[A word of warning: This is LONG. I just found out that posts on this forum are capped at 40,000 characters. This is going to be coming at you in
sections.]
Version 0.27.95
The shortcomings of the existing language_DWARF.txt are well-known. In brief, it's fine for expressing
names of people, places, landforms, etc., but good luck using it for actual communication. A few months ago, I tested its abilities with a very simple sentence: "Go kill a sheep." The attempt failed spectacularly, as not
one of those words is to be found there; the closest I could get was "Walk butcher old lamb." I experimented with a few more sentences, usually with even worse results. I set out to rectify this by creating a new language, called
Dorwaf, which is its own word for
dwarf.
There have of course been previous attempts to improve dwarven communication—most notably in the thread,
The Edification of Dwarven Language. These earlier lexicographers did a pretty good job, but they didn't go far enough: They tried to preserve the existing vocabulary. You simply can't construct a good language based on already-sophisticated words like "clutter", "pinnacle", and "harvester". You have to use only the simplest of concepts, such as "I", "food", "big", and "no", as your initial building blocks. So, I decided to re-invent the entire thing—with the composition of each word now closely tied to its
definition. I started with the
Swadesh list, and expanded that into a set of ideas that I considered to be too ancient and/or too basic to be broken down into components. Then, I gave each concept a one-syllable word. These are the root words of Dorwaf, and all other, polysyllabic words are created by combining them: The word for
fortress is "defend-home".
Pregnant is "baby-swollen".
Shoddy is "bad-make".
Nut is "shell-plant-egg". And so on. So, point by point:
1: With a full complement of conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions, etc., Dorwaf can be used to express a very wide variety of thoughts, with a precision and complexity comparable to real-world languages.
2: The vocabulary is currently at over 3,100 core words—which can be multiplied enormously by applying the various prefixes & suffixes.
3: Similarly-spelled words have similar meanings. After enough exposure, a reader will be able to look at a word they've never seen before, and still be able to make a good guess at its definition, or even deduce its exact meaning by reading its roots.
4: The inverse of point 3, users will be able to coin new words in a very logical process: They can either combine existing roots into a new compound word, or (if it
truly seems justified) they can assign an unclaimed root word that's similar to an already-existing root with a related meaning. For instance,
chás /
lizard is deliberately very similar to the more basic
cháf /
reptile, which in turn was based on the even more fundamental
sáf /
animal. (In fact,
cháf is an amalgam of
sáf and
chóf /
scale).
Dorwaf has no cases, declensions, conjugations, or genders. There are also no adverbs: no distinction is made between modifying a noun and modifying a verb. What the language
does have is a system of prefixes & suffixes, which is very important and must be spelled out in detail. Some may be applied to multiple parts of speech, and most can also be used as individual words. All prefixes use a consonant-vowel structure: C-V, while all suffixes are V-C. This rule holds true even when they are used as standalone words. All other syllables have a construction of C-V-C, consonant-vowel-consonant. As a word moves between parts of speech (
e.g., skeptic / skepticism / distrust / skeptical), these changes are indicated by vowel shifts.
Sentence structure is largely identical to English, with two exceptions. The first is verb placement: The location of the (primary) verb determines whether the sentence is a statement, question, or instruction. The second is adjective placement: In Dorwaf, adjectives are always placed
after the word or phrase that they modify—in direct contrast to English, which usually places them before. In other words, dwarves say the
most important word (the noun or verb) first, and then the adjectives in decreasing order of importance. Curiously, they generally take the exact opposite tack when combining roots into compound words, with the most important root coming
last, and those that describe that root coming before it. For example, the word for
elf is
hélwáf, "tree-person", a person associated with trees.
Pick is
gàklòd, "stone-hit", a striking tool used on stone.
Historically, dwarven sentences were rather short and simple, needing no punctuation beyond the basic period, question mark, and exclamation point—with the latter being written down only rarely. But as influences from other races come creeping in, dwarves are adopting the human quotation mark, and even beginning to write longer sentences that use the elvish comma.
