Re: USAGE: syllables
| From: | Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, June 13, 2003, 22:03 |
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On Fri, 13 Jun 2003 11:24:06 -0700 JS Bangs <jaspax@...>
Dá-ráyt-wad-Dá:
> This is a fabulous chart. What are all of these languages for? I
> have heard precious little about Gabwe.
> Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
-
Gabwe is the Goblin language i made for the Live Action Role Playing game
i was in a few years ago in college. My character, Ur Baharav (with
acutes over the R's because they're velar), was a wandering monk who grew
up in the Goblinoid-run nation of Tiere; so, even though he was human,
his native language was Goblin, and it was the only language he was
literate in. The monk class according to this RPG system could cast
certain spells, and i also picked up some healing spells, so in order to
give Ur more 'character', i decided to chant my spells in Goblin.
Gabwe has many dialects, all of which seem to have more or less the same
grammar but vastly different phonologies. For instance, in Standard
Tierean dialect, the geminate approximants /ww 44 jj RR/ are realized as
[v r Z G]. In Old Byronese dialect, voiced stops can only occur as the
geminated allophone of their equivalent nasals, so for instance the name
"Old Byron" is a Common Speech representation of the Gabwe name /o:lm
ma:j ron/ ~ [olbajron] 'City Under the Swamp', which in Standard Tierean
would be /u:Rb ba:j 4ud/ ~ [u:Rbba:j4ud]. (it parses as literally
'City-Swamp-under')
Gabwe (or at least the Tierean dialect) is supposed to be pronounced all
in creaky voice, which hurt my throat when i used it too much :-P.
I tried to make it as alien from English as possible:
it's OVS, noun-adjective, and uses case endings. It also (unlike
Rokbeigalmki) has a very limited syllable structure - it's most
complicated syllable structure is CRVRC, where R is an approximant.
It has six pronouns: (using proto-Gabwe forms)
ek = me
Ngol = exclusive we (me+them)
himb = inclusive we (me+you)
toy = all-inclusive we (me+you+them)
yaw = you (singular and plural)
nda = them (singular and plural)
Originally i only had Standard Tierean ([ti:E:GEw]), Old Byronese
([olbajronwE]), and Proto-Gabwe ([Nga:mbwe]) developed, but then one day
i was bored in class and decided to make as many other dialects as i
could, so that's where the 'random unnamed dialects' come from.
I based the writing system off of Korean. I was originally going to just
use Korean itself, but it didn't have the necessary syllable structures,
so i decided to just copy it instead with some changes to make it fit
Gabwe better.
http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~bh11744/gabwe/Gabwe.gif
-picture of Gabwe writing.
The Black letters at the top say (LtR) 'Gáb-we Dá-túk-Ék' (I speak Gabwe,
lit. 'Goblin-ish, It-Speak-Me')
The Blue letters below them are the various letterforms:
P T K B D G W R Y R' H
A E I U Á É Í Ú
Under that, the Green ones in the boxes illustrate Korean-box-style
writing:
Í ÚR' (a name) KÁD (holy) PWÉT (person) TÁRK (human) GWUR'T
Then the Black Beads-On-A-String-style writing letters say:
(the empty dash is a space)
Úr' Bá-Há-R'áw-we Bág-Gért-Téyt-Dáw Dúb-Báy-Réd-we
[u:R ba:ha:Ra:v ba:ggE:4t^hE:jtd:aw du:bba:j4E:dwE]
"Ur Baharav, Acting Magistrate of New Byron"
or in Old Byronese dialect:
[ol m&?&l&w@ m&gErstejtn&w nobajrEnwE]
The blue beads-on-a-string text off to the right of the picture is just a
vertical version of "Ur Baharav"; instead of reading it top-down LtR, you
read it RtL top-down.
-Stephen (Steg)
www.googlism for "Ur":
ur is no picnic for the handicapped
ur is known in the bible as ur of the chaldees
ur is the most perplexing
ur is an american jewish historian specializing in ladino and sephardic
studies
ur is currenty active in italy and several other european countries
ur is missing
ur is the size of a fat date *together with* its pit
ur is a black hole for money
ur is unaffiliated with any church
ur is philip and angela o’brien from melbourne and they play contemporary
pop/rock music
ur is an abbreviation for > über"
ur is the scottish gaelic for 'new direction'
ur is no more
ur is coming to your campus
ur is more than a set of trade agreements
ur is known as both a shrub of passion and healing
ur is the ending which marks the masculine nominative singular
ur is?
ur is not simply called "ur"