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[RedKing]

So, we know that developing a more realistic language system for DF is one of Toady's long-term goals, but waaaaaaay down the road. For the moment, we just have vocabulary with very little real morphology to it, no plurals, case, gender, etc.

But even without that, there's something else it lacks that we can work on in the meantime: a writing system!

I know there's some other conlang'ers out there, anybody else want to give it a go and collaborate on a DF alphabet/syllabry/abjad/etc.?

For some ideas of things to start with (or just a fascinating site to browse), check out Omniglot, the motherlode site about writing systems, real-world and otherwise.

Another site worth checking out is the Alphabet Synthesis Machine, which pseudo-randomly generates a series of related characters from a starting glyph, then outputs a TTF font file.

[RedKing]

Hmm...okay, maybe I should get the ball rolling.

So, couple of things out of the way:
1. We need a name for this.
DF Dwarves don't have a word for "dwarf", but then they wouldn't see themselves as dwarves. So I think we can assume they would use the word udos, "man" for themselves. Many language names (especially primitive ones) translate roughly as "speech/tongue of the people/humans/men". "Speak" is âm, which doesn't render easily because of the extended character. "Tongue", however, is a simple nol, which would give us Udosnol, or "man-tongue". Works for me.

2. What kind of system is a best fit?
We have five basic categories to start with:
A. Alphabetic -- The kind most of us are familiar with, one glyph per sound. Means we'll have about 20-35 glyphs in total.
B. Syllabary -- Uses one glyph per CV (consonant-vowel) unit, with some final consonants as well. Best known example is hiragana/katakana in Japanese and Inuktitut.
C. Abjad -- Consonants only, vowels are not specifically indicated, or are indicated using other consonants or diacritic marks. Typically found associated with Semitic languages where a three-consonant "root" forms the basis for a cluster of related words. Best examples: Arabic, Hebrew.
D. Abugida -- Sort of a hybrid of the syllabary and abjad. The basic unit of writing is the syllable, but most glyphs are a consonant plus a default vowel (typically "-a"). Changes to other vowels are indicated by diacritic marks. Best examples: Virtually all the writing systems of the Indian subcontinent
E. Ideographic -- Many words have pictographic glyphs, although those glyphs can become phonetic markers as well for use in imported words or abstract words for which there are no good pictograms. Best examples: Chinese, Egyptian hieroglyphs

At first glance, I thought Udosnol would absolutely need an alphabet, because it doesn't seem all that CVCVC(V) at a glance. But then I actually started looking through the wordlist, and it actually is pretty amenable to a syllabic system, as long as you have plenty of accomodation for final consonants, and maybe treat consonant clusters like st as their own phoneme.

Examples:
urist (dagger) - VCVC(C)
libash (axe) - CVCVC(C)
tosid (armor) - CVCVC
kogan (boat) - CVCVC
cog (boot) - CVC
rakust (tomb) - CVCVC(C)
dastot (sword) - CVC(C)VC

So now I'm kinda jazzed about the idea of doing something along the lines of an abjad or abugida, especially because of the next consideration:

3. What should it *look* like?

There's a basic principle in human writing systems -- if you're writing on something hard with basic tools, you want a script with lots of simple geometric shapes and straight lines. When you make that leap to paper and/or paint/ink, it encourages curves and whatnot. I would assume Udosnol, being used mostly for engraving, would be a runic-type language. But then, these are dwarves. So carving on rocks comes naturally to them, and they might be able to handle curvilinear engraving with basic tools. They also might be prone to making things incredibly more complicated than they need to be. 

With the above consideration of using an abjad/abugida, I like the idea of a script where characters in a single word could be physically linked, so that you could denote word seperation by a small break in the continuous line. For example (in Devanagari):

(using images rather than text, just because a lot of people may not have character support installed for some of these)

Another idea is that it doesn't have to go horizontally. For example, 'Phags-pa (now extinct) was a vertical abugida script created as an attempt to make a common script for the Yuan Dynasty in China (i.e. Kublai Khan and his Mongol followers) and their Chinese subjects. It eventually died out as most of the Yuan nobility eventually forgot Mongolian and learned only Chinese anyways. But it's a good stylistic inspiration:

[miauw62]

Sounds intresting, but because english is not my native language, i dont understand half of what youre saying.
But implenting a dwarven script into dwarf fortrtress may actually not be a very good idea.
If you wont be able to read half of the stuff on the screen, that would suck.

[RedKing]

I think the problem is more that I may be speaking too much in linguistics jargon. 


And ye gods, I'd never ask Toady to put this into DF. That'd be a nightmare.
I was proposing it more as a fun thought experiment, and maybe if someone else out there wanted to use it for a visualizer or artwork or something. Or even just creating a TrueType font.

[FearfulJesuit]

Remember that the medium of the writing is going to influence how it looks. For example, Burmese has almost no straight lines, because it was most often written on (I think- it was some sort of leaf) banana leaves, and those tear if you're not careful. The stout, long-lived dwarves are likely to do most of their permanent, for-the-ages writing on walls, so the script will be one that's easy to carve into stone. However, the straight lines of stone carvings are likely to be rounded and simplified when paper is being written on (we do know dwarves write books)- look at the difference between hieroglyphics, which were carved, and demotic Egyptian script, which was what happened to hieroglyphics after centuries of being written on papyrus.

[RedKing]

Which means we should ideally work out the engraving script first and then we can worry about rounding it out for use in books (at this point, only necromancers are known to write books anyways) 


A little partial vocabulary analysis shows me that doing a syllabic script is possible, but it's definitely going to need some tweaks because of a high frquency of VC constructs ending in -l, -r,  -g and -k. And those usually seem to be part of a larger syllable (ex. gek or bug).

