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Author Topic: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project  (Read 34303 times)

CaptainMcClellan

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #90 on: February 19, 2015, 06:02:42 am »

Here's my attempt to simplify Dirst's consonant runes. ( Note: Later I realized I had left out the third row. That's my mistake and it can easily be added in. )


Also, here is how I think it would be employed in written script:

Note how the vowels ( excluding the first ) are notated above the consonant that precedes them. That's simply how I feel it would/should be done in Dwarven and because I was working in a limited space. ( I did this in Colors3d, a drawing program for the Nintendo 3ds, so I didn't have much room to work with, this is also why I accidentally omitted the third row of consonants. ) Also please note, as underlined in red, I am treating the "st" character as a modified form of the "t" rune. This is because it wasn't specified in Loam's consonant clusters. Finally, to differentiate URIST ( the dwarf ) from urist ( the dagger ), I used two vertical lines on either side of the word. Since there is no rune that consists of simply a vertical line, I don't see any reason why it should be any more complex than that.

Any questions, comments, or criticisms?

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #91 on: February 19, 2015, 08:11:59 am »

I'm on a phone and probably won't be on an Internet-enabled pc for a while, so I can't get a good look at Captain's simplified runes, but maybe this will help: to prevent the lots if mirror images, I arrang any dangling endpoints into an imaginary line that swoops from upper left to lower right (though I missed two in the last column).

As for appropriate shapes look at Latin (designed to be carved in stone) and Greek (designed to be penned on paper), especially the minuscule/lowercase letters.  There just seems to be something undwarven about curved elements, and this makes it hard to come up with 40 distinct glyphs.

One runic element I'd like to keep is a lack of upper and lowercase symbols.  A "capitalized" letter would likely be bigger, and I imagin it would extend below the line rather than above it.  I'd like to avoid the ambiguity that comes from capitalizing the first letter in a sentence.

The vowel runes were designed to be full-height letters, and would be hard to distinguish as small overscripts.  They could be modified to be distinct at that size, but then it starts getting a little too close to Middle Earth elvish.
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CaptainMcClellan

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #92 on: February 19, 2015, 08:36:57 am »

I'm on a phone and probably won't be on an Internet-enabled pc for a while, so I can't get a good look at Captain's simplified runes, but maybe this will help: to prevent the lots if mirror images, I arrang any dangling endpoints into an imaginary line that swoops from upper left to lower right (though I missed two in the last column).

As for appropriate shapes look at Latin (designed to be carved in stone) and Greek (designed to be penned on paper), especially the minuscule/lowercase letters.  There just seems to be something undwarven about curved elements, and this makes it hard to come up with 40 distinct glyphs.

One runic element I'd like to keep is a lack of upper and lowercase symbols.  A "capitalized" letter would likely be bigger, and I imagin it would extend below the line rather than above it.  I'd like to avoid the ambiguity that comes from capitalizing the first letter in a sentence.

The vowel runes were designed to be full-height letters, and would be hard to distinguish as small overscripts.  They could be modified to be distinct at that size, but then it starts getting a little too close to Middle Earth elvish.
Ah. I'm afraid I don't follow with the "dangling endpoints into an imaginary line" thing, and would probably have to see that demonstrated. So if you get the chance, or if anyone else can understand, please demonstrate.

Yeah, I tried to keep in mind letters to be easily written and letters to be easily carved. ( My simplifications do actually resemble Phoenician and Greek a bit aesthetically, especially for the written script. ) One issue is that I don't have the best ever penmanship, so the simplified rune system I came up with might does look a little sloppy. ( If you get the chance to look at them, imagine that all endpoints in a segment connect at a 90° or 45° angle and all segments are straight. ) Also, for the two script runes in the top row that look pretty much identical, they aren't supposed to. One should look like a backwards "Z" and the other more like a fish-hook. ( Or a J with a music eighth note's flag. )
 
I'm all for that too. My "capitalization" was merely to append a vertical line rune ( basically a sans-serif capital "I" or a "|" character ) to either side of the word to note that it's a "proper" or "name" noun, rather than it's common variant. As a strictly text example: |dirst| for Dirst. As per segments of the rune going below the baseline, let's not if we can avoid it. Especially if an attempt is going to be made at a tileset for playing Dwarf Fortress in our rune system. ( I promise it won't be as painful as it sounds! :p )

Eh, that may not be too bad a thing? I fully understand if it is more preferred to have full-height letters, and for engravings this would no doubt be the case. However, for writing I think that overscripts wouldn't be that impractical, and could actually be used to very industrious effect in bookkeeping scenarios. ( Though, to invalidate my own point, these would probably work more on pictographs, ideographs, and abbreviations. :P )

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #93 on: February 19, 2015, 10:13:51 am »

The endpoints pattern is easiest to see in the third column of consonants.  You can put a straight-edge across the letter and touch most of the endpoints, and that straight-edge will be slanted from upper left to lower right.

