What Do The languages Sound Like?

Diamond Cross

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Has anybody ever tried to make a recording of any type about what the different standard languages of Dungeons And Dragons and the settings sound like?

For example, I'd be very curious to hear what Dwarvish sounds like as well as Draconian from 3e.
 

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I've never made a recording, but I have given this a good amount of thought.

Male dwarven names, for instance, always begin with a "hard" sound- K, Z, D, TH like in "The" (not as in "think"), etc. A dwarf named something like Wendall would be the equivalent of a human boy in high school named Sissy Little Bitch. Dwarven is fairly guttural, full of hard sounds. A good Dwarven speaker uses a strong, regular rhythm when he talks. The Dwarven language follows its rules of syntax exactly; there are no irregular verbs or other weird corner cases. The language is also strictly regulated by the dwarven elders, and it is a curious example of a "living dead tongue", where many of its concepts and terms are obsolete. Every century, each dwarven thanedom assembles a council of elders that makes recommendations for new words that should be allowed into the language, then one representative will travel to other thanedoms collecting feedback and, eventually, votes; but the process usually takes decades to approve a new word.

Draconic is a very sibilant tongue, full of "S", "SH", "CH", "SS" (subtly different from "S" and hard for non-native speakers to get right), "Z", "KS", "TS", "PS" and other similar sounds, as well as a number of hisses that have no real human equivalent (although we could probably hack up a recognizable approximation if we spoke the language). It has an extraordinary depth of vocabulary that short-lived races can only begin to learn, including whole tenses that imply vast sweeps of time. Only ancient dragons and their ilk are truly proficient speakers of Draconic. Because it is the tongue of dragons, much of the language involves glorifying the speaker. Tenses conjugate pronouns or nouns rather than verbs, for instance, and it is literally impossible to utter a sentence in Draconic with an unclear subject.
 

I've never really thought about it in D&D, but back when I ran Star Wars, I'd make up a little one-line "Language guide" for each race I made up. For example:

Trassians: Lots of -eth and -uth sounds, a's are long, flowing sentences
Bentari: Voice masks in normal atmosphere(cup hand over mouth), long nnn sounds in pauses between words, lots of "cut off" words ending in chk, nk, etc.

That way I could glance at it and if aliens were talking Trassian, I could come up with something that sounded similar to what the Trassians sounded like last time. It was great for me because it bothers me when I'm not consistent and it really helps for immersion.

If some of the players spoke the language and others didn't, I'd say what it sounded like, then tell the players that spoke the language what the alien said or jot it down on something for them to read.

You could do similar with D&D languages without much difficulty.
 

I generally just use (very hacked forms of) real world languages for each of the races and their dialects, as well as freely rip off Tolkein, Star Trek, etc. Then I can just use google translate & its pronunciation tools.
 


Dwarves really ought to sound like Icelanders, as that's as close to Old Norse as you're going to get, but no one ever seems to want to do that. (Of course, there probably aren't many gamers who speak Icelandic who don't live there!) Common, of course, sounds exactly like whatever form of English you happen to use normally. B-)
 

Not often will I go to the trouble of "making up" language on the spot typically when I DM and the characters can't understand a language it goes like this...

DM: do any of you speak drwavish?
PCs: No....
DM: ok the angry looking dwarf points at you and shouts something in his gutteral tongue.
 

Dwarves really ought to sound like Icelanders, as that's as close to Old Norse as you're going to get, but no one ever seems to want to do that. (Of course, there probably aren't many gamers who speak Icelandic who don't live there!) Common, of course, sounds exactly like whatever form of English you happen to use normally. B-)

Make them sound kind of like Eric on True Blood... :P
 

Dwarves really ought to sound like Icelanders, as that's as close to Old Norse as you're going to get ...

Yeah, that would work. See if you could find some Icelandic TV clips on You Tube, and just use the audio.

For another source of written versions, or true sounding recordings, Old English is mostly mutually understandable with Old Norse. Look for recordings of Old English being spoken also. Don't let the "English" part of it fool you, Old English is unintelligable to modern speakers and readers of English.
 

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