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[Solitarian]

Great work! Now that you mention it, I think rearranging the alphabet to match the phonetics makes sense. I don't like that English writing is so inefficient. For example, the letter C does not need to exist, as its sounds are expressed by K and S. As such, I hope that each Dwarven letter has a separate sound so redundancy is avoided.

[VABritto]

Great work! Now that you mention it, I think rearranging the alphabet to match the phonetics makes sense. I don't like that English writing is so inefficient. For example, the letter C does not need to exist, as its sounds are expressed by K and S. As such, I hope that each Dwarven letter has a separate sound so redundancy is avoided.

I agree. That is why I assumed that C was the Ch fricative sound, in line with S & Sh and T & Th. I placed thus Sh after S, Th after T and C after K. I also placed Ng after N.

Saw my further explanation of the cat saying?

I am also thinking of adding St as a seperate letter in the dictionary because it is the only combination of letters that breaks the consonant rules of the language. It might actually not be pronouced as st. Maybe it is like ancient hebrew צ. Something like a strong s. Either way I will place it after Sh

Also, I think that Fmid could be changed to Âmid since âmid means to listen, Âmid could mean listener. Fmid breaks the consonant rule so it could be best to keep it as Âmid.

I also just found out that dwarf_Language actually has already a word for One: Lod. So it might be best to change Nir to Lod since it is already in the files.

[Solitarian]

Yes, I saw your further explanation of the cat phrase. The ultimate meaning is the same (i.e. don't be careless), so I think further refining of the phrase is unnecessary.

As before, I am no expert (or even amateur) of phonetics, and I am not so concerned about the system chosen for Dwarven. I leave that to you and Loam and other people who are more knowledgeable/interested in codifying phonetics. My only suggestion at the moment is that some letters could be given the same sound for the sake of consistency, if that becomes a problem. In German, the letter ß is often represented as SS, and both make the same sound. However, as I said, I prefer everything to make separate sounds. I trust you with it!

Also, I think that Fmid could be changed to Âmid since âmid means to listen, Âmid could mean listener. Fmid breaks the consonant rule so it could be best to keep it as Âmid.

I also just found out that dwarf_Language actually has already a word for One: Lod. So it might be best to change Nir to Lod since it is already in the files.

You're right! How did I not know that? There is also already a word for "first" (uthar). Oh dear. I have some edits to do!

[VABritto]

Yes, I saw your further explanation of the cat phrase. The ultimate meaning is the same (i.e. don't be careless), so I think further refining of the phrase is unnecessary.

As before, I am no expert (or even amateur) of phonetics, and I am not so concerned about the system chosen for Dwarven. I leave that to you and Loam and other people who are more knowledgeable/interested in codifying phonetics. My only suggestion at the moment is that some letters could be given the same sound for the sake of consistency, if that becomes a problem. In German, the letter ß is often represented as SS, and both make the same sound. However, as I said, I prefer everything to make separate sounds. I trust you with it!

I edited my post a little before you posted so there is more things there to read, sorry xD

[Solitarian]

Yes, I saw. I edited my post too.

[VABritto]

Yes, I saw your further explanation of the cat phrase. The ultimate meaning is the same (i.e. don't be careless), so I think further refining of the phrase is unnecessary.

As before, I am no expert (or even amateur) of phonetics, and I am not so concerned about the system chosen for Dwarven. I leave that to you and Loam and other people who are more knowledgeable/interested in codifying phonetics. My only suggestion at the moment is that some letters could be given the same sound for the sake of consistency, if that becomes a problem. In German, the letter ß is often represented as SS, and both make the same sound. However, as I said, I prefer everything to make separate sounds. I trust you with it!

Also, I think that Fmid could be changed to Âmid since âmid means to listen, Âmid could mean listener. Fmid breaks the consonant rule so it could be best to keep it as Âmid.

I also just found out that dwarf_Language actually has already a word for One: Lod. So it might be best to change Nir to Lod since it is already in the files.

You're right! How did I not know that? There is also already a word for "first" (uthar). Oh dear. I have some edits to do!

It is why I wrote Firstborn son as Utharär in the Annals lol because of this "first". Funny enough there is no word for Second lol

[Solitarian]

language_DWARF has two words for "one":

   [T_WORD:ONE:lod]
   [T_WORD:ONE_PREF:nir]

I assume that PREF means prefix, so I am uncertain which I should pick to be my numeral 1. Perhaps nir is the number while lod is a nonspecific pronoun (e.g. one never knows what life may bring)? However, that would break the no pronouns rule, so that doesn't fit the codification. I'm not sure what to do with this. What do you think the difference between nir and lod should be?