That doesn't need to be preserved when simplifying the runes, it's just some insight into why the shapes are the way they are.  As I said, it was to prevent a lot of mirror images.

Capitals reaching under the line just means that all of the lowercase letters are lifted a bit in their cells rather than lowered a bit.

It would not be hard to modify the vowel runes to be distinct in a vertically short space.  Instead of //\ in a single symbol you make it two marks next to each other /  /\.  BUT if we go with over or under scripts, it will be impossible to render the runes in a DF tileset... though TrueType might be able to pull it off.  I saw a Khmer font that tried to accomplish underscripts.  In that language, lots of letters can end up as underscripts.  There was a specified modifier that would put a big dot under a letter, and the reader was to imagine that the next full-height letter was really tucked under the previous one where that dot was.
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Timeless Bob

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #94 on: February 19, 2015, 01:38:49 pm »

I like the idea of the circumfex marks being body language translated into symbology.  I imagine each circumflex to be a different gesture with eyebrows, beard, shoulders, ect... which would make the spoken Dwarvish to be a very animated language. 

The abbreviated word list I've often imagined to be only the spoken version of it, and incomplete for much the same reason as written Hebrew did not contain vowels: the reader was assumed to already know what was needed in the spoken form and add it into the "short-hand" written form.

As such, my conjecture is that the word list we are painfully trying to reconstruct is not the full language, but merely the verbal form, the rest being positional/gestural in nature.  It's my contention that while dwarves are industrious, they usually have to get together in "parties" to actively communicate - dwarves will not transfer information unless very near to each-other, indeed, "line-of-sight" is required for information to pass between them.  So - the written form would necessarily contain "gesture marks" that have no phonetic equal, indeed, attempting to pronounce a gesture would be untranslatable to the dwarven ear and not making the proper gestures while doing so would trim all of the verbs, prepositions and the like from the language, making it (understandably) incomprehensible.

Considering that often dwarves communicate while holding things, a hands-free series of gestures and relative body positions, such as "leaning toward (the conversational partner)" or "leaning away from (the conversational partner)", would be more likely.  Head, hip, shoulders, elbows, knees and feet positioning increase the ability to convey information non-verbally in conjunction with the verbal aspects of the language. 

It's interesting to note that such a form of communication would lead to a highly individualized fighting style, since group consensus would quickly deteriorate into individual action/reaction cycles until such time as the vocalized shout is heard and recognized as a general positional change requirement, which is in line with how we see dorfs fight and train.

(Of course, this would make dwarves in a passionate discussion, such as when electing a Mayor, seem to be suddenly overtaken with mass seizures.)
« Last Edit: February 19, 2015, 01:41:42 pm by Timeless Bob »
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Timeless Bob

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #95 on: February 19, 2015, 01:51:01 pm »

Ported from the "dwarven poetry" thread:
And the usual tonal example:

Quote from: Shī shì shí shī shǐ
Shíshì shīshì Shī shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí, shì Shī shì shì shì.
Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
Shì shì shì shì.

Meaning in spoilers.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Perhaps the words are merely the base forms of a verbal language that relies on the inflection of the words to produce the rest of the language.
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Dirst

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #96 on: February 20, 2015, 11:07:01 am »

Here I tried to "modernize" the consonant runes a bit to make them suitable for a quill pen.  The vowels could get a similar treatment (closing the loop between the chevron and the internal accent mark), but this set uses curve = consonant and angle = vowel.



The flag on Spoke 1, Rune 2 ought to be concave but that makes it too similar to the next rune... and there is no rule that the scribes need to be militantly consistent with the pattern anyway.  Spoke 1 is a pain in the ass in general because I used up all of the nice border combinations with Spokes 2 through 5.  I suppose I could use top-and-bottom for that Spoke (think of an H on its side) but then we're back into many pen strokes per letter.

