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[Baffler]

During a discussion on Dwarven battle cries talk of a fully fleshed out dwarven language appeared. One that would hypothetically be perfectly fit to be spoken conversationally. This idea intrigued me and a few others, so I have created this thread for anyone interested to work on building a Dwarven language from the ground up, either as a long term collaborator or to just drop by and offer suggestions. I won't lie, it is a MASSIVE project. The Dwarven language exists now for the sole purpose of naming sites and people.I have compiled some detailed notes on the language as it exists today spoiler'd below, but the tl;dr version is that the vocabulary is almost entirely nouns and adjectives, and that almost no grammar or mechanics exist. So verbs, forms and tenses, sentence structure and just about everything else will need to be built from scratch.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Introduction and Foreword:
Before any discussion on expanding the linguistic system can be made, I feel it is important to take stock of what exists
already. In the interest of both brevity and ease of use, I will break down these notes into sections by form. These notes
do not use foreign civ's lexicons for the sake of unity, but all the different languages follow the same stucture. On the
same note, it would be impossible to describe the language without comparing it to an existing one. I will use my native
English most frequently, but if a fitting example exists elsewhere I will mention it. Also worth noting is that the only
other language I speak is Spanish. Everything else is taken from secondhand research.

Nouns:
A major portion of words in the current language are nouns. They are all common, words like "nightmare," "rust," "dog,"
and other words that describe everyday objects and occurrances. Abstract nouns also exist, such as "fragment," "age," and
"anger." There is no way to distinguish a noun as singular or plural except in context, for example, apple and apples are
both expressed as "bemòng." Being based on English, it carries the irregular plurals in the same way. Goose and Geese are
both written as "kurig." Articles and similar conjunctions are not rendered. To take a famous example:

Trailmachines the Fellowship of Right --> Kälástákud Riril Kìrar --> literally "Trailmachines Fellowship Right."

Some aspects of this apply to real language. Articles are absent in Russian, Hindi, Japanese, and a few more widely spoken
languages. The omission of the word "of" is more notable, which has some equivalent in every language. Also worth noting
is the absence of pronouns, which at least exist in every language (but are used far more often in some than in others.)

Adjectives:
Adjectives are the other major block of words in DF's lexicon. No distinction between adjectives and adverbs exists, at
least that I could find. The use of the languages is rather limited, so it is entirely possible that there is no scenario
in which the distinction needs to be drawn. With regard to syntax, adjectives are always placed before the noun they are
modifying, forming a compound word.

The age             --> anam
the long age        --> romekanam
the long bloody age --> romeknashonanam

Compounds which would be formed by hyphens are also supported, but follow the same rules as adjectives. This can result in
extremely long compounds formed from one word and up to three proceeding modifiers.

The Long Bloody Dragon-Age --> romeknashonmåmgozanam

Verbs:
Verbs are the smallest portion of the lexicon. They are also the most limited in terms of formation, use and mechanics.For
example, the words death, die anddied are all included, but are represented by a single word, "råsh." verbs that do not
have a noun root are also expressed in all forms by a single word. The word "run" for instance, is represented in multiple
forms in the translated lists, but all are expressed natively as "rur."


Because sentences are not formed using the current language, forms of verbs are limited to a few tenses. Another important
note to make is that the language has no need in it's current use for the verb "to be," an essential part of sentance and
grammatical structure and function.

As I see it, our first goal should be establishing verb forms and tenses. Any thoughts?

[Baffler]

We have a wiki! Check it out for an in-depth explanation of new proposals and accepted standards without having to slog through the forum thread.
The DF Languages Wiki

[Naharl]

If you want to start proper with the linguistics, check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet

You could base dwarven speech on a particular set of sounds that already exists or existed in some real human language.

[Baffler]

I didn't include it in my notes, but Dwarven speech as it is currently is pretty heavy on diacritical marks. mostly acutes, commonly seen in Western European languages, and the ring (å) which I am less familiar with. It seems to be more prominent in Scandinavian languages and older Eastern European ones. Umlauts and graves are seen with reasonable frequency too, so phonetically I see it being pretty diverse. The direction it eventually takes could easily end up being down to flavor.

[gabandre]

I imagine dwarven as being a very regular language.
If I were to build a dwarven language, I would probably base it on ancient greek and hebraic grammatics (and not only because I know them).

My suggestion is to define suffixes, both verbal and nominal.

Also, would dwarven have a explicit neutral gender? It would save some work by hiding the neutral in one of the other genders like portuguese does (masculine can be both masculine and neutral)

[lue]

Also incredibly useful for conlanging is this page: http://zompist.com/kit.html (which happens to state what Nahari said: start with sounds)

With regard to the missing articles, I personally don't count them out just because they don't yet exist. It seems to me that "The" and "Of" just happen to be omitted from names because the structuring of names is completely regular.