Couple of ways to handle that (ge+ka, with a diacritic to drop the vowel; two seperate glyphs for ge+ek with some kind of modifer to show they're combined [as opposed to ge'ek]).

Definitely getting interested in this though....the number of distinct phonemes is decently low, so it's not going to be a nightmare to come up with characters.

[Skyrunner]

RedKing = linguistics guy! / D:

Uh...

... Whatever the writing is, for the grammer I think we should never partake of English-way. I suppose that's a given >.>

I know not of any linguistic stuff, but I think that a 'verb-centric' way would be good. I don't even know what that means, but if you look at names:

Boat+murdered
Deathgate (ok, this doesn't work that way :S)
Sky+scrape
Marked+angel

Actually, I think that it's just the users who do that and not an inherent property. Just ignore my post T_T

I have no proof to back up my idea, so ..

[Hubris Incalculable]

I'd vote against Ideographic. There's just too many words to create symbols for, and I figure dorfs would rather write phonetically. I'd say that either an alphabet or abudiga would work best.

[miauw62]

Yeah, alphabetic is PROBABLY the way to go.

[Thief^]

I like the idea of having consonants and vowels still, but having the vowels be just small dots, like this:

:r'st (for Urist). Obviously replacing the consonants with non-english characters too, but I figure if you're chipping the same vowels out of stone all the time then you'd want to make them easy to carve.

EDIT: Latin letters (used by English) were created to use with ink and pens, Chinese letters were created to use with paint and brushes, are there any that were created for carving in the real world?

EDIT2: Common two-letter combos should be a single glyph. A carved language would want to keep the amount of glyphs in a word down. "or" would be a single vowel, perhaps, and "st" a single consonant.

[RedKing]

EDIT: Latin letters (used by English) were created to use with ink and pens, Chinese letters were created to use with paint and brushes, are there any that were created for carving in the real world?

Latin (in non-rounded form) actually works well for engraving. Lots of short, straight lines and simple curves which can be approximated with two straight lines.

As far as real-world carved scripts, there's Futhark (Norse runic, used by Tolkien as the basis for his dwarven script; also used by Richard Garriott for the Ultima series):

Spoiler: Lord's Prayer in Old Norse/Futhark (click to show/hide)

Ogham (Irish system, used mostly for carving in wood or on stone stele):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Orkhon (Turkic runic system, used mostly on hard surfaces):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But I think this idea that it has to be a simple, geometric script because of engraving is perhaps overblown. Arabic and Chinese both have flowing characters with free-standing marks in their script, and there are gazillions of hard-surface engravings and bas-reliefs in both.

It might actually make more sense for the elves to have a simple, geometric script because they lacked advanced toolmaking, as far as we can tell. If dwarves can make puzzleboxes and mini-forges, they can make styluses and toolkits for fine-detail engraving.

Spoiler: Example of Arabic bas-relief engraving (click to show/hide)

[Thief^]

If dwarves can make puzzleboxes and mini-forges, they can make styluses and toolkits for fine-detail engraving.

Fair point.

[miauw62]

If dwarves can make puzzleboxes and mini-forges, they can make styluses and toolkits for fine-detail engraving.

Fair point.

Indeed.
But somehow, smooth, flowing lines fit more with elves then they would fit for a bunch of drunk bastards that do love mechanical stuff.
Dwarves are (usually) practical, they do things in the most efficient way, so a very flowing and fluent writing may not be best fit for them.

[Vattic]

But somehow, smooth, flowing lines fit more with elves then they would fit for a bunch of drunk bastards that do love mechanical stuff.
Dwarves are (usually) practical, they do things in the most efficient way, so a very flowing and fluent writing may not be best fit for them.

I always saw dwarves as obsessive when it came to their crafts and building. I know we are not talking about Tolkien dwarves right now but Moria was more than simply efficient; Since when did dwarves need such high ceilings? An ornate flowing script would show skill and mastery and not be so out of place.

[RedKing]

Dwarves are (usually) practical, they do things in the most efficient way, so a very flowing and fluent writing may not be best fit for them.

o_0

We're talking about a race (or at least player-deities controlling that race) that will build insanely complicated death-traps just because. Or spend two years of game time setting up a controlled cave-in to fill in a gap somewhere, because they prefer natural rock walls to constructed ones.

Som players focus on hyperefficiency, others on "naturalistic" design using the contours of the rock as guides to the shape of the overall fort, still others take a RP tack. So one size definitely doesn't fit all here.

And Vattic's right: one of the things that often gets lost in depictions and expys of Tolkien's dwarves is that they were master artisans, capable of creating things of great beauty or ornate design (such as the Nauglamir). And the fact that Khuzdul is based heavily in Semitic means that a script like Arabic or Hebrew would have been a better starting point for their script than runic, alphabetic Cirth was. (Tolkien's explanation was that the Cirth runes were actually developed by the elves but later abandoned in favor of Tengwar; the dwarves and some humans adopted it with only minor changes to fit their linguistic needs)

Still working on revising the lexical analysis, so I can describe the total range of phonemes in Dwarvish and get some frequency tables going. Then we can start in on the look of the script.

EDIT: One nice side-effect of all this is that even though Toady (or ThreeToe...not really sure which one is more involved with making dwarfy words) aren't really using any kind of ruleset to generate new words, there *is* an emergent logic to the vocabulary. For instance, as far as I can tell, there are no "w" sounds in Udosnol. This would allow us to create rules for use in a basic "word generator" program (of which I have several) and create additional vocabulary if so desired, that would still "sound" right.