Exodus Progress
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Thursday, January 5 2006 16:30
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I think I'm nitpicking about the "h" thing... just a little. But I have to ask how exactly a "kh" digraph is going to be different from a mere "k" if everything is aspirated. I suppose with a long tongue you could try and fold it so it approaches the roof of the mouth where it does for a k, and also where it does for a th, with some frication. Hmm. Come to think of it... sliths might well have some alien place of articulation that humans don't have. Heh. This is amusing me way too much. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Thursday, January 5 2006 17:09
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The digraph "kh" represents a voiceless velar fricative ("ch" in properly pronounced "Chanukah" or in Scottish "loch"). "Gh" is the corresponding voiced sound. I may as well list the big ones: "Th": voiceless dental fricative ("thin" but NOT "this"), corresponding to voiced "dh" (but "dh" is rare). "Sh": voiceless post-alveolar fricative ("should"), corresponding to voiced "zh" (the "s" in "measure" — "zh" is also rare). "Rh": uvular trill, like some varieties of a French or German R, or so I'm told. It's guttural. [ Thursday, January 05, 2006 17:14: Message edited by: Kelandon ] -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 3040
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written Thursday, January 5 2006 18:20
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quote:What exactly is the difference (phonetically in general, not necessarily as it pertains to the Slith language) between your gh and your rh? Aren't they pretty much the same thing? -------------------- 5.0.1.0.0.0.0.1.0... Posts: 508 | Registered: Thursday, May 29 2003 07:00 |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Thursday, January 5 2006 18:29
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When I was doing phonetics, I always had the urge to lump all those together under the feature [+phleghmy voice]. I suppose this is why I fled as quickly as I could into the beautiful abstract sanctuary that is phonology. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Thursday, January 5 2006 20:44
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quote:They're similar, but they're not strictly the same. As far as I know, no real language contrasts the two, but the place of articulation is different: the gh is a velar, but the rh is a uvular. French notoriously considers them allophones, but properly pronounced Greek and Armenian will demonstrate a difference — Greek has the velar, Armenian the uvular. (EDIT: Whoops. Apparently I'm wrong: they both have the velar. Almost nothing has the uvular anymore. But they are still different sounds.) I recommend you to the Wikipedia pages on the uvular trill and the voiced velar fricative for a more complete discussion. [ Saturday, January 07, 2006 04:28: Message edited by: Kelandon ] -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Master
Member # 5977
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written Friday, January 6 2006 00:06
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I was wondering how far you are with the Slith language, what you already thought off, I mean. I know what you are talking about, because I'm also trying to invent a language. It can be really annoying but also fun to do. I did the verbs now, but have no clue of how I should proceed. Its really hard to invent a nephilim language when you are not so sure of how they did t, even in Avernum. that is, for great part there wasn't really a language of Nephilim. However, I do need it for my own scenario (and make it more interesting for the player). Hmmm, I think I'm going to start a new topic about this... besides that, I'm making my own Latin texts. I encounter there the same problems as with making a new language: after making a new text, I have no clue whatsoever on how to continue. So how do you cope with that? Do you take larg breaks in which you think it all over? And one other thing I was curious about: how long did I actually take you to come up with the things you already have? I really advise you to post it all somewhere, just for the ones (like me) who'd be all to happy to translate the text, and then afterwards look up how the text should have been. -------------------- Play and rate my scenarios: Where the rivers meet View my upcoming scenario: The Nephil Search: Escape. Give us your drek! Posts: 3029 | Registered: Saturday, June 18 2005 07:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Friday, January 6 2006 00:34
