The kobold language is based entirely on how we used to talk to our cats growing up. The nonsense words would have a roughly consistent meaning for days at a time, but it was very fluid overall, and it's not really about communicating novel ideas to people, especially those that weren't around when a given word became attached to a given object.
Story:
Out of curiousity of how the DF Kobold society would work, I sent my good friend Urist McScholar to visit a Kobold cave where he tried to learn their language and culture... He was met with many many new words, a renewed love for stonecrafting, contempt, a missing axe, being stuck at the bottom of a pit for a few days, and the discovery of a missing artifact. But his mission was not a failure (he was not dead), and some interesting facts about Kobold culture would be revealed to the mountain homes.
tl;dr: Dwarf studies Kobolds.
Toady One: Feel free to leave questions unanswered if you haven't thought about the answer.
Do Kobolds have fixed names as implied by world gen, or would they frequently change their nicknames?Using permanant names would likely mean that Kobolds choose not to establish fixed words and that the dynamic nature of their language is cultural. This helps to define whether a Kobold can learn other languages where words are established permanently.
But since DF isn't always logical, and this isn't a scientific experiment, I can ask:
Can a Kobold learn another language?Does a Kobold prefer to reuse an old word or try to make a new one. This seemed a bit relevant: replace both 'Cat' and 'Human' with 'Kobold'.
I don't think these were all of the ideas I had, but they seem to be the most interesting ones at the moment, that and it's late and I need sleep.
