I'm not an etymologist by any means but since you've had no other responses... What's the problem? I can't guarantee I can help but I can give it a go.
Cheers, DoD
I'd like to take the word lists, what we know of the cultures and lanuages of Oerth, and see if some conclusions can be drawn that would allow us to extrapolate more words, and perhaps some grammar rules. I'm thinking a philologist would have to expertise to make that happen.
Mmmmm, an etymologist would be the best option. I can claim to be a philologist by inclination if not by training. I am the sort of nerd who will try to work out latin roots and their meanings from modern English.
So, if you like, you can shoot me a list of known words and and I can see what I come up with. Ya never know, I may get a a flash or two of genius.
I've been thinking about the linguistics of some of GH's languages. In trying to draw any conclusions from what we know about them, I've resorted to reading linguistics websites and such. Either way, I'm hoping to make some headway... eventually.
GUIDE 1: When trying to construct the linguistics of the GH languages I've started working from the assumption that Common = English. I'm hoping the practical reasons for this are apparent.
That said, I'm defining "Common" as the widely-distributed version. I'm sure there are variations on the Common tongue. One might expect differences in the way Common is spoken in Ahlissa, as opposed to Furyondy, for instance. I needed a baseline - I needed to start somewhere - and so this is where I'm at.
I've also defined "English" as American English. In other words, the most common form of Common, the base line, spoken throughout the Flanaess is identical to American English. I am aware that there are English dialects, which could manifest side-by-side with the variations in Common. For instance, since Common grew out of the Aerdi tribal tongue spoken by the Oerids of the Great Kingdom, one could equate Old High Oeridian with Old English, with the Common spoken in the states of the former GK equating to the English spoken in Britian IRL.
Unfortunately, I'm no linguist, so I'm going to be making a lot of mistakes along the way. However, I belive that the Common = English model is the best way to start.
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Which brings me to something I need help with.
Living Greyhawk Gazetter, page 11, states the following about the Common Tongue:
A combination of Ancient Baklunish and the dialect of Old Oeridian spoken in the Great Kingdom was the basis of this traders' tongue. Beginning centuries ago as Middle-Common, the language contained many obviously Oeridian elements, and the contributions of Baklunish grammatical structure and vocabulary are clearly identifiable.
If I'm reading this correctly, the Common Tongue takes Old Oeridian (Old English), mixes in some regional variations, and then adds some elements of Baklunish grammar and vocabulary. Does Common borrow directly from Ancient Baklunish, or did the it acquire elements from colloquial dialects? I'm leaning toward the latter, as Common was a traders' tongue, and so would acquire those elements that were being used "on the street." That said, the written format may borrow directly from Ancient Baklunsih, as the standard literary version of the Baklunish language.
t might be instructive to see which languages have contributed to the grammatical structure of the English language, and how representative those languages are in terms of vocabulary. Perhaps a particular real-world language will present itself as inspiration.
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Some may ask "why" I'm doing this. Well, I'm bored and figured "why not!" Seriously, though, I'm trying to create a better language model as a foundation for the GH Dictionary project. I don't plan on copying whole languages in-tact, but given the parameters already established, hope to create something useful for future Greyhawkers to enjoy.
My time on the 'net is up, so I have to go. I'll write more when / if I get the chance. In the meantime, I would really like to hear comments / suggestions.
Living Greyhawk Gazetter, page 11, states the following about the Common Tongue:
A combination of Ancient Baklunish and the dialect of Old Oeridian spoken in the Great Kingdom was the basis of this traders' tongue. Beginning centuries ago as Middle-Common, the language contained many obviously Oeridian elements, and the contributions of Baklunish grammatical structure and vocabulary are clearly identifiable.
If I'm reading this correctly, the Common Tongue takes Old Oeridian (Old English), mixes in some regional variations, and then adds some elements of Baklunish grammar and vocabulary. Does Common borrow directly from Ancient Baklunish, or did the it acquire elements from colloquial dialects? I'm leaning toward the latter, as Common was a traders' tongue, and so would acquire those elements that were being used "on the street." That said, the written format may borrow directly from Ancient Baklunsih, as the standard literary version of the Baklunish language.
t might be instructive to see which languages have contributed to the grammatical structure of the English language, and how representative those languages are in terms of vocabulary. Perhaps a particular real-world language will present itself as inspiration.
I took a crack at explaining this in my first article The Development of the Common Tongue, which has some porblems with canon (I didn't know as much GH lore then as I do now) but some people thought it was an interesting theory, and the basic theory doesn't conflict with canon. In short I viewed Common as something like ladino (primarily Old Castilian with Hebrew)and yiddish (primarily Middle High German with Hebrew) in the role of aramaic. In my theory it was developed by baklunish merchant clans living in the Flanaess in the post-Migration and early Great Kingdom periods. The language was at first widely used to facilitate trade, then as the GK expanded and the members of those baklunish ethnic group were taken on by the Aerdi as a ready-made bureacratic class to run the empire, their oerid-baklunish language was widely adopted, eventually becoming the Common language of the GK and even being adopted to a great extent in the Sheldomar region. I've since modified this to make the Old Oeridian elements even stronger than the Ancient Baklunish. Hope you find this interesting. This is a great (and given the diverse canon authors, frustrating) project, so I for one say thanks for tackling it.
Right now, I'm starting to look at the linguistic characteristics of the English language; the phonetics (the possible sounds in English) and phonology (how sounds are actually used in English).
English uses a 26 character alphabet, but how many sounds does an English speaker use (phonetics)? What boundaries are put on those sounds when used (phonology)? That's my first hurdle.
I've got a chart that says whether the 'h' is a glottal stop, etc... and I have the little chart that shows where vowels are voiced (looks like a semi-collapsed trapezoid). What I need to know is "How many sounds does the English language use? What are those sounds?" For instance, if you wanted to create a phonetic alphabet, with one character being used for one sound, and no cross-over (ie... a one-to-one relationship), "How many characters would that alphabet need?"
Right now it's just an academic exercise, but once I have that baseline, I'm going to move on to other things.
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While doing the above exercise, I've decided that when "mapping out" the GH languages it would be best to stick to as closely to a 26-sound language as possible. This allows authors to use the language without having to create non-standard characters, or use funky accents. The only exception would be using a ' character to denote some sort of stop, or other vocal anomoly (sp?). This may not be practical, in the end, but it's where I'm starting out - at least for Common. Who knows where I'll go from there :)
Sounds right from memory. Been a long time since I did even basic linguistics.
On your desire to use English as a basis for Common: I can get a hold of my Old English textbooks from long ago and use them for inspiration for the vocab extensions.
I'm thinking of using a derivative of Aramaic for the Ancient Baklunish script, with some ideograms or logograms thrown in to represent words borrowed from other languages. Something like this:
or this
or this
Note: I did not create the above scripts. Didn't want anyone giving me credit for something that wasn't mine.
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