Subject: What is a language?
Author:
Posted on: 2019-11-11 11:59:25 UTC
Technically, Al Bhed is precisely as regular a language as English. It has grammatical rules you can follow, and instances where those break. Okay, it includes words like 'funmtc', with a string of four consonants, but the pronunciation rules work around that. And the letters are quite pretty. I think I may allow it. :)
hS
I have a project in mind which involves writing the same message in multiple fictional languages, preferably in their own writing systems. Slight problem - while I can do a decent job of Middle-earth languages (link slightly NSFW I guess, though more so if you happen to read archaic Qenya or Gnomish), I don't actually know any other fictional languages. I've previously been gifted names in a few, and have transcribed them accordingly:
... but I wouldn't even know where to start on constructing my own material in them.
I've crafted a simple inscription in English:
We are the children of myriad worlds. Once we wandered lost, but now we have found each other. We join our hands in friendship, and by our hands we build a new world together.
... and, as is my wont, translated it into Quenya:
Nalvë híni linambaron. Yáressë ranyanelvë, hecili, mal sin ihírielvë elvë. Nútalvë málilva nilmenen, ar málilvainen ocáralvë Vinyambar.
So can anyone help by offering up any more?
('Fictional' language can be taken slightly loosely; if we happen to have anyone fluent in Toki Pona or somesuch, I'd be happy to accept it. The key requirement is that it must have a native writing system which isn't used on Earth - sorry, Esperanto speakers!)
hS
While we have a lexicon and alphabet, I've been able to find very little in the way of grammar, even of a basic sort. It's difficult, therefore, to make translations into Tau'sia of more than, like, A word. I might just have to get back to you on that one. =[
This has been the very rare sad Scapeface. It shows up but briefly, in times of woe and mourning.
This project will be woefully incomplete if it doesn't have representation from our favourite Space Socialists-Slash-Mind-Controllers!
I have managed to find what asserts itself to be a 'complete grammar' of Tau'sia... but it's in Spanish. This is the link, and this is a different link. It has sections on pronouns, verb tenses, and prepositions (at least), but I don't know enough about Tau'sia to say whether it's based on official information.
I implore you, though, to continue your research until you find the answer. It is, after all, for the greater good. ^_~
hS
The word list used in the Gramatica linked appears to be the one from ATT's living lexicon, which is actually a lot LESS complete than the Expanded Lexicon most commonly used (link here). None of that seems to be canonical, but the GW approach to Tau'sia is "who gives a rat's arse" so canon is really more of a general guideline here than a strict rule. However, a little more digging has turned up
But it might take me a few days. I've not practiced either for a while (being rather more focussed on the ten RL languages I'm trying to learn at the moment, with varying degrees of success).
If anyone else gets there first, feel free to jump in.
Elcalion, polyglot
We are the children of myriad worlds. Once we wandered lost, but now we have found each other. We join our hands in friendship, and by our hands we build a new world together.
Literal: We children of-worlds many. We wandered by-lostness once but we already-find to-us now. We join hands-our for-friendship and we will build from-hands-our by-togetherness world-new.
Kisha yalli rhaesheseri sani. Kisha verish k'athleizar kash kashi, vosma kisha ray ezish kishaan ajjin. Kisha akkemolaki qoraes kishi okeokhaan, ma kisha amarilaki qorasoa kishi k'athniyanqoyar rhaesheseres sash.
I don't think Dothraki has a native writing system in-universe (whereas HV presumably does but it's just unknown to us). I guess that same HV font you used might be your best bet?
Elcalion
Obviously as a Tolkienist I am contractually bound to reject the writings of Gurrm out of hand, but languages are too much fun for that. I AM A FREE SPIRIT. ^_^
hS
Here's my best crack, although far from idiomatic I'm sure
īlon riñari vȳhoti naenȳti iksi. īlon qrīdropatre aerēptiti, yn īlon pontālī sīr rhaenti . īlon ondossi raquiroti imazumbili, īlon gieri ondossi vȳs arlio mazverdili .