The Alphabet The consonants of the Dorwaf alphabet are based on the (simplified) phonetics of the Angerthas Moria, the most well-known set of runes used by J.R.R. Tolkien's dwarves. Its vowels, meanwhile, are taken directly from Tarn Adams's Original Dwarven—albeit with å replaced by ü, mainly for consistency. This gives a full alphabet of 48 letters (and digraphs):
a á â à ä b d e é ê è ë f g h i í î ì ï j k l m n o ó ô ò ö p r s t u ú û ù ü v w y z ch ng sh th zh
Curiously, neither Tolkien's dwarves nor Toady's seem to care that the digraph 'th' actually represents
two different sounds (depending on whether it's voiced or unvoiced). So, as their scripts do not distinguish between the two, then written Dorwaf won't either. (Then again, if the game
did support a separate glyph for the other 'th', that would bring the number of letters to 49. The number 7 is of symbolic significance to dwarves, and 7 × 7 = 49.) As far as capital letters are concerned, it's worth mentioning that no words in Dorwaf can begin with a vowel using a diacritical mark, or with the 'ng' digraph—so unless you're writing in ALL CAPS, uppercase diacriticals and the capital eng will virtually never be needed (by dwarves, anyway—other languages might still use them).
The Vowels Dwarves have the amazingly helpful idiosyncrasy of pronouncing their vowels differently, depending on which role the word fulfills in a sentence. Thus, merely by looking at the diacritical mark over a word's vowel(s), or hearing the difference in its spoken inflection, the reader / listener can identify the part of speech of the clear majority of words.
| VERBS are indicated with a circumflex ( â ). e.g.: | tûg | = | remember | | lâk | = | cushion | | nûgwêth | = | persuade | | sôfhûp | = | wear |
| NOUNS all have an acute ( á ) or grave ( à ) accent. | tùg | = | memory | | làk | = | pillow | | nùgwèth | = | persuasion | | sòfhùp | = | clothing |
| ADJECTIVES use a diaeresis ( ä ) over the vowel. | tüg | = | memorable | | läk | = | soft | | nügwëth | = | persuasive | | söfhüp | = | dressed |
MISCELLANEOUS words—articles, conjunctions, prepositions, and pronouns—use no diacriticals at all, nor do the various prefixes & suffixes.
Nouns that are alive, or perishable goods that have very recently been alive, use the á mark. The à is used for inorganic objects, or materials that can be made into them, and also for immaterial concepts. There is some case-by-case fluidity on this matter: For example,
youth is spelled
tìz when discussing the
condition of being young, and
tíz when describing a young
person. The words for
hide and
fur change their diacritics during the tanning process, and nouns like
sóflóz /
scratch vary depending on
what got scratched. "Non-living" nouns are also frequently the noun forms of certain verbs: Consider the verb
fôr, which means
to kiss. Noun 1 (living) of that word is
fór, a
lip, while noun 2 (non-living) is
fòr, a singular
kiss.
In polysyllabic words,
all the vowels (except those in prefixes & suffixes) technically have the same diacritical mark, but in actuality only 1 or 2 of them are written down: If a core word has 3 or more syllables, the standard practice is to show the diacritics on the
first &
last vowels only, with the other vowels left blank, to save time in writing—they are understood to have the same mark as their fellows.
The Syllables Dwarves consider certain consonant sounds, in relation to their neighboring vowels, to be too difficult to pronounce conveniently. For this reason, there are no Dorwaf syllables that begin with 'ng', and also no syllables that end in 'h', 'w', or 'y'. This is obviously not the case for humans (the Vietnamese begin words with 'ng' all the time)—but dwarves aren't humans. Since all Dorwaf root words are just 3 letters long, consonant-vowel-consonant, this gives us 22 letters that can
start a word, and 20 letters that can
end a word. 22 consonants × 5 vowels × 20 consonants = 2,200 possible 3-letter root words. At present, I'm only using 615 of them, leaving plenty of room for expansion.
I gave the language its rules for a variety of reasons. Some, like having no diphthongs (two vowels together, & pronounced as one), and the rigid C-V-C syllable structure, are continuations or exaggerations of the traditions set forth by Toady One & Threetoe. Others are largely for flavor, to make Dorwaf more distinct from other DF languages. For example, the existing goblin language seems to use 'ng' noticeably more often than Original Dwarven—this makes for a useful hallmark to distinguish the tongues, so I accentuated the difference: Dorwaf uses 'ng' only in the latter half of a syllable, and only in words with connotations of being evil, disgusting, or otherwise undesirable. Let the
other races, which might not have Dorwaf's useful system of 25 vowels, make use of things like diphthongs, double letters, accented syllables, and glottal stops.