Edit: Very small correction to one of the runes.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2015, 11:20:22 am by Dirst »
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Dirst

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #97 on: February 20, 2015, 11:15:09 am »

Timeless Bob,

I would like to see some gestures and stances incorporated into the language, but a written language needs to be relatively unambiguous (even if it relies on knowledge in the reader's head such as filling in vowels, the same series of symbols shouldn't have multiple possible meanings).

The sparse word list is because DF languages are currently only used to generate names.  Importantly, every language in DF draws from the exact same set of words, so it is not a commentary on how dwarves in particular write things down.  In the future I'd like to see the notion of untranslatable words, with some rough approximation listed in the other languages... but we aren't even close to that point yet.

A historical example of an untranslatable word is that Ancient Greek just didn't have a word for blue.  They described the sky as "bronze colored" which doesn't evoke the same color in an English-speaker's mind at all.
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CaptainMcClellan

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #98 on: February 20, 2015, 12:40:40 pm »

Here I tried to "modernize" the consonant runes a bit to make them suitable for a quill pen.  The vowels could get a similar treatment (closing the loop between the chevron and the internal accent mark), but this set uses curve = consonant and angle = vowel.



The flag on Spoke 1, Rune 2 ought to be concave but that makes it too similar to the next rune... and there is no rule that the scribes need to be militantly consistent with the pattern anyway.  Spoke 1 is a pain in the ass in general because I used up all of the nice border combinations with Spokes 2 through 5.  I suppose I could use top-and-bottom for that Spoke (think of an H on its side) but then we're back into many pen strokes per letter.

Edit: Very small correction to one of the runes.
Well, there's no denying your runes are cleaner, but I'm not sure about easier to write. On the otherhand,
* CaptainMcClellan likes Dirst's runes for their similarities to Glagolitic

Timeless Bob,

I would like to see some gestures and stances incorporated into the language, but a written language needs to be relatively unambiguous (even if it relies on knowledge in the reader's head such as filling in vowels, the same series of symbols shouldn't have multiple possible meanings).

The sparse word list is because DF languages are currently only used to generate names.  Importantly, every language in DF draws from the exact same set of words, so it is not a commentary on how dwarves in particular write things down.  In the future I'd like to see the notion of untranslatable words, with some rough approximation listed in the other languages... but we aren't even close to that point yet.

A historical example of an untranslatable word is that Ancient Greek just didn't have a word for blue.  They described the sky as "bronze colored" which doesn't evoke the same color in an English-speaker's mind at all.

Yeah, but that's more a matter of colour-word development, which is something I've gone over countless times in this thread. It's not as much an untranslatable word as a word that has yet to develop... I think a more accurate example of an untranslatable word would be "chutzpah" or "schmuck", which while describable in English, just don't really have the same feel or meaning to them. ( Hence why they're gradually being borrowed from Yiddish to English, though that also has a lot to do with a considerable amount of influential Ashkenazi migrating to the US... which is something I'd kind of like to see in the language development cycle at some point, is a group of ethnically distinct but culturally influential minorities immigrating into a site and bringing with them their words and idioms. And vice versa, a group of well-established folk who spread out their language and idioms through development of a technology, a la the US. From what I gather, that's Toady's eventual goal, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it. Wow, I get off track easily. ) Now if, for example, the dwarves had not yet developed a word for green ( plausible ) and borrowed the word from Elves ( who almost certainly would have such a word), I guess that would kind of be along the lines of what you're saying. Knowing, however the (perceived) attitudes of Dwarves, it's likely that they'd just develop a word rather than borrow.

Dirst

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #99 on: February 20, 2015, 02:21:59 pm »