Elcalion, subject object verbing
I'm posting the word-by-word rough version of this translation as well so perhaps one day I can fix/improve
Re-ordered version to fit HV syntax:
We children of-worlds-myriad are. we once-lost wandered, but now we each-other have-found. We our-hands in-friendship will-join, and we together by-our-hands world-new will-build.
HV:
We īlon (1st person plural pronoun)
children riñari (accusative collective plural of riña, 'child')
of-worlds-myriad vȳhoti naenȳti (genitive plural of vȳs, 'world'; postpositive genitive plural of naenie, 'multitude')
are. iksi (1st person plural of sagon 'to be')
we īlon
once-lost qrīdropatre (past-habitual participle of qrīdropagon 'to be lost')
wandered, aerēptiti (past-habitual 1st person plural of aerēbagon, 'to travel, move over great distance')
but yn
we īlon
each other pontālī
now sīr
have found rhaenti (1st person perfect plural of rhaenagon, 'to find')
we īlon
our hands ondossa (technically just 'hands' rather than 'our hands', probably missing a possessive or genitive construction here). Possibly should be ondossa īlo 'hands our')
in friendship raquiroti (locative plural of raquiros 'friend', literally 'in friends').
have-joined, imazumbili (future 1st person plural of imazumbagon 'to join') - technically this is 'will join' and probably should have used imazumbti which is the perfect 'have joined'
we īlon
together, gieri (nominative plural of giez, 'together')
by-our-hands, ondossi (instrumental plural of ondos 'hand'), I originally had 'ondossa' which is the nominative plural
world-new, vȳs arlio, (accusative singular of vȳs, 'planet'; adjectival form of arlie, 'new')
will-build, mazverdili, (1st person plural future of mazverdagon 'to create, build')
I don't know how it sounds in the show, but reading it gives me a fairly Russian feel (check out that 'mazverdili' at the end). Despite hitting the same harsh consonants as Nesh's Dragon Speech, it feels very different.
Now, this next is a bit of a cheat, because technically High Valyrian is only seen written in the Latin alphabet in the show. But, it's written in a lovely old style which there just happens to be a free font available for, and so:
With the flowing tails, I think it looks sufficiently 'un-English' to count. ^_^
hS
Reminds me of a mix of Spanish and Turkish. The grammar and system of pronouns is very Turkish but some of the consonant sounds are very Spanish. It has four genders, multiple declension and eight cases so I cannot guarantee that I have got the grammar perfect, but it would probably be intelligible even if unidiomatic.
It looks amazing in that font!
Elcalion, language geek
The Al Bhed language in Final Fantasy X is a simple substitution cipher from English, so your phrase gets converted letter-for-letter into this:
"Fa yna dra lremtnah uv soneyt funmtc. Uhla fa fyhtanat mucd, pid huf fa ryja vuiht aylr udran. Fa zueh uin ryhtc eh vneahtcreb, yht po uin ryhtc fa piemt y haf funmt dukadran."
Pronounced: "FEah aenah de-raah lu-raeaym-tenah-ha oo-fu seeohneayae-te feoonm-te-ku. OO-ha-luah feah feae-ha-teahnah-te moo-ku-de, peee-de haoo-fe feah raae-jaeah fuooee-ha-te ahae-lu-ra oo-de-raahn. FEah zooeay-ha ooeen raae-ha-te-ku eay-ha funeayah-ha-te-ku-raeay-bae, ae-ha-te peoh ooeen raae-ha-te-ku feah peeeeaym-te ae haah-fe feoonm-te deoo-kukah-de-raahn."
(All above content from the translation site I linked in my first line.)
But there's also an official alphabet, which I'm amused to see has capital letters created by stretching out the lowercase letters in a Microsoft Publisher-sort of program.
My other, probably not not good idea, is, well . . . to put the phrase through this.
<_<
—doctorlit was going to include the angelic script from James Rollins's The Judas Strain, but upon looking it up again, the cipher provided in the novel gives multiple angelic characters for the same English letter, and therefore is less helpful than the Unown suggestion
Technically, Al Bhed is precisely as regular a language as English. It has grammatical rules you can follow, and instances where those break. Okay, it includes words like 'funmtc', with a string of four consonants, but the pronunciation rules work around that. And the letters are quite pretty. I think I may allow it. :)
hS
These are all pretty awesome, though!