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I have pretty much all of the grammar of Classical Slith squared away. I still have to work out some of the nitty-gritty of the uses of the subjunctive and optative, and there are a few bits about noun gender that I'd like to modify, and some little bits and pieces of noun suffixes that I have to work with still, but most of what remains is creating the vocabulary. Basically, I decided first on a general structure. I wanted a heavily inflectional language based on Indo-European patterns. This got me started. Then I sat down and did phonology: what sounds does this language have? Since it was a language of reptile-men, a lot of hissing sounds (fricatives) made sense, with a bunch of spitting sounds (aspirated stops) and some growling (liquids and nasals). It made sense to throw in the idea of long vowels and short vowels, so between all of those, I had a sound system. I decided that the stress system would work the same way as Latin (stressed on the penult if it's heavy, on the antepenult if the penult is light). After that, I did paradigms: which cases exist in this language? What forms do they take? I like the Polish case system (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, vocative), so I took that one. I used forms based loosely on Latin and Greek, for the most part, with appropriate substitutions to get rid of ambiguity and to make it sound more hissy. Then I did verb paradigms: how do the verbs conjugate? Which moods and tenses exist? Which verbals (infinitive, participle, etc.) exist? Are there aspectual distinctions? I basically decided to have as many forms as I could think of, so I organized that. At that point, I began constructing sentences to test out the grammar and see what sorts of constructions I would need to define and what sort of vocabulary I needed. And that's about where I stand now. The whole process took about two or three days. Of course, the next step is to figure out the exact sound changes that took place to transform into Modern Slith. I did some basic grammar work with that — I know which cases compress and which moods and tenses vanish — but I'd like more detail. And once I've done that, I ought to work out Barbaric Slith. [ Friday, January 06, 2006 00:35: Message edited by: Kelandon ] -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Friday, January 6 2006 07:13
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I don't know why, but the Latin elements really seem like they have the right feel for the sliths. Which is funny... they don't seem particularly Roman. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Saturday, January 14 2006 00:50
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To help clarify things for myself (and to serve as quick references), I made a couple of pages about the slith language. They can be found here. Check out the verbs page. I think it's pretty neat! :P Exodus is still coming along. I've made pretty incredible progress over the last couple of weeks — there are a handful of dungeons left to design, and then I have to go back and put in huge amounts of secondary dialogue. -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Master
Member # 5977
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written Saturday, January 14 2006 01:01
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Phew. I admire you and the Sliths for being able to prnounce all these h's and k's and t's after the other. :P Do you yourself have problems pronoucing them? Just out of curiosity. yes, it is indeed very neat, and for some reason I seem to recognice parts of latin conjugation in the Slith verb conjugation. Anyway, good job! I'm awaiting the rest with great expectancy (I hope that is possbile to say. in any case, you understand what I mean, I hope). -------------------- Play and rate my scenarios: Where the rivers meet View my upcoming scenario: The Nephil Search: Escape. Give us your drek! Posts: 3029 | Registered: Saturday, June 18 2005 07:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 6666
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written Saturday, January 14 2006 01:04
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Wow. You've put a lot more effort into it, than a scenario would require, but I guess it benefits the community. I skimmed through it, and one little thing caught my eye: in the pronunciation section you had quote:I guess this shouldn't be? Oh, and one thing of interest: Have you studied English at university level as well, or do all these linguistic terms from your Greek studies? Posts: 353 | Registered: Monday, January 9 2006 08:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Saturday, January 14 2006 01:07
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It actually isn't very hard to pronounce, once you get a good handle on what the sounds are. And that L problem is fixed now. Thanks for pointing that out. I've studied Latin, Greek, and Polish in college (and Spanish in high school), and linguistics is a bit of a hobby of mine. Reconstructed pronunciation in particular is one of my interests (since almost no one can really do Attic Greek justice in terms of pronunciation), so a lot of these terms were just floating around in the things I read. Of course, when I had to look things up, I always used Wikipedia's IPA page. [ Saturday, January 14, 2006 01:12: Message edited by: Kelandon ] -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Master
Member # 5977
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written Saturday, January 14 2006 09:28
