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wccbuck / eberron_tw

Eberron Tiddlywiki
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Create gibberish generators for various languages #24

Closed wccbuck closed 1 year ago

wccbuck commented 1 year ago

Take a sentence as input, and "translate" each word into something that sounds decent. The goal is to have a quick way to read aloud something that could pass for the chosen language.

If one of the input words is already known to have a translation, use that instead of gibberish. This means each language needs a list of known words plus plurals/tenses/etc. if possible.

Make a page for the gibberish generator with a drop-down to select language, but also add a gibberish generator to each relevant language page.

wccbuck commented 1 year ago

Adaran

Adaran is heavily influenced by Quor, which is itself related to Abyssal (quori are fiends after all). This is why we have lots of "ashashta" sounds in Adaran, which sounds similar to known Abyssal words like Ashtakala. As an aside: the Riedran language does not have strong roots in Quor besides a few loan words; it is a language constructed by the Inspired from two old Sarlonan languages (Ghirvaguran and Nulakazi), and the Inspired themselves keep Quor to themselves as a holy language. See the Riedran comment for more on that. But regardless, we can get some clues about the Adaran language by looking at Inspired names.

Adaran is also influenced by old Ghirvaguran ("Corvaguran", renamed in my Eberron). Ghirvaguran takes inspiration from Sanskrit: aspirated consonants, similar sounds. Might also include some Tibetan.

Known Quor words:

Adar means "refuge" in Adaran, but it's probably a Ghirvaguran-root word since it also appears in Riedran.

wccbuck commented 1 year ago

Riedran

The continent of Sarlona had hundreds of spoken dialects before the Sundering, but the biggest three were Ghirvaguran, Nulakazi, and Khunanese. When the Inspired took over and formed the Unity of Riedra, they created the language "Riedran" from elements of Ghirvaguran and Nulakazi, and enforced its usage across all eight provinces.

In my Eberron, Ghirvaguran takes inspiration from Sanskrit, and Nulakazi takes inspiration from Old Persian.

Very few Riedran words are known. If I find more I'll add to this list.

Also "alta" is spirit, "altavar" is "dark spirit" or fiend, but those are loan words from Quor; don't consider them for vowel/consonant lists.

wccbuck commented 1 year ago

Draconic

Just use this. https://draconic.twilightrealm.com/

Edit: Don't use that. Use canon examples only: https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Draconic

For some reason, the maintainer of the twilightrealm translator decided not to use all canon words, overwriting them with fan creations. I understand augmenting the lexicon, but why would you replace?

wccbuck commented 1 year ago

Mjordai/Dwarven

Language of the dwarves of the Mror Holds. Take some inspiration from Norwegian/Swedish. "Mjordai" itself is a word made up by a fan, supposedly means "twelve". Not a lot of vowel-j's in canon words, so I think using it here could be an interesting and authentic-feeling hallmark of the language.

Useful syllables:

Known Mjordai words:

There's also this (take each word with a grain of salt): https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Dwarvish_dictionary

wccbuck commented 1 year ago

Goblin / Dhak / Volaarun

No distinct differences between modern Goblin and old Dhakaani in canon examples (to my knowledge), even though realistically the Dhakaani language would have been sundered from surface goblinoids over the course of several millennia with effectively no contact. But this is a gibberish generator, so.

A decent gibberish generator already exists here, which I can take heavily from: http://web.archive.org/web/20190211175829/http://www.screwytruths.com/translators-2/common-to-goblin/

Vocabulary: https://eberron.fandom.com/wiki/Goblin_(language)

More vocab: https://www.rpgcrossing.com/showthread.php?p=8706892

Note: remove "vk" from consideration because it doesn't make any sense. Especially since there aren't any "F"s in the language. Probably also remove "th" (θ) to differentiate it from Orcish. "Th" does show up in that vocab list, e.g. "gath", "romath" etc, but perhaps those could be recent additions to the language and aren't found in old Dhakaani.

I think "LH" in "lhesh" etc is pronounced like a lateral fricative (/ɬ/ voiceless, and /ɮ/ voiced). Or, better: Dhakaani uses /ɬ/ for "LH", and /ɮ/ for many Z sounds, which makes it sound different than modern Goblin. "Jhazaal" (Jhaɮaal) would be pretty hard to pronounce for a native English (Common) speaker, which I think is cool.