The Vocabulary I'm not even going to
try to make it share space with anything else. Expect one post that's nothing but a spoiler hiding the Dorwaf -> English list, and then a second post with the spoilered English -> Dorwaf list. (The same words, just with different columns alphabetized).
The format of each line is [ Dorwaf word : ENGLISH EQUIVALENT : Part of speech : Definition ]. The definition may become useful later on if Toady ever decides to incorporate a dwarven dictionary into the game . . . but for now, it serves no purpose other than to clarify meaning in those words where I think confusion might arise, and is therefore currently blank for all words except these few.
Some of the vocabulary, notably when it comes to classifying plants & animals, is somewhat less than accurate. For example, the word for
aardvark translates to "none-shell-armadillo", and
pangolin is "sharp-armadillo". This makes sense in terms of the animals' appearance, diet, and behavior, but all three of these these creatures are actually unrelated. This reflects the fact that dwarves generally aren't that interested in biology, and don't much care about inaccuracies in that arena. (Their jargon for petrology and metallurgy, however, is spot on.) I also tried to fit as many of the cavern creatures into existing clades (bird, insect, reptile, etc.) as I could, but since the caverns are going to be undergoing a major rewrite anyway, I just created the new "monster" and "elemental" clades, and dumped a lot of them in there.
The Verbs The location of a sentence's primary verb indicates what type of sentence it is. Most common is the simple declarative statement, with the verb in the
middle (between the subject & predicate):
Udib sûn sut ken yùdmutsèj. = "Udib walk to the river." =
Udib is walking to the river.Stinthad kît ken sòrwùm. = "Stinthad have the cap." =
Stinthad has a cap. Placing the verb at the
start of the sentence turns it into an inquisitive question.
Sûn Udib sut ken yùdmutsèj? = "Walk Udib to the river?" =
Is Udib walking to the river?Kît Stinthad ken sòrwùm? = "Have Stinthad the cap?" =
Does Stinthad have a cap? And setting a sentence's verb all the way at the
end makes it an imperative instruction (which may or may not be exclaimed).
Udib sut ken yùdmutsèj sûn. = "Udib to the river walk." =
Udib, walk to the river.Stinthad ken sòrwùm kît! = "Stinthad the cap have!" =
Make sure Stinthad has a cap! Exception: If there are adjectives describing the verb, they still come directly
after the verb.
The other way of asking a question in Dorwaf is to begin the sentence with one of the familiar Who / What / When / Where / Why / How interrogative words, but even then the verb follows immediately afterward: It is
"Bich gîtchuksûn vakez?" /
"When meet we?", not
"When do we meet?". This follows the same pattern as the English phrases "Who goes there?", "How are you?", "What is the matter?", etc.
When a sentence has multiple verbs, but they take
equal precedence in meaning, that's no problem, just treat both verbs as a unit and move them around as you would a single one:
Tez ken zhér pêlsêd gis gâkfôf. = "You the wheat threash and grind." =
(I want you to) Thresh and grind the wheat.Pêlsêdith gis gâkfôfith tez ken zhér? = "Thresh-past and grind-past you the wheat?" =
Did you thresh and grind the wheat?Ri kez pêlsêdith gis gâkfôfith ken zhér. = "Yes I thresh-past and grind-past the wheat." =
Yes, I threshed and ground the wheat. But when verbs are
nested, when a verb calls up a dependent clause that contains its own verb, then it gets tricky. Mentally place parentheses around each successive clause and treat each one like its own sentence—it might not be in the same tense, or have the same type of verb placement, as the other parts of the sentence. For example:
Do you remember when (Urvad said (he was going to train a war elephant someday))?There are three verbs:
remember,
say, and
train. ("Do", "was", and "going" are also verbs, in English, but they will be dropped during the translation.) The outer sentence, with
Do you remember X, is a question set in the present tense. The middle sentence,
Urvad said X, is a statement in the past tense. And the inner sentence,
He will train a war elephant someday, is a statement set in the future tense. Each must be translated separately, and then combined.
