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oui!

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aucun!

11 (39.3%)

Total Members Voted: 28

[WoobMonkey]

At least, not yet. Music and poetry are planned features: for the tavern arc, I think. Even now though, we see the rudiments of purely imaginative works in religious artwork and the occasional engraving of a griffon or centaur.

In that case, I shall reserve any further comment on this idea until the next release.  I don't want in any way to try to discourage the amazing creative and scholarly work going on in this thread.

[Loam]

This thread is like llama wool on an evil glacier; just won't stay dead...

Something struck me about Dwarvish: it has the largest assortment of marked vowel sounds out of all the languages, with twenty-five total vowel sounds (compared to nineteen consonants, I think). This suggested to me that Dwarves are very attuned to vowel sounds, making small and certain distinctions and relationships between them. Following this thinking, I created a chart:

Spoiler: The Vîr Amvôd (Vowel Star) (click to show/hide)

(No, it isn't a pentacle)

It shows the relationships between all the vowels and their subtypes. I is considered the "highest" vowel (i.e. in the mouth, cf. IPA); Å is the lowest; the rest are in between, with E and A being "in front" and O and U being "in back."

Circumflex marks a "long" vowel, considered an extension of the "standard" vowel.

Diareses mark "half-vowels," considered weaker or in-between versions standard vowels. They have distinct sounds:
    Ï = yɪ
    Ë = ø
    Ä = æ (the a in "bat")
    Ö = wɔ
(Note that this introduces y and w sounds into Dwarvish, which were previously absent)

Acutes and Graves mark "lifts" and "drops," respectively (or rises and falls, I haven't quite decided on terminology). They represent middle stages of a vowel, considered to be "lifting" or "dropping" towards a half-vowel. As before, for English speakers they'd sound exactly like the standard vowel.

Å still sounds like long O; it's not technically a half-vowel (it's called the "deep vowel" or the "deep A") but it's treated pretty much the same.

Continuing in the "Dwarves notice vowel sounds a lot better than we do" reasoning, I though that maybe using ablauts for alterations in meaning would be a good idea. For example, the plural of English "man" is "men"; the vowel shift expresses plurality. Same for goose-->geese (and maybe mouse-->mice?).
I've come up with a sample system for verbs using this approach. The shifts follow the relationships between the vowels, as outlined in the Vîr.

Spoiler: Verbs! (click to show/hide)

Based on the Vîr, every vowel has a distinct relationship with each of the other four:

1 = the "stem vowel", i.e. the one being altered, generally the final vowel of a word.

The dotted lines represent temporal relationships:
2 = past temporal
3 = future temporal

The solid lines are additional relationships.
4 = the "Cross"
5 = the "Mirror"
Now let's take an example verb: zat, "to stab." "I" will be the understood subject.

The dictionary form zat is an aorist tense, functioning as both infinitive and simple present:
     zat "I stab"
Simple past shifts the stem vowel (a in this case) along the vowel's past temporal relationship. For a, that is o:
     zot "I stabbed"
Simple future shifts the stem vowel along the vowel's future temporal relationship. For a, that is e:
     zet "I will stab"
To show perfection, prefix the stem vowel's cross relationship. For a, that is u:
     uzot "I have stabbed"
     uzet "I will have stabbed"
To show pluperfection, prefix the stem vowel's mirror relationship. For a, that is i:
     izot "I had stabbed"
     izet "I will have had stabbed"
(Note that perfection/pluperfection are only available to the past and future tenses)
To show definity (progression in English), lengthen the final vowel:
    zât "I am stabbing"
    zôt "I was stabbing"
    zêt "I will be stabbing"
    etc.

Obur izêt måmgoz "The hero will have had been stabbing the dragon"

I realize it seems very complicated, but I actually think it's easier than endings: it follows a logical pattern, whereas endings must be memorized. It also cuts down syllable count, which I think is good, especially in a consonant-heavy language like Dwarvish: it helps with the flow. Ultimately the system works much more like English (also note the lack of person or gender inflections)
That said, it would require a strong knowledge of Dwarvish words, since it messes with the basic structure of them; so I though it might be wise to relegate it to a "high" or "court Dwarvish," as distinct from a more forum-friendly "colloquial Dwarvish." That way, only those really interested in the language would have to deal with these funky ablauts, and everyone else could use more familiar endings.

[Baffler]

You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. For terminology, I'd suggest peaks and valleys, if only because that would be a familiar image to a dwarf. As far as difficulty, I actually think I would rather learn this than the endings. As you said there's less you need to actually memorize and it rather neatly wraps up issues that would normally require an irregular form. I do have one concern though, how is the stem vowel determined? If the stem vowel has some marking how is that handled?

[Loam]

For terminology, I'd suggest peaks and valleys

Sounds good to me.

I do have one concern though, how is the stem vowel determined?

