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Author Topic: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project  (Read 34302 times)

CaptainMcClellan

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #120 on: March 10, 2015, 11:14:52 am »

Pssh, yeah. That mnemonic is very helpful, but I had gotten the basic idea the first time. I just am stuck pulling myself in seven directions at once to work on all of the projects I've assigned myself to and my college work, so that's why I didn't get around to responding. This project isn't dead, though and I like that system of number notation because I think it's very clean and natural. As per the stroke to make the rune unalterable, I'm thinking just one vertical stroke down the center of the rune. It's very hard to mistake and it doesn't interfere with the current setup of the rune. (Though, admittedly I'm not sure how much it helps with the issue. ) As per approximates, I see no reason why there wouldn't just be an "unknown digit" rune. There is in the actual game mechanics: "?". Granted, it can and probably will be argued that that's just a translation convention.

As per the less accurate book keeping methods, methinks that this could boil down to number of significant digits according to the bookkeeper, e.g. 5-X if 5 is the five rune and X is a rune meaning "thousands place" with the hyphen being some kind of signifier of approximation. Basically "It rounds to 5000" or "About 5000" or "5000 and some." Which saves space and aids readability (slightly) from the bookkeeper's perspective. However, a bookkeeper could be ordered to treat all digits as significant: 5362 Barrels of Dwarven Rum is exactly 5362 and is written with a digit for each place value in stead of "5-X barrels of Dwarven Rum". ( The practicality of such simplifications is more obvious when you have hundreds of thousands. ) Though, I am still willing to posit that Dwarven bookkeepers use their own system of stenography for the purpose of rapidly taking notes and have a separate tally system that better facilitates addition rather than simple display of number value. ( In fact, bonus points if said tally system is impractical for displaying number value easily. There's a reason bookkeeping is a skill. Even real-life accountants have historically had to treat numbers differently and learn different maths than other professions. ) However, even if this is the case, it doesn't necessarily mean much linguistically as it does culturally/practically, as their records would probably still be translated into a Dwarven number system that all Dwarves can read instead of the specific bookkeeper/another bookkeeper. It's just how I visualize it and how I'd do it if I had to count everything in a fort.

Also, I'm looking at your runes and thinking to myself that they need to be simplified or at least given a cursive form. Sure they can all be written in 1-3 strokes, but those strokes look kind of awkward for a hand and don't inherently leave the hand in an optimal position to go to the next letter. ( Assuming dwarves write left-to-right, that is.  ) It's not horrible, but a necromancer who was writing his fortieth biography definitely wouldn't use that, nor would any dwarf who had a lot to write, due to the extra movement increasing hand strain. In addition, the consonant runes wouldn't lend themselves very well to being engraved as of their most recent iteration. The worst offenders are the second and fourth rows, as well as special mention to the third character on the first row and the last two of the last row. ( The last of the last being more of a minor annoyance than a legitimate problem. )

Curiously, it seems like most of the number runes are actually suited to best being written by the hand that their spokes are mapped to. I'm not sure if this is relevant, but it suggests to me that a particularly skilled bookkeeper could write two at once, one quill in each hand, and potentially even take note of two numbers at once.

Ops Fox

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #121 on: March 21, 2015, 06:41:26 pm »

This is incredible that you guys are doing this, do you have a notes version of your accepted or pending ideas so far? I ask because while I did read the entire thread, I have forgotten important bits here and there and its tedious to read the same conversation twice to try and find important bits.

Also somewhere its mention that some words you would expect to share a root dont, like sorcery and sorcerer, I think that can be explain by word drift. Wizard for instance originally came from wiseman, so maybe those two dwarven words drifted from different sources like the original word for sorcery meant something to the extent of magic or black magic and sorcerer's root word meant something like scholar. It was only in recent dwarven times that those two words drifted and changed to be what we call consider sorcery and sorcerer now.
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CaptainMcClellan

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #122 on: March 21, 2015, 08:33:32 pm »

This is incredible that you guys are doing this, do you have a notes version of your accepted or pending ideas so far? I ask because while I did read the entire thread, I have forgotten important bits here and there and its tedious to read the same conversation twice to try and find important bits.

Also somewhere its mention that some words you would expect to share a root dont, like sorcery and sorcerer, I think that can be explain by word drift. Wizard for instance originally came from wiseman, so maybe those two dwarven words drifted from different sources like the original word for sorcery meant something to the extent of magic or black magic and sorcerer's root word meant something like scholar. It was only in recent dwarven times that those two words drifted and changed to be what we call consider sorcery and sorcerer now.
Yeah. Sadly, nope. We don't have a notes version and even our general consensus is kinda on a sandy foundation. However, if you care to volunteer, I can point you to some of the most important developments.