"remember you that" =
tûg tez bek "Urvad talk-past that" =
Urvad mûrith bek "person-male train-future elephant war other year-future" =
wávep shûkzitzêfiv jófhór püpjunyëth sët bìvivTûg tez bek Urvad mûrith bek wávep shûkzitzêfiv jófhór püpjunyëth sët bìviv? =
Do you remember when Urvad said he will train a war elephant someday? In Dorwaf as well as English, there are also verbs that do little or nothing by themselves, except
introduce other verb clauses. These are auxiliary verbs such as
can,
might,
request,
prefer, and
shall. A few English translations are only
approximate equivalents, so some clarification is necessary:
thîk /
need : The action (or object) is required, for some critically essential purpose.
chîk /
must : The action is 100% guaranteed to occur, there is no way for it
not to happen.
zîk /
shall : The action has been ordered or mandated by an authority figure.
yît /
should : The action would produce a desirable result or net benefit.
Some auxiliary verbs express probability:
chîp /
could means that an action is statistically possible,
chîb /
might means there's at least a plausible chance of success, and
chît /
can means the action is reliably within the subject's capabilities.
The Pronouns Dorwaf has one word,
sav, for both
it and
this. It can be used to refer to inanimate objects, living things, and people indiscriminately, although more formal conversation does tend to use the pronoun
wav instead, specifically for sentients—similar to English's generic "one" pronoun, such as in "One does what one must". The language also has a form to specify that the person or thing being referenced is separated in some way (usually distance) from the conversation. Pluralizing pronouns is as simple as adding the prefix
va- /
many. More specific quantitative prefixes may also be applied, such as
mosav /
these four, or
sokez /
all of us.
| Dorwaf | | | | English | | Dorwaf | | | | English |
kez | | 1st person singular | | I / me | | vakez | | 1st person plural | | we |
tez | | 2nd person singular | | you | | vatez | | 2nd person plural | | you all |
sav | | 3rd person singular | | it / this | | vasav | | 3rd person plural | | they / these |
wav | | 3rd pers. sing. sent. | | | | vawav | | 3rd pers. plu. sent. | | |
suv | | 4th person singular | | it / that | | vasuv | | 4th person plural | | they / those |
Note that the pronoun
suv /
that is an entirely different word from the conjunction
bek /
that, which is used to separate clauses in a sentence.
Other pronouns include
chuk /
here,
setchuk /
there, and
setbif /
then, each referencing a place or time that has already been established (either in conversation, or by simple mutual presence).
The Proper Nouns The names of specific people, places, and things in Dorwaf are usually written without diacritical marks. The marks can be added if the user wishes, although doing so might interfere if anyone later wanted to "verb" or "adjective" that noun by changing the diacriticals. For example, if the proper noun in question was "Mexico", then you would describe food dishes invented there as
Mëxicö zhìp /
Mexican food. If you want to redub a Japanese anime into English (and probably make some contextual changes as well) for an English-speaking audience, you would say that you want to
Ênglând /
Anglicize that movie. If you want to say that Malcom X converted to Islam, you could say that he
Îslâmith. (Because there is no rule against beginning a proper noun with a vowel, this is the only known case of a possible capitalized diacritical.)
The Prefixes Prefixes include the specific numbers 1 through 10: the nickname
Urist the Seven-Fingered could be written as "Urist seven-finger",
Urist Nezhód. Prefixes may be stacked:
menasòjbùm means
twenty-eight chairs. (Dwarves are quite familiar with their base-10 number system, and place value.) When numbers are stacked with other prefixes, the numbers are always placed first, the furthest from the core word. The word
nu /
ten is quite rare, used only when the total is exactly ten. The number 2310 is spoken "two-three-one-null", not "two-three-ten". Dwarves have no words for specific numbers larger than ten, although some are beginning to use the human words for
hundred and
thousand. Numbers are also sometimes used when quantifying adjectives, usually to exaggerated effect:
Likot sêf 3jëk jül bud Sarvesh = Likot be 3-skilled more than Sarvesh =
Likot is three times more skilled than Sarvesh. Now, certain words begin with numbers as an integral part of their derivation,
e.g., "one-eye-person" /
cyclops. If you ever describe
multiples of such words, always list that number as a standalone word, not as a prefix.
