D20 Linguistics

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

He might mean this site, the "Language Construction Kit".

Alright, I've finished a preliminary perusal of this site, and I think it's excellent, but what I'm planning would definately bear more specifically on use for D20.

JohnSelmak, I like the idea of creating a system of thaumemes, a grammar for Bruce Cordell's Language Primeival, but I wonder if this would stretch beyond the reasonable scope of this work's Thesis.

PirateCat, this would be one of three things: a Dragon article, a series thereof, or a free PDF. I don't think any publisher would put money on this selling more than a dozen copies, even sold at cost.

 

[Lyriel Aelorothi]

He might mean this site, the "Language Construction Kit".

Thank you...

 

[resistor]

I'd definitely be interested, but that might just be because I'm a student of Linguistics. On that note, if you want any help, I'd gladly contribute. I'm not an experienced linguist, but I'm working on a minor in the field and would love to help.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

I guess for those who answered "Maybe, I'd need to know more," I'd like to know what else you'd like to know.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

It's fair to say that he [Forrester] had very shameful things to say about names using an apostrophe, and names that substituted a "y" for a vowel. An elf named Ly'inne would have been excoriated.

An apostrophe is often used to indicate a glottal stop, like the one in the middle of many English speaker's pronounciaction of the word "button." "y," at least in Old English, is just like the vowel in the words "beat" and "feet," but rounded.

 

[Kirin'Tor]

This is one of those subjects that for me would be better treated with a mini-pdf or a Dragon article; I'm interested in knowing more, but not to the extent of buying a whole book on the subject.

I agree with piratecat, I'd love to see something like that in Dragon...and I'd be willing to pay a few bucks for a PDF on it, but I wouldn't by a print copy unless (A) it was fairly large (A.5, I prefer hardbound) and (B) had a lot of useful information, perhaps some crunch...

If it also included some fleshed out fantastic languagues (dwarf,orc, elf, dragon, etc), maybe some character options (feats, PrC's, races) and monster options (creatures & templates) based around language, it'd be more likely as ell (as they'd add content and size)

 

[Umbra]

I probably wouldn't read a whole book. But I have two players who definitely would!

 

[jgbrowning]

PirateCat, this would be one of three things: a Dragon article, a series thereof, or a free PDF. I don't think any publisher would put money on this selling more than a dozen copies, even sold at cost.

Au contrair Arbiter of Wyrms.

Shoot us an e-mail about your idea and the expected size of the work. We'd probably be willing to put it out as a PDF. We're known for somewhat complex works about campaign/world creation so we could possibly pick it up for release at rpgnow.com. I know we wouldn't pay as well as Dragon, but we do pay, and pay on-time.

We'd prefer something around 20 or so pages, but that's flexible.

josephbrowning@exp.citymax.com or josephbrowning@gmail.com

(WARNING: we are moving to India on Wednesday, so we may not respond the quickest around then... )

joe b.

 

[Lord Rasputin]

Distribute this for free? I would pay for it. Seriously.

One thnig that always drove me nuts about Kenzer's languages is that their grammars are more or less that of English, as well as Wizards' stab in the Draconomicon. Not only would a basic construction kit be good, but you'd probably want samples of the languages already in the SRD.

 

[Incenjucar]

For it to have even a half-decent amount of information, especially with samples, it would have to include about three college linguistics textbooks of information. There's a reason linguistics is an entire major all its own with lots of sub-categories. It's a huuuuuge area, with immense amounts of history, art, logic, and social aspects involved.

Now, you may be able to pull of a smaller "Guide to Fantasy Languages for Linguistics Students" (or at least one for those with a side interest in such -- I've only taken a single class, but I've done a bit of language study on my own over the years), but one for the teeming masses would have to be extremely vague... Like maybe charts of word forms that you need to have, style sheets for deciding on where the parts of speech go, etc.

Just trying to explain the variety between Sanskrit, Japanese, Latin, and English, is a fricking career in and of itself.