A guest post by Melonmode - the resident Tavern Cunning Linguist!
@Melonmode
Why do I love made-up languages?
I’m known in the Tavern for taking the time to mess around with fantasy languages; my Blood Hunter Inquisitor, Francisco Cabal, inherited an Elvish rapier that he named “Akhiilor Kerym”, or “Duty’s Blade” in the Elvish tongue (Faerûnian Elvish, that is. Tolkien’s Elvish is a daunting thing, even for me.) The DM also expressed enormous joy when I presented him with a letter written entirely in Dethek - the Dwarvish script, with words from a blend of Giant and Old Norse sprinkled in - all so that my Goliath, Vodhan, could write home. That a Duergar, who probably laughed his arse off, received the letter instead of Vodhan’s family is beside the point… (It was, he did, it was a huge plot point, and very funny - Ed)
But why do I feel the need to do this? Because fantasy languages and scripts have always piqued my curiosity with the flow of their verse and the weird shapes of their script; each one shows painstaking effort and time and work put into a game or a song or a book: the writers and designers are flexing their nerdy brain wrinkles with their grandiloquence, and that is something I’ve always respected. I feel transfixed and compelled to stop and translate everything I come across, and I will soon add it to my little notebook if I don’t have the particular script. As of writing I currently have 32 pages of different fantasy scripts, codes and symbols from works of fiction to real-life history: from the clawed scratchings of Dovahzuul in Skyrim to the angular numerical code of the Cistercian Monks in the 13th century, from Morse Code to the Minecraft Enchanting Language (aka Standard Galactic), and so many more.
Dovahzuul - Skyrim
“Dovahkiin kos fin saviik do muz!” - “Dragonborn be the saviour of men!”
I believe Skyrim was the first step in this direction - when I first booted up the game on my PlayStation 3 in 2012, I was greeted by a song in the main title screen:
“Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin, naal ok zin los vahriin…”
The Song of the Dragonborn, created by Jeremy Soule.
I didn’t know it, but that song, with its thunderous Nordic verse, was singing about… me. The player. That song’s dominant theme is a boss theme, which typically plays when the protagonist confronts a terrible foe; however, the theme plays when the protagonist, the Last Dragonborn, fights a great battle. YOU are the boss to be fought, the obstacle to overcome, the great terrifying power to beat.
Hearing this song, which still gives me goosebumps, inspired me to look more into what they were actually saying, and quickly learned that Bethesda Game Studios had developed an entire language with its own alphabet, writing system, and grammar.
That. Is. Incredible.
Very soon after I was writing my name and many other things in Dovahzuul: the Dragon script. And every time I saw it in-game I had to stop and take a screenshot so that I could translate what it said; what hidden lore was waiting for me just behind a couple of hours of translating. And so it began…
Elvhen - Dragon Age
*“Andaran, atish’an” - “*Enter this place in peace”
The second place where a fantasy language really struck me was when I was playing Dragon Age: Inquisition. Unlike Skyrim, Inquisition didn’t shout a fantasy language at me in the main title screen (though I wouldn’t have complained,) but the language of the Elves, Elvhen, is sprinkled in by the few Elvish characters we meet, primarily an Elven wanderer and spirit speaker named Solas: a man who is open about his goals to help the protagonist close the rift into the Fade (the dimension of demons and spirits and gods), but reveals only what he needs to when speaking about himself - unless the player pursues him romantically, which can only be done by a female Elven character; thus bringing their shared language to the forefront of their conversations.
I have never romanced the egg (Google him and tell me I’m wrong), but the snips of Elvhen that he slips into conversation once again piqued my interest with how beautiful it sounded (as every version of Elvish should), leading me to the Dragon Age Wiki and their page on the language. That page is filled with every single word of Elvish mentioned in the series - a treasure trove for someone like me. It was around this time that I was playing my first long-standing game of Dungeons and Dragons, with my Changeling Rogue’s character sheet begging for a name.
The Eluvians are mirrors in the Dragon Age universe that allow people to travel between cities, realms and worlds, and what better word to describe a person who can steal the face of another than the Elvish word for a magical mirror? Eluvian the klepto-maniacal rogue, was born.
A song for you, in Elvhen.
Giant - DnD
“Meg nom er Trutgravr” - “My name is Truthcarver”
By the time Rime of the Frostmaiden had kicked off in the Tavern, I had already added a few fantasy scripts into my notebook, and to make a weak-muscled Goliath (whose name actually means “Weak Muscles”) a little more interesting than merely hurling Eldritch Blasts at everything that moves, I mixed my love of fantasy languages with my other infamous trait: writing absurdly long backstories and needlessly complex notes.
The initial backstory I gave to the DM was a simple story about a father seeking a cure for his cursed child, but in my notes and on various websites I developed the full life and story of Vodvi-Angr til Thuunlakalaga. Vodhan for short. Of course, I couldn’t do this without first learning more about the language I was hoping to use, and so a weekend trip to the Forgotten Realms Wiki was in order.
Sadly, the wiki provides only a scant selection of vocabulary for the language of Giants, and with possibly 200 words to choose from, all seemed lost…
That was until I read a minor note: “Many of the words of the Giant language come from Scandinavian languages…”
Score!
It took far more time to find words in an online dictionary for Old Norse, but eventually I could produce a table and list of phrases that Vodhan could use, both in his backstory and in-session. With a terrible Scandinavian twang, I like to think I brought a little culture to our Thursday night game session, and regardless of whether I did, what I truly brought was a stoked passion for finding more languages to consume and note, and so every new script I found, whether it was a made up script by Twitter user DarkDollGames or the Icelandic Staves of old, my small notebook was quickly gaining weight in graphite…
Stay nerdy, and send any cool languages my way. Or don’t, I’m not your supervisor.