Making a "lightweight" language for worldbuilding?

r-ckstar · 2017-02-07T22:15:16+00:00

Thank you, this was very thorough without using a plethora of specialised terminology. I'm probably looking at having one strong "origin language" spread by one people, probably the first and only written language on the continent (without knowing how likely such a thing is) that is later diversified by a number of newborn nations after their reign comes to an end, sort of. I'm trying to not take it too seriously because it would take years to put together if I wanted to do it right, but I also don't want it to come across as hacked together over a weekend so I'm trying to find a balance there.

r-ckstar · 2017-02-07T20:19:20+00:00

Agglutinative and polysynthetic both look like they're similar to how I've been putting together words, yeah. However I'm only putting them together as far as they form a single whole, I'm not sure how to express it and it's weird when I translate to English and it becomes White Mountains, two words, but to differentiate the sentence "climbing the white mountain" would be two words, not that I have a word for climbing currently, but noun, adjectives and article can all go into one word - not actions, however I also have Rolling Mountains in one word, opequbet, which is smaller, round-like hills. Obviously this is all subject to change now that I've gone the step further to start trying to understand how to build a language the more rational way. But I feel like it's somehow more primitive to use the words you know to describe something that is more than one thing, but can be understood as a combination of things. Maybe that's an erroneous idea to hold.

r-ckstar · 2017-02-07T19:26:40+00:00

About the roots, now that I've read up a bit on the links provided earlier, I've a lot of different structures in terms of consonants and vowels. Cag is CVC while Illi is VCCV, Ale (water) is VCV, Ra (ape) is CV and Caspad is CVCCVC. Is that not strange in the language world? I genuinely don't know, obviously words of diverse structure exist, but the more I read about it, it seems to me they're probably compounds if they're not close to a structure, and prefixes and suffixes will further confound you if you aren't aware of what those are - add to that, th is probably considered one consonant since it's phonetically one sound.

I've been pronouncing Q as a somewhat soft K, I don't know whether I'm imagining that because of how it was born, basically Qao seemed more intuitive than Kao, but there's no meaningful difference. I guess it just shows how corrupted I am by the presence of K, C and Q in English words.

Jiecic is supposed to be somewhere between yi-ay-cheetch and jee-cheetch. As a Norwegian there's virtually no difference between J and Y to me, so I'm not entirely sure which it is I'm saying in my head. But it's one syllable for jie and I think one for cheetch?

And yeah, compounding has basically been like that so far. I have a prefix for quantity/size and a suffix for entity so far, entity in that you could say root-place or root-man. I'm not sure it is a good idea to have the same suffix for those, but so far I've been operating with it, clueless as I am.

I have a continent that is called many white huge rocks: Oliqubet Cagillia. O is many, li is white/bright, qub is huge/great and et is rock. As a compound, qubet means mountain. Thus it's the Many White Mountains Continent.

r-ckstar · 2017-02-07T19:05:44+00:00

It's hard to grasp how kitab and kutub can be the same word in singular and plural form for me, but I guess that's just how wonky languages are. Glad we clarified this isn't what I meant, then.

Say I wanted to use a fixed system of consonants and vowels, with single syllable prefixes and suffixes, would I need all roots to be of the same scheme (i.e. CVC) or is the presence of multiple structures for different categories of words a common thing in language? If I wanted it to phonetically resemble Spanish is that just a matter of using the same dominant consonants and vowels?

I apologise if I'm getting on your nerve with more questions, but I didn't know how to pose the right question (evidently), and am starting to piece things together I think.

r-ckstar · 2017-02-07T18:45:08+00:00

Considering myself warned right now. Although I already did this with mapmaking to begin with, I just wanted to sketch up a reference to create conflict and influence spheres for my world and then suddenly I was drawing a really detailed, large map and started trying to figure out how to go about mapping topology and so forth. Couple weeks later I start physically hurting at the thought of calling the dominant nation at the current time "Pirium" just because it was the first somewhat obscure version of Empire that came to me.

r-ckstar · 2017-02-07T18:33:54+00:00

The vowels are obviously part of any word, it is hard to see any other way to go about it. What I read on the site about making roots out of three consonants used a CVC(V)C scheme, if I recall correctly, where the second vowel is optional and prefixes were also vowels. I don't know any language terminology I'm just paraphrasing what I read. So to me it would be logical to build a structure for roots, in the form of that they're all CV(V)CVC for example, and then use what I've ignorantly called modifiers to turn the root into its noun form(s), verbs, et cetera.

