Languages

[olauwers]

Sounds good.

Out of curiosity, in the "Battle good but hard."-sentence, is "Battle" the subject or the verb? (We should try to make such things more clear in the language, by having some sort of suffix or something to indicate verbs/subjects. Otherwise, pure fact sentences are going to cause alot of misunderstanding. But maybe that isn't bad for the orcs. They don't need to be consistent and coherent in what they say all the time, it could show their weakness in intelligence.)

[Kostia Kaploon]

Originally Posted by olauwers

Sounds good.

Out of curiosity, in the "Battle good but hard."-sentence, is "Battle" the subject or the verb? (We should try to make such things more clear in the language, by having some sort of suffix or something to indicate verbs/subjects. Otherwise, pure fact sentences are going to cause alot of misunderstanding. But maybe that isn't bad for the orcs. They don't need to be consistent and coherent in what they say all the time, it could show their weakness in intelligence.)

You are right.. sorry i missed it..

well verbs will have an "action" suffix -

battle - noun - ormic
(to)battle - verb - ormicma

ex.:
ormicma *future* hard = battle hard! (like saying to someone.. like a battle call)
ormic *future* hard = battle will be hard (like saying to his man to prepare because its gonna be hard)

(of course all words are temporary for now..)

btw i think sentences show look general like this (just trying things about.. feel free to critic)
SubjectTimeObject (fact)-
me *past* little child.
VerbTimeSubject,Object (action)-
run *present* men, the enemy castle.

*present* is the same as leaving it out (run men, the enemy castle) but its more rushing like saying "do it now!!"

any other problems with it?

kost.

[olauwers]

All sounds good now.

[Kostia Kaploon]

ok having that covered we have a few more issues we have to aprove and we basicaly have the grammar. Ok here we go:

Person

How to say "you" "we" "they" etc. in orcish..

To make it simple and a bit "dumb"

I decided to use 3 main words with prefixes and sufixes (letters that come before and after a word)

there will be a word for every person for example:

First person - I - mun
Second person - You - kun
Third person - They - dun

To talk about a number of persons instead of one (he vs. they) you simply add a suffix that indicates plural for ex. osh

he - dun
they - dunosh

And finaly a prefix to indicate female gender for ex. mi

they(female) - midunosh

Basicly that summens it up.. next subject:

Numbers

I thought about something simple yet a bit unique here:

i haven't decided yet about it so ill need your help here. The two options i think are the best are:

1) three tens and five
or
2) five and three tens

both of them mean 35 and they are a lot similar.. but there is still a difference.. so what do u prefer?

the full system will go like this:

356: three hundreds and five tens and six (or the other way around)

Questions

That one is pretty straight forward:

YesNo: Sentence + ?
AnyOther: Question word + Sentance + ?

Thats preaty much what i have so far.. Please critic it and find any problems or things you would like to change..

kost.

[olauwers]

I like the system for persons, but it sounds a bit complicated for Orcs. It'd be great for, say, elves, but I believe Orcs should make it pretty straight-forward and just use different words or something like that. Otherwise their poor little minds will explode under the pressure of all the -fixes. Still, it's a very good idea, we'll have to look deeper into this specific subject, and see what is best.

For the number system, I'd say "three tens and five ones". That shows how they just say it like it is. But, do Orcs count the same way as us humans? Do they use the decimal system? Maybe they count in a different way. Maybe even in terms as "two armies, and half a battalion", and, say, an army has 1000 Orcs and is divided into 10 battalions of 100 Orcs? I think that would give them something special in their counting system.

Questions, I like the system, but it resembles our languages alot. It's gonna be especially difficult because it's mainly a spoken language, and Orcs don't know much about intonation, if you ask me. I would just put a word that means it's a question at the end. Say, the word is Barf:

Battle good barf.

Of course, that is only for the Yes/No-Questions. The question-word questions can stay the same. It basicly just gives Yes/No-questions a question word.

What do you think?

[Kostia Kaploon]

Ok, after we discused it a bit a few things were changed and decided:

Personal

We decided that what i proposed is too long and it should be 1 sylibal.. we kept the general idea:

We use a "u" as basis for "I", "o" as "you" and "e" as "he", then we add a "d" to indicate plural and and "r" to indicate singular.

so they will be Ru Ro Re Du Do De (or we could change the names themselves afterwardes)

Names

All the orcish leaders/army generals/orcish gods have long names...

when orcs talk to them they have to use the full names..

when they talk among themeselves they use nicknames for the leaders...

the little orcs themselves do not have personal names..



ok got that one.. moving on...

kost.

[Puppeteer]

Of course, maybe it's like the Sumerians. There is no system of numbers, but simply for example in writing you write the object "x" number of times, ie. 3 fish= fish fish fish. This is simple yet effective. Also, 0 is quite complex for a crude race.

[Kostia Kaploon]

Originally Posted by Puppeteer

Of course, maybe it's like the Sumerians. There is no system of numbers, but simply for example in writing you write the object "x" number of times, ie. 3 fish= fish fish fish. This is simple yet effective. Also, 0 is quite complex for a crude race.

i understand the reasoning.. and you can say 0 fish with "no fish"

but there is a problem with that.. what if they want to say that there are a hundred humans up ahead? the game will crash lolz...

but good thinking and keep em ideas flowing..

kost.

[olauwers]

That is an interesting system. The 100 human problem could be solved by comparing it with something else they know. For example, they say there is an army of humans up ahead. An Orcish army contains 100 people. Thus, there are 100 people up ahead. As long as we find enough comparisons, that system could work.

[Joseph Visscher]

Honestly I hope to God that dof doesn't make or get a Artificial Language, we need to focus those resources to the gameplay, 3d art, better animations, better sounds etc, etc. somthing like Artificial Language would be near the bottom of the list in my books anyways.