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oui!

17 (60.7%)

aucun!

11 (39.3%)

Total Members Voted: 28

[Halfling]

I don't understand what exactly appeals to you about Swedish.
I don't understand what is the "general idea", and I know Swedish. A different word order?

Nothing in particular appeals to me about Swedish other than that I remembered those particular words of that language of the region.

As for why that one, the dwarves in DF are obviously the dwarves of Germanic/Norse mythology, by proxy of Tolkien -> other fantasy. Tolkien was inspired by and took dwarf names from the Norse poetic Edda, and the dwarf mythology - honestly, I'm no expert, but - seems like stayed further there, because Christianity arrived later. So you would expect them to speak in a Scandinavic way if similarly to any real language.

"General idea" is an often used compound that refers to the whole of something without detailing the specifics. In that case it meant taking the preposition and genitive from the Swedish expression. In another it could mean taking their (Swedish, Norse, Icelandic) word order and prepositions while applying some peculiarities and elucidating a simplified grammar. Don't these languages have pretty good buzz in the English-speaking world and especially fantasy community? So while saying it's based on Chinese will make people here strongly biased to not want to learn or even read about it, saying it's all made up or inspired by Russian may be neutral, saying it's based on/inspired by Norse would make people more interested and it would also be familiar to I-E speakers. And with the mythos link you would have some justification and recognizability for the choice.

[Baffler]

I have successfully completed my hardware upgrades and will be back uninterrupted for the foreseeable future. I am currently working on writing a language proposition, I expect I'll have it up on Friday or Saturday. Until then, I think it is important to keep this intelligible for the average DF player who wants to learn it, but still stay as faithful as possible to the source material. I see the balance of that looking like using the accented vowel marks as they are, or along the lines of Loam's alphabet.

Grammar isn't as important to hold to IMO, because as has been pointed out, it is (most likely) a placeholder. As far as that goes, staying along the lines of the Indo-European group will make it easier to learn, but I think we can depart from it, maybe even significantly in some places, and it shouldn't be too hard to grasp as long as it's consistent. A nice, regular language fits my idea of Dwarves as well, but this isn't just my project.

[Loam]

Here's a link that may interest some of you: http://folk.uib.no/hnohf/
It's a site about Tolkien's languages, pretty well consolidated. I learned a smattering of Quenya from it.

In my own proposition, which at present is unfortunately similar to Latin* (Latin being the only other language I know), I began to play with the idea of using vowels as the major means of conveying meaning: that is, changes in vowel sounds within the words would signify such things as inflections or modal auxiliaries would in other languages, such as tense, number, usage, etc. I feel it might be a very interesting alternative to consider.




* Although, does anyone else see something Roman in the Dwarven character? Nobility, groundedness, a kind of earthy sensibility?

[Halfling]

Grammar isn't as important to hold to IMO, because as has been pointed out, it is (most likely) a placeholder. As far as that goes, staying along the lines of the Indo-European group will make it easier to learn, but I think we can depart from it, maybe even significantly in some places, and it shouldn't be too hard to grasp as long as it's consistent. A nice, regular language fits my idea of Dwarves as well, but this isn't just my project.

Unless you know what will replace the assumed placeholder, if your language is obviously different from what is in game, with the tools easily available to the player, yet claims to be same, that makes you look foolish. For any DF fan it should be enough to make it irrelevant.

[dwarfhoplite]

Loam, wouldn't that mean that a word could take a high number of different forms?
Are you suggesting a vowel harmony system to determine which vowel turns in to what to convey the wanted meaning?

[Loam]

I... suppose so. I haven't really thought it out. Is there any specific problem with a high number of forms?
It seemed we were waffling between inflections - word order - particle words, and I was inputting another approach for the discussion. Of course, the system could and probably would work in conjunction with endings and particles; I don't suppose any language truly uses only one or the other.

[dwarfhoplite]

Learning lots of forms for already completely alien words may be a bit much to many. Also, I can't see how that would be much different from a case system.

A fixed word order could make for a extremely clunky and dwarfy tongue, too.

Mountain Urist digs
High the mountain is
Plenty there to be dug is
Metals and riches Dwarf wants and seeks
But careful Dwarf be must
Too deep not to dig

[lue]

I notice the poll's closed. Was there a result on word order, or are we foregoing the poll in favor of Actual Discussion™?

[Loam]

Learning lots of forms for already completely alien words may be a bit much to many

I see where you're coming from. In my endeavor I was trying more to make a language for the Dwarves than for the community; hence I wanted it to have a naturalistic quality that wouldn't necessarily be "easy to learn," but would feel more real when it was learned (not that I'm against a community language, it's just not my primary concern).

A fixed word order could make for a extremely clunky and dwarfy tongue, too.

Something like this was my original idea. But as it progressed it became hard to maintain: the little details of language, such as relative clauses, prepositional phrases, and the like, I found more difficult to incorporate into a fixed-structure language.

[dwarfhoplite]

I think you try to achieve too much. Maybe dwarves don't use relative clauses.
Perhaps they speak like cavemen.
They are cavemen.

[Baffler]

No result on word order, it just wasn't having the intended effect of compelling people to come and post about what they voted on and why. As such, I have removed it to prevent confusion.

[Gentlefish]

When you subsitute the actual english words into the dwarven language, "The book of lies" becomes "Book lies"

It's literally the two words. Literally.

And the artificial book of lies slaps the adjective directly onto the word. "ArtificialBook Lies"

[dwarfhoplite]

Is that now a compound word or a genitive structure?

My native language makes distinction between:

valhekirja = liebook
valheiden kirja = book of lies

It is hard for me to understand accurately what you mean.

[Halfling]

In DF Dwarfish the rules you have are exactly:
x y, where x is a proper noun: "x the y" (as in Urist the cheesemaker)
x y, where x and y are common nouns: "x of y" (as in slayer of dragons)  <--- distinct from below with a space
xy, where x and y are nouns: x-y/xy (knife-murdering, dragonslaying)   <--- distinct from above without space
xy, where x is an adjective and y is a noun: "x(adj) y" (angry mechanism)
xzy, where x and z are adjectives and y is a noun: "x(adj) [and] z(adj) y" (angry, awe-inspiring mechanism)

[Baffler]

I hate to keep pushing this back, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, but schoolwork hit like a ton of bricks this weekend, so I don't expect to have my proposal up for another few days, though I will probably continue posting here. C'est la vie.

Now then, I am somewhat stuck on a certain point: prepositions. Not as words, but in their usage. I know that in English we have prepositional phrases, which can't be broken up and while they technically CAN end a sentence, in almost all cases it doesn't really work. I'm not really concerned with coming up with words like above, below, under, etc. at this juncture but I am having some difficulty with form. Consider this simple English...

Catten runs over the hill.
This would be rendered currently as:

Catten rur ág inen (lit. Catten run over hill)
This works fine, but in a more complex sentance:

Catten runs past Urist's cat.
Rendered as:

Catten rur ág Urist kun. (lit. Catten run over Urist cat.)
This leaves a lot more ambiguity. Now my question is, should prepositions be explicitly so with their own distinct form, as noted by either a special particle or a special construction? Or would it be better to stay with the English form?