It would be very nice to create different forms for words. I suspect they're absent simply because it was never fully necessary for making the names work. But I'd sure like to see a difference between death the noun, die the present tense, and died the past tense. (Just making stuff up here, "naråsh", "råsh", and "rash" instead of råsh for all those words.)

Also nice would be avoiding a mirror image of English's lexicon. We could separate the meaning of "that" like in French, as a simple example.

English: "I enjoyed that." and "We know the method that will let us win."
French: "J'ai aimé ça." and "Nous savons le mode que laissera-nous gagner." (apologies for any possible French language mistakes, natives of the language)

We could also combine meanings that are represented by different words in English. My point here is that the Dwarven-to-English and vice-versa dictionaries shouldn't have easy lives .

Also, here's a list of all the letters used in language_DWARF.txt for the language, unless my quick one-liner ate some of the characters by accident (shouldn't've):

Code: [Select]

a b c d e f g h i k l m n o r s t u v z à á â ä å è é ê ë ì í î ï ò ó ô ö ù ú û
Maybe later I'll write up a quick table of how I think the diacritical letters are supposed to be pronounced, based on both how I read them and what European languages tend to say.

Keep in mind that diacritics don't necessarily have to change sound; in some languages they indicate grammar changes instead. (Such as the diaeresis in French and old English, where it forces syllable separation: co-operation would've once been spelled coöperation.)

[Sutremaine]

Also, would dwarven have a explicit neutral gender? It would save some work by hiding the neutral in one of the other genders like portuguese does (masculine can be both masculine and neutral)

I would think that neutral gender would be the default for dwarves, given how gender-neutral their society is (with the exception of baby-carrying and the parent a dwarven child chooses to follow).

So instead of having masculine / neutral with the feminine specifically noted, you'd have neutral and then both the masculine and feminine specifically noted.

[Umune]

 

Also, would dwarven have a explicit neutral gender? It would save some work by hiding the neutral in one of the other genders like portuguese does (masculine can be both masculine and neutral)

I would think that neutral gender would be the default for dwarves, given how gender-neutral their society is (with the exception of baby-carrying and the parent a dwarven child chooses to follow).

So instead of having masculine / neutral with the feminine specifically noted, you'd have neutral and then both the masculine and feminine specifically noted.

Why stick with actual genders? Perhaps the dwarves, taking a small note from their ethics, distinguish between sentients and non-sentients, with the latter being the majority of word?

[Gentlefish]

True gender-neutral language would have no gender differentiation in words. Maybe a word addition. Like Dwarf-female and dwarf-male. And sheep-male and sheep-female.

[Baffler]

I honestly didn't expect this much interest

Don't take my word as final, but I think that dwarves would want to be able to express something as concisely and explicitly as possible. That would mean IMO that words wouldn't usually define gender except in certain cases to avoid ambiguity.

With regard to "the," it isn't totally necessary to include. As stated in my notes, a lot of major languages don't have an equivalent. "Of" is essential as I see it though. An equivalent word or construction would have to be created from scratch. Of course, coming up with a way around its use would be awesome.

As far as sound goes, that is a lot more difficult to discuss in a text-only format. I honestly don't know how to approach that at this juncture.

[Gentlefish]

phonetically?

[Maw]

Was musing on something similar (though unrelated) today.

1) plurals.  Two options, a modified version of the base word e.g. goose -> geese or an addon word to the base word goose -> many goose.  other e.gs mouse -> mice or mouse -> many mouse.

2) pronouns.  AFAIK there is no English singular version of the word 'they'.  English has he/she, but no gender neutral singular.  While English has 'it', 'it' never seems to suit to describe a singular 'person' without gender.

[Ace_Warbringer]

Don't take my word as final, but I think that dwarves would want to be able to express something as concisely and explicitly as possible. That would mean IMO that words wouldn't usually define gender except in certain cases to avoid ambiguity.

I would believe the dwarves would have a complex stressing system with their words. I.e.: dwarf could mean all three genders (male, neutral, female) based on stress of the pronunciation. Complexity and simplicity in one. Armok help you if you tried to read it.

[chevil]

Some people have already tried that.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108579.0
This thread should give you some ideas to work with.

[Cattani]

I like the idea. A language system could be used in-game, i think.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In dwarf mode, Languages could be a skill your broker needs to perform trading with various races. Having a broker with low Languages could even become dangerous (like, he accidentally offends the elven emperor's mother or something). This would improve reality, since not everyone can communicate easily in a completely unknown language)

In Adventure mode, it could be a skill you train at the mountainhome in order to interact with different races.

Although im ignorant of the technical pieces, i'm a portuguese speaker willing to help. If needed, it is.