The Keidran Language Thread

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Re: The Keidran Language Thread

#16 Post by Hulk10 »

Many romance languages are like that.
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Re: The Keidran Language Thread

#17 Post by Neptune »

iliar wrote: Thu Mar 01, 2018 4:59 pm Little fan fact about Keidran Language.
[21:05:34] <Tom> The Keidran language works the same way.
[21:05:50] <Tom> Or similar. All pronouns are gendered.
[21:06:29] <Tom> So there is a male and female "I" and "my"
A lot of languages have gendered 3rd person pronouns. Virtually all of the Indo-European languages, for example. Slovenian and some other languages have a 2nd person singular used in feminine contexts.

French has participles, which virtually mark pronouns. For example, "J'ai créé" means the speaker is male, while "J'ai créée" means the speaker is female.

Thai has truly gendered first person pronouns.
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Re: The Keidran Language Thread

#18 Post by Warrl »

NuclearBird wrote: Sat Mar 10, 2018 8:50 pm
Neptune wrote: Sat Mar 10, 2018 6:59 pm What's your native language? Lithuanian (a heritage language I want to learn) has masculine and feminine.
Hungarian. Pronouns are entirely genderless. No he/she/it, only person/object distinctions.
Technically, that's gender. The term "gender" doesn't really mean "sex", it means "kind" (it's essentially the same word as "genre", as in different categories of book - romance, science fiction, biography...). So if you have the pronoun "xx" for that person over there and the pronoun "yy" for that thing (not a person) over there, and it would be incorrect to refer to a person with "yy" or a non-person with "xx", you have two genders.

I currently identify five genders in English pronouns. Masculine, feminine, neutral-person, neutral, and unperson. In the forms that could be followed by a verb:
I - 1st person singular - neutral-person
we - 1st person plural - neutral-person
you - 2nd person - neutral-person
he - 3rd person singular - masculine
she - 3rd person singular - feminine
it - 3rd person singular - unperson
who - 3rd person - neutral-person
what - 3rd person - unperson
they - 3rd person plural - neutral
those - 3rd person plural - unperson

(Of course, being English, it can't stay that simple. "Those who" is neutral-person plural. But "that who" is just incorrect. While "that which" and "he who" are okay. Confused yet?)

Notice the lack of a neutral or neutral-person 3rd person singular pronoun. This has been a bit of a problem. I haven't seen a proposed fix that I don't think is ugly, but using "they" in that role is the least ugly I've seen. Which is a good thing because I think that in the long run (and probably not very long, as such things go) it's going to win out and become definitely-proper English.

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Re: The Keidran Language Thread

#19 Post by Neptune »

With some hints from the map of Mekkan and the TK Wiki, I can include some phonemes.

Since the language is reported to be "growly," this can mean guttural consonants. This definitely adds the uvular trill (and possibly the epiglottal trill, too). The voiceless and voiced uvular stops, along with the glottal stop. Keidran mouths also include uvular, so uvular consonants are possible.

The ch in ch'rall, since the language will be heavily laryngeal and dorsal, will probably be a voiceless velar fricative, voiceless uvular fricative, a voiced version of the last two, or even pharyngeal. ch is dorsal-laryngeal in many languages (Germanic languages, Celtic languages, Greek and Slavic), so this makes a lot of sense.

The apostrophe in ch'rall and marlch'ren could be a sign of glottalized ch (possibly an ejective form or even dorsal stop or maybe a click). But it's probably just filler Tom used to make it look fantasy-ish. Maybe ch'r is a singular phoneme, because the two instances of actual Keidran words we have use this sequence of glyphs.

ll is definitely either a coronal lateral fricative or velarized coronal lateral approximant. It's the former in Welsh. I say this, as one of the settlements is has two ll's in its name (I think it's Llallon or something there's Llasanfraid, but no double ll). It seems pretty Welsh, anyway. If so, then w could represent /u:/. y would represent the central closed unrounded vowel.

The dental fricatives are also possible, because of a town named Moelygarth. Since carnivores don't really have much of a place to make alveolar noises, t could be dental. So would d.

That's all I'm really gonna put down about it currently.
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Re: The Keidran Language Thread

#20 Post by aitaituo »

Growly could also just mean lots of rhotic sounds, potentially rhotacized vowels.

I've been down this road before and have plenty of training in linguistics (and philology). I don't think the map gives us enough information. Toponyms are famously screwy. We don't know how many non-English keidran toponyms are originally human settlements. Most of the names are in English in all four territories. We don't know if they're from the Keidran language or fossilized keidran. We don't know how different Tiger and Wolf dialects are in their phonetic inventories, which may screw up the samples considerably.

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Re: The Keidran Language Thread

#21 Post by Neptune »

aitaituo wrote: Mon Mar 12, 2018 6:52 am Growly could also just mean lots of rhotic sounds, potentially rhotacized vowels.

I've been down this road before and have plenty of training in linguistics (and philology). I don't think the map gives us enough information. Toponyms are famously screwy. We don't know how many non-English keidran toponyms are originally human settlements. Most of the names are in English in all four territories. We don't know if they're from the Keidran language or fossilized keidran. We don't know how different Tiger and Wolf dialects are in their phonetic inventories, which may screw up the samples considerably.
The wiki says that Keidran has virtually no dialectal variation. However, Tom retcons (a lot), so maybe he'll open up to two or three Keidran (I like to call this family Kerissic because muh scientificness) languages. Since Tom probably thought of the French uvular trill when he said "growly," then that's definitely included; r-colored vowels and nasalization are also in the ring, mainly because they're perfect for a mouth that's hard to get rounded perfectly. Humanese is definitely English though (maybe), so that means that those villages like Llasanfraid are Kerissic in origin. Lyn'knoll is the only Kerissic-Human combination we know of.