I had similar, though nowhere near as developed ideas about that. The only thing is this: How would they drift so much in that time? ( World-gen time, that is. ) Moreover, it seems the drift occurs before time itself... This has implications that will need to be addressed.

Most importantly, thank you for posting.

Ops Fox

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #123 on: March 21, 2015, 09:19:02 pm »

This is incredible that you guys are doing this, do you have a notes version of your accepted or pending ideas so far? I ask because while I did read the entire thread, I have forgotten important bits here and there and its tedious to read the same conversation twice to try and find important bits.

Also somewhere its mention that some words you would expect to share a root dont, like sorcery and sorcerer, I think that can be explain by word drift. Wizard for instance originally came from wiseman, so maybe those two dwarven words drifted from different sources like the original word for sorcery meant something to the extent of magic or black magic and sorcerer's root word meant something like scholar. It was only in recent dwarven times that those two words drifted and changed to be what we call consider sorcery and sorcerer now.
Yeah. Sadly, nope. We don't have a notes version and even our general consensus is kinda on a sandy foundation. However, if you care to volunteer, I can point you to some of the most important developments.

I had similar, though nowhere near as developed ideas about that. The only thing is this: How would they drift so much in that time? ( World-gen time, that is. ) Moreover, it seems the drift occurs before time itself... This has implications that will need to be addressed.

Most importantly, thank you for posting.
I would appreciate it if you pointed me towards those important post and I will try to compile a notes version of what you have so far.

I think of it along the lines that the worlds are not created at world gen, but rather world gen is when recorded history begins. In the time before world gen dwarfs are still around speaking to each other, developing their language and causing words like sorcery and sorcerer to drift towards one another. Think of it like the neolithic and paleolithic periods for ourselves, we were certainly around then and important development were made, we just dont have any records of it.
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CaptainMcClellan

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #124 on: March 22, 2015, 12:59:11 am »

This is incredible that you guys are doing this, do you have a notes version of your accepted or pending ideas so far? I ask because while I did read the entire thread, I have forgotten important bits here and there and its tedious to read the same conversation twice to try and find important bits.

Also somewhere its mention that some words you would expect to share a root dont, like sorcery and sorcerer, I think that can be explain by word drift. Wizard for instance originally came from wiseman, so maybe those two dwarven words drifted from different sources like the original word for sorcery meant something to the extent of magic or black magic and sorcerer's root word meant something like scholar. It was only in recent dwarven times that those two words drifted and changed to be what we call consider sorcery and sorcerer now.
Yeah. Sadly, nope. We don't have a notes version and even our general consensus is kinda on a sandy foundation. However, if you care to volunteer, I can point you to some of the most important developments.

I had similar, though nowhere near as developed ideas about that. The only thing is this: How would they drift so much in that time? ( World-gen time, that is. ) Moreover, it seems the drift occurs before time itself... This has implications that will need to be addressed.

Most importantly, thank you for posting.
I would appreciate it if you pointed me towards those important post and I will try to compile a notes version of what you have so far.

I think of it along the lines that the worlds are not created at world gen, but rather world gen is when recorded history begins. In the time before world gen dwarfs are still around speaking to each other, developing their language and causing words like sorcery and sorcerer to drift towards one another. Think of it like the neolithic and paleolithic periods for ourselves, we were certainly around then and important development were made, we just dont have any records of it.
I'll... try to get around to it. No promises, but poke me every so often about it.

Eh, yeah. I mean, there's always that argument, but then how do you explain the pretty obvious terraforming that occurs in world gen? Besides, there's no evidence (and there would be) of megabeasts prior to the start of history and there are no known crude oil deposits. All of these things seem to suggest a fresh world teeming with life. That the sapient races may be migrants from another universe is a possible explanation that I'm willing to accept. I'll admit, I'm just a sucker for the god-like creation scenario and like to think of each world as beginning when the player presses "generate a world". It's a bias, to be sure, but it's not an unacceptable one, nor does it devalue my questions about the existence and persistence of each Dwarf Fortress world. I dunno. I mean, I don't really know if I'm even coherent right now. It's three hours past when I wanted to be asleep tonight, so that's why I might sound a little off and that's why I'm asking you to get back with me later about pointing you to the notes. ( Preferably do that on Monday and depending on my college obligations, I might be able to get around to it. This semester got tough, quick, and I wasn't really prepared to handle it. )

Dirst

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #125 on: March 24, 2015, 04:57:54 pm »

Pssh, yeah. That mnemonic is very helpful, but I had gotten the basic idea the first time. I just am stuck pulling myself in seven directions at once to work on all of the projects I've assigned myself to and my college work, so that's why I didn't get around to responding. This project isn't dead, though and I like that system of number notation because I think it's very clean and natural. As per the stroke to make the rune unalterable, I'm thinking just one vertical stroke down the center of the rune. It's very hard to mistake and it doesn't interfere with the current setup of the rune. (Though, admittedly I'm not sure how much it helps with the issue. ) As per approximates, I see no reason why there wouldn't just be an "unknown digit" rune. There is in the actual game mechanics: "?". Granted, it can and probably will be argued that that's just a translation convention.

