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Old Church Slavonic and the origin of Fampyrs, discuss!

Lacrymas

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I've asked him about etymology once or twice, it was about if "dyr" and "hyl" are written with an "y", shouldn't some other word be written in some way, I don't really remember. I tried to deduct a phonological rule. Fampyr would also follow that btw.

I was thinking we should petition him to change fampyr to (f)ąpyr. This way people would mostly read it as "fapper".

I think the Fam- part is the problematic one, not the Y. Not to mention that wikipedia states that the first recorded sighting of the word in English is spelled as vampyre and PoE's own DYrwood and other such words. Is there another example in PoE where a V is substituted for an F? Fampyr looks like someone mangled together the Slavic version of vampir, the old English and French version of vampyre and pronounced it as F /ɛf/ by way of the German V /faʊ/.

I thought that was what we were discussing, lol, not the Y part.
 

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marmot01 asked: Hi Josh. A PoE fan over here. I admire the work you've put into constructing fantasy languages. I have a bit of a geeky question on Aedyran sound laws. I've spotted the use of the letter 'y' in the words 'hyl' and 'dyr'. In both cases 'y' is pronounced as [ ɪ ], which I believe is a reduced vowel ([ ɨ̞ ] in US notation). What was the old pronunciation, and have you also devised a sound law that explains it? Also, how is "wood" pronounced in Hylspeak? I'd expect the [ ʊ ] to be a later form?

Before I begin, I should say that I’m not a linguist, and many of Eora’s languages’ orthographies were contrived for the sake of distinctiveness in the written form (because we use relatively little voice-over) and to give familiar readers a sense of inspirational sources (Old English and Icelandic for Eld Aedyran; Italian, Occitan, and French for Vailian; Cornish and Welsh for Glanfathan).

That said, yes, Eld Aedyran always pronounces “y”s as [ɪ]. Dyrwood sounds like “deer-wood”. Hylspeak sounds like “heel-speek”. I should note that both of those words are actually Hylspeak, not Eld Aedyran. Because Hylspeak borrows elements from Eld and “contemporary” Aedyran (English), the latter of which is influenced by Vailian and Glanfathan to the point where the orthography becomes inconsistent, it also has inconsistent orthography. Hylspeak is also used by many people with limited or no reading or writing skills, so a Hylspeak word can have different spellings even within the same community (assuming it’s ever written down).

The Eld Aedyran word for wood is “wode”, and can be seen a unique axe found in The White March, Wodewys.
 

Lacrymas

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Aha, so what he's basically telling us is that it's random. Good to know.
 

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Yeah, that's the explanation for "y" being a long e in "dyr" but "ea" also being a long e in "speak". I was more curious how is it that a long vowel is marked by one letter, but then a long o in wood is suddenly marked by two letters. But I guess the randomness explanation covers that. Why is the Dyrwood named in Hylspeak though, and not in Aedyran? Anyway, I like it that he took the trouble to construct vocabularies for the languages.
 

Lacrymas

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I guess they are going for the "coolness" and "memorable" factors above any kind of formal logic. Fampyr isn't cool, though, it's the most uncool word I've seen. Even moist is better.
 

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Upir would have been cooler than fampyr :D I guess with the knowledge we have now, fampyr should be pronounced with a long e - fampeer?

Actually different spellings of the same word were a normal thing even among educated writers, as we saw, because there wasn't a strongly enforced centralised language norm, so it's not But to really do it justice, he would have to design complete phonology and phonetic transformations (so that the wrong spellings are wrong "in the right way"), which would require lots of research or contracting someone like the conlang society, who do the languages for Game of Thrones. For a guy who consulted a climatologist for the deadfire climate zones, I wouldn't have been surprised.
 

Lacrymas

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Well, Tolkien did that with the Elvish languages and he was only 1 person, so why not them? I don't know if there is any point, I think the difficulty of such a thing outweighs its benefit. The philosophy of language (irl) is interesting, but whether it has practical usage in a game is questionable.
 

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Well, Tolkien did that with the Elvish languages and he was only 1 person, so why not them? I don't know if there is any point, I think the difficulty of such a thing outweighs its benefit. The philosophy of language (irl) is interesting, but whether it has practical usage in a game is questionable.
It took Tolkien 50+ years to get the LotR published... some corners might be worth cutting to get the game in 2018 instead of 2068.
 

Lacrymas

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It took Tolkien 50+ years to get the LotR published... some corners might be worth cutting to get the game in 2018 instead of 2068.

Exactly my thought, it would be too difficult and in the end even pointless for them to do so. It would be nice for some consistency in the very few words they come up with, though :p Eh, Josh already said they aren't going for meticulously planned languages, so whatever.
 

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Well, Tolkien did that with the Elvish languages and he was only 1 person, so why not them? I don't know if there is any point, I think the difficulty of such a thing outweighs its benefit. The philosophy of language (irl) is interesting, but whether it has practical usage in a game is questionable.
It took Tolkien 50+ years to get the LotR published... some corners might be worth cutting to get the game in 2018 instead of 2068.

Dont be dumb. Lord of the Rings took 17 years to get published.
 

BilboBaggins

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And 12 years to write.

george-rr-martin2.jpg
 

Lacrymas

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Not even close to Tolkien. So, so far you'll be justified thinking they are members of two entirely different species.
 

Iznaliu

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BTW I keep reading incredible bullshit regarding "upir" in wikipedia, including the misconception that there was a Novgorod priest in the 11th c. named "Упир Лихий", which if it were true, literally translates as "Evil Upir". Anyway, at least I know what I'm naming my evil priest. :lol:

It was a personal name in East Slavic, which is rather odd given it's meaning.