Well, there's no denying your runes are cleaner, but I'm not sure about easier to write.
Spokes 2 through 5 can each be drawn without lifting a pen from the paper, though it isn't always obvious which end to start with.  The cursive capital I has similar issues... you have to start out drawing right-to-left which has no clearly-defined progression in English, so some people start with the tail and others start with the hook.
Yeah, but that's more a matter of colour-word development, which is something I've gone over countless times in this thread. It's not as much an untranslatable word as a word that has yet to develop... I think a more accurate example of an untranslatable word would be "chutzpah" or "schmuck", which while describable in English, just don't really have the same feel or meaning to them. ( Hence why they're gradually being borrowed from Yiddish to English, though that also has a lot to do with a considerable amount of influential Ashkenazi migrating to the US... which is something I'd kind of like to see in the language development cycle at some point, is a group of ethnically distinct but culturally influential minorities immigrating into a site and bringing with them their words and idioms. And vice versa, a group of well-established folk who spread out their language and idioms through development of a technology, a la the US. From what I gather, that's Toady's eventual goal, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it. Wow, I get off track easily. ) Now if, for example, the dwarves had not yet developed a word for green ( plausible ) and borrowed the word from Elves ( who almost certainly would have such a word), I guess that would kind of be along the lines of what you're saying. Knowing, however the (perceived) attitudes of Dwarves, it's likely that they'd just develop a word rather than borrow.
I don't think anything as basic as "green" or "blue" should be left untranslatable, but Dwarven might have distinct names for "flame orange" and "magma orange" that other languages lump together.  The easiest "untranslatable" concepts to code into a computer would be distinctions made in some languages that aren't made in others.  One example would be the oranges I just mentioned, elves might have very different words for male and female tigers, humans might distinguish between 80 types of grain that others just call "wheat" and so on.

One famous exchange in the Bible is completely stripped of meaning in English.  In English, this makes no sense:
Jesus - Do you love me?
Peter - Yes Lord, you know that I love you.
Jesus - Do you love me?
Peter - Yes Lord, you know that I love you.
Jesus - Do you love me?
Peter - Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.

In Greek or Hebrew, however, the first two questions use a word for unconditional love, whereas the responses use a word for fraternal/friendship-style love.  The third question switches to that version of love.  With that context, Jesus isn't nagging or repeating for effect... he's just losing an argument.
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CaptainMcClellan

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #100 on: February 20, 2015, 02:57:06 pm »

Well, there's no denying your runes are cleaner, but I'm not sure about easier to write.
Spokes 2 through 5 can each be drawn without lifting a pen from the paper, though it isn't always obvious which end to start with.  The cursive capital I has similar issues... you have to start out drawing right-to-left which has no clearly-defined progression in English, so some people start with the tail and others start with the hook.
Yeah, but that's more a matter of colour-word development, which is something I've gone over countless times in this thread. It's not as much an untranslatable word as a word that has yet to develop... I think a more accurate example of an untranslatable word would be "chutzpah" or "schmuck", which while describable in English, just don't really have the same feel or meaning to them. ( Hence why they're gradually being borrowed from Yiddish to English, though that also has a lot to do with a considerable amount of influential Ashkenazi migrating to the US... which is something I'd kind of like to see in the language development cycle at some point, is a group of ethnically distinct but culturally influential minorities immigrating into a site and bringing with them their words and idioms. And vice versa, a group of well-established folk who spread out their language and idioms through development of a technology, a la the US. From what I gather, that's Toady's eventual goal, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it. Wow, I get off track easily. ) Now if, for example, the dwarves had not yet developed a word for green ( plausible ) and borrowed the word from Elves ( who almost certainly would have such a word), I guess that would kind of be along the lines of what you're saying. Knowing, however the (perceived) attitudes of Dwarves, it's likely that they'd just develop a word rather than borrow.

I don't think anything as basic as "green" or "blue" should be left untranslatable, but Dwarven might have distinct names for "flame orange" and "magma orange" that other languages lump together.  The easiest "untranslatable" concepts to code into a computer would be distinctions made in some languages that aren't made in others.  One example would be the oranges I just mentioned, elves might have very different words for male and female tigers, humans might distinguish between 80 types of grain that others just call "wheat" and so on.
Hmm... Yeah, I could see that happening.

One famous exchange in the Bible is completely stripped of meaning in English.  In English, this makes no sense:
Jesus - Do you love me?
Peter - Yes Lord, you know that I love you.
Jesus - Do you love me?
Peter - Yes Lord, you know that I love you.
Jesus - Do you love me?
Peter - Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.