As per the less accurate book keeping methods, methinks that this could boil down to number of significant digits according to the bookkeeper, e.g. 5-X if 5 is the five rune and X is a rune meaning "thousands place" with the hyphen being some kind of signifier of approximation. Basically "It rounds to 5000" or "About 5000" or "5000 and some." Which saves space and aids readability (slightly) from the bookkeeper's perspective. However, a bookkeeper could be ordered to treat all digits as significant: 5362 Barrels of Dwarven Rum is exactly 5362 and is written with a digit for each place value in stead of "5-X barrels of Dwarven Rum". ( The practicality of such simplifications is more obvious when you have hundreds of thousands. ) Though, I am still willing to posit that Dwarven bookkeepers use their own system of stenography for the purpose of rapidly taking notes and have a separate tally system that better facilitates addition rather than simple display of number value. ( In fact, bonus points if said tally system is impractical for displaying number value easily. There's a reason bookkeeping is a skill. Even real-life accountants have historically had to treat numbers differently and learn different maths than other professions. ) However, even if this is the case, it doesn't necessarily mean much linguistically as it does culturally/practically, as their records would probably still be translated into a Dwarven number system that all Dwarves can read instead of the specific bookkeeper/another bookkeeper. It's just how I visualize it and how I'd do it if I had to count everything in a fort.

Also, I'm looking at your runes and thinking to myself that they need to be simplified or at least given a cursive form. Sure they can all be written in 1-3 strokes, but those strokes look kind of awkward for a hand and don't inherently leave the hand in an optimal position to go to the next letter. ( Assuming dwarves write left-to-right, that is.  ) It's not horrible, but a necromancer who was writing his fortieth biography definitely wouldn't use that, nor would any dwarf who had a lot to write, due to the extra movement increasing hand strain. In addition, the consonant runes wouldn't lend themselves very well to being engraved as of their most recent iteration. The worst offenders are the second and fourth rows, as well as special mention to the third character on the first row and the last two of the last row. ( The last of the last being more of a minor annoyance than a legitimate problem. )

Curiously, it seems like most of the number runes are actually suited to best being written by the hand that their spokes are mapped to. I'm not sure if this is relevant, but it suggests to me that a particularly skilled bookkeeper could write two at once, one quill in each hand, and potentially even take note of two numbers at once.
Thanks for the feedback.  The tunes are made with a quill or brush in mind.  They could be carved as block letters by turning the curves into 45-degree bevels.  The ending positions aren't any worse than a lot of English capitals like B, P and J.  Though I guess it does happen a bit more often in the runes I posted.

The numbers could be tallied by someone who smudged his fingertips or fingernails: just tap the "up" fingers to the surface, both hands at once, but that would take a lot more space than writing digits.  Might work as a fast way to put a count into soil or another deformable surface.

Any mark that unambiguously identified the last stroke of a digit would work for fraud prevention, whether it is a curl or a cross stroke or a serif.  I'd suggest adding those only if it's otherwise a "serif font".
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Loam

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #126 on: March 26, 2015, 07:12:47 pm »

The numbers look pretty good. It's a bit of an intimidating system to get into, but once you get the hang of it it works pretty well. I'm still leery of having the left-hand and right-hand numerals look so similar, though.

I wrote this using what I've come up with:

Quote
A solemn poetic form concerning alcoholic beverages, originating in The Lyric of Coal. The poem is divided into two distinct septets. Use of simile is characteristic of the form. Each line has five feet with a tone pattern of uneven-even stress pattern of unstressed-stressed because that's how I read it at first and my Dwarvish doesn't have tones.

The first part is intended to make an assertion.

The second part is intended to invert the previous assertion.

Na abid on tu emen ùnadak:
nitig räduk, dastot risasiz in,
ïkor az onilun kel îk tosdat,
nekik ak olaltur datan – sirab
fabor nak; omam vúsh at izutuz
uzûd tu izot ór, nazush shosêl,
van obusmâl on séstin îk zalís.

Ot mân shaman omór, van voz bar than
kobmot; ïkar nastek than odeb voz,
öntak tu izot mân saràm soram,
van lòr räduk tu alnis abod than.
Zon îk ziksis; ser agseth, kêr nural,
van than busumid, usal ak kurång,
nabar gusemen than tor mân midor.


