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at all how

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to delete poll.

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Total Members Voted: 0

[Bytyan]

for simplicities sake, I would like to see the language have no more then 38 characters, so as to fit easily on a laptop keyboard.

[Nonsequitorian]

I think a new alphabet would really be a lot of work when creating the language. It would be easier to have a concrete version and then simplify English pronunciations with a new alphabet. It would be wonderful if we had actually the same alphabet, but got totally rid of the "TH" sound and replaced it with þorn, or thorn. Þ is why we have "Ye olde," which is actually just pronounced "The old."

I am going to place a poll on the first thing I believe we should start with, cases, genders, and noun formation. All the little words like articles and prepositions and conjunctions and especially pronouns we'll do second. Verbs can be third on the list of things we decide. Adjectives I believe we've agreed on, or at least I've seen no direct opposition so I'm assuming it's agreement.

[Nonsequitorian]

Crap double post

EDIT: How2Delete?

[Sadrice]

I'm also fond of Eth (Ð, ð), which is pronounced as the Th in 'that'.  Adding them would make Dwarvish look like Icelandic, which would be satisfactorily Norse for me (Dwarves are not Scots!).

[Nonsequitorian]

I like that a lot. I've always been pissed off that English has a letter for a "ks" (x) sound, but no letter for a "th" sound, and the "th" has no indication of it being voiced or unvoiced. It's a drag for learners. The "ts" sound of a German Z or Russian Ц also should have a letter due to it being different from an actual TS, but I don't think it's worth it as to the normal listener, the "ts" sound and the actual TS are effectively the same.

[jimi12]

I say make it as simple as possible. No cases. No genders. No conugations. No pronouns. Think caveman speech. It seems adjectives will be added to nouns which will work.

An example might be: Urist past-walk by the river and past-think to Urist, "Today Urist will no eat cat. Yesterday Urist past-eat cat. Question Urist has meatdog in backpackbluesilkcavespider of Urist?"

Translates" I will not eat cat today. I ate cat yesterday. Do I have dog meat in my blue cave spider silk backpack?"

By not having conjugations and using add on words for tenses instead of conjugations, it cuts down on the number of words to be made.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, there's a problem with how the game works right now...

For example, "lance" is "kubuk" (ignoring nonstandard letters for now...), but "lancer" is "kivish". 

Likewise, "prince" is "kudust" and "princess" is "sastres". 

What the procedural word creation system needs to do is recognize some etymologies of the words. 

Having the same simple suffixes or prefixes on words indicate past-tense on all verbs would be simple and reasonably logical.  (Even with the stupid-complex English rules, "-ed" at the end of most verbs means "past tense". I.E. Jump -> Jumped.)

So, we could just make, say, "Kur-" a prefix for past-tense put on any verb.

[Nonsequitorian]

Why use a procedural word generator when we can just keep the words already created and make new ones? Due to adjectives/adverbs being at the end of words, tense indicators should definitely be at the front. Perfect tense could be kur-, future could be nim-, future-perfect could be kurnim- (sounds better than nimkur). Pluperfect could be pokur-, po being a universal prefix meaning "more"

[FearfulJesuit]

I'm in favor of introducing some grammatical categories that aren't very European. Why not make Dwarven ergative, or make the verbs polysynthetic?

[Jeoshua]

... except all of the races of creatures and most of the monsters are European in nature.  No Oni, no Fusi, no Elder Gods or any of that.  Just Elves and Dwarves and Kobolds, all of which are European fairy tales, mostly Norse in their genesis.

There are also Zombies (Haitian witch doctors... still European roots for their language).
And Vampires (Romanian stories... European roots for their language).

Dragons.  But not the wise nature-spirit kind from Japan, the Fire Breathing European kind.

What we call "Fantasy" nowadays is all from European Fairy tales.  Tolkien took hundreds of stories told from all over Europe and made it into a world which worked seamlessly.  Heck, if you really look even his languages has European roots and sounds.

===

Why use a procedural word generator when we can just keep the words already created and make new ones? Due to adjectives/adverbs being at the end of words, tense indicators should definitely be at the front. Perfect tense could be kur-, future could be nim-, future-perfect could be kurnim- (sounds better than nimkur). Pluperfect could be pokur-, po being a universal prefix meaning "more"

This.  We already have a system where the words for the language are defined.  Personally I am working on trying to extend that list here:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108389.0
(And could really use some help, it's 400 words long just covering Basic English)

If some more grammar were to find it's way into the game, I would certainly not complain.

[expwnent]

I don't understand all of this, but I like what I do understand.

[Nonsequitorian]

Why use a procedural word generator when we can just keep the words already created and make new ones? Due to adjectives/adverbs being at the end of words, tense indicators should definitely be at the front. Perfect tense could be kur-, future could be nim-, future-perfect could be kurnim- (sounds better than nimkur). Pluperfect could be pokur-, po being a universal prefix meaning "more"

This.  We already have a system where the words for the language are defined.  Personally I am working on trying to extend that list here:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108389.0
(And could really use some help, it's 400 words long just covering Basic English)

If some more grammar were to find it's way into the game, I would certainly not complain.

Fantastic! I was hoping we could set up a group of people to make words, but it looks like you've already taken that burden!

I don't understand all of this, but I like what I do understand.

When we who do quite a bit of studying of languages, or just know a variety of languages with different grammar (for me I know French, Latin and Russian, and I'm moving to Germany to learn German within the quarter), have things sorted out in the fancy shmancy terms of the world of linguistics, making it all easy for the average person to understand will be simple.

[Nonsequitorian]

Holy crap tripple post.

[Jeoshua]

The best language, form-wise, to model the language on would be Proto-Indo-European, since almost all of the entities and creatures come from European myth.  It has the benefit of being really well defined without being OVERLY well defined, and would cover the basic questions of "what kind of grammar" and "what tenses are there" and "what sounds exist".

Each specific language should have certain aspects of the language "blotted out", such as possibly human civilizations not having many tenses, and elven languages omitting the Accusative altogether.  Or something like that.

[Nonsequitorian]

It says a lot about not much in that article. I see grammar pop up once or twice and tense only once. There is a lot of cryptic pronunciations and a ton of history, even when it says there is no direct indicator of existence.

What I see useful there is the verb conjugations, which are completely cryptic yet completely relevant. If the verb "Büz" is to drink, then "Büzmi" is "I drink," "Büzsi" is "you drink," and so on through the conjugations present.

These are, if you can't find them:

1st sing.-mi
2nd sing.-si
3rd sing.-ti
1st pl.-mos
2nd pl.-te
3rd pl.-nti

But I think if we adopt these, we should change them around a bit. Why have -ti and -te when they sound similar? We could get rid of 2nd Pl altogether anyways.