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[Janne Joensuu]

The current grammar is awful and horrible. I was happily modding it for something better, and finally finished it - just to find the new version added hundreds of words.   I lost interest for a while, but I decided to make a new post about my project and things I learned while doing it.

First, most words used in Dwarf Fortress names are nouns, verbs or adjectives. I'll use adjectives windy and yellow, nouns beast and mace and verbs murder and craft as examples.

You might think that names would be in the format: Windy-mace or Yellow-beast; or alternatively, Beast-mace or Mace-beast, or even Crafted-beast or Murdered-mace. In reality, you're likely to get names such as Beasts-windy, Yellow-murders, Crafts-windy or Yellow-windy.

I went through all the words of the old language files, and changed the words so that almost all adjectives are only available as front-compounds; I limited most nouns to only be only singular when they are a front-compound and singular and plural when they are rear-compounds; I made hyphen-compound words very limited. It works, to an extent. You are more likely to get Bluesyrup or Spearbeasts or Coppergold than some of the worse names. However, I can't change verbs, and they are currently one of the biggest problems as far as names go.

I also changed nouns' availability as the Words of Words. The Abbey and the Abbeys are fine, as an example, but the Ant isn't - I changed it to plural-only. Similarly, of Beer is good, but of Noses isn't. Also, quite surprisingly, most of the actor (cook, hammerer, smasher, crasher) words weren't available as "the actors". I changed them all to only be allowed as rear-compounds (s. or pl.) and as the-compounds (s. or pl.), to allow names such as -cook, -smashers, the X diggers and the Y cook.

Let's think about the name "boat-murdered" for a while. It could have been Murdered-boat or Murdering-boat. It could have used a noun instead, to be Boat-murder or Murder-boat. As far as the irregular verbs go (e.g. speak, speaks, spoke, spoken, speaking), Spoken-boat is better than Spoke-boat, as are Stolen-boat and Broken-boat. I don't know the correct names for the forms of the verbs, but the examples should give you the idea.

During my project, I removed some words. It might have been a stupid decision, because it means that the modded language files won't work with existing games. However, no-one, ever, nowhere, should be named anything-proliferated, and something-bellies isn't much better.

I'll continue my grammatic project when I can gather the courage to do so, but I'd like to hear other people's opinions as well. I'd be delighted if some form of community-created language files eventually got into the Dwarf Fortress proper, because language overhaul should be done before or later, and it would be a waste of Toady's time to go through hundreds of words.

I could go on and give examples, but I'll upload the updated language files when I get to that, or possibly even the currently incomplete ones if there's interest.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

This sounds kind of neat.

It does sound, however, as if the changes you are making are fairly non-intrusive. As such, I would suggest you get in contact with Toady himself. Maybe you could send him the completely corrected grammar files so he can add them in the official release which would then reduce the problem of new words and mixing updates.

The reason why I  suggest this is that you are not altering gameplay, so it is very likely that Toady would not mind the alteration of the naming style (well, it could still be that the current style is deliberate, of course). Thus, I think he might be interested in someone providing data cleaned up in that fashion.

Deathworks

[Red Jackard]

Would you like to take a look at the language mod I've worked on?

I feel this sort of project is something where people should combine their efforts - it can grow pretty tedious.

[Cthulhu]

This is a good idea, the names are funny, but when you're trying to seriously solo-RP, it gets into the way when you find towns named Snugglebeast; or you're known to the people as The Unkind Ink of Whales.

[Drakale]

I always assumed that the names where a rough translation of their dwarven equivalent, wich may sound good in dwarven but their meaning is lost to us. Kinda like taking a chinese name too litteraly might not mean anything in english, but sounds good in chinese... To be honest i like the wackiness of the original name generator, it gives a feeling the dwarves live in a totally different and strange culture/world.

[Crafty Barnardo]

This looks like a solution in search of a problem to me.  
I don't really see why Murderedboat or Murderingboat is 'better' than Boatmurdered.  The names aren't really sentences that are supposed to have literal meaning.

[Red Jackard]

It's a preference, so if you are fine with the current setup it may seem unnecessary.

[Draco18s]

quote:Originally posted by Drakale:
<STRONG>I always assumed that the names where a rough translation of their dwarven equivalent, wich may sound good in dwarven but their meaning is lost to us. Kinda like taking a chinese name too litteraly might not mean anything in english, but sounds good in chinese... To be honest i like the wackiness of the original name generator, it gives a feeling the dwarves live in a totally different and strange culture/world.</STRONG>

Like a street in Hawaii translating to "Whale Gonad."  It makes sense, but why would any (English Speaking) person name a road that?

I also don't see anything wrong with "Boat Murdered."  It's not a Murdering Boat, nor is it a Murdered Boat.  It's "Murdered By Boat."