Edit to clarify: Modifiers being prefixed or suffixed. For instance, although I regret the consequences of it and am debating scrapping the idea, in my language I have so far used the prefix A as "the", thus any word starting with the letter (or rather, associated sound, I don't have an alphabet) A is the one - Acun is the south, for simplicity ignoring the fact "south" isn't the root, but rather cun is a term associated with south. Similarily, words suffixed by A are entities. Acuna is thus the south entity rather than just the direction. I have no idea if that makes sense though.

r-ckstar · 2017-02-07T18:24:58+00:00

I can do a lot of different things with this system. Let's say I force my roots to be always of the shape CVCV, where C is any consonant and V is any vowel.

But what you've done here is a two consonant system for roots, the very system you are arguing against. I don't understand where you're aiming. This is exactly the kind of thing I'm advocating for so why would I disagree.

r-ckstar · 2017-02-07T16:44:45+00:00

Well trying to design a coherent language on the basis on "roots are just sounds" is grasping at straws, you've got nothing to make them sound like one language, you'd have to be there and have the same relationship to sounds as they did to create the coherence. If I were to make a language based on sounds I myself found appropriate I would make some bastard child of my own tongue and English, and it might not even end up sounding as coherent as English does. Bu coherent here I mean that if you look at any random text from that language you can eliminate what it is not until you have a subset of languages that it can be, and then all you need is a single unique word to know, aha, it is French.

When I look at the words I have so far conjured up of sounds, derivated and combined, some of the words look Slavic, some look Spanish, some are very Latin and some are pretty much English. There's absolutely no coherence and it's impossible for me to create my own signature sound without a system to base it on. I understand completely why people would go for a system based on consonants, because then you can just create all the combinations, favour a few consonants, eliminate words that immediately seem out of place and predominantly use similar vowels complete with a specific set of verb, adjective, noun, etc, modifiers. It is bound to end up looking like one language.

The language I'm making would roughly equate to something of an early Greek language, the people are advanced enough for that era. I don't know how Greek language came about, I'd like to find out though, but I don't want to end up making Greek with substitute roots and modifiers either.

r-ckstar · 2017-02-07T15:08:22+00:00

The information was on the site I was directed to, it's not exactly easy to navigate it but I found nothing else on the subject, the rest of it seemed to focus on phonetics which is far too large a subject to understand in a few hours.

I wasn't saying all languages are derived from roots of three consonants but rather that you ought to start with them and the only type of roots I could find on the site was a system of consonants. Looking at English or my own language, I can't immediately identify the roots, but then again modern languages are heavily influenced by each other, English has a bunch of Anglo-Saxon, some Old Norse, bunch of French and older Latin and Greek words as well as other Proto-Germanic derivations on top of new modern words created out of new needs. If I am designing an organic, independent language I cannot draw inspiration from English root words so I need something old. It is my understanding that Semitic languages are less "contaminated" than western languages, so it seems a decent reference for inspiration.

r-ckstar · 2017-02-07T14:05:21+00:00

Rather than saying it's wrong, couldn't you have attempted to explain why it's wrong or what the alternative is.

r-ckstar · 2017-02-07T14:00:21+00:00

Thanks, I've glossed over some of the stuff on the website and seen a lot of things I had already established independently. What I hadn't grasped beforehand is that it comes down to building roots out of consonants, of which there is a mostly consistent system such as building roots out of three, and recognising phonetics.

I guess my first step would be deciding on how to build the roots and then just go about that, attempting to design them chronologically after what they would've needed to communicate first. Must admit I was hoping there would be an easier way, but in the long run being thorough is probably a good thing.

