Re: Occult languages

On Tue, 24 Apr 2001 22:20:00 -0500 Patrick Dunn
<tb0pwd1@...> writes:
> > Okay, this probably is no help whatsoever to you (although i liked
> the
> > ideas you mentioned, and i remember someone a few months or a year
> ago
> > creating a "magic language" based on Hebrew and Latin if i remember
> > correctly... oh wait, maybe that was helpful after all :-) )
> Heh.  That was me.  But it got on my nerves; too artificial.
-

Well, i liked it!  :-P

> > but anyway, the non-helpful thing i wanted to say was that
> > my conlang "Gábwe" (Gabwe with rising accent on the A), or Goblin,
> was
> > invented so that my character in my local Live Action Role Playing
> group
> > could say his magical spells in it.  So whenever i'm casting a
> spell on
> > someone, i first ask them if their character understands Goblin,
> and if
> > they do, i read the spell in English translation.  If they don't,
> i read
> > it in Gabwe, which gets very tiring after a while because it's all
> in
> > creaky voice and that hurts my throat.
> How does it work grammatically?
-

Okay, here are a few rules:

1. The word order is OVS, both in sentences in general and in
'conjugated' verbs, which are verbs with (a) pronoun(s) as subject and/or
object.

Dá-tíy-Ék.

da = it/they
tiy = see
ek = me

Since _da_ comes first, it is the object, and since _ek_ comes last, it
is the subject.
So, _Dá-tíy-Ék_ means "i see it/them"

The capitalization is just an orthographic mark for nouns and pronouns,
and nouns used as adjectives - pretty much anything except verbs being
used as verbs, and affixes.  Everything is stressed (the accents) except
for affixes.

Now for a longer sentence:

Pwét-et Dá-tíy-Ék Gáb.

pwet = person
et = direct object marker
gab = goblin

This means "I, a goblin, see (a) person(s)."

There's no marking of definiteness or indefiniteness, or singular,
plural, male, female, neuter, etc.

2. Compounds or Adjective-Noun combinations have the adjective last.

Tárk-Kád-Hír'

tark = human
kad = holy
hir' = here, this

"This holy human"

3. Affixes come after their nouns, as well.

Báy-rud

bay = swamp
rud = under

"Under the swamp"

Putting rules 2 and 3 together, we get the place names:

Tí-Ér'-r'e
Land-Mountain-between = "the Land between Mountains" (where my character
is from)

Úr'b-Báy-rud
City-Swamp-under = "the City Under the Swamp"

4. Phonological rules:

The "Standard Tierean" dialect of Goblin works like this:

There are the consonants

/ p t k b d g w * j R h /

(* = flap ; R = velar approximant)

and the vowels

/ a E i u /

When geminated across syllable boundaries, for instance

Pwét-Trí = "three people"

-voiceless stops become aspirated [t<h>]

Úr'b-Báy = "Swamp City"

-voiced stops remain geminated [bb]

Téyr'-R'áw = "all shadows"

-approximants become fricatives
/ww/ --> [v]
/**/ --> [r] (trill)
/jj/ --> [Z]
/RR/ --> [G]

Other dialects have different sounds, and different things happen to
them.

One of the things i like about its weirdness is the pronoun inventory.
Goblin has:

ek = me
gur' = exclusive we (me+them)
hib = inclusive we (me+you)
tuy = all-inclusive we (me+you+them)
yaw = you (singular/plural)
da = them (singular/plural)

4 first-person pronouns, and only one each of second and third!


-Stephen (Steg)
 "bleah!  bleah!  muahahaha!"

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