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Author Topic: Dwarven Linguistics: Community Project  (Read 24130 times)

Owlbread

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics: Community Project
« Reply #45 on: August 29, 2013, 05:11:04 pm »

I've managed to register. I'll maybe try putting up my old language proposal as an indo-European style model that maybe you can use parts of in the future if you want. Pick and mix.
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lue

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics: Community Project
« Reply #46 on: August 29, 2013, 05:47:15 pm »

@Owlbread: I'm completely fine with that. I just added a way for people to do that :) .

@Loam: You can add your work at that link too, if you care to. And I agree, the diacritics give a certain flavor to dwarven speak (esp. when Dwarven uses so many of them!)

@Baffler: If there's something you need to do that you can't, I'll gladly add you as a mod or admin. You started this project, after all. :)
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Rokh

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics: Community Project
« Reply #47 on: August 29, 2013, 06:10:09 pm »

Great! I'll sign up on the wiki later.


Quote from: Loam
Personally I like the diacritics, mostly for aesthetics: I think they add to the character of the language. Plus, if you know the keyboard shortcuts, they're not too hard to type with.

Yep, that's probably the biggest pro for diacritics. Moreover, diacritics are always better than digraphs. What I was trying to say is that I think sometimes diacritics can get dangerous. That's all.

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@Rokh
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Anyway, welcome aboard.

Thank you! ;)
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Trollhammaren

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics: Community Project
« Reply #48 on: August 30, 2013, 10:03:58 am »

ptw
« Last Edit: August 30, 2013, 10:10:32 am by Trollhammaren »
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Halfling

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics: Community Project
« Reply #49 on: August 30, 2013, 01:16:02 pm »

Hey, I seem to have trouble registering on the wiki. It says there's already somebody else called Halfling there. Did my registration get processed anomalously somehow or...?

Anyway, I was frustrated that the above sample does not seem to match vanilla DF dwarfish. Already existing dwarven expressions should not look out of place and grammatically incorrect in what should be the dwarven language, like they will if the language mandates suffixes and connectors in compound nouns. Instead I think they should make them look natural and correct in context. The words should also be recognizable as the words from DF, so that you could use the provided dwarven vocabulary to translate easily (such as kin melbil osor fak ulol sanreb avuz... oak tome kingdom drain own mine).

Therefore I thought I'd give it a try too. Here's my attempt:

I have no linguistic background, I'm not a native speaker of an Indo-European language; Indo-European languages are the minority of the languages I know. So my view on what might be necessary, easy to learn or usable may be a little different for a variety of reasons. At least Mandarin and Russian influenced. I also tried to include means to express respect or aggression easily.

"In the year 1050, the dwarven civilization of Kinmelbil, "The Oaken Tomes", exhausted the last of its mines. Driven by lust for gold and rumors of the priceless and all but mythical metal adamantine, a team of seven colonists was dispatched to build a new home for the dwarves of Kinmelbil in the Smooth Points of Pride. The first year of diaries from the ill-fated foreman of the mine was recovered, giving some hint as to the beginnings of the fortress that once stood there, if not its mysterious and presumably gruesome fate..."

Informal register (easier to learn if you're used to inflected language):

Id MMLZ, Kinmelbilosor fakír ulol sanreb avuzangar. Nethgönlimul kán tithleth oman toriteshkadèg kán tel lathondèg lïd enôrkel sterus dok emal, arnòm ashok olumír lotol om siz lïdan cenäthtovon, shedsut abanim oman irbom dok, tovonankinmelbil fidgamim kân Umaräkil Nikuz. Arnòm atölír utharid om alodthîkut lïd enentaremdèg erar, otadlin lïd usenudizír om tokmek lïr arôlsavot nirsten zustash geshud dok, ash tori shovethdèg kán toritnetdèg igrish taremgar itet.

Formal register (as close as it gets to DF dwarvish, most words are uninflected and unmarked for type) that I still believe is usable once you get used to it:

Id MMLZ, Kinmelbilosor fak ulol sanreb avuzgar. Nethgönlimul kán tithleth toriteshkad kán tel lathon enôrkel sterus dok emal, ashok olum lotolsiz cenäthtovon, shedsut aban irbom dok, tovonkinmelbil fidgam kân Umaräkil Nikuz. Atöl utharid om alodthîkut enentarem erar, otadlin usenudiz tokmek arôlsavot nirsten zustash geshud dok, ash tori shoveth kán toritnet igrish taremgar itet.

Spoiler: literal translation (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Basic grammar (click to show/hide)

Feel free to use/suggest/improve/reuse in part/ignore, it was such as a strange mood and probably not close to comparable effort to the above.

Baffler

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics: Community Project
« Reply #50 on: August 30, 2013, 03:03:26 pm »

Quote
adventuredwarves
  :D
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Halfling

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics: Community Project
« Reply #51 on: August 30, 2013, 03:15:24 pm »

I didn't want to get into the business of making my own words too much at this time :P

Owlbread

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics: Community Project
« Reply #52 on: August 30, 2013, 04:22:57 pm »

I have posted my old proposal on the wiki, or at least as far as I got with it:

Here.