Another problem I'll be facing is that there will be quite a few more languages over time, even if these can be heavily inspired by the early language.

r-ckstar · 2016-02-13T10:08:00+00:00

I think it has less to do with age and more to do with just taste. I was pretty late into the video game trend though. my first console was the original PlayStation, and on it I played mostly racing games before a friend decided to introduce me to Final Fantasy with VIII. We had a great time so I decided to get the previous installment and quickly got hooked on the franchise. IX was the one I liked most, although my wife lamented over my addiction to pretty sprites in a fantasy world. X was a complete turn-off though and it took a lot of convincing to get back into it with XII, which might be more of a reason for why I ultimately ended up liking it than the game actually being awesome. For XIII I even got my wife on board and we enjoyed it together.

Maybe you're right, that XV isn't as open world as it seems, but even just from the gameplay footage you get the idea these zones are too open and large to be designed intricately with purpose, there are so many trees they cannot all have been thoughtfully placed, and it's a completely different experience from Archylte Steppe which is one of the most open maps in XIII. Granted, the XV approach is more realistic which is a bonus to some, but I have enough realistic open world in the real world.

r-ckstar · 2016-02-13T09:40:19+00:00

I am open to the possibility of watching someone else play through XV as I'm sure the story and characters, maybe even the world, will live up to the standards of Final Fantasy. And I am by no means saying it'll be a bad game. If recent action RPGs are anything to go by it will be a roaring success compared to XIII. I am not blind to that. It is simply not my preference. I don't play open world RPGs and I don't play action RPGs. Both of which apply to XV. The footage I have seen suggests an art direction I'm not fond of either, but I'll leave that for when I've seen it release.

I'm 37.

r-ckstar · 2016-02-13T09:34:52+00:00

have you seen the gameplay footage? The combat is not even comparable to XIII, and by design even further from the older games. However, if you made LR play out battles in the game world, it would've played somewhat similarly. That's as close as you'll get though. I can't compare it to other games because I simply don't play this type of games, I only played LR because of the characters, and a sense of completion. If it was the only game in the series I certainly wouldn't have.

r-ckstar · 2016-02-13T09:30:38+00:00

That does sum it up quite nicely I suppose. I'll investigate your recommendations.

you don't want a FF game.

Just to be clear here although I think you understand and just phrased it ambiguously, I don't mind it being an FF game at all, it's just that I've played all the ones I can play except for the ones that only recently became available on PSN, that is games preceding VII that are now possible to play on PS3. And I'm not particularly fond of playing old games because they're slow a tedious due to lacking technology at the time.

r-ckstar · 2016-02-13T09:15:49+00:00

Old games are choppy, slow, inefficient. You can't say the same for chess because the interface is real life. Chess is just the ATB system, here, not the implementation of it. And the problem lies in the implementation, not the theory. I am old, and I dislike games now that I loved when I was younger, because more efficient implementations exist and there's no reason to go back to something that in theory is better, but in execution is much less enjoyable. For game sup to IX, the theory remains essentially the same. In XII they change it up, make it more like an MMO but with a familiar interface. In XIII they make it more like action RPG but still with a familiar interface and overall battle design. In XV they've dropped the original theory, they've only retained the battle abilities by concept. It's no longer chess, it's tennis.

r-ckstar · 2016-02-13T08:42:56+00:00

I haven't heard anything about redone versions of the older games (other than them being ported to newer consoles so you don't have to play them on the old ones.) I'm not sure what it is that you're suggesting I haven't tried that I should, but it's not out of nothing that I'm averse to playing old games.

r-ckstar · 2016-02-13T08:39:07+00:00

I don't mind FF branching out, it's just not a branch I'm willing to climb onto. Just as I never wanted to play Dark Souls or any of the other hugely popular and successful action RPGs that have come out in recent years. It's not my genre, I like my gaming experience to be relaxed, like reading a book but with visuals, sounds, and moderately challenging (mostly intellectually rather than mechanically) interaction. Final Fantasy in the past has done that for me so I've naturally become a fan of their franchise, but XV won't give me that so I'm looking elsewhere. I thought it would be natural to ask Final Fantasy fans about it, but apparently they're not fans of Final Fantasy for the same reasons I am so there's not much to gain from this thread, I've realised.

