Omnimaga
General Discussion => Other Discussions => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: Scipi on April 03, 2013, 02:15:56 pm
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I've always been interested in inventing my own spoken/written language. Here lately I've actually been making some progress towards my first useable language that will be used for a hypothetical race/culture to be used in future games I make (The Kakrii race). The language is meant to be harsh sounding, thus it makes use of k/ch/sh/z sounds.
So far I have the written portion, basic grammar rules/syntax, and some words figured out.
Here is a guide for the written language:
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573921/Kakrii_Alphabet_Cheatsheet_1.png)
Here's an example of a basic sentence:
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573921/Kakrii_Language_Example.png)
The grammar tends to go as: [Question][Tense][Subject_1(Who/what is doing the action)][Subject_2(Who/what is receiving the action)][Action/Verb][Adjective]
This is still in progress, I don't know much about grammar rules.
Certain kinds of words always have a prefix of sorts.
Nouns always start with:
Ka - Physical
Ke - Conceptual
Ki - Nonexistent
Note: THis language does not distictuate between gender. All words are used gender neutral. What the language does do, however, is distictuate between if it exists, does not exists, or exists theoretically.
Verbs always start with:
Ch
Sh - Question
Kr - Adjective
Ra - Future tense
Ri - Past tense
Ro - Present tense (Used when you want to explicitly show present tense)
So far, that's about the extent of what I have. What I want to figure out next is the numbering system. I want it to be base 16, however I want a written form that's more efficient than the symbolic method we use as well as more compact and allows for mathematical concepts to be more intuitive. After that I just need to fill out the lexicon and grammar rules.
Words I have so far:
Kai - I/Me/Mine
Kao - You/Yours
Kas - Other
Check - Perform upon
Chakas - Speak
Kekaskak - Language
Kezech - Bonding (Best equivalent word would be marriage)
Chazech - Best equivalency would be "To love" (There is no word for Love since the race this language is developed for does not experience this emotion, but they do have something similar)
Chernas - Hello
So that's more or less what I have so far. Anyone have any suggestions for the numbering system? What do you guys think?
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tl;dr
j/k
that seems very interesting :) I'll take time to read through all of it later though.
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This looks interesting, when my exams are over I'll read it :)
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Interesting. It's always cool to see different languages used in games and those languages actually makes sense. When I did that it was very limited, as it used alphabet and simply involved replacing vowels with the next one (eg e->i, o->u, y->a) and consonants as well or vice-versa, but I think I recall some games literally using something else than alphabet and you usually needed to find an item to translate it.
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What language(s) (if any) is it influenced by?
As for the number system, I .. don't really know. Personally I've long been an advocate of base 16 because of its simple connection with base 2, which makes it trivial to calculate with it [you only need algorithms for the basic operators, no tables], but as for the notation.. I don't really know. I have a couple of ideas that I think are bad which might somehow still be of value (you never know?):
- Residue Number System. I wouldn't call it intuitive, but you get to break up operations in lots of small pieces and is efficient in the sense that you end up writing down mostly small numbers (on the other hand you'd have a whole array of them, so that doesn't do that much good). It also allows trivial GCD and LCM, which is elegant IMO. But: division is terrible and you'd always be wondering how many moduli to use (and which).
- Continued Fractions. Not intuitive either. Doesn't solve the problem of how to write large numbers - you'd still end up with long base 16 strings. Harder for simple calculations. But it does let you write down crazy numbers efficiently and so some mathematical concepts could become easier to grasp, maybe.. such as fractions and square roots. I could see a mathematically super-advanced race using it all the time, but mostly because they'd be the "crazy mathematician" kind of guys, and I'm not sure what you're aiming for here.
- Base -16. Not too interesting. Doesn't help at all. But it's .. something?
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One thing we have to keep in mind is that in this age of post-apocalyptic games, we could create a language that looks ancient, but uses some elements from modern technology that people retained over the generations, such as binary for number display or even hex as you mention.
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What language(s) (if any) is it influenced by?
I would say, at least in the writing, a mix of Greek/Latin style lettering and Japanese characters. I've always liked how compact japanese/chinese symbols seem to be, yet latin/greek alphabets are better able to handle different syllables with fewer symbols. As for the actual spoken part, none. I invented it based on the idea that this is an aggressive culture.
For the numbering notation, I was thinking a modified Mayan style.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Maya.svg/200px-Maya.svg.png)
Edit: It seems pretty powerful, except for decimal notation, and perhaps exponents.
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I myself planned for the people of Zarmina to use base 16 because, like harold said, it has many interesting properties and there's more trivial stuff like dividing by 2, 4, 8 and other numbers like that.
For the number system, the modified Mayan style (without the 5th column) sounds good to me.
Also can I use your language in my game?
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Also can I use your language in my game?
Sure. If you go with the actual symbols and everything, you may want to have text with them loaded as an image though since there can be so many combinations of symbols.
I'll be sure to fill in some more of the lexicon and get an actual numbering system down. It'll be base 16, it's just how to represent numbers that I need to figure out.
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I just thought of something... Lemme write it up.
I mean, yeah the Mayan style would be interesting, laid up vertical style, maybe moving some strokes around. So you actually have a semi-quartery system, the dots alternating with the strokes. Also you would make out a character for 0, the decimal point and the basic operations, moving the character to the right for exponents and there you go.
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Here's what I got. Symbols that connect values denote the operation. I think another parallel line on the right will denote parenthesis.
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It kinda looks like Arabic, especially drawn like this, with a felt pen or something.
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I was having fun with the calligraphic pen in inkscape :P
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I would say, at least in the writing, a mix of Greek/Latin style lettering and Japanese characters. I've always liked how compact japanese/chinese symbols seem to be, yet latin/greek alphabets are better able to handle different syllables with fewer symbols. As for the actual spoken part, none. I invented it based on the idea that this is an aggressive culture.
I don't think Chinese characters are really that efficient, especially traditional characters. They may take up less space overall since the strokes are so compact, but i think the average Chinese character takes more strokes than it would to write out in, say pinyin. Chinese words tend to be much shorter, though. Though Chinese cursive might be more efficient than the Latin/Greek alphabets.
I think it's a really cool idea and a fun project, i hope to see more! Where did you get the idea of real/unreal/hypothetical? I think that's an interesting distinction :)
Also, your numbers require a lot of strokes (Chinese often use the 0-9 forms we use, especially for 0 -- compare that to the Chinese character for 0: 零 ;)), if you want to keep that format you could try something like:
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This is very interesting! I think it'd be cool if you included a couple of non-English vowel sounds, but it's awesome the way it is as well
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Chickendude, that could certainly work for shorthand lettering of the numbers. (And resembles what I was originally thinking of the look of numbers themselves)
This is very interesting! I think it'd be cool if you included a couple of non-English vowel sounds, but it's awesome the way it is as well
I would certainly be open to adding non-English vowels, except I really don't know any :P If I knew how they sound, then I could create a symbol for them easily.
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Progress:
I've come up with a simple mathematical notation.
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10573921/KakriiMath.png)
Here's how to pronounce numbers.
[ (0) = Ke/Ku
| = Kuk
|| = Kus
||| = Kun
/\/\/ = Kea
/\/\/ = Keo
/\/\/
/\/\/ = Keu
/\/\/
/\/\/
You concatenate the words together like you do numbers. So 5 = KeaKuk. 3 = KeKun. 8 = KeoKu
So far I need to come up with a way to describe numerical place. Like in English we say 3 Hundred. Numbers are written and said least significant first. Makes addition easy to work with.