken from Berber. The Scottish/Semitic idea is more of a playful acknowledgment of our own (if at times memey) conception of the Dwarves, and giants like Tolkien. Personally, I see problem only with the Goblins, since it is indeed offensive to assign any language group to them, so perosnally, I think their tongue should be more fictional and mishmashed. But as a semitic speaker, I don't see any offense in ideas from my language group being used to create a Dwarvish conlang. And the same goes for whatever language group one chooses for the Elves and Humans.
In general, I think patterning (while still mixing and changing things up) conlangs on real language groups is generally beneficial. One of the problems with many Conglangs for me is that many of them don't feel real. They feel like they were constructed by a single person, and not through aeons of development. When you take a real language group, and try and take inspiration from that, you get something that feels more real. Still, care should be taken not to get too close to a specific language, as you don't want to lose the fantasy aspect of your conlang.
As for Analytical vs Synthetical, I think that it's possible to find a middle ground. Just like the huge diversity in real languages, you can have a diversity in conlangs, relevantly if you have a few. But yeah, in our case, it's best to keep things rather simple. In my vision, the language would still be highly regular. It will have a few complexities, but you won't have multiple conjugations or declinations.
As for procedural generation. Isolating and analytical languages lend themselves well to it, because you just vary the roots and keep the syntax and structure. The afro-asiatic/semitic model can work with it too by varying consonant tuples and pattern vowels.
If the pattern for a role holder is C1VC2C3V, for example, then to get the word "miner", you insert the consonants from the tuple generated for mining, and choose random vowels.
Affixing languages can also be generated by varying the affixes and roots.
Still, I don't think procedural generation is really right for languages because of player engagement. Since you can't expect a player to play on the same world for years, or even months, there is no reason for him to even pay attention to the languages, since they will be regenerated in his next world anyway. Except for the nerdy pleasure the designers get, you might as well generate gibbrish for unknown languages.
If you keep the languages constant, on the other hand, then players have a reason to at least skim over things in the game's languages, since as time goes by, they will get more and more familiar with the languages, especially if they are kept rather regular/simple. You can even get fan works containing them, like Klingon, for example.
P. S.
Sorry for quoting this post in one piece, but I don't have access to my PC right now, and on phone structuring a quote is a bit of a mess.