Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: Dwarfish language?  (Read 955 times)

Noobazzah

  • Bay Watcher
  • Make lye, not war.
    • View Profile
Dwarfish language?
« on: August 14, 2012, 05:35:31 am »

So, is the dwarven language translateable to english? Or is it just randomized gibberish? If it can be translated, point me to a direction where I might learn this magnificent tongue :D.
Logged

Kamin

  • Bay Watcher
  • Once you go cloaca, you never go backa.
    • View Profile
    • Slaves to Alcohol: Desura DF Fanpage
Re: Dwarfish language?
« Reply #1 on: August 14, 2012, 05:38:32 am »

Well, if I'm not mistaken the game itself has a pretty comprehensive list of words which are, technically, "translated."

Noobazzah

  • Bay Watcher
  • Make lye, not war.
    • View Profile
Re: Dwarfish language?
« Reply #2 on: August 14, 2012, 05:52:23 am »

It's just that Zefonlaz for instance means "Fountainscale", but Urist Zefon+blahblah has neither fountains or scales in his name translation.
Logged

Iceflame

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Dwarfish language?
« Reply #3 on: August 14, 2012, 05:57:27 am »

Dwarfish ist really easy. You may translate 'urist' to every single word in every existing language.
Logged

Noobazzah

  • Bay Watcher
  • Make lye, not war.
    • View Profile
Re: Dwarfish language?
« Reply #4 on: August 14, 2012, 06:15:05 am »

Perhaps if I started checking out my dwarves' tiltes ("Accidental Blizzard of Amusement" etc) and compare them, I could at least figure out if the dwarven language is comprehensible to humans. After all, a language used by constantly drunk/constantly hangover'd midgets may exceed our undestanding.
Logged

Trif

  • Bay Watcher
  • the Not-Quite-So-Great-as-Toady One
    • View Profile
Re: Dwarfish language?
« Reply #5 on: August 14, 2012, 06:54:17 am »

Check out language_DWARF.txt in /raw/objects. If some words aren't displayed correctly, change your font to "Terminal".

Basically, yes, every word can be translated (e.g. urist means dagger), but there is no sentence structure. If you have a sentence in dwarf tongue, there is no way to determine if a word is an adjective, a verb or a noun.
Logged
Quote from: Toady One
I wonder if the game has become odd.

Noobazzah

  • Bay Watcher
  • Make lye, not war.
    • View Profile
Re: Dwarfish language?
« Reply #6 on: August 14, 2012, 08:19:07 am »

Thanks. Definitely going to learn some dwarfish eventually :).
Logged

Madventurer

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Dwarfish language?
« Reply #7 on: August 14, 2012, 11:56:22 am »

Why not remake the language like Tolkien made elvish and such, then give it to Toady?  :)
Logged
Then he made grudge wit about 20 other dwarfs (still don't know why - perhaps they were stealing his chair).

Starver

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Dwarfish language?
« Reply #8 on: August 14, 2012, 12:13:44 pm »

1) Develop a more fully fledged version of fictional language,
2) ???
3) Qapla'!
3a) baH!
Logged

Noobazzah

  • Bay Watcher
  • Make lye, not war.
    • View Profile
Re: Dwarfish language?
« Reply #9 on: August 14, 2012, 12:41:30 pm »

Such a feat is not possible, unless one moves to a cave, carves some stone boulders and makes a dwarfy study room with one's bare hands. I'd also need a lifetime supply of mushrooms and booze, and maybe a cat.
Logged

expwnent

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Dwarfish language?
« Reply #10 on: August 14, 2012, 04:53:50 pm »

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=47347

It doesn't work well for forms of words, though. For example, urist means dagger, so if your fort is named dagger, it'll be named urist, and if it's named daggers, it'll still be named urist. But it doesn't matter much.
Logged

Kamin

  • Bay Watcher
  • Once you go cloaca, you never go backa.
    • View Profile
    • Slaves to Alcohol: Desura DF Fanpage
Re: Dwarfish language?
« Reply #11 on: August 14, 2012, 05:54:22 pm »

It doesn't work well for forms of words, though. For example, urist means dagger, so if your fort is named dagger, it'll be named urist, and if it's named daggers, it'll still be named urist.

As far as plural forms of words are concerned, many languages are contextual; Chinese, for instance, does not really have plural forms of words. I wouldn't be surprised if most of us felt Dwarven could be considered the same, even if only for arguments' sake.