There's probably a lot I have forgotten or need to clarify but that is the best I can do just now.
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lue

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics: Community Project
« Reply #53 on: August 30, 2013, 04:48:50 pm »

@Halfling: It appears someone does have that account, dating back to 2008. (I had the same thing come up. If you notice on the wiki, I had to pick "lue42" instead of "lue".)

@Owlbread: Nice!

@Baffler: Any set date or minimum number of votes before the polls close? Just curious.

(You know, working on this has made me want to actually make my own conlang, finally.)
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Halfling

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics: Community Project
« Reply #54 on: August 30, 2013, 05:24:03 pm »

Didn't realize it was all of wikidot that this applied to and not just the languages wiki. :)

Went right ahead and registered as Halfling42, and now you have this too:

http://dflangs.wikidot.com/props:kiss-dwarfish-proposition

Talvieno

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics: Community Project
« Reply #55 on: August 31, 2013, 05:52:48 pm »

If we're going to talk linguistics and etymology, I'd like to point out that the ingame dwarven language, as it is, has no word roots to speak of. (By comparison, the English language, for example, has "hydro-" for "water", "tele-" for "far", "bio-" for "life", etc.) I don't think reworking Toady's language is in order, but I thought I'd point that out, as it mildly irritates me from time to time. It would be considerably easier to turn the DF dwarven language into something learnable if the words had common roots. Just my two cents there.
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RLS0812

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics: Community Project
« Reply #56 on: August 31, 2013, 07:44:50 pm »

How about all adjectives relating to a noun being smashed into one long word. "The big red car", would become "The bigredcar". German 101  :P
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Owlbread

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics: Community Project
« Reply #57 on: August 31, 2013, 07:47:52 pm »

In my proposition that is how it would work, but it would be "the carredbig".
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Larix

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics: Community Project
« Reply #58 on: August 31, 2013, 08:23:07 pm »

If we're going to talk linguistics and etymology, I'd like to point out that the ingame dwarven language, as it is, has no word roots to speak of. (By comparison, the English language, for example, has "hydro-" for "water", "tele-" for "far", "bio-" for "life", etc.)

You meant the greek language, right? :P

For an example of etymology, i'd offer "cold" - related to "cool" and "chill", and through later borrowings (from latin/italian/french) "gelatine", "gel" and "glacier". All these words are derived from the same PIE root, reconstructed as "gel-" ~ "to freeze, to cool down". At the same time, there are words describing similar phenomena with different roots, like "freeze" and "ice", and similar-appearing words like "to kill" (sort of similar to "chill", i'd say), which aren't related.
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Halfling

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Re: Dwarven Linguistics: Community Project
« Reply #59 on: September 01, 2013, 03:27:42 am »

Well, you can make words have an etymology by sticking only to the base words we have now, a limited set, and using them for all your needs as compounds. Such as the above "adventuredwarves". Real life atomic words are not few and are not that transparent either.

"Bio" means life, right? Let's roughly match: http://www.xiaoma.info/compound.php?uni=%E7%94%9F&start=1&fhz=%E7%94%9F
You can use "life-creature" to mean "organism". By my convention that would be (lïd) thunenmes.
"Life-creature-grasping" (handwave grasp to mean understanding since no such word exists) for "biology": thunenmesgídthur
"Life-order" thunenshed "physiology"
"Life-grow" thunenbol "reproduce"
"Life-living" thunenthunen/"life-fate" thunentarem "living; biological"
"Living-strength" thunentarememen "vitality"

That seems to accidentally make it a lot more transparent than English is, so if you want to make it match English more, you just slur the "thunen" so it's unrecognizable, or, if you want to match the evolution of English even more accurately, replace it with "eni" from the elven word "eniwa", life. :P Let's say make it thu- and also remove the first syllable of every word in the compound unless it's only one.

Organism: thumes
Biology: thumesthur
Physiology: thushed
Reproduce: thubol
Biological: thurem
Vitality: thuremmen

Right?

Or, just for fun using google's English etymology as the source to parallel:
Organism: slur of "organismus": xaz (Goblin) -> khaz (Dwarvish)
Biology: bio- (life) + -logy (study): eni(wa)- (Elvish) + -çomo (Elvish) -> enikomo (Dwarvish)
Physiology: physio- (body) + -logy (study): thi(te)- (Elvish) + -çomo (Elvish) -> thikomo (Dwarvish)
Vitality: vitalis (living) + ity: stûm(ö) (Goblin) + -ist (Dwarvish) -> stûmist (Dwarvish)

If you believe Dwarves should represent an ancient and far-reaching rather than a linguistically derivative culture, then it should obviously look more like Mandarin than English etymology, though, although it doesn't have to be like either.
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