I don't know if they work, but there's always Enochian Supernatural, aka the angelic language (which I will fully confess I only know about at this point) or the mix of American English and magled Mandarin Chinese that Firefly is famed for. XD
My Mando'a translation was cobbled together over about half an hour. If you've got actual knowledge of the language (or even just more time), I'd love to see your version!
I don't think the Firefly one would work - I seem to recall it's mostly 'English with Mandarin cursing' - but Enochian I know nothing about. Hmm...
hS
With many thanks to Iximaz for pointing me at Star Wars, I've managed to put together a Mando'a [Mandalorian] translation:
Mhi ori'sol uvete'ade. Mhi ru kemi echoy'la, a'jii mhi mar'eyi cuun tsad. Cuun gaane burcyan'yc to, bal mhi pirimmu cuun gaane nau'ur evaar'la me'suum tome.
We [are] many worlds-children. We once walk searching, but now we find our alliance. Our hands [are a] friendship connection, and we use our hands to forge [lit. 'light up'] [a] young planet together.
Mando'a doesn't really use the very 'to be', so the first sentence is a little ambiguous, but I don't think that's a problem. I love the fact that the closest word for 'build' turned out to be the verb 'light up' - because it comes from the phrase nau'ur kad, 'to light up a saber'. ^_^
And, thanks to a lovely transcription service, we have an in-universe text at last:
hS
Much as I'd love to give Klingon a shot, I really only know the good curses, there. :P I can take a stab at the Ancient Language from Eragon, though it would only be for funsies since it sadly does not have its own script.
Anyway: A-hem—
We are the children of myriad worlds. Once we wandered lost, but now we have found each other. We join our hands in friendship, and by our hands we build a new world together.
Vae eru du kynn abr vaetnaí íliaí. Framvír, vae vrangro unin rauthr, mar hávr verda darmthrell. Vae gatho lamar nen vinar, un medh thorna lamar vae malthinae frëma íliaí.
(Direct translation: We are the people of scattered lands [literally, places]. Before, we wandered in misfortune, but have become brothers. We join/unite hands as friends, and with those hands we create more lands [places].)
Hoo! Okay, that was a lot of jumping through metaphorical hoops. Lots of missing words from the dictionary, not a fun thing to be stuck with. I'm 99% sure I conjugated all the verbs properly, though... eeks.
As a side note—you could consider looking into Aurebesh from Star Wars? It would be a pretty simple 1-1 cipher since Galactic Basic is just kinda... English. :P
That's actually really surprising - I figured it would have followed right on the heels of the map. Maybe it depends on what sort of fantasy he was reading; the Eddingses didn't play much with alphabets, for instance. (DId they not even come up with one for the movie?)
Anyhow, thank you! I think part of the fun of this is working around exactly the sort of vocab holes you mention. We were never going to end up with exact translations, and the more fragmentary the language, the more exciting the circumlocutions will end up being. ^_^
You can definitely see the Norse influences in the Ancient Language, like that 'hávr' in the middle, and the English sentence structure is also pretty clear. My big question is: what is the word for 'places'? I can't see anything in common between vaetnaí íliaí and malthinae frëma, which I think should both contain it ('scattered lands' and 'create more lands' respectively, right?).
~
I remain mildly peeved that Galactic Basic is just English. That said, if we're talking Star Wars, I think Karen Traviss made a decently functional Mando'a language, and that has its own alphabet. Hmm...
(There must be someone in the PPC Trekkie enough to know Klingon, right? ^_^)
hS
So according to the Wikia, there is a script for the Ancient Speech, and it's... well, it's about what you'd expect from Paolini:
"The Liduen Kvaedhi was a special script invented by the Elves for writing in the Ancient Language. It was designed to be the most beautiful form of writing possible. Words and sentences were written in glyphs that changed depending on the context of the word. The names of Dragon Riders' swords were engraved on the blades and sheaths in this script. Also, unlike the spoken form of this language, there was "no barrier to writing fiction". The script consisted of 42 basic letters which could be re-arranged into a nearly infinite amount of glyphs."
