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[Dwarf]

Good evening, fellows.

Both as a tribute to Dwarf Fortress and a linguistic adventure, it struck me that the Dwarves of Dwarf Fortress need a proper language.
We have some literal material to go by, but as I will describe later, it is of questionable usefulness.
Ideally, we'd have a phonology, grammar, own alphabet (most likely runic) and, last but not least, a basic vocabulary, since most day-to-day conversation requires a fairly small set of words.

Now, on vocabulary…
Whilst we do have the language files, we are presented with two problems:

a) It seems that Toady One has not created words with great consistency. For example, blood is nazush, whilst bloody is nashon, or metun, than, gesul, which are cross (noun), cross (verb) and cross (adjective), respectively. Whilst this could likely be made possible with some grammatical rules, it will get complicated.

b) The language file vocabulary is highly limited. Any claims of canonity by using Toady's language files would be negated by the need to create new words.

Thus, we are presented with a difficult choice; One one side, I believe that to be able to be called an even unofficial Dwarf Fortress language requires some canonity, this will make the language undoubtedly harder to understand and to design, and easiness is something I'd like to strive for in order to make the language as usable as possible.

Your thoughts?

[Ironhand]

Cross as an adjective means "angry".

And all three of those "cross" words mean completely different things.
I think that it would be kinda ridiculous if they all were spelled the same way.
English does that, but that's just sort of a weird, annoying coincidence.

[Dwarf]

Ah, thanks for that.
Corrected and it never happened.

[smigenboger]

It would be interesting to have a language with no metaphoric states of being.

What grammar style were you going to knock-off? Grammar could separate barbaric from civilised.

[Dwarf]

I meant that, with some grammatical engineering, one could surely make nazush for blood and nashon for bloody work, probably by using na- as root and different endings to make it into an adjective or noun…

Which, come to think of it, is not really complicated and an awesome idea.

With na- as root for "blood" (but not meaning anything on it's own), one could attach -zush to make it a noun, or -shon for an adjective, and, for example, -shone for a comparative adjective, or -zushen as defined article… It's an interesting twist.

[Supermikhail]

Is this by any chance inspired by The Language Construction Kit I've advertised at the Bay12 Writers Guild? Or intends to make some use of? (Really, in case it isn't, because the LCK would an awesome aid to the process).

[Dwarf]

Ah, I found this link otherwise. There are much more helpful websites in my opinion, though.

[Supermikhail]

I don't know, I'd really like to see a link of two of proof, that they can boast of so much information and so many ideas. Although, I'm not trying to start a dispute over likes and dislikes. What do your sites suggest one should start with?

By the way, anybody knows what's the accent Captaintastic (I believe) used in his DF shorts? I think it could be relied on in the current work.

P.S. And then, if one were to go by any reliable, professional source, constructing a language for DF would quickly become a ridiculous idea, because DF doesn't have any real history (being procedural and each run different) to make the language evolve to its current state. For example, I thought, how cool it would be if dwarves borrowed some words from goblins or elves. But what words and if they would borrow, would depend on what interactions the races had, and each alternate procedural universe would have different interactions.

P.P.S. Before becoming disenchanted, I stumbled on this site that could be an inspiration for the project.

[Dwarf]

This website is very useful.

But yet again, my approach does not work, except if we had a plethora of different endings. It's far easier to use fairly different words for 'bloody' and 'bloodied' (and thus, for all other adjectives).

[Dwarf]

That being said, I will come up with a basic phonology shortly. I'd like each diacritic to represent its own sound, that is, to make pronunciation as easy as possible.

EDIT: I think I'll go for a generally low-sounding, vowel rich phonology, with soft consonants, on which I'd like to hear your thoughts afterwards.

[Supermikhail]

You know what it entails? Recording the sounds of the language in as goofy a voice as possible!

Wow, I can't even read the language file correctly. Anybody know what the encoding is?

[Dwarf]

It's Codepage 437.
Andux was so nice as to convert them.

[Dwarf]

Here we've got a first quite basic draft.

Also, I yet have to upload some of my voicings I'm sure you'll be able to hold your horses for mah sexeh voice.

EDIT: Here is my pronunciation of the IPA part, if your'e interested. Likely, my pronunciation of ʊ and ɒ is a bit shabby,

[Supermikhail]

Wow, that was amazing! And language files in an easily readable format! But, why did you choose the sounds that you chose?

[Dwarf]

I chose them for the general sound I was aiming for, that is, generally low-sounding. ɛ, which is fairly common, is lacking for example, for it wouldn't fit in
The phonology is quite bland as of yet, I'll think I'll try to figure out some system of long and short vowels.