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[superfuzz3519]

hi all i hate to dilly daly so lets get started
first of all the suggestion part.
the langauge of the dawarfs should be seperated by class, ie nobles and commoners
The first one is Formal Dwarf.
Formal dwarf is spoken by nobles, at a formal party, trading, in court, and anything noble related.
It is harder dwarf to learn so it is not spoken between the commmon people and is only spoken by nobles.
Common Dwarf is easier to learn cuz its simple. it is spoken buy people in a non-noblity seat.
the nobles refuse to speek it cuz its wat seperates them
fill free to add or change.
NOW PART II
I look at my options for naming my fortress/dwarves; impressive (100+ pages) but it could use more
therefore i now want to suggest/ force a over haul of the dwarven langauge system.
even if i have to read a dictonaty word for word.
also i would like to know how the hell the creators came up with the dwarven words!

[Neonivek]

the langauge of the dawarfs should be seperated by class, ie nobles and commoners

It isn't always entirely different languages it is often single words.

For example the words "Beef" and "Pork" came from this distinction... though eventually it stuck for everyone.

[superfuzz3519]

For example the words "Beef" and "Pork" came from this distinction... though eventually it stuck for everyone.

true but there is no pork in DF

[Capntastic]

Entomology is the study of insects.   Just a little etymology for ya'.

[NW_Kohaku]

Dear Forum,

The leaves are starting to turn, and I was thinking of you. 

People seriously need to stop putting greetings and nonsensical conversational bits at the start of their posts.  This, especially combined with the horrendous grammar  (much less on a topic about dwarven grammar) immediately convince me that anything you have to say are completely worthless, and that it isn't worth the pain of the spelling errors to even read what you write.  These aren't old-fashioned mailed greeting cards, we don't need formal greetings or signatures.

The weather is here, I wish you were beatiful.

Love,
NW_Kohaku

[Medicine Man]

This has the most horrible lack of spelling possible,please for the love of Armok use a SPELLCHECKER.Sorry about that rant but please at least make your writing readable.

[Kilo24]

This has the most horrible lack of spelling possible,please for the love of Armok use a SPELLCHECKER.Sorry about that rant but please at least make your writing readable.

That wouldn't fix the egregious error in the title.

About how he came up with the language: I seem to recall Toady mentioning generating the words randomly for each language then manually combing through to make sure that naughty words were not generated.  If you look around on the forums, some other people have come up with similar scripts to generate languages IIRC.

And here I was hoping for some actual entomology... now it's going to bug me all day.

[Neonivek]

I have to say though... You REALLY wouldn't notice the differences in language once you know the language.

[VoidPointer]

And here I was hoping for some actual entomology... now it's going to bug me all day.

I could try and figure out how blood gnats evolved the ability to rot food through ☼steel barrel☼s, if you'd like.

[therahedwig]

Well, what you describe only happens when the nobility is a genuinely different people from the commoners.

The difference between a language spoken by a people and a subgroup there-of(like nobles) is usually that the subgroup uses different words, but not a whole language all-together. In a society like western society today where people are able to become whatever class they want as long as they work for it, you mostly notice this in the use of 'fancy' words.

But a completely different language would be like the Jews with their Yiddish. They were a completely different people, completely different culture and religion and on top of that, they were gettho'd(is that a word?).

Then there's things like, the invasion of Great Britain by the French, they took control, and happily kept speaking their own language, which is why modern English contains so many words of French origin.

And then you'd actually get to proper etymology.
Toady would have to write a system that would first create some base-languages, then when those entities spread out, the language spreads out. When isolation happens, the local language starts modifying itself(idealy based on what kind of things are important to the community, a sheparding people use different words then a seafaring people). When one entity conquers the other, the conquered might not speak that language straight away(unless that happens to be some mandate) but the vocabulary of one language may bleed into the other. This would also happen in cities where people are constantly confronted with foreigners, like a harbour or a capital.

Of course, in the end you have to ask yourself: What would this mean for the gameplay? That every three villages you visit have a different dialect your adventurer would have to get used to? A separate skill for every formal language in a world? Or just ignore it in it's entirety? (Or maybe that you don't have to pay attention to the languages for conversation purposes, but perhaps having to do so to figure out writings you'd find on tombs and old books)