(Ix, I figure you know this, but hopefully other people will read too.)
The Wikia shows three glyphs, on a pair of swords and a ring. It looks like they do represent the same system, but given that the words shown are 'Brisingr', 'Zar'roc', and 'Yawë', I'm not sure we can draw any conclusions about the letter-symbols that make them up. The sources are the deluxe edition of Eldest, and Eragon's Guide to Alagaësia, so there might be more information out there... it's hard to tell.
... right, so apparently Paolini drew some glyphs in the Guide, though they're not translated. I think the double-headed axe is Zar'roc's, and the one down and left of it is Brisingr's, and the top-left is definitely 'Yawë' but the others stand untranslated (and it's possible the ones we know are concept-glyphs, not actually spelt out.)
It's frustratingly clear that he has at least some of the alphabet written out, but doesn't seem to have ever shared it... ai Elbereth.
hS
Since we have next to no examples of it, I figured it pretty much wasn't worth mentioning.
I did go back and fix the mistake—íliaí got left out in the second half of the phrase. ^^;
But there might be enough examples to do something with, actually. Paolini's art portfolio contains another named example (Wyrda, at the end of the first block), and there's this piece which may contain glyphs not in the previous item. It also has a crossed-through note - can anyone interpret it?
And there... might be more? It's kind of hard to figure out. I think that probably is it. But between the four named glyphs, plus the... half dozen or so unnamed, maaaaaybe we can work something out? Odds are probably better if someone can work out the struckthrough note.
hS
The key piece of evidence is that 'Brisingr' and 'Yawë', despite not sharing a single letter, have a very prominent 'dagger' symbol in common. If they're both written using the same 'alphabet', then I think the system is so opaque as to be undecipherable.
(I suspect that Paolini just drew symbols he liked the look of, and that there's no actual system in place. I may be wrong, though.)
hS
I don't think I'm especially good with any fictional language. However, the Dragon Tongue from Skyrim is fairly well developed and has its own script. I've taken a stab at a translation:
Mu los kiir do pogaan leinne. Ont mu rovaan sizaan, nuz nu mu siiv pahsemu. Mu gron haalu ol fahdonne, ahrk naal haalu mu wahl goraan lein ol zeymahzinne.
Literally:
We are children of many worlds. Once we wandered lost, but now we find all-of-us. We link our hands as allies, and by our hands we build [a] young world as companions.
Notes:
There is, of course, Klingon, but I know absolutely nothing about working with that one.
~Neshomeh
Because buried on that link was a handy transcriber, and so:
The letter that really stands out is that N, partly because it's doubled so often, partly because it has a very lonely dot on top of it. If you're a dragon scoring the rock, it's probably also quite tricky to write - you have to bend your hand right around to do it. Fun stuff. ^_^
hS
I wasn't sure if you'd found it. Glad you did. ^_^
If the plurals get annoying, you can always drop them. Like I said, they're totally optional when context makes the meaning clear.
~Neshomeh
This is the first sentence of your translation, done on plasticine. ;) My letter-forms could definitely be clearer; Dragon Speech uses three wedge lengths, plus one square dot, but mine are kind of all over the place. (In fairness, my Latin handwriting isn't much better!)
I really love the detail you put into the translation, and the way you explained your thought process. I think the only feature of interest in the Quenya version is that I coined the word 'Vinyambar', 'New World'. That's Elves for you, right? Naming everything.