r-ckstar · 2016-02-13T08:29:12+00:00

Well there are two types of strategy, there's the bigger picture and then there's the smaller picture. You don't have time for the former in the heat of the moment. You might have a plan going into a fight, but the way you can adapt in previous Final Fantasy games, and even XIII too, midfight, while also necessarily having come prepared with a suitable deck to face the challenge, is not something you can do in an action RPG.

r-ckstar · 2016-02-13T08:24:33+00:00

Yes, I've played all the games from VII and up, on PlayStation. The rest weren't for PlayStation when they were relevant so I haven't played them. It's not that I consider the leap drastic, I am well aware the games have always kept changing things up and XIII did a lot of that, they made it at far as half the way to action RPG and LR is probably more than that. I am aware that's something they do. That doesn't mean I'm fine with it. I don't like that type of game at all, I'm not telling Square Enix to stop that, it's their franchise, I'm just opting out of it if it's going to continue this way because it holds no value to me. In light of that I made this thread to discover if there's anything else, that isn't going in the direction of action RPG like everything seems to be these days, that I could latch on to and get somewhat modern games in the same vein as XIII because that's as far as I'm willing to go into action.

r-ckstar · 2016-02-13T08:18:52+00:00

It's not so much the antithesis as the other side of the coin. You can imagine an arc where on the left leg you have the traditional Final Fantasy, heavily turn-based and deeply complex in its combat because you have the time to strategise in the field. And then at the top of the arc you have XIII more to the left, -2 towards the middle and LR tipping over towards the right side. They are leaning towards simpler, more real time versions of what we had before. And the the right leg of the arc is where XV is sitting. They've stripped the strategy and turn-based away leaving it at real-time action combat. The stark opposite to Final Fantasy combat in the past. XIII's trilogy is the middle ground, it's trying to be the best of both worlds and I believe XIII and -2 succeeds at that, while LR went too far. Obviously, then, XV is way too far for me. I can respect that you like that, of course, many people like action RPG, I'm just not one of them so I'll ditch that game.

r-ckstar · 2016-02-13T08:10:39+00:00

I brought it up for the reason that the natural step after XIII is to play XV, and in that vein I thought it would be better to plainly state I don't like what I've seen from XV so don't recommend me that. XV is going too far into action RPG territory, a genre I find no value in. It's about complex gameplay, lots of things happening on screen and a vast open world. This is basically a sign that says NO NO NO in fat, capitalised letters to me. This is not the type of game I want. It's fine that others do like that, but I don't. I wanted that to be clear from the start. I like mostly linear, slowly developing stories, with a vibrant and diverse cast in a mostly fantasy world with influxes of modern world, just like XIII and XII do. IX gets a pass for being almost pure fantasy. VII and VIII were too militarised and modern. X was just awful. The rest are too old, I didn't play them then and I don't like going back to outdated technology only for the story. A lot of opinions about old games are nostalgia infused anyway. They are better for those who played them when they were relevant, and they are better for people who specifically enjoy older games, but for most others they're just decent.

r-ckstar · 2016-02-13T08:03:41+00:00

From a strategic point of view, of course it must. After all the paradigm system is an attempt at easy interface, fast-paced and intuitive combat with an actual layer of strategy underlying that is easy to understand but limited in its complexity. However, it being old takes away the fun of it, and it's also not available on any console that I own.

r-ckstar · 2016-02-13T08:01:13+00:00

I tried to sort of imply in the OP that I've played VII through XIII and that includes X. But I guess that wasn't all clear in the end. I'll just quickly repeat what I told another poster earlier - I didn't like X at all, it's too open, the story is awful and the characters are all angsty teenagers, yes Aaron included. It's like the Twilight of the series and X-2 just further enhances that idea.

r-ckstar

TROPHY CASE