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[Supermikhail]

@Dwarf: Heh, I haven't visited that in months. I guess I'll have to learn all those fancy functions again.

@Ampersand: JC, I thought I was going to have an evening relatively to myself, and some writing. It turns out there's a fresh constructed language to digest. On that note, yesterday I gave a go to Armenian. That's some nice phonetics, too, I must say. You can check it out here. Along with spelling and national music, which I found annoying and had to turn off (frequently), unfortunately.

Oh. Oh! I'm not specifically interested in a difficult language - I'd like Dwarven to be a distinct language, that is, it mustn't be similar to what I speak or am familiar with, namely, Russian, English, French, Armenian (since yesterday). And Latin, but you can't take it for phonetics. So, it must be difficult, but only in the sense that our lazy brains find it hard to get into.

[nbonaparte]

Make it different, but don't go the way of Klingon. It should sound fairly humanlike. Hey, idea, work backwards from a scottish accent to a phonology.

[Supermikhail]

Scottish like that - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuBe31j3H9U&NR=1?

So, going through the language file - scottish rolling "r" and hissing "s" and very aspirated "t" are very good. Also take very aspirated "k", like in Armenian... I mean, just very aspirated.

Does anybody have any idea if the diacritics and the rest mean something in the language files? Or can speculate, if one should take them into account.

By the way, I see the word "ngárak", it's got this accent mark, I guess. More importantly, it's got a not most common in European languages in the beginning of a word letter combination "ng". Immediately comes to mind Swahili.

Considering the "th" lack of good reverberative qualities, I've recently discovered an Armenian sound that is like "ts" or Russian "ц", but you put the tip of your tongue behind your upper teeth. Or "th" could be just more aspirated.

If alveoli are taken up by "s", we have to either get rid of "sh", or move it somewhere. Consider pronouncing it in the same position as American "r".

Nasal consonants or what sounds to me like nasal, i.e. n, m, l, just don't want to work at all. I don't know what to do with them.

Something might be done about "g". I thing it could use some softening, that is, the tongue's back tries to touch the roof of the mouth, and aspiration.

Wow, brainstorming. I'm tired.

About vowels. I'm for the notion that languages tend to stick to some part of the mouth. Like, Americans keep their tongue up and back, closer to the roof. French keep it forward and close to the front lower teeth. Russians keep it up and closer to the front. I think we should look for a native feel of vowels with different tongue placement, and then some vowels might form on their own, and some might fall off. Like with Armenian, that only has 4 vowels (at least as far as I'm concerned).

Also, I'm not entirely satisfied with how "ur" for "hearth" sounds. I think it'll benefit from adding "b" to make it "bur". Then "mother" turns into either "bobur", or "borbur", both of which to me sound much nicer than the original.

[Dwarf]

Hey Mikhail, dropped you a PM (or hav I ?)

[Supermikhail]

You haven't as far as I can see, and ICQ hasn't improved during the time I was absent from it - or the face of the world that you can see through it, namely a lot of spam.

[Dwarf]

Well, the question I asked was if you could maybe get something else than ICQ, since it's acting up for me :S

[Supermikhail]

Acually, I had an idea to try to burn some fuel on the Bay12 IRC, maybe some more people will get interested, although I don't know what Bay12 IRC would think of it.

Anyway, I've got a Skype here somewhere, and that could be very beneficial to phonetics, although I've got to put a disclaimer here - my ideas don't come from long meticulous linguistic manipulation, but from pretty instantaneous and accidental inspirations, between which I usually do some other stuff, completely unrelated, so I'm a little dubious of the productivity of this endeavour, although you've suggested it so you must see something.

Edit: Actually, a free alternative Ekiga would be better as Skype has bugged out my keyboard layouts again.

[Dwarf]

Uhm, that's some weird stuff. I've got no idea of compiling whatsoever, and I don't even know if it's PPC code (I'm pretty certain it's x86)

[Supermikhail]

Assuming I know what you're talking about, and you've downloaded Ekiga (I installed it through Ubuntu Package Manager, so I don't really know how it goes with the main site)... well, I'm out of ideas. Your turn.

[Supermikhail]

Well, are you sure you've been here? I would very much dislike using Skype, and, no offense, I suspect you pressed a wrong button.

In other news, I fear that the reverberation assumption upon which I've based my phonetics idea, may be complete BS. Why's that? Because the bushmen, who are considered the progenitor tribe to all humanity, have got a lot of noise in their language (namely, clicks), and they live in the savannah, where it could be useful. But we, who have descended from them, don't produce so much noise. And I suspect that somewhere on the journey between Africa and Europe these many sounds lost their usefulness, while retaining a sort of cumbersome nature, and were discarded.
So, back to dwarves. I suspect that even if proto-dwarves had the language traits that I've spoken of, their descendants, "modern" dwarves would have a completely different language, in terms of phonetics, because they moved from unfurnished spacious natural caverns into quite civilized dug, smoothed, and engraved tunnels, whose sound qualities differ little from those of aboveground homes of, for example elves.
So, I don't know. I'm sad.

[Dwarf]

No, I haven't. All I see is a "Windows" and a "Linux" button, and I don't know how to compile code. That code might not even work on the PPC architecture I'm using (NOT an x86 Intel architecture).

[Supermikhail]

Oh, PPC. Are you sure it's ICQ, that's at fault, not the particular client you're using? Anyway, here's a Wikipedia list of different instant messengers, choose whichever you like, or... Have you got Windows Mobile by any chance? Also, should voice messaging be considered at all? If yes, I've dug up this article, maybe it'll be useful.

I offer my apologies to anyone witnessing this necessary completely unrelated to the topic interlude.

[Supermikhail]

Hey, so how about Skype? I've started to suspect that the main reason of my problems is not Skype itself but my switching headsets constantly, because one is a headset, another is headphones and a mike. Your hardware has got to run it.

In any case, I've already posted and decided to redact it, here's my Skype name - supermikhail00pa.

[Supermikhail]

I'll just bump this thread, because I failed to make my very important point because Skype is so exciting.

I'd like to ask random people to say how they think a phrase sounds in Dwarven. Just, I don't know, off the top of their head. Phrases I've come up with are these:

Hello, world. ( )

Urist has got a pickaxe.

My name is Urist.

I live in Dwarf Fortress.

Pick whichever you want. Well, if there are no ideas, I guess we've got to go with scientific method, but if there are then there's going to be something to choose from for a better sound.

Meanwhile, my ideas for something to guide people - the Dwarven language isn't very keen on 1) vowels, 2) verb "to be". Mainly because they etch on rock and want to save time and space. They don't use vowels in writing and don't use "to be". When you write "Urist in Brtstash", in a chronicle, it's easy to guess that it means "Urist is in Brtstash" - Urist is, for example, a local ruler. "To be" is still used sometimes, but in some weird formal sentences, or just in special cases. Also, "Urist" at least in early Dwarven spelling is just "RST", but I guess later it might gain some vowel letters, because engraving technology advances.