Can also use "Fricative Heavy" option 3 from the Dialect game rules, with these changes:

wccbuck commented 1 year ago

Aerenese / Elvish

Celtic-inspired. Vaguely similar to Sindarin/Quenya (https://www.elfdict.com/). Gibberish generator here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20190408152338/http://www.screwytruths.com/translators-2/common-to-elven

Known vocabulary:

wccbuck commented 1 year ago

Zilasalza (gnomish)

Might not do this one. It has a common ancestor with Dhakaani, Orcish, and Talentan. It's also influenced by Sylvan and Mjordai. We have pretty much no examples of this language. The only one I can find is "Zilargo" = "home of the wise". Another example is "Deniyas", a district in Sharn, but no telling what it means. Oh and probably "berg" means city, right?

In my Eberron, I use a kind of Upper Midwestern "Fargo" accent for Zilargo. In real life this accent is influenced by a combination of Scandinavian, German, and Irish dialects. (Makes sense if I'm using Scandinavian accents for dwarvish and Irish/Welsh for Aerenese, which was influenced by Sylvan.) Anyway, I might be able to pull syllables from those.

Also add some Hungarian.

City/place names:

Names:

wccbuck commented 1 year ago

Shedani (drow)

Also might not do this one. It is inspired by the Sulat dialect of Giant (separate from the Culsir dialect which influenced Aerenese, but related). It's also inspired by Sylvan, like Aerenese. So there should be some similarities there. We have a few examples of Shedani but it's hard to unpack them. By the way, "Shedani" is a fan word like "Mjordai" and "Zilasalza".

By the way, I like the idea of Qaltiar and Sulatar being called that by Common-speakers, since "-ar" endings so commonly indicate "people" in Common (perhaps influenced by Dhakaani "dar"), but that the name they call themselves is something different since they have no linguistic connection to Common. Maybe Qaltiu and Sulatu. Also, I think apostrophes should be pronounced as glottal stops (like "wa'er" or "Bri'ish" in a Cockney accent)

For the name generator, I took some influence from Cambodian, Pali, and Javanese names. Also I replaced "ch" and "z" with "x", replaced "-ar" endings with "-u", and stuck semi-random apostrophes after vowels, N's, and L's (and the occasional R). J's seem to be more of a Sulatu thing, while apostrophes and "-oor" endings seem to be more a Qaltiar/Vulkoori thing. Not sure what I'll do with that. With the letter changes, here are the only canon drow name examples I could find:

"Drenga" is borderline not usable since it's the name of an enslaved gladiator in Stormreach; very plausible that his name was changed as a boy.

wccbuck commented 1 year ago

Syrk

Another "maybe" language. In my Eberron, the language of Syrkarn is influenced by Riedran, Khunanese (or "Caleshazi"... lots of Nahuatl phonemes, but also Tupi), and Cul'sir giant.

wccbuck commented 1 year ago

Talentan

"Bescat" means exchange (fan word). In Mjordai the language is called "Bhazragi" which means "tribespeak" (also fan word). Talenta Plains language evolved from a Proto-Khorvairian that isn't spoken today, with influence from Mjordai and Dhakaani.

Example words:

Consider Tolkien's Westron as inspiration. https://folk.uib.no/hnohf/westron.htm

wccbuck commented 1 year ago

Azhani

Azhani is the language spoken in the Shadow Marches (particularly in the south), which evolved from the now-extinct language known by "Orcish". It's also heavily influenced by Dhakaani and old Ghirvaguran.

Orcish could be inspired by ancient Mesopotamian.

Don Bassingthwaite books are the origin of the Azhani language and have tons of example vocab:

wccbuck commented 1 year ago

Ok I found someone's attempt to "modulize" those gibberish generators.

https://github.com/sirslaw/spell-language-generator/blob/master/languages/ghukliak.js

The original was written by someone whose first language is German and is not very familiar with JavaScript. They capitalized all their variable names, don't seem to know that booleans exist, made a gigantic switch/case statement that they copy/pasted for every language... it's a mess. But it's a starting point.

In the original there's a variable called "ControlDiph". I believe this was intended to be a diphthong detector (multiple vowels in a row). The "sirslaw" person who was trying to "translate" the generator into something useful changed the name of this variable to "controlDiff" which makes me think they didn't know what it was.