I have seen that you sort of went the semitic way of non-consecutive morphology (vowel alteration), like Tolkien did with Khudzul in LOTR . . .
Having some callbacks to Tolkien was intentional, but any echoing of the Semitic languages was not. As you're probably aware, Tolkien noticed/created several parallels between dwarves and Jews, to the point that the former starts to be little more than a racist caricature of the latter. I don't know about you, but I for one am soundly disinterested in perpetuating negative stereotypes, so I won't be making any deliberate steps toward making the dwarf language(s) seem Semitic in feel. (I also won't be making them Scottish, as I see no logic in
that trope either.)
Granted, it's a nice enough
idea: Give the elven, dwarven, human, and goblin languages a more palpably different feel by giving each one hallmarks from a different real-world language family--ideally ones that aren't related at all--so humans' speech could be based on the Germanic languages (As most DF players speak English, which is a Germanic tongue, it would make sense that human players should feel the most familiarity with what the in-game humans speak), while the speech of
elves is more like Mandarin Chinese. But which language family should I use as the basis for
goblin words and grammatical structure? Which group of millions of people do I wish to offend?
Happily, there are plenty of ways to make the various languages visually & phonetically distinct
without patterning them after real-world languages, so that's the path(s) I'll be taking.
Are you open to collaboration, if the project is even alive?
I am open to collaboration, but you seem to have very different goals than I do: In addition to the Semitic connection, you mentioned cases and conjugations, and non-standard pronunciations, three things that I personally want to stay as far away from as possible. My intention was to make Dorwaf, and then the procedurally-generated languages based on Dorwaf, to be as
extremely simple as an actual language could possibly be and still work for communication. (This has to be so simple that a
computer can speak it, after all.) Heck, if you
really absorbed the "How to speak Dorwaf" posts at the start of this thread, your fluency would be about equal to a 1st- or 2nd-year foreign language student. And yet if you
printed those posts out, there's only enough text to cover about nine sheets of paper (double sided). Compare those 9 sheets of paper with your average Spanish 1 textbook. That's how simple Dorwaf is, and I'm hoping to carry that tradition forward.
Yes, the project
is still alive, but my progress has been largely halted lately because a) Real Life has gone its usual route of sticking its big fat ass right in my way, and b) The way I have the language organized, everything depends upon the root tables: The list of one-syllable words that stand for the simplest concepts, the foundation of everything else. As the game gets updated, new and very fundamental elements get added, which means I have to
overhaul the way that certain words are related to what other words (and how
closely they're related, etc), which is a real pain, and
very intimidating. I
will get to it, but . . . slowly.
The vowel system might be also reduced, unless tone is introduced, otherwise we end up with what seems like a whooping 25 monophthong system, unless some of the vowels are actually diphthongs . . .
Yes, Dorwaf is tonal. The dwarven vowels are, hopefully, the only instance in which I will use nonstandard pronunciation--that is, I use the diacritical marks as an indicator of the
pitch given to the entire word, not for the
shape of the actual vowel itself. So the dwarves actually have only 5 vowels--though the other races will doubtless have more, and in
those languages, the diacriticals will stand for actual different monophthongs:
a as in gr
ape,
â as in h
at,
ä as in f
ather, etc.
My rough intentions for the other languages:
Human languages will be noticeable for their preponderance of consonants: Whereas almost every dwarven syllable is C-V-C, humans will go as far as C-C-C-V-C-C. (Hence their ability to say "dwarf" as one syllable, whereas dwarves themselves have to use two, "dorwaf".)
Elves, meanwhile, play fast & loose with their vowels: They're the only race that uses diphthongs, and the ratio of vowels to consonants is nearly 1:1. Most all of their vowels, however, are of the I, E, and A families, largely eschewing O and U.
Lastly, goblins make frequent use of the Eng (ŋ) and the glottal stop, almost never use the I or E sounds (all of their vowels are U, O, and A), and have the smallest vocabulary--and thus hardly any need for polysyllabic words.
DF doesn't currently have sound, so a text-to-phonetics screen would be needed to convey these differences in pronunciation.
. . . phonetics are needed to have a natural language evolution . . .
The prospect of DF actually being able to "speak" these languages is a tantalizing one indeed, even if it's just the one genderless voice synthesizer, used regardless of who's doing the talking. But what do you mean by language
evolution? If future versions of DF are going to hold to the current time model (where world-histories longer than 1000 years are all but unheard-of), I see little need to give even a token nod to evolution of
any kind.
It could be used in adventure mode to create more immersion, atmosphere, realism. Creates enormity in the world, distant worlds. With my human player I go to the land of the dwarves and they speak their language. If my human player has read the book he wrote sixofspades he will simply see the dwarf text with the translation, otherwise he will not get it and he will not understand anything unless you bring an interpreter.
That's pretty much exactly what I intend. I will spell out which roots are related to which other roots, and which roots are joined to create which polysyllabic words--
that won't change (at least until Toady changes it). But, how each root is actually
spelled/pronounced,
that will be procedurally generated and will vary from game to game, and most likely even from civ to civ in the same game. So, if you're a citizen of one dwarf culture and travel to a different dwarf culture, you'll still be speaking with the same grammatical structures, but the words themselves will be different. (Perhaps civs that are geographically close together will have more similarities than those on opposite sides of the map.)
Adventurers that have learned more than one language would probably have the option to
choose which language to speak . . . perhaps even code-switching in the middle of a conversation, thus themselves taking on the role of interpreter.
. . . if the project is moving forward as a full conlang rather than a proof-of-concept, maybe put it in the General Discussion forum.
Hm, I feel it's appropriate here, as it is indeed a demonstration of what I intend to do myself if Toady doesn't beat me to it. But I do see your reasons for putting out in General Discussion . . . just as I understand ido66667's desire to take on the project--not least because I seem to be dragging my feet on it. Why don't *I* keep Dorwaf here, while ido66667 spearheads a more collaborative project in G.D.?
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Topic: Dorwaf and how to speak it (Read 13949 times)