hS
IIRC, they designed the script to look like something that might be carved into stone with large talons. {= )
Meanwhile, under the heading of "because I can [maybe]," I decided it would be fun to translate Tolkien's "All That Is Gold" into the Dragon Language. Interestingly, the bit I'm struggling the most with is "deep roots." We don't have either of those words in Dragon, so I'm having to come up with some way around it, and since I'm also attempting to make a poetic translation, it's really messing with my ability to form a meter, let alone rhyme at all. {= P
Still, I've got the first half of each verse working reasonably well at the moment:
All that is gold does not glitter
Ni viintaas los pah faraan
(Not shining is all wealth)
Not all those who wander are lost
Ni sizaan los pah wo rovaan
(Not lost are all who wander)
And then:
From the ashes, a fire shall be woken
Nol krah heim, yol fent alok
(From cold forge, fire shall arise)
A light from the shadows shall spring
Nol vulom, kun fent alok
(From darkness, light shall arise)
I'll get the rest eventually. ^_^
~Neshomeh
I'm imagining this to be from the universe where Tolkien and Lewis collaborated on Lord of the Rings - and so Bilbo's Ring, rather than corrupting the spirit, instead progressively turns you into a dragon. Now the former Hobbit crouches in the former troll cavern, scratching his poems into the walls, waiting for the Ranger he has heard rumour of to come and free him - though whether from the curse or from his life, Bilbo no longer cares to consider.
hS
Here's the original for reference:
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes, a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
And in Dragon, with translation alongside:
Ni yuvon los pah fin faraan, (Not golden is all the wealth)
Ni sizaan los pah wo rovaan; (Not lost are all who wander)
Kruziik reyth neh fen vokiin, (Venerable tree never will unbecome)
Zok tum silsos dreh ni diin. (Most inner lifeblood does not freeze)
Nol krah heim, yol fent alok, (From cold forge, fire shall arise)
Nol vulom, kun fent alok; (From darkness, light shall arise)
Vokrii fent kos fin krent tuz, (Restored shall be the broken blade)
Vodu'ulaan fent meyz jun ruz. (Uncrowned shall become king then.)
I think the most dubious choice I made was vokiin, which can be used in the sense I'm using it, but more literally means "unborn." It's a bit of a stretch, but it let me keep the reference to freezing, which is a concept we actually have multiple words for, so it's worth it. I'm pleased I was able to keep the tree symbolism in some form, too. As we know, Tolkien liked trees. {= )
I also coined the compound vodu'ulaan from base word du'ul, "crown," adding the negative prefix vo- and past participle suffix -aan. Again, worth it to keep as close as possible to the original meaning of the poem. I found it really annoying that krent, "broken," is one of the few irregular past participles we have; rhyming with -aan words would have been so much easier. {= P I'm still not thrilled with the meter of the last two lines, but I dunno how much more I can poke it.
Now, the way I see it, this is an Elder Scrolls crossover, and the poem is a prophecy inscribed by an ancient dragon who had a glimpse of the future. ^_^
~Neshomeh
That's definitely a language made for chanting - all those deep vowels give it a lovely lámatyávë, very different to any of Tolkien's fleshed-out language (it has resonances with the Black Speech). I think you made a good choice by going for rhyming couplets; the repetition really gives it emphasis.
As for 'unborn' - remember that the belief in Gondor and most of the world was that there was no heir of Isildur - that Aragorn (and his ancestors) were literally unborn. I don't know if 'tree' can mean 'family tree' in Dragon Speech, but if it can... ^_^
(This is going to end with me penning Eldar Scrolls, isn't it?)
hS
Even if it wasn't deliberate in the original, it certainly works very well as such. Just one more reason I was happy to keep that symbol in place. I actually thought about making it a literal reference if I had to (we have the vocabulary to say "clan/family tree" or "child tree").
I'm pleased it works so well as is. ^_^
And yes, the language was very much designed to be sung and chanted by deep, gravelly voices, as in the Skyrim theme (lyrics shown there). It's glorious.
~Neshomeh
I did have a vague memory of you knowing this one... ^_^ I love the cuneiformesque script for the Dragon Tongue - much like the Toki Pona Mayanesque hieroglyphs, it's delightfully not what we're used to seeing. (Unlike Tengwar and the Cirth, though the Sarati have a very Sanskrit look.) Thank you so much for the translation; I'll see about 'inscribing' it when I get a chance.
Heck, maybe I'll even actually inscribe it...
(From a Coursera course a few years back, using Actual Cuneiform. It... I have no idea what it says. Could be my name I guess?)
hS
