Here's something cool about Language!

[Son_of_Thunder]

Mandarin

This story got me thinking about the elvish language in particular. It's usually described as being musical and flowing.

What other interesting things have you thought about language?

Son of Thunder

P.S. Makes me wish I knew Mandarin instead of plain jane english (not the queen's english mind you).

 

[bwgwl]

here is a great site with ideas on how to create your own languages for your fantasy worlds.

lots of linguistical goodness.

 

[dave_o]

My girlfriend speaks Mandarin (she's not Asian, though). It's really a musical language, but it's also a tonal language, meaning you can say the exact same thing two different ways, and mean entirely two different things.

So it's gorgeous, but difficult.

 

[randomling]

Certainly is an interesting story. And makes sense that speakers of a tonal language like Mandarin would be using of their resources to interpret it than speakers of an intonational language like English.

I guess I see Elvish as musical and flowing too (which probably means it is intonational rather than tonal*). Probably it is very simple in sound sequencing (consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel, rather like Italian or Japanese, rather than "consonant-encrusted" like English).

I can see Dwarven as being very consonant-encrusted though!

*this is just IMHO, English-speaking ears mean tonal languages tend to sound a bit odd to me.

 

[bwgwl]

I can see Dwarven as being very consonant-encrusted though!

yes, i could see it being somewhere between Germanic and Slavic, with lots of good, thick consonant clusters and heavy on the back vowels.

 

[Djeta Thernadier]

I can speak very limited Romani.

Romani is a fascinating language, spoken by the Romani (gypsy) people. It is very cool in that, because the Rom didn't want the gadjo (non Rom) to understand it, for every word you learn, there are several others that mean the same thing.

Its quite possibly one of the hardest languages to learn for this reason, and that it hasn't been widely studied.

http://www2.arnes.si/~eusmith/Romany/

That's probably the best one I can think of...

~Sheri

 

[Mark]

Here's an interesting short article on Click Languages-

http://web.sunybroome.edu/~stoner_r/ENG111ClickLanguages.htm

 

[Perun]

yes, i could see it being somewhere between Germanic and Slavic, with lots of good, thick consonant clusters and heavy on the back vowels.

I'm a native speaker of a Slavic dialect (Dalmatian Croatian, a member of the southern slavic language branch), and I just can't imagine dwarven to sound like any Slavic language. I have a hard tyime seeing any Slavic language as a "hard" language (I'm fluent in English, can do a decent Serbian, I can understand Italian, but am not too good at speaking it, and I know a couple of words of German -- something I'm ashamed of, seeing how Austrian blood runs thick in my veins). German is a "hard" language, like most Germanic languages...

Anyways, it's just me.

 

[tarchon]

I can speak very limited Romani.

Romani is a fascinating language, spoken by the Romani (gypsy) people. It is very cool in that, because the Rom didn't want the gadjo (non Rom) to understand it, for every word you learn, there are several others that mean the same thing.

Its quite possibly one of the hardest languages to learn for this reason, and that it hasn't been widely studied.

http://www2.arnes.si/~eusmith/Romany/

That's probably the best one I can think of...

Its probable links to Indian languages (at least in the case of the Eastern dialects) have been studied extensively. Plenty of descriptions exist, but the dialects are so fragmented and heavily influenced by local majority tongues that describing Romani at large is largely impossible and not terribly productive to try. I guess you probably speak Vlach? Try it on a Punjabi sometime if you get the chance. It's been claimed that the affinity is readily apparent with really conservative dialects.