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[Cobbler89]

As I understand it, the DF language system works as follows:

Each WORD has various grammatical forms.

The grammatical forms and their English meanings are used in allowing words in certain parts of the name generator and giving the part-of-speech/grammar-varying English forms for them (e.g. the difference between "mountain" and "mountainous").

The WORD itself alone is used in the translations for each race's language, without modifiers such as FRONT_COMPOUND_NOUN_SING for any variations.

Hence, the actual dwarven language in DF uses the same word for some related words such as "mountainous" and "mountain".

In other words, the grammar in the English translation of names and in the structure allowing certain words in certain parts of the name and not others... doesn't make it into the dwarven language, there being no variations between "mountain" and "mountainous" for the difference in its use at different parts of a name.

Furthermore, there are no combining forms -- by which I mean, for instance, that where DF can slap two words together in a name ("Snarlpits", "Boatmurdered", etc.) it does not use a smoother form of the first word's ending like we would in combining some words (e.g. "society/social" + "economics/economical" = "socioeconomics/socioeconomical", not "societyeconomics/socialeconomical").

Is my understanding of all this correct?

If it is incorrect, how would I make there be, say, different dwarven words for "mountain" and "mountainous", or combining forms for some words?

[Putnam]

Completely grammarless, yes.

[TheZoomZoll]

Well,kind of..seeing that they are grammarless as in many forms or terms..
Lisps (a lisp is a difficulty pronouncing S like snakes do),on the other hand,are grammarless as well.

If you really want to be mean you can call it gibberish..although not really

[Cobbler89]

Does anyone know if there has ever been a suggestion to change that? E.g. "make the part-of-name identifiers such as [FRONT_COMPOUND_NOUN_SING] in language_words.txt only show which English word to translate with, allow them to be added to language_DWARF (and other language files) for variations in the translated words (independent of the variations in English in language_words.txt -- so, in English MOUNTAIN:FRONT_COMPOUND_NOUN_SING would be NOUN:mountain, but in Dwarven it could be the same as the adjective form instead) and let the ones present in language_DWARF restrict usage in particular parts of names as the entries in language_words.txt currently do"? (Is that comprehensible? Should I expand it a bit to explain each part of what I mean more clearly?)

[i2amroy]

It's a little hard to get at what your saying, but I believe I understand you correctly.

As for an answer the only real thing we can tell you is that "it's on the list". Toady knows that the language system is kind of lacking right now and actually has plans to eventually develop it to a better system, so it's coming eventually, but right now it's not on the list for the release (or even really any of the near releases). Any serious reworkings will probably occur when he eventually gets around to revamping the writing/book system to include more of the treasure hunting role (It's even on the dev list as "Phrase storage and grammar updates" under Adventure Role:Treasure Hunter/Writing.). So it's coming, but it probably won't be anytime soon in the releases since there are a lot more visible/easy to add/fun things on the list above the update.