I agree there are some really kinda silly names, but I think it's more of that very specific combination of words, not so much "this kind of word and that kind of word" issue.

[Janne Joensuu]

quote:Originally posted by Deathworks:
<STRONG>It does sound, however, as if the changes you are making are fairly non-intrusive. As such, I would suggest you get in contact with Toady himself. Maybe you could send him the completely corrected grammar files so he can add them in the official release which would then reduce the problem of new words and mixing updates.</STRONG>

I haven't completed the files, and as I said above, I removed some words... If I wanted this to become official, I'd have to re-enter couple of dozen words back into the language files, because otherwise old worlds wouldn't be compatible with whatever version started using my edited language files. I'd also want people's opinion on the mod before making it official.

I'd like to see some way to control verbs, because verbs are such an annoyance at the moment. There are verbs for everything, and it seems at least a third of all names have verb in them.

quote:Originally posted by Red Jackard:
<STRONG>Would you like to take a look at the language mod I've worked on?

I feel this sort of project is something where people should combine their efforts - it can grow pretty tedious.</STRONG>

AFAIK, your mod only adds words, and relatively few of them. Unless you did the alphabeticalization via a script, one of us would have to do everything all over again.

I have a list of 180 or so words I'll check for and add, eventually, after I've fixed the existing words. I could use help in that, since I don't have any easy way to generate random names for the various languages. If someone's interested in helping in helping with the existing words, I could post the rules I've used after I find my notes.

As far as Boat-murdered... well, consider different verbs, such as to wreck, to speak, to beguil and to bathe. All exist in DF. Boat-wrecked, boat-spoken, boat-beguiled and boat-bathed don't work as well a wrecked-boat, spoken-boat, beguiled-boat or bathed-boat, even though weird combinations are still possible. Wrecking-boat, speaking-boat, beguiling-boat and bathing-boat are actually pretty bad, so I'd rather not see them either. The only good way to resolve this would be to allow us to control how different verbs are used, similar to how other words can be categorized as various compounds.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[Nesoo]

Just imagine the names as literal translations of Dwarven idioms: phrases that don't mean what they literally say, such as "cat got your tongue" or "frog in your throat". There was a good German one that I learned too, but I don't remember it any more  

Edit: The word "of" is your friend.

[ March 05, 2008: Message edited by: Nesoo ]

[Draco18s]

quote:Originally posted by penguinofhonor:
<STRONG>Boat-wrecked sounds just fine to me.</STRONG>

Sure does.  Here, let's replace boat (a noun) with another noun (like ship).

Ship-wrecked

[Zeofar]

It could simply be explained that it is the most raw, literal translation of the words. This makes sense too, as Toady has not made complete languages with complete and perfect translations. Also, since the languages may not follow the same sentence construction rules, it makes good sense the way it is.

As a real world example, in Arabic, there is a way to say things like "Eveningly" and "Morningly", not being the same thing as "Every evening" and "Every morning", as there are different ways to say that. Aside, from this the strange names are part of the spirit of the game and it is foolish to change them. It is like telling the Tamarians to stop speaking in riddles.

[Janne Joensuu]

quote:Originally posted by Zeofar:
<STRONG>As a real world example, in Arabic, there is a way to say things like "Eveningly" and "Morningly", not being the same thing as "Every evening" and "Every morning", as there are different ways to say that. Aside, from this the strange names are part of the spirit of the game and it is foolish to change them. It is like telling the Tamarians to stop speaking in riddles.</STRONG>

It's the same in Finnish, which is my native language. Instead of adding small words before or after other words, the words itself change shape.

As far as "they're poor translations" go, they are poor English and I don't like that. I want to make them sound and look better. If someone likes the strange names, good for them; if someone else would like to see something better, I'll try to get closer to that.

[Red Jackard]

quote:Originally posted by Janne Joensuu:
<STRONG>AFAIK, your mod only adds words, and relatively few of them. Unless you did the alphabeticalization via a script, one of us would have to do everything all over again.

I have a list of 180 or so words I'll check for and add, eventually, after I've fixed the existing words. I could use help in that, since I don't have any easy way to generate random names for the various languages. If someone's interested in helping in helping with the existing words, I could post the rules I've used after I find my notes. </STRONG>

Not only extra words, there's other tweaking in it. The alphabetizing I did by hand.

I may have misunderstood your intention; it sounded as though you were grooming the existing vocabulary and deleting oddities, not entire words. Like removing OF_NOUN_PLUR from BILE, because when would the phrase "of Biles" ever sound good? Guess I'll wait to see what you come up with.

[ March 06, 2008: Message edited by: Red Jackard ]