Basidian is a different story. Since we have absolutely no examples of words or grammar from the language(s), it could range from being Germanic (common theory), Japanese or even Tai-Kadai or any other number of bases or no stem language at all. It's impossible to analyze, compared to some Kerissic lexicon and a gibberish sentence.
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Re: The Keidran Language Thread

#22 Post by aitaituo »

Neptune wrote: Mon Mar 12, 2018 9:58 pmHumanese is definitely English though (maybe), so that means that those villages like Llasanfraid are Kerissic in origin. Lyn'knoll is the only Kerissic-Human combination we know of.
I just don't see much English in Sarn, Sevene, Lua, Fenor, Belan, Sodan, or Morlin. The rest of the names tend to be simple compounds like Twin Lakes and Waterhold. Place names are often simple unless they're originally foreign language toponyms or named after people. My hunch would be that the simple English names are translations into English of Human words and the other ones are authentic Human. I think "Edinmire" supports this idea as a potential Human/English compound.

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Re: The Keidran Language Thread

#23 Post by Neptune »

aitaituo wrote: Tue Mar 13, 2018 2:48 am
Neptune wrote: Mon Mar 12, 2018 9:58 pmHumanese is definitely English though (maybe), so that means that those villages like Llasanfraid are Kerissic in origin. Lyn'knoll is the only Kerissic-Human combination we know of.
I just don't see much English in Sarn, Sevene, Lua, Fenor, Belan, Sodan, or Morlin. The rest of the names tend to be simple compounds like Twin Lakes and Waterhold. Place names are often simple unless they're originally foreign language toponyms or named after people. My hunch would be that the simple English names are translations into English of Human words and the other ones are authentic Human. I think "Edinmire" supports this idea as a potential Human/English compound.
Well, even that depends. Maybe humans in one area spoke a certain language, while ones in the other spoke another. The former group was annexed and assimilated, leaving its remains as only the names of towns in that area. This could also be place names or just one fossilized human language. Edinmire could be well named after a man or woman named Edanmar or whatever. Lua and the other names could have been named after their patron.
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Re: The Keidran Language Thread

#24 Post by Lightice »

Neptune wrote: Tue Mar 13, 2018 3:06 am Well, even that depends. Maybe humans in one area spoke a certain language, while ones in the other spoke another. The former group was annexed and assimilated, leaving its remains as only the names of towns in that area. This could also be place names or just one fossilized human language. Edinmire could be well named after a man or woman named Edanmar or whatever. Lua and the other names could have been named after their patron.
Edinmire is a very English placename. "Mire" is another word for wetland, while "Edin" is an old-fashioned first name. Thus, its origin is clearly "Edin's mire", a wetland belonging to someone called Edin.

Those other placenames mentioned incidentally have Celtic or Germanic origins, both very typical of English locations, as well.

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Re: The Keidran Language Thread

#25 Post by Dadrobit »

Tom wrote: In the Keidran language, there are almost no noticeable differences between female and male voices. Keidran language consists of two dialects: Low Keidran and High Keidran. Low Keidran is spoken with low growls and guttural sounds; it is generally spoken by the medium- to low-class or slaves. High Keidran is spoken with high-pitched inflections, and is spoken by the high-class and higher-educated Keidran communities.

Often, humans who can't tell will mistakenly consider all Keidran speaking High Keidran to be female and all Keidran speaking Low Keidran to be male.

When speaking, Keidran pronounce their genders verbally by including either male or female additives in their speech. In Natani's case, she speaks with a Low Keidran dialect. To sound like a male, she simply has to use "male speech" inflections. She's used this form a speaking for so long, it would actually be difficult and unnatural for her to speak with a female voice at this point.

Hope that answers your question.
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Re: The Keidran Language Thread

#26 Post by Qwe304 »

there is a good bit of (translated) keidran in the note flora wrote to keith in the bonus pages of book 1
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Re: The Keidran Language Thread

#27 Post by Neptune »

Qwe304 wrote: Tue Mar 13, 2018 5:16 pm there is a good bit of (translated) keidran in the note flora wrote to keith in the bonus pages of book 1
Anyone got the text or sauce for that?
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Re: The Keidran Language Thread

#28 Post by Qwe304 »

Neptune wrote: Thu Mar 15, 2018 3:50 pm
Qwe304 wrote: Tue Mar 13, 2018 5:16 pm there is a good bit of (translated) keidran in the note flora wrote to keith in the bonus pages of book 1
Anyone got the text or sauce for that?
here: https://imgur.com/a/Yz28O
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Re: The Keidran Language Thread

#29 Post by Neptune »

Qwe304 wrote: Wed Mar 21, 2018 1:17 pm
Neptune wrote: Thu Mar 15, 2018 3:50 pm
Qwe304 wrote: Tue Mar 13, 2018 5:16 pm there is a good bit of (translated) keidran in the note flora wrote to keith in the bonus pages of book 1
Anyone got the text or sauce for that?
here: https://imgur.com/a/Yz28O
No correlation on that, so it doesn't help
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Re: The Keidran Language Thread

#30 Post by Technic[Bot] »

Qwe304 wrote: Wed Mar 21, 2018 1:17 pm
Neptune wrote: Thu Mar 15, 2018 3:50 pm
Qwe304 wrote: Tue Mar 13, 2018 5:16 pm there is a good bit of (translated) keidran in the note flora wrote to keith in the bonus pages of book 1
Anyone got the text or sauce for that?
here: https://imgur.com/a/Yz28O
Not an expert on the topic but that seems heavily runic.
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