Minecraft Forums

Perhaps add a chimney and make the edge of the roof cobblestone rather than wood?

All right, I have a few more words. I filled out the names of most of the remaining mobs. If anybody has an improvement, as always, please tell me!

nee horse

karah squid

pohmohe mooshroom

ehirtbarok spider

ehirtbarokil cave spider

temamanhat skeleton

I also created some other words:

barok block

hirt (to) climb

babarokosh wall​

man stick

te- white(thing)

teman bone


And I changed e to be [(to) be, is] and [desert] to ar-poksesesh, to conform to the rules of compound words; I tweaked to meaning of hat to also mean [alive] and I changed how the plural is formed to: You form the plural by reduplicating the first sylable of the word (minus the coda), but ignoring any prefixes.

Full support. And an excellent idea. A nice way to add real depth. On the level of sound alone it adds flavor, should the player bother to learn the language it could also add usefulness though it would require improvements to Villager behavior.

Villagers trading with you can say what they want for what in addition to it being displayed in the gui. Then they can thank you afterwards. Or mutter insults behind your back when you refuse to trade.

The villager that trades eyes of ender might also literally tell you directions to the nearest stronghold.
(would require cardinal direction words, probably some indication of distance, do we have a word for block yet?)

Villager children could run around saying simple words or phrases in context with the world around them to give a sense that they too are learning this language.

A panicking villager at nightfall without a path to the inside of a building can scream "WHERE IS THE DOOR?" or "A ZOMBIE IS ATTACKING ME!"

A truly good use for this language (after it's made) would be if there were an actual method for the player to communicate with villagers. Perhaps the player could find pieces of a sort of "rosetta stone" hidden in structures that when held by the player would translate what they type to Minecraftian, either simple english commands or to literally transcribe the characters. This way the player could ask villagers for information, or if the villager likes the player enough, he can even give the villager commands like, "follow me," "wait here," or "this is your new home." This would allow a player to help build new villages in more convenient locations.

Quote from nightworld115

1.Ehh, Villagers aren't mute anymore so this is basically useless.
I respectfully disagree.
2.Villager sounds annoy people to death.
Part of the reason why is that they are mostly repetitive and meaningless noises. Like cows mooing. A language would be quickly recognized as noises with some meaning, or at least not be the same sound constantly. Plus there's no rule that Villagers HAVE to sound like Squidward.
3.This was bumped.
Because it's a legitimately good idea that a bunch of people, including me, have only recently discovered.
4.This would be a weird language.
So is English.

Quote from Bilgewater

As for other vocab, these Testificates are still lacking some basic words of self-expression. Good, bad, and so-so are basic forms of being that could be added to conversational Minecraftian. We've got 'fahi' for fun, fa or fah could be 'good'. Since you've got 'n' and sometimes 'i' to negate a verb, 'ni' would be my logical choice for 'bad'.

I very much support the

I was fiddling around yesterday and decided that those squidward NPCs looked awfully mute, so I decided to whip up a language for them. Here is a quick technical overview, for anyone with knowledge of linguistics and conlanging. It's nowhere near at the level where I can write a full babel text, but it has enough to make it a nice naming language once some more vocabulary is flushed out.

here's a sketch of it so far. If enough people are interested, I could TRY to write a less technical introduction, but I'm not a teacher by any means.


PHONOLOGY
consonants: /p, t, k, f, s, x, m, n, l, r/ (all letters are written as in the IPA, except /x/ which is written <h> for aesthetic purposes.

vowels: /i, e, a, o/ (again spelled as in the IPA)

phonetactic constraints and allophones:

syllables can be (C)V(C) where the syllable coda cannot be a stop (p, t, or k) If a compound word or affix is appended to a word with a stop at the end, the stop changes to the corresponding fricative (/p/ > [f], /t/ > [s], /k/ > [x]).

However, all consonants can be geminated as in Italian, so "akka" is a valid string)

There are no diphthongs, so an epenthetic [k] is inserted between morphemes which would otherwise result in two vowels next to each other

[i] is used as an epenthetic vowel as well.

(for the one person who is still reading, the phonology of a language is how many sounds it has. Humans can produce ~150 sounds that are used in at least one language, but no language uses ALL of these sounds. Phonetactics (or phonetactic constraints) in a language say how these sounds are allowed to come together to form syllables and words. There are also features like tone and stress that are called supersegmetnal features, but sometimes tone can make a difference in meaning as in chinese, so can stress, as in Spanish (amo vs amó))

phonology and phonetactics are the two most important features when constructing a language that will be used in media, because it dictates how the language sounds to foreign ears. Do you want people to say "that sounds kinda like French" or "kinda like Hebrew", its all in the phonology and phonetactics.

This language will sound a bit like italian (because consonants can be long or short) and a bit like Japanese (because the syllable structure is so constrained), and perhaps a bit like Hawaiian (because there are so few phonemes)

Now on to the grammar!

word order in regular sentences is subject verb object, as in english.
ex: Hasti kek tokko. The ghast eats the wolf. (contrived, I know)

Adjectives can act like verbs in sentences like "the wolf is small", "is small" is a special kind of verb
ex: Tokko mekapi. The wolf is small.

If a noun with an adjective is the subject or object of a sentence, like "the small wolf runs", the adjective is added as a suffix to the noun
"tokkomekap" = "the small wolf".

It should be apparent by now that "Minecraftian" as I will call the language for now, does not have words for "a" and "the", just like Latin.

Nouns have 3 numbers: singular (which is unmarked), plural (indicated by reduplicating the root (saying the word twice)) and another kind of plural that I can't quite decide on yet, but for now, it's a collective plural like in some of Tolkien's languages, and it's formed by reduplicating the first syllable of the root minus the final consonant if there is one.

Tokko = the wolf/a wolf
tokkotokko = wolves
totokko = all the wolves/the whole group of wolves/ the wolves considered as a unit detc.

The present tense of verbs is unmarked

tokko kek = the wolf eats

past tense is formed by adding -am

tokko kekam = the wolf ate

reduplicating the verb changes it from simple aspict to continuous aspect

tokko kekkek = the wolf is eating (there's a difference between "I eat" and "I am eating")

It works for past tense as well, forming more or less the imperfect of Spanish or Latin.

tokko kekkekam = the wolf was eating.

That's about it for now. Wake up, wipe the drool off your keyboard, and tell me what you think! :smile.gif: