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Author Topic: The Edification of a Dwarven Language  (Read 47357 times)

Helgoland

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Re: The Edification of a Dwarven Language
« Reply #285 on: November 29, 2012, 05:31:09 pm »

Yeah, the vocabiulary is romance (romanic?), though scientific language is a bad example - virtually all languages use greek and latin words there. The grammar of english, however, is basically germanic, which is why (if I remember correctly) it's counted as a germanic language.
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Owlbread

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Re: The Edification of a Dwarven Language
« Reply #286 on: November 29, 2012, 06:08:57 pm »

Yeah, the vocabiulary is romance (romanic?), though scientific language is a bad example - virtually all languages use greek and latin words there. The grammar of english, however, is basically germanic, which is why (if I remember correctly) it's counted as a germanic language.

Indeed, it was originally very Germanic indeed. It's because of the Normans and the status of Latin as a prestige language that we became so influenced by romance languages.
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Inarius

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Re: The Edification of a Dwarven Language
« Reply #287 on: November 29, 2012, 06:09:22 pm »

Occitan is a lovely language. It is so "pure". A sort of Spanish without its arabic influences (it is quite coherent, on an historic point of view), or French without German (quite coherent, too). Hence the lack of "j" and "r", which are making spanish sounding so particularly. It's always a pleasure to me to hear Occitan spoken around me, hopefully and fortunately it is not dying.
Actually, I am more passive bilingual . I can't write it, but I use to listen it a lot so am able to fully understand a radio program, for example. Too bad, creating languages is mainly focused on the writing part.
(about myself, I try to write English to be "readable", but I know that i have...well...a "foreign" accent when writing.)

About Dwarf now :

I see things like this :

-First create generic words of creatures. There are lacking for now.
For "common" creatures, we should find specific words, because they are the immediate environment of Dwarves.
For "rare" creatures, they should be named with composed-words, related to things Dwarves know better. For example, a tiger could be a "yellow wolf" , well I don't it's a bad example, but I can't think of another now. I just hope you understand my example. A "sperm-whale man" could be named (as in english) as a "whale-man". But for now there is no word for "whale". "Whale" could be in Dwarf a specific word (let's say roblďk), or a composed word such as "giant-fish" - even if it's not a fish, but Dwarves are not very fond of water.
As we can't name them one after one, we could, -for example - share the list of words between volunteers, and these fellows could create words of his minds, following simple rules we could define here.


For legendary creatures, even if there are not common they exists in mythology and legends. Wherefore I think we should find specific words (even if they can be composed) to name them.


- Secondly, weapons, armors, all ITEMS.
It will be easy, as the greatest part already exists. Example : Sword "thil", two "lad", hand "ám" and great "umon". So "two handed sword" is either "great sword", therefore  "thilumon" or "umonthil" ; or "ladthilám" or "ladámthil", well...etc.
Here, again, some simple rules we could define here.
Perhaps we could begin with weapons, as it will be quicker ?

- Thirdly material and quality. A "Masterwork Iron door" is masterwork + iron + door. Discussing the order of the words can be done later, but how expressing - as a Dwarf - these terms ?

I will put here tomorrow all the dwarven words which could be linked to this, the list of the weapons to translate, and we'll see !
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Snake_Eyes

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Re: The Edification of a Dwarven Language
« Reply #288 on: November 30, 2012, 12:52:07 am »

Sorry to interrupt but while trying to change the Armok ConLang, I noticed none of the Armok species or languages have many words that deal with gender. There is no masculine or feminine words.

Also I thought how nice it would be to have Cyrillic character set in DF.

Are there many submitted ConLangs for Armok?

If I made a thread about trying to write one, would anyone be interested in helping?

Thanks,
:) Snake_Eyes
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Myrkky100

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Re: The Edification of a Dwarven Language
« Reply #289 on: November 30, 2012, 04:12:21 am »

It's not the combination of words that makes it newspeak sounding, it's the use of binaries for the simplest of things.

The binaries idea just popped into my mind and I figured such a structure might be of use. But I really don't see any special reason the dwarven culture would cause the language to have it, so if the general consensus is that it dumbs the language down too much, I have no problems with dropping the idea.

- Secondly, weapons, armors, all ITEMS.
It will be easy, as the greatest part already exists. Example : Sword "thil", two "lad", hand "ám" and great "umon". So "two handed sword" is either "great sword", therefore  "thilumon" or "umonthil" ; or "ladthilám" or "ladámthil", well...etc.
Here, again, some simple rules we could define here.
Perhaps we could begin with weapons, as it will be quicker ?

- Thirdly material and quality. A "Masterwork Iron door" is masterwork + iron + door. Discussing the order of the words can be done later, but how expressing - as a Dwarf - these terms ?

I will put here tomorrow all the dwarven words which could be linked to this, the list of the weapons to translate, and we'll see !

I think weapons would be as good of a starting point as anything else.

I propose that the quality phrasing should follow the structure of the game: base level would be indicated by stating just the material, then there would be 4 related words to indicate quality levels from well crafted to exceptional, "masterful" should have a distinct word and artifact status would be indicated by stating the name of the artifact (possible also a different noun class indicator).
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Snake_Eyes

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Re: The Edification of a Dwarven Language
« Reply #290 on: November 30, 2012, 05:33:35 am »

I do not know if this is a bug, the language files have some typos:

[T_WORD:ECTO:]
[T_WORD:PLAINADJ:]

There a lot of words with spaces instead of underscores, does this mater?