It's the final vowel of the aorist tense/infinitive (i.e. the dictionary form)

If the stem vowel has some marking how is that handled?

The verb would probably use endings (which I have yet to think of). Such verbs are fairly uncommon, to my knowledge, but they do exist.

[Loam]

A new translation of the Boatmurdered Prologue:

Ak MMLZ îd, osor dun tôvôn Kinmelbil fok zettan avuzéruläl. Îs-steris az nethgön bar limul van az tithlêth dun kelïdor, keléranteshkath van latholéth, tomêm dun zizmôlósis îs-goshath bar aban bomórir dun tôvôn dun Kinmelbil ak Umaräkil Nikuz. Îdéuthar dun atôs dun erar enen-tarem dun avuz îs-atölet, omamath tul dun nabsal dun ikutâd dun geshud zet isavet sûl, am åsh zettan tareméshoveth van gimbir egdûbesh…

Spoiler: Literal (click to show/hide)

In the 1050th year, the civilization of Dwarves Kinmelbil drained its last mine. Being driven by lust for gold and by rumors of adamantine, a priceless and most mythical metal, a group of seven colonists was sent for to build a new home of the Dwarves of Kinmelbil in Umaräkil Nikuz. The first year of diaries of the ill-fated foreman of the mine was recovered, giving some of a hint of the beginnings of the fortress that had stood there, if not its mysterious and presumed gruesome fate…

Spoiler: Analysis (click to show/hide)

Ak MMLZ îd: simple prepositional phrase. Ak is currently used for both locative and temporal "in"; wonder if temporal should go to another preposition?

osor dun tôvôn Kinmelbil: dun is the genitive particle, rather than having a genitive case. Tôvôn is plural (singular tôvon) - the final vowel is lengthened. Not sure how this'd be marked for nouns where the final vowel is already accented (maybe it won't be marked at all?)

fok zettan avuzéruläl: fok (aorist fak) in the simple past. Zettan is the neuter third person pronoun zet inflected for possession with -tan. Possession is therefore a different function from the genitive. Also note that avuz "mine" and uläl "last" are joined with an infix -ér-. I like the idea of affixing adjectives directly to the noun.

Îs-steris: I haven't worked much with the passive voice yet. I think it will be done by prefixing the aorist "to be" Îs with the proper verb form. Since this is a past passive participle (lit. "having been driven"), I suppose the proper verb form should be participial - right now it's just aorist.

az nethgön bar limul van az tithlêth dun kelïdor: just a string of prepositional phrases. Again note that tithleth "rumor" is pluralized.

keléranteshkath van latholéth: Again note the combining of adjective to noun. It only seems to work with one adjective at a time, though I guess we could have keléranteshkathélatholéth (but that's just ridiculous)

tomêm dun zizmôlósis îs-goshath bar aban bomórir dun tôvôn dun Kinmelbil ak Umaräkil Nikuz: Again note the passive voice. In the original, bar aban bomórir dun tôvôn is "to build a new home for the dwarves." I've been having trouble with that "for" - my particle bar is causal (as in bar limul "for (the cause of) gold/ caused by gold"), but this usage doesn't seem causal. I'm using the genitive here, but I don't know if that's correct either.

Îdéuthar dun atôs dun erar enen-tarem dun avuz: "first year of diaries" is really an idiom, I suppose, so I shouldn't translate it so literally. Enem-tarem "ill-fated" gives me trouble; right now it actually reads "foreman ill-fate." It should probably be erar dun enen-tarem "leader of ill-fate," but that string of genitives is odious to my eyes. That was one good thing about the a genitive case: no awkward particles mucking up sentence flow.

îs-atölet: atöl is a verb whose final vowel is already marked, so traditional vowel shifting won't work. Instead it uses a simple ending -*t, where * represents a vowel denoting tense: e for past, u (or o?) for future. Perfection, pluperfection, and definition could all still be marked in the same way.

omamath tul dun nabsal dun ikutâd dun geshud zet isavet sûl: nothing special, except isavet (aorist savat) in the past pluperfect. Again, that dun... dun... dun... gets on my nerves.

am åsh zettan tareméshoveth van gimbir egdûbesh…: simple negative conditional. Sequent particles could probably just be added together (so, amåsh).

Right now it's just too much like English. Without enough meaningful difference, it ceases to be a language and just becomes a secret code. I might try to fit it into a more rigid sentence structure, which might especially be helpful for passive voice stuff. I'd have to think of a poetic form that emphasized sentence structure, though, but that could be fun.

[RailroadRider]

Right now it's just too much like English. Without enough meaningful difference, it ceases to be a language and just becomes a secret code.

A simple fix would be to remove tense. In Chinese they say "We go tommorow", but in English we say "We will go tommorow". Easy fix and it will streamline things somewhat.

[Scoops Novel]

The realistic names thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=145713.0

Thoughts? I'd really appreciate anything you can share on how names actually developed in the past.