Spoiler: Translation (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Analysis (click to show/hide)

I've also been adding words to the impoverished lexicon: I've got about 700 verbs now, almost doubling the vanilla number, plus many pronouns, question words, prepositions, common adverbs, etc.
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Uristsonsonson

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #127 on: March 26, 2015, 07:53:51 pm »

Wait, there's already a full grammatical system here?! That's amazing! I was literally just getting a handle for how I was starting to force a pseudo-grammar into the RAWs the last time. How does this system work? Is it intended for putting into the game itself?
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Dirst

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #128 on: March 26, 2015, 08:24:38 pm »

Loam had previously done some work fleshing out the language before this particular project launched.

I'm curious how Loam added pronouns to the language file... Are they tagged as nouns?

And a nice dwarfy poem you have there.
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Loam

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #129 on: March 26, 2015, 09:21:03 pm »

Wait, there's already a full grammatical system here?! That's amazing! I was literally just getting a handle for how I was starting to force a pseudo-grammar into the RAWs the last time. How does this system work? Is it intended for putting into the game itself?

Well, it's hardly full, and a lot of it just borrows from English. And it's by no means intended to be put into the raws, since it just started out as a personal project for writing stuff in Dwarvish.
To actually put a pseudo-grammar into the language files... would be very difficult. You'd need to have many different entries for each word.

Spoiler: RAWs pseudo-grammar (click to show/hide)

I'm curious how Loam added pronouns to the language file... Are they tagged as nouns?

None of the new words are added to the language files, just to my own wordlists. Putting pronouns into the raws would be kind of silly, since you'd just get names like "The Hill of Me." But they probably would be tagged as nouns.
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Ops Fox

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #130 on: March 26, 2015, 10:01:33 pm »

Wait, there's already a full grammatical system here?! That's amazing! I was literally just getting a handle for how I was starting to force a pseudo-grammar into the RAWs the last time. How does this system work? Is it intended for putting into the game itself?

Well, it's hardly full, and a lot of it just borrows from English. And it's by no means intended to be put into the raws, since it just started out as a personal project for writing stuff in Dwarvish.
To actually put a pseudo-grammar into the language files... would be very difficult. You'd need to have many different entries for each word.

Spoiler: RAWs pseudo-grammar (click to show/hide)

I'm curious how Loam added pronouns to the language file... Are they tagged as nouns?

None of the new words are added to the language files, just to my own wordlists. Putting pronouns into the raws would be kind of silly, since you'd just get names like "The Hill of Me." But they probably would be tagged as nouns.
what words have you created though?
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Dirst

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #131 on: March 27, 2015, 08:16:54 am »

It's possible to keep the pronouns out of names by keeping them in a PRONOUNS symbol that is culled from all names, but the game still won't understand the difference between nouns and pronouns.

What does the game do if there are words/symbols in one language that don't appear in other languages?
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Uristsonsonson

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #132 on: March 27, 2015, 09:08:16 am »

Wait, there's already a full grammatical system here?! That's amazing! I was literally just getting a handle for how I was starting to force a pseudo-grammar into the RAWs the last time. How does this system work? Is it intended for putting into the game itself?

Well, it's hardly full, and a lot of it just borrows from English. And it's by no means intended to be put into the raws, since it just started out as a personal project for writing stuff in Dwarvish.
To actually put a pseudo-grammar into the language files... would be very difficult. You'd need to have many different entries for each word.

Spoiler: RAWs pseudo-grammar (click to show/hide)

I'm curious how Loam added pronouns to the language file... Are they tagged as nouns?

None of the new words are added to the language files, just to my own wordlists. Putting pronouns into the raws would be kind of silly, since you'd just get names like "The Hill of Me." But they probably would be tagged as nouns.
I'm actually working on essentially that right now. The only things I'm stuck on are how to represent it in language_SYM and the exact forms each language will use. I'm thinking of having Human use either prefixes or particles, Goblin have no definite patterns to represent how alien they and their mindset would be to the world, Elven have several conjugations and declensions riddled with irregularity, and Dwarven to stack clitics at the end. Basically Human=Austronesian, Goblin=alien, Elven=Greek or Latin, and Dwarven=Sumerian. That would be relatively easy to change though.
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Ops Fox

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #133 on: March 28, 2015, 09:51:24 pm »

Notes version of the thread.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: March 29, 2015, 01:31:30 pm by Ops Fox »
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Dirst

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics Core Project
« Reply #134 on: March 28, 2015, 11:03:33 pm »

Thanks for summarizing The Story Thus Far.  The conversation is pretty disjointed because people drop in and out as their real lives give them time to participate.  I for one want to take another crack at those consonants when I have a free hour or five.
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