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[The Unicorn Killer]

If we have cases for nouns, and verbs can have subjects built in (like in amo means I love, amas means you love, amat means he/she loves...), then sentence structure matters not because the subjects, objects, adjectives (and thus participles), and almost everything else needs not rely on any other word.

In english we say "I ate food."

But because we know I has to be the subject (because otherwise it wouldn't be I),  the sentence "Ate food I" is still "correct" in the sense that, save for the order of words, the grammar is correct. This is how many ancient languages worked, why not dwarvish?

Kinda like Mandarin...

[Jeoshua]

Yes, but where that breaks down is when you say "Food Ate I"

[NW_Kohaku]

I'd rather have different words that are spoken in sequence, without the complication of verbs that build their subjects into them, so that you need to learn a new verb for each subject it might have. 

Many of the words you are using are rather short, and that means there aren't many variations you can have before you start running into compound words just to make a new sound.  What if "am-at" means "they love", and "os-" means something else, like future-tensing the verb, and then "osamat" means "duck"?

In general, compounding words, even though the game does this already, unfortunately, makes the language more difficult to learn because you can't tell where the words are supposed to be broken up without a high degree of familiarity. 

Chinese at least makes its character-words squares so that compounds are just two (or more) distinct characters squished into one square.  You can tell where one stops because it doesn't touch the other. 

[Chagen46]

Many of the words you are using are rather short, and that means there aren't many variations you can have before you start running into compound words just to make a new sound.  What if "am-at" means "they love", and "os-" means something else, like future-tensing the verb, and then "osamat" means "duck"?

Context my friend, context. Do not underestimate the human brain's ability to logicially figure out what meaning out of multiple possible ones is intended. Everything from whay the previous conversation was about to whether or not it's being used as a noun or a verb can be used to figure out the meaning.

Just look at "whether" and "weather". They're pronounced the same, but you'd never confuse thetwo in speech, because they're used in different situations. Same with other homophonous pairs.

Another example would be "catch". If your friend came up to you and said "I got a nice catch today", how are you supposed to know if he meant a catch of fish or if he meant a catch of a football/etc.? Well, if that friend likes fishing, he's probably talking about the fishing meaning. If he likes football, he probably means the "catch a ball" meaning. If he said earlier that day that he was gonna go play ball with his friends, then....you see what I mean?

This has never been a problem for any language, ever. The human (and presumably dwarf) brain can figure out things just fine.

[NW_Kohaku]

Many of the words you are using are rather short, and that means there aren't many variations you can have before you start running into compound words just to make a new sound.  What if "am-at" means "they love", and "os-" means something else, like future-tensing the verb, and then "osamat" means "duck"?

Context my friend, context. Do not underestimate the human brain's ability to logicially figure out what meaning out of multiple possible ones is intended. Everything from whay the previous conversation was about to whether or not it's being used as a noun or a verb can be used to figure out the meaning.

Just look at "whether" and "weather". They're pronounced the same, but you'd never confuse thetwo in speech, because they're used in different situations. Same with other homophonous pairs.

Another example would be "catch". If your friend came up to you and said "I got a nice catch today", how are you supposed to know if he meant a catch of fish or if he meant a catch of a football/etc.? Well, if that friend likes fishing, he's probably talking about the fishing meaning. If he likes football, he probably means the "catch a ball" meaning. If he said earlier that day that he was gonna go play ball with his friends, then....you see what I mean?

This has never been a problem for any language, ever. The human (and presumably dwarf) brain can figure out things just fine.

This would be true for a normal language, one we expected people to be fluent in, but this is a language that isn't going to be spoken by many people, and as such, if it's going to be learned at all, we should expect most users not to be fluent, and we should expect most users of this language to need all the help and clues they can get to learn more easily. 

[Chagen46]

Eh, most conlangs are never intended to be spoken or used outside of stories anyway.

[SealyStar]

Okay, so given that assumption, the gramatical structure of the sentence: "Stab the elf with the Dagger" would break down to something like:

[VERB:STAB]
[NOUN:ELF]
[NOUN:DAGGER]

But then, what separates those two nouns.  What way would we use to define, in the sentence, what that one is object, the other subject, and make it clear we're not stabbing the Dagger with the Elf?

That's what grammatical cases are for. Put "elf" in the accusative, "dagger" in the instrumental/dative/ablative (depending on what language we're talking about). No prepositions needed.

[NW_Kohaku]

As someone who doesn't speak a language with noun cases, could someone explain what those things are, and how they are used?  Because when someone starts talking about the dative or ablative case, it's just noise to my ears...

I'd also have to say, this is not just a language that should be easy to learn, but also a language that should be easy to machine translate back and forth without any loss of meaning.  As in, every term needs to have a 1:1 relationship between this language and English for the program to be able to easily print both forms of text. 