In Greek or Hebrew, however, the first two questions use a word for unconditional love, whereas the responses use a word for fraternal/friendship-style love.  The third question switches to that version of love.  With that context, Jesus isn't nagging or repeating for effect... he's just losing an argument.
Mmmm yeah. I actually knew that... It's a very good point to bring up in demonstration. Honestly, on that subject, Modern English has lost a lot of meaning. On the other hand, it's gained a good bit in the way of communicating in a more concrete way, I suppose. ( Or analytical, or neutral, or whatever. Less is up to having to have contextual knowledge. Weirdly, it seems like it's more open to interpretations though.  )

Dirst

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #101 on: February 20, 2015, 06:56:42 pm »

I take st as just a consonant cluster (notably the only intra-syllabic consonant cluster Dwarvish permits). Also, I use c for a voiceless palatal stop (like the k in "keel"), rather than the English either-k-or-s-depending-on-context.

Looking at the data, I've noticed that c, f, and v (incidentally, the three least-common sounds in Dwarvish) cannot appear in a word-final position. I wonder if we can't use that to our advantage...

Okay, here's a suggestion - it's not pretty but it's functional:
t d k g
s z c* (gh)
b* v/f* th sh
n m ng (mg)
r (rh) l (lh)
*c is a voiceless velar fricative; b is [β]; v and f are variants of the same sound.

The order is: base sound / voiced or "strong" form / velarized / velar voiced or "strong" form
First row is stops, and the system works great.
Second is fricatives, and it's not bad (we're missing the voiced velar stop)
Third is more fricatives: a [v] is "stronger" than a [β], and so goes in the voiced slot. th and sh are "backed", not exactly velarized.
Fourth is nasals, works alright - m is, of course, not a voiced n though.
Fifth is liquids - perhaps all l should be [ɫ]. rh and lh are pure fictions.
Okay, back to getting the consonants in order.  How about this arrangement?
Spoke
Base
Base
Voiced
Velar
Velar
Voiced
1
f
v
th
(ch)
2
s
z
sh
c
3
t
d
k
g
4
(p)
b
l
r
5
n
m
ng
(mg)

The Spokes are re-arranged a bit to avoid some of the uglier runes, with Spoke 4 ending up as the Odd Bedfellows.  The "c" position is really for a "zh" sound, but "c" works there.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2015, 07:04:32 pm by Dirst »
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Dirst

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #102 on: February 20, 2015, 07:40:23 pm »

And if someone with better hearing than mine would like to tackle the meaning of the vowel accents, Wikipedia has a chart of all IPA-distinct vowel sounds, though note that there are other possible vowel-like sounds described elsewhere in the article.

By the way, Dwarven has more vowel sounds than any real-world language.
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Dirst

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #103 on: February 20, 2015, 08:16:27 pm »

Okay, last one for tonight :)

íf îv i ith ï ús ûz u ush ùc ö ót ôd o ok òg å âb a al àr ä én êm e eng ë

As a mnemonic to help dwarf children learn their alphabet, the letters can be grouped into "fortresses" with vowels representing interactions and consonants the resources within.

í ascending/approaching the fortress
î going around/surrounding/sieging the fortress
i going through/entering/trading with the fortress
ì descending/leaving the fortress
ï forsaking/embarking from the fortress (this is the hybrid between the I and U areas)

The four resources could, for example, (1) ores, (2) gems, (3) crafts, and (4) agriculture.  The frontier fortresses at the begining and end of the alphabet are outposts that don't have any native food production, and one of the others has no ores.
The O fortress presumably is the Mountainhome, and the letter t ("ót") represents adamantine.
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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #104 on: February 24, 2015, 03:38:05 pm »

Does anyone have any thoughts on the alphabet and runes?

Beyond that, I was thinking about numbers.  I have an idea for digits, but that's only part of the issue.  During DF's time period, mathematicians used a place-value system for numbers and merchants used a symbol-value system (Roman numerals).  There is also an option in between similar to Chinese numbers.

Examples using modern glyphs:

Place value: 925
Symbol value: CMXXV
Chinese: 9百2十5

Place value: 302
Symbol value: CCCII
Chinese: 3百2

Which type of system does everyone think is appropriate for dwarves to use DF?  Note that the game interface is going to use place-value no matter what, this is more about how things are written down when a tale says that thirty-seven thralls stormed the dining room.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2015, 06:38:08 pm by Dirst »
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Just got back, updating:
(0.42 & 0.43) The Earth Strikes Back! v2.15 - Pay attention...  It's a mine!  It's-a not yours!
(0.42 & 0.43) Appearance Tweaks v1.03 - Tease those hippies about their pointy ears.
(0.42 & 0.43) Accessibility Utility v1.04 - Console tools to navigate the map
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