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I was just looking again at the conjugations, and I found one big thing that sort of disturbed me: most of the endings of the nouns are very different from each other. Did you do this on purpose, or did it come out like that by accident? It surprised me, as you said you based the ending on Latin ending, albeit loosely. In latin some are a bit different, but not as different as the endings in the conjugation of the Slith language nouns. [ Saturday, January 14, 2006 09:52: Message edited by: Thralni, Nephil translators & co. ] -------------------- Play and rate my scenarios: Where the rivers meet View my upcoming scenario: The Nephil Search: Escape. Give us your drek! Posts: 3029 | Registered: Saturday, June 18 2005 07:00 |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Saturday, January 14 2006 10:35
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Thralni, I'm a little confused by your comments. The noun endings look like they fall into patterns remarkably neatly (certainly compared with any natural language). And Kel, I really like that you have built an implied association between vowel coloration and gender into this (with the many masc/fem endings where o/a is the only difference). -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Saturday, January 14 2006 11:43
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Yeah, Thralni, I don't know what you mean either. The vowel tends to determine gender, but all the endings are pretty much the same. Er, and the same with conjugations — the personal endings are all the same for all tenses, which is more regular than Latin (or most other languages). I based the endings off various Indo-European endings, so there's a little Latin in there (-am feminine accusative singular), a little Greek (-oi masculine nominative plural), and a little bit of other things (-ani feminine instrumental plural from Polish -ami). And then a few are shifted to more slith-like sounds (-âkh feminine accusative plural from Latin âs). Classical Slith is the most regular form of the slith language. Archaic Slith (the preceding dialect) had a handful of irregularities that were crushed by standardization. Modern Slith introduces a number of irregularities due to sound changes. Classical Slith is sort of like Turkish in its regularity, from what I understand, and for much the same reasons (artificial interference from above). [ Saturday, January 14, 2006 11:45: Message edited by: Kelandon ] -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Master
Member # 5977
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written Saturday, January 14 2006 23:34
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I looked at it the wrong way. Now that I look at it again, I see that they are indeed quite regular, only I managed to look and compare the plural and singular, and not compare the different genders. That was my mistake. In that case it is indeed more regular then latin. Moreover, I see more and more GReek and Latin in it then before. Specifically the vowels o and a make me think of the Greek masculine and feminine forms. I misread the whole lot, so my comment wasn't justified. -------------------- Play and rate my scenarios: Where the rivers meet View my upcoming scenario: The Nephil Search: Escape. Give us your drek! Posts: 3029 | Registered: Saturday, June 18 2005 07:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Monday, January 30 2006 07:41
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If anyone's curious, I've basically finished designing the terrains and combat. I'm leaving the last couple of towns for the very end, so that I can make them completely together, but now I have to go back and write a whole bunch of dialogue that I've been putting off. It should be fun, though, so I don't expect to do a lot of procrastinating on this. While I was taking a short break from working on the scenario, I wrote a couple more pages on the slith language. The "Eras and Dialects" page is new, and I've put in explanations on the "Nouns" page. -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 3174
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written Monday, February 6 2006 11:51
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quote:Kelandon, I frikkin love you :D I have a feeling Im going to enjoy this scenario just as much, maybe more as/than Bahssikava. Cant wait! -------------------- Aa' menle nauva calen ar' ta hwesta e' ale'quenle, melloneamin. --------------------- Finder of impossible beta testing errors. Posts: 364 | Registered: Saturday, July 5 2003 07:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Sunday, June 11 2006 16:26
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Update: I just got chills watching the final cutscene. The scenario is finishable! There are still a fair number of bugs, and there's a host of things that I'd like to go back and change, but basically I'm going to give it one more run-through with a regular party (fixing the bugs that I come across) and then I'll send out a beta call. Barring disaster, I'm still projecting a beta call sometime this month. Right now there's about sixty towns and about thirty outdoor sections. I'm debating whether to use the Beta Testing Center or not (so anyone with an opinion can weigh in on that). I've put up a little bit more on the slith language (particularly on Modern Slith), in case anyone wants to know how I pronounce "Bahssikava" or "Legare." :P -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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