Me míporwáf =
two cyclopes, but
memíporwáf can easily be misread as
a person with twenty-one eyes.
The word
va can be used as a prefix when the total number is larger than 10, but far more frequently just means "plural" in general.
There are also
yu (meaning
too much) and
hu (
not enough).
Kezik gùch sêf huzül! = "I-of beer is under-full!" =
My beer (mug) isn't as full as it should be! Less commonly used are
so /
all and
su /
half. Preceding nouns, they are quantitative modifiers: a broker might say to a caravan,
Kez kôl tezik somànzhèl gis tezik sufòk = "I take you-of all-flour and you-of half-sugar" =
I'll take all of your flour, and half of your sugar. (Dwarves will also occasionally use
su to simply mean some, rather than exactly half.) They work in similar fashion when added to verbs: A warrior who's killed a great many types of creatures might have the nickname
Momoz Sotêthef /
Momoz All-Slayer. A dwarf blind in one eye might be described as
supôris /
half-seeing. As prefixes on an adjective,
so and
su are used to modify the strength of that adjective: a dwarf wincing in direct sunlight might describe it as "all-bright".
The word
ri, "yes", meaning
assent or
affirmation, is most frequently used as a standalone word, but when applied to a verb, it means to
redo the action. This is for cases where some work either was inadequate, or has since been undone / destroyed / etc.
Rigîtpûp = "Yes-settle" = to
reclaim a settlement. As the prefix on an adjective, it simply means
very.
Ri is sometimes used on nouns, as a reflexive intensifier that means
itself.
Lorbam mûrith sut riwaveb = "Lorbam talk-past to yes-one-female" =
Lorbam was talking to herself.
The word
ra, "none" means
null,
zero,
negation. As the response to a Yes/No question, it means
no opinion. When used as the prefix on a noun, it turns the noun into an adjective meaning a
lack of that noun—a
dórwáf rapüp is a
homeless dwarf . As the prefix on a verb, it means to
stop or
prevent that particular action. And when leading an adjective, it means that the adjective
does not apply.
Ingish sêf rarülnüg = "Ingish be none-clever" =
Ingish is of average intelligence.
And the word
ru, "not", means
refusal or
opposition. When acting as the prefix on a noun, it turns the noun into a verb, meaning to
remove that noun (usually from another noun, such as
rusôf sáp = "not-skin deer" = to
flay the deer). As the prefix to a verb, it means to
undo that verb, to reverse it to the way it was before. And when appended to an adjective or preposition, it signifies the exact opposite of that word:
Ingish sêf rurülnüg = "Ingish be not-clever" =
Ingish is stupid.
Ken záb yêjith rujut ken húgbél = "The rabbit run-past not-around the bush" =
The rabbit ran through the bush. Invoking the opposite of a word when such an opposite already exists (in this case,
mes /
through) is regarded as technically incorrect, but still happens occasionally—usually for the purposes of a rhyme.
The prefix
che is only used to indicate lycanthropy. A
chegútcháv is a
weretortoise.
PREFIX TABLE| | | Lone Word | | NOUN | | VERB | | ADJECTIVE | | MISC. |
| 0-9 | | numbers | | specific # of items | | to do specific # of times | | specific # of times as X | | |
| va | | many / plural | | more than 10, or vague plural | | to do over and over | | | | |
| yu | | over | | (too) many | | to do a lot, or overdo | | (too) extreme | | to too great an extent |
| hu | | under | | (too) few | | to do only a little / not enough | | (too) weak | | to an insufficient extent |
| so | | all | | all, or all available | | all-doing or all-done | | to maximum intensity | | |
| su | | half | | half, half available, or some | | half-doing or half-done | | only half intensity | | |
| ri | | yes / approval | | "itself" | | to redo | | very | | |
| ra | | null / none | | lacking | | to halt or forbid | | X is not applicable | | |
| ru | | not / opposition | | to remove | | to undo | | opposite of | | opposite of |
| che | | lycanthropy | | sometimes takes this animal form | | | | | | |
Author
Topic: Dorwaf and how to speak it (Read 13955 times)