[VABritto]

language_DWARF has two words for "one":

   [T_WORD:ONE:lod]
   [T_WORD:ONE_PREF:nir]

I assume that PREF means prefix, so I am uncertain which I should pick to be my numeral 1. Perhaps nir is the number while lod is a nonspecific pronoun (e.g. one never knows what life may bring)? However, that would break the no pronouns rule, so that doesn't fit the codification. I'm not sure what to do with this. What do you think the difference between nir and lod should be?

Now this is definitely a conundrum we got ourselves in. Let us think of what information we have:
Lod means one and is a noun.
Nir- means one and is a prefix.
Uthar means first and is a noun.

This means that in dwarven you can say "One" by itself, and it is a word on its own. But you can also say "One-[thing]" which sounds like... An adjective, but for some reason it is listed as a prefix and not an adjective. And we have First, which like English First is different from One.

This is what we have to go with...

Well, we have made it a principle of the language that words can be prefixed as an adjective. So Keshamkun means Curious cat. Nirkun would then mean One cat. Maybe Lod is used as a place holder when you want to adjectivize something WITH one (yes, kinda like a pronoun, but only used with an adjective, like Kironlod, Holy One). It is the only way I can think of to make sense of it. But I also think it can be useful so as to distinguish between someone who DOES something and someone who IS something. For example Ùdosîm could mean "Someone who makes wisdom" (which can be translated maybe as a very polished and polite word for Teacher or Author) while Dosîmlod would literally mean Wise One. Someone who IS wise. (It also permits us, funny enough, to translate Toady One's name to Dwarfish: Nodlod).

[VABritto]

Finished doing the L nouns.

10 out of 43 entries done.

You can check out all the entries already published at Dwarven Dictionary

[Solitarian]

That just made me realize that this is how we can mark plurality! Shámman can be used or you can use a number as an adjective. Perhaps a large number could be used as a generic "many". We do this frequently. A person might say "there were a million mosquitoes outside today" to mean that there were many mosquitoes (not literally one million).

Uthar can't be a noun. "First" is an adjective, as are all ordinal numbers.

I like your suggestion, and it is better than my ideas. I kept thinking of lod as being either a pronoun or an article, but Dwarven doesn't have those! Perhaps lod is one when the number is spoken in isolation, but if it is used as an adjective, then it must be nir. So zez-lod is 11, while Nirkun is one cat. That seems like exactly the sort of pointlessly confusing distinction that a real language would have. However, your suggestion seems more useful. I'll ponder this.

[VABritto]

That just made me realize that this is how we can mark plurality! Shámman can be used or you can use a number as an adjective. Perhaps a large number could be used as a generic "many". We do this frequently. A person might say "there were a million mosquitoes outside today" to mean that there were many mosquitoes (not literally one million).

Uthar can't be a noun. "First" is an adjective, as are all ordinal numbers.

I like your suggestion, and it is better than my ideas. I kept thinking of lod as being either a pronoun or an article, but Dwarven doesn't have those! Perhaps lod is one when the number is spoken in isolation, but if it is used as an adjective, then it must be nir. So zez-lod is 11, while Nirkun is one cat. That seems like exactly the sort of pointlessly confusing distinction that a real language would have. However, your suggestion seems more useful. I'll ponder this.

Sorry, yes. First is an adjective xD And yes, a way to differentiate what someone IS from what they DO can be pretty useful and remove a lot of confusion.

Another example: Ùturel = Student. Turellod = Learned One (another word for Scholar).

[VABritto]

An interesting word I got here is Milol. It means Messiah. I cannot possibly believe it is meant in the Abrahamic sense of The Messiah, so I imagine it actually is in the Hebrew sense of "Anointed One". Meshiach (messiah) was used in ancient times to refer to a King, Priest or Prophet that was anointed with holy oil. Usually only the first King of a line was anointed that way (according to Jewish practice) so in a way Milol could simply be a more honorable and dignified way of saying First King of a lineage (as in, who had to be anointed).

[Superdorf]

Ooh, I like that! I wondered briefly if the language might simply use "Messiah" to mean "savior" in a generalized sense, but there's already a word for that-- "tâmol". Your interpretation works much better.

[Solitarian]

How strange that Dwarven has some words which are oddly specific (like messiah), yet it has no word for snow.

[Superdorf]

Meta reply: When Toady set up the language files, he pretty much just created whatever words occurred to him at the time, then added more as the fancy took him. "Snow" never came up, but for whatever reason "messiah" did.

In-world reply: When you spend as much time underground as dwarves do, you don't pay so much attention to silly things like sky-ice! If dwarves need to mention snow by name, they can just call it "sky-ice" or "ice-rain" and leave it at that.