[SealyStar]

As someone who doesn't speak a language with noun cases, could someone explain what those things are, and how they are used?  Because when someone starts talking about the dative or ablative case, it's just noise to my ears...

I'd also have to say, this is not just a language that should be easy to learn, but also a language that should be easy to machine translate back and forth without any loss of meaning.  As in, every term needs to have a 1:1 relationship between this language and English for the program to be able to easily print both forms of text. 

I speak English, and we don't have noun cases. Neither do a lot of languages.
A lot of old languages, especially, do, though: Latin is the most well-known/cited example.
Other languages have more or less cases, or different uses, but in Latin there are six (technically seven, but no one uses the seventh). There are a few other uses for each case, but these are by far the most common:

Nominative: Refers to the subject of the clause; whatever is performing an action.

Genitive: Used with other nouns to indicate possession; translates into English as either "of" or "apostrophe-s".

Accusative: Refers to the direct object of the clause; whatever is affected by the subject's actions.

Dative: Refers to the indirect object of the clause; whatever the direct object is being given, told, shown, etc. to, as in "I gave a gift to the person".

Ablative: In Latin, formed from the earlier locative, instrumental, and ablative case. A very versatile case, used with most prepositions or as the means or manner in which the main verb is carried out.

Vocative: Refers to the person being addressed; only used in speech, such as calling to your friend "Dude, come over here!". Identical to the nominative except in the second declension, but that's not really important.

(Locative: Mostly assimilated into the ablative, refers to location: in, at, on, etc. In Latin, only used to refer to "small islands", or in the case of a few nouns. Always identical to the genitive.)

Other languages with declension include:

German (four cases: nominative, genitive, accusative, dative)
Sanskrit (a dead language, like Latin; seven cases: six as in Latin, plus the instrumental)
Czech (seven cases: six as in Latin, plus the instrumental)
Pre-Modern Dutch (four cases, same as modern German; modern Dutch has no cases)
Irish Gaelic (four cases: nominative, vocative, genitive, dative, though in many classes of nouns one form is used for several)
Old English (again, dead; four cases, same as modern German)
Middle English (again, dead; three cases: same as modern German/Old English, but with the nominative and accusative merged)
Russian (six cases: same as Latin, minus vocative/locative and with the ablative split into the prepositional and instrumental)

It's also worth noting that, while all the above are Indo-European, some non-Indo-European languages spoken in Europe have taken on declension: Finnish and Basque have incredibly complex and confusing ones. Many non-European languages have cases of some form, but they tend to be rather different from European ones. Furthermore, virtually all Indo-European languages hold some form of case-based declension: pronouns are the main refuge of the system...

There is an interesting Wikipedia article on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grammatical_cases

Hope this helps. Probably doesn't, but that's because I've studied this shit and have never really had to explain it to others.

[NW_Kohaku]

Alright, that does help me understand it, to a degree...

With that said, however, this seems like something that would make perhaps a nice option to include as an alternate language type, but I think that perhaps making the dwarven language more English-like in this regard might be easier to program (as it will have to be bounced from Dwarvish to English by machine translation without loss of meaning) and to allow users to learn it.

It may not be quite as satisfying to a master of linguistics, but making this language as simple as possible for an English-speaker to learn would be a bonus. 

Perhaps making elvish and goblinish languages have cases, while dwarvish is more easily understood could be an alternative?  Only the hard-core would want to learn the more advanced languages, anyway. 

[h3lblad3]

Yes, but where that breaks down is when you say "Food Ate I"

Actually not true.  "I" is a subject word.  "Me" is the object word.
As long as you use "I" it's going to be a subject word.

Now, if you said "Food ate me" that would be different.  Or "Me ate food".  Me is an object word and thus is only used when it's not the subject. So both of those mean the same thing even if the typical syntax is thrown right out the window.
You don't say "John threw the balls at Ted and I." You say "John threw the balls at Ted and me." 
Or, if you and Ted were the jerks, "Ted and I threw the balls at John."

It's one of the few hold-overs of English's past.

[Jeoshua]

I realize this.  Which is why I said "it breaks down" at that point.  So yes true, since you just made the point I was trying to make, in more words.  Thanks for clarifying what I meant tho, I appreciate it

[Nonsequitorian]

Are we getting back into a case argument again? I vote cases.

[Jeoshua]

I think just about everyone is on board for cases or some other case-like structure, be it any of the following:

• Case Endings - Suffixes which denote case
• Case Words - Separate words which denote the previous or following words are of a specific case
• Gramatical Case - Positioning of words denotes which case the word might be

Right now we have a mildly Grammatical Case in all the languages.  I propose we stick mainly to that, since it is simpler to implement, and have some other mechanism to more definitely denote what case and grammatical function the words serve in situations where the words might be otherwise ambiguous.

[Nonsequitorian]

I think case endings would be the best.