[URBIS] Need name for servant race - does anyone here speak Italian?

[Jürgen Hubert]

Here is some of the latest stuff I came up with for Urbis:

"Bargeto (Metropolis, 1,349,772): The citizens of Bargeto mostly live an easy and carefree life, for its wizards have created a race of homunculi with the aid of alchemy and the nexus tower's magic that serves as laborers. This servant race can be made to look in whatever way its creators choose. The magic spells put upon them with the aid of the nexus towers keeps most of them loyal and obedient to the city and its citizens."

"Doppelganger
These rare beings are created in the city of Bargeto as servants of its human citizens. The alchemical and magical processes that creates these homunculi originally sets their appearance, and ensures their loyality to the city. However, there are a few of these beings who become free thanks to accident or design, and they gain free will and the ability to alter their appearance in whatever way they like. These doppelgangers roam the world and follow their own agendas.[/b]"

Here's my problem: I want to base the region the city of Bargeto is in vaguely on Italian cuture - and that includes the Italian language. Unfortunately, I don't know a word of Italian.

So if anyone here can speak Italian, could he or she come up with an idea on how to call a race of magically created servants?

 

[Zappo]

Ok, let's see. The Italian for "servant" is servo or servitore (pl. servi or servitori).
Servo today has a connotation of 'underling', while servitore is neutral.
The pronounce is more or less what you'd expect, I think. It's fairly easy for these ones.

"Slave", instead, is schiavo (pl. schiavi). The 'schi' thing is pronounced similar to 'skee' (an 'i' sound is shorter than the English 'ee', though).

Italian for "homunculous" is omuncolo (pl., you guess it , omuncoli). It's pronounced about the same (no final 's' of course, and all the 'o's are the same).

I'll think up something more...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Hmmm. Schiavo/schiavi sounds best so far... Unless you can come up with somthing that sounds even cooler, I think I will stick with this one.

 

[RobNJ]

If you wanna get really cool you can call them:

lo schiavo (lo skeeAHvo) singular and
gli schiavi (lee skeeAHvee) plural

That "lee" is sort of right, sort of not. It's somewhere between pronouncing "glee" and "lee". You have to press the front of your tongue to the top of your mouth and draw it back as you say "lee".

It makes it much more alien looking/sounding.

 

[Zappo]

Italian pronounce is fairly easy once you've got the 'gl' and 'gn' thingies sorted out. Unlike English, the vowels are always pronounced in the same way, no matter what word they're in or what letters are nearby.

Senz'anima - "soulless"
Creato (pl. creati) - "created"

BTW, the feminine version of "schiavo/i" is "schiava" (pl. "schiave"). So, "the slave" can be either "lo schiavo" or "la schiava" while "the slaves" is either "gli schiavi" or "le schiave". "A slave" translates as either "Uno schiavo" or "una schiava".

 

[Zappo]

For the free servants, you could use libero (pl. liberi, fem. libera, pl. fem. libere), which means "free".