Cheers,
:) Snake_Eyes
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Inarius

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Re: The Edification of a Dwarven Language
« Reply #291 on: November 30, 2012, 07:51:02 am »

All the words are in the file "language_words.txt" in the DF\raw\objects folder.

For now: the weapons.

Battle Axe   : libash
Crossbow   
Mace   
Pick   tekkud
Short Sword  : dastot (it's the word for "sword" but as dwarves are small we can suppose that short sword = sword for them)
Spear  :   lokum
War Hammer : nil (hammer, but we can suppose that a war hammer and a hammer is the same thing for a Dwarf, as a axe is a tool as well as a weapon)
2H Sword    :
Blowgun   :
Bow   : egdoth
Flail   
Great Axe : libash
Halberd   
Dagger : URIST
Long Sword   
Maul   
Morningstar   
Pike   
Scimitar   
Scourge : abshoth (but I don't know wether it's for the weapon or the other word)
Whip   : bomrek

Be bold ! Propose things in dwarf and/or in english. That would be cool to finish at least this.
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Nonsequitorian

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Re: The Edification of a Dwarven Language
« Reply #292 on: November 30, 2012, 11:21:23 am »

If anything, I'd say Crossbow should be Doth, so that Egdoth sounds like a word to have come off of Doth. Would make sense, that Bows, which aren't common with dwarves, comes from Crossbows, which are common.

teloft

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Re: The Edification of a Dwarven Language
« Reply #293 on: December 02, 2012, 05:07:40 pm »

A nice (ans short) read for European language differences

http://theforeigner.no/pages/columns/english-reclassified/
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Orange Wizard

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Re: The Edification of a Dwarven Language
« Reply #294 on: December 02, 2012, 07:27:56 pm »

PTW. I'd really like a fleshed-out Armokian Dwarvish.

But all the linguistics make my head hurt.
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Myrkky100

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Re: The Edification of a Dwarven Language
« Reply #295 on: December 03, 2012, 03:43:52 pm »

OK, here are some suggestions added to Inarius' list and marked with red and with the explanations added. I did mostly 2 word combinations with some reductions here and there to keep the words short enough.

Battle Axe   : libash

Crossbow   :  doth  (as proposed by Nonsequitorian)

Mace   : liom (li (the prefix from axe to indicate a weapon) + om (crush))

Pick   : tekkud

Short Sword  : dastot (it's the word for "sword" but as dwarves are small we can suppose that short sword = sword for them)

Spear  :   lokum

War Hammer : nil (hammer, but we can suppose that a war hammer and a hammer is the same thing for a Dwarf, as a axe is a tool as well as a weapon)

2H Sword    : dandastot (dan[man] (heavy) + dastot (sword))

Blowgun   : zongdoth ([ek]zong (feral) + doth (bow))

Bow   : egdoth

Flail   : gonggash (same as the verb flay)

Great Axe : libash

Halberd   : romlibash ( rom[ek] (long) + libash (axe))

Dagger : URIST

Long Sword   : sardastot (sar[am] great + dastot (sword))

Maul   : romnil (rom[ek] (long) + nil (hammer))

Morningstar   : omrit (om (cursh) + rit (cut))

Pike   :  sarlokum (sar[am] great + lokum (spear))

Scimitar   : matdastot (mat (bend) + dastot (sword))

Scourge : abshoth (but I don't know wether it's for the weapon or the other word)

Whip   : bomrek
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dwarfhoplite

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Re: The Edification of a Dwarven Language
« Reply #296 on: December 03, 2012, 05:25:47 pm »

I likes.
Only the long sword being 'great + sword' seems illogical.
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Orange Wizard

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Re: The Edification of a Dwarven Language
« Reply #297 on: December 03, 2012, 05:45:14 pm »

I like the morningstar being called a "crush cut". It's alliterative and descriptive.
I agree with dwarfhoplite saying that "great sword" seems illogical. Wouldn't it be "very big sword" or at least "long sword"?
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Myrkky100

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Re: The Edification of a Dwarven Language
« Reply #298 on: December 04, 2012, 02:45:13 am »

Only the long sword being 'great + sword' seems illogical.
I agree with dwarfhoplite saying that "great sword" seems illogical. Wouldn't it be "very big sword" or at least "long sword"?

I actually have no idea why I did it that way... Must have been a brainfart. So:

Long Sword: romdastot (rom[ek] (long) + dastot (sword)

Also a few more proposals:

Catapult: lamtagdoth (lam (stone) + [e]tag (big) + doth (bow))

Ballista: etagdoth (etag (big) + doth (bow))

PTW. I'd really like a fleshed-out Armokian Dwarvish.

Armokian Dwarvish has an awesome ring to it...
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Myrkky100

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Re: The Edification of a Dwarven Language
« Reply #299 on: December 05, 2012, 08:49:58 am »

I'm having a really slow day at work so I translated the names of underground crops:

Cave wheat: askil (cave (as) + kil (wheat))

Dimple cup: storofid (storlut (dimple) + ofid (cup))

Pig tail: thuvkesh (thuv[eg] (pig) + kesh (tail))

Plump helmet: erzon (er (fat) + zon (helmet)); kirun (mushroom)

Quarry bush: amuzrorul (am (open) + [av]uz (mine) + rorul (bush))

Sweet pod: caklenod ([te]cak (sweet) + lenod (seed))

I'd argue that since erzon are the most common staple crop, they could also be referred to with the general name kirun.
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