Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Socialist Threat]

Well i searched the forum but find nothing. I had a request regarding Dwarvish language recently - some guy wanted to make or translate the song into Dwarvish, something like that. I've got somewhat interested, naturally, being a linguistic student myself.

Well of course what made Toady One seems pretty fine and suits the goal - giving the name in Dwarvish - well. It seems to be pretty simple -no plural forms of nouns... no past tense..no prepositions...no inclinations. No auxilliary verbs.The reason why there's no prepositions, past tense and stuff - because there's no need in them, obviously. Though, it still could be enough to speak dwarvish, at least to be understood. It seems to be similar to Mandarin language, perhaps (I never studied it myself).

There seem to be no verb "be". But ok. we dont need the verb "be" to communicate. There's no "do" also, but this one can be substituted by the verb "act". I thought about using the auxilliary verb "to drink" instead of "to be" but it's bullshit of course lol.

Another problem would be the absense of predicate. Actually I believe there IS predicate in Dwarvish. Just...just Toady didn't need it. I mean, I could imply there's REALLY no predicate in Dwarvish, like, to say "Urist MacDwarf killed a goblin" (predicate = killed) we would need to change the sentence into "Urist MacDwarf the Goblinslayer". But it's totally crazy. Dwarves may be crazy, but not THAT crazy.

I need to know the grammar rules about using the predicate because it's somewhat important to understanding the text. Though, I guess the right and the main grammar rule would be "Write in English, but omit all the stuff and leave the words (stems) alone." There's also no modal verbs and no pronouns but it's not vitally important for communication. The language would be exceptionally simple, but it would be able to exist.

So, "You killed the goblin!" would become "Urist MacDwarf kill goblin". How do I distinguish it from imperative mood? Like, "You, kill the goblin!" Well it would be somewhat hard to achive but still possible, for example - the absense of exclamation mark. Or to use some special verb for imperative mood, like "go" (though, I think there's no verb "go" in Dwarvish as well). And, how would I distuinguish the names of dwarves from actual words? Urist could mean "the Dwarf named Urist" or it could mean "a dagger" instead.

Anyway, I dont want to add anything at all, just to find out the most obvious way how the Dwarvish language would look like.

I wonder if anyone tried to investigate the issue already? Maybe there're some ideas that I missed?

[RenoFox]

There is no grammar yet, only words. The next release will have books that can be read with a reading skill, but the grammar itself will be done later.

[Dsarker]

I think what he wants is for us to make the grammar.


Let's see. Let's make it one declension, one conjugation (unless the nouns and verbs would suggest otherwise). We'll have gender, that way we can differentiate between Dwarf Urist and dagger.

Let's see. We need a vowel consonant ending stem. Consonant changes for different cases. Vowel changes for different genders. Nice and simple, neh?

Verbs...let's see. No deponent, no irregular. I don't think Toady has deliberately kept verbs and nouns the same, just he hasn't needed to change it.

Verbal ending- vowel consonant vowel consonant. Change first vowel for mood. Change first consonant for passive/active. Change second vowel for person. Change last consonant for tense.

Participles....idk...

Adjectives follow nouns, except with different vowels.


Anything I've missed?

[peskyninja]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

MAGMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[Socialist Threat]

There is no grammar yet, only words. The next release will have books that can be read with a reading skill, but the grammar itself will be done later.

It seems making a grammar would be a somewhat secondary goal after all, really. Dont think it's gonna be finished soon.

I think what he wants is for us to make the grammar.

Well... not rather like that, I'm trying to find out what would be the most natural Dwarvish grammar choice.

We need a vowel consonant ending stem. Consonant changes for different cases. Vowel changes for different genders. Nice and simple, neh?

Well yeah, but(!) - it should correspond to the Game itself. We have some examples of the usage of Dwarvish in DF, so it shouldnt contradict. SO DF in general misses some important thing - the predicate. So here it would be possible to figure something out I think.

Like, if there's a creature ingame called... Adil Stibmermishos Adiltun Urvad (Adil Shorebeach the Walled Door of Seal)... then what we have here should correspond to the grammar rules we already have, anyway. Well, I agree still - it's pretty disambigious.

[Teneb]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

MAGMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I noticed the language files (especially the dwarf one) have no word for magma. That should be corrected.

[Powder Miner]

Capitalization. That is how you distinguish dagger (urist) and dorf (Urist)

[Dsarker]

How do you distinguish new sentences? Do we have punctuation at all?

[Slazia]

I would suggest having at least 100 words for magma. In addition, I would also suggest around 50 or so for tantrum spiral.

[cephalo]

Here is the quote from my queen in her story from my latest fort Praisegems (link in sig).

“Nåst Lirukïngiz mïkstal tholoram, Lirukïngiz ud mïkstal ágoram!”

“I will show you that the Violent Ceiling owns the deep world, and how it will soon own the world above!”

I kindof had to fudge a few things while pouring through the language files. But it still sounds pretty dwarfy. I'd hate to try and pronounce it though.