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Author Topic: The Language Expansion  (Read 517 times)

PTTG??

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The Language Expansion
« on: July 10, 2009, 03:55:04 pm »
I have often found myself running up against a wall when naming my fortresses and adventurers; and that is the limited dictionaries of the races.

I propose that rather than force Toady One to take time away from coding to invent new Dwarfy words and give them each a set of spheres and meanings, we instead create a new dictionary ourselves, expanding on the old one perhaps many dozens of times.

The way we would do this is to take a real-life dictionary and simply assign random dwarven words for every common RL word. We would also attempt to differentiate between plural and various verb conjugations throughout the current language, while keeping some key words the same.

Most likely, we would split up the task by letter or some other measure. Is anyone else interested in a project like this?
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AngryToad

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Re: The Language Expansion
« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2009, 04:25:42 pm »
Sounds cool, and useful, of course.

I might not be able to help, (due to my severe lack of the ability to make up words) but, still.

Go for it.

Sky's the limit.

Hoo-rah.
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Vattic

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Re: The Language Expansion
« Reply #2 on: July 10, 2009, 04:44:45 pm »
An interesting idea, you could use a method similar to the one Toady used. He generated the languages and then read over them to make sure there wasn't anything wrong. To make the languages unique from each other and to make words from the same language look like they are from the same language he gave the random generator biases as to what letters to choose. He spoke of it in the last podcast, I think it was nearer the end where he spoke of generating card games.
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Bloogonis

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Re: The Language Expansion
« Reply #3 on: July 10, 2009, 06:32:42 pm »
for this to work right there needs to be a phonetic alphabet of the languages. This way the words would make sense and could be translated more easily. I'm not sure there is one, it looks like it is "English word -> Dwarf word"

Ex: of how it might be workable
 
  • Letter groups equals letter
    BOW: egdoth = Eg + Doth
    BURY: ostar = Os + Tar
  • Word groups equal related words(more complicated)
    ARROW:feb
    SHOOT:keskal
    Bow would then become BOW:Febkeskal

Both of these would mean some existing words might change but it would give a strong base for the project.
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