ы was originally a ligature (I haven't figured out how the sound was written beforehand), but confusingly, ы comes from ъ+і, not ь+і.
ы has always been a ligature, not just originally. The ligature still represents a sound, like any other of the graphemes which correspond to a phoneme. ы represents one of 11 vowels in Old Slavonic (11 if we count the two syllabic consonants r' and l' ). It corresponds to a discrete phoneme, not to two separate phonemes pronounced one after the other.

I don't think it is equivalent to ъ+і anymore in any Slavic language, so it doesn't qualify as a ligature.

The sound ы is a "harder" variant of the `н` (not the "N", but the "I", it used to be borrowed from the Greek `Н` sign, see here). It's not 100% established how it was pronounced. In both Glagolitic and Cyrillic scripts, it was represented by a ligature of two other letters. In Cyrillic texts, the combination is more often ъ+ι - `ъι` but in many texts it can be encountered as ъ+и - `ъи`. This second writing is used as an argument for theories that it may have been pronounced as a diphthong..

The general opinion among slavists however, is that given the circumstance that Proto-Indo-European diphthongs transformed into monophthongs in the Proto-Slavic period, ы was a monophthong and it sounded about the same as the ы in modern Russian. I guess this is still a subject of debate though, so you may see arguments for it being a diphthong.

I don't think the orthographic argument is particularly persuasive. ы/y was pronounced as a monophthong in the common ancestor of the Baltic and Slavic languages (compare Russian мышь, English mouse, Latin mūs)
As you can see in the example of mouse, the ancestor of ы can be found to be Proto-Balto-Slavic *ū. It is also pronounced as a monophthong in most modern Slavic languages; it is implausible that it would have independently remonophthongised in all Slavic languages independently. As the modern realisation of ы in Russian, y in Polish, etc. is [ɨ]; the common ancestor can be held to be pronounced the same or maybe a transitional form between [ɨ] and [uː], such as [ɯ] or [ʉ]. Early borrowings from Slavic to other languages would help elucidate the development of the sound more closely.

Now regarding ъ and ь:Both had a weaker and shorter pronunciation than the other vowels. Whenever ы and н were replacing ъ and ь respectively in certain forms of words, they were also pronounced more weakly. This reduction of their pronunciation was the reason for their transformations. It is not clear how exactly they sounded in Old Slavonic. It is assumed that ъ sounded like a short o or short u, and ь like a short е or short i.

ъ is cognate to Lithuanian short u; e.g. Lithuanian budė́ti, OCS бъдѣти. Same with ь and i.


According to their position within the word, the ъ and ь could additonally be "strong" or "weak". They were in a strong position when they were in front of a syllable which itself also contained an ъ or ь. For example, the first ъ in вънъ, сънъ, or the ь in подобьнъ, старьцъ. They were weak in any other position, for example in the endings of words - градъ, гладъ, народъ, властъ, or in the middle of words, where they were not superseded by another ъ or ь -- мъногъ, посълахъ, прилежьно, чьто, тьма правьда, дъва. When an ъ or ь was found in numerous consequential syllables, then the one that was in an even-numbered spot counted from the back would be the strong one, the others would be weak -- пришьльць, дьньсь. (You could pronounce that by softening the syllables ш, д, с, and pronouncing the ь as a short e).

With time there was a process of the weak-position yers falling out of use, with time people stopped pronouncing them (in Old Bulgarian that is). As they stopped pronouncing them, the yers which were in strong position found themselves in closed syllables, not in open ones, and their pronunciation became more clear, to the point where they became "full-fledged vowels" - In the 10th-11th centuries the ь transformed in to е, the ъ into о, and then later, after the 11th c. into the present day Bulgarian "ъ". Examples are дъждь -> дождь, дьнь -> день, коньць -> конець seen in medieval texts.

I mentioned Havlik's Law in another post, but the specific processes differed in each language.

What's more significant regarding our *вѫпиръ is that there was a process of substitution of ь with ъ when a consonant gradually became pronounced harder. In texts there are instances of "ножъ" instead of "ножь" (knife), "мечъ" instead of "мечь" (sword).

So, the explanation could be that the unattested *вѫпиръ assumes that the р was hard in Proto-Slavic before becoming soft in the later упирь (and other variants).

BTW, in wikipedia articles in various languages there are different forms given for the word, sometimes вѫпиръ is marked as unattested, other times it's not, and it's just claimed it's the Old Bulgarian form. I can't check their sources and I myself don't know where and how the word is attested in Bulgarian, Russian or Czech. So in the end, I know as little as I did in the beginning. If we can find it in some text we can think on why it has an ь or ъ. :)


I think both ь and ъ could be confused either way after р, since South Slavic languages did not distinguish between soft and hard r. It is generally assumed that упирь is the original as it is found in most Slavic languages, while the innovative вѫпиръ is found in only a few South Slavic languages
 
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Ulfhednar

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Well, Tolkien did that with the Elvish languages and he was only 1 person, so why not them? I don't know if there is any point, I think the difficulty of such a thing outweighs its benefit. The philosophy of language (irl) is interesting, but whether it has practical usage in a game is questionable.
It took Tolkien 50+ years to get the LotR published... some corners might be worth cutting to get the game in 2018 instead of 2068.

Dont be dumb. Lord of the Rings took 17 years to get published.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/why-world-war-i-is-at-the-heart-of-lord-of-the-rings

Middle Earth world building was an ongoing project for Tolkien that started during his military service in World War I.
 

AwesomeButton

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BTW I keep reading incredible bullshit regarding "upir" in wikipedia, including the misconception that there was a Novgorod priest in the 11th c. named "Упир Лихий", which if it were true, literally translates as "Evil Upir". Anyway, at least I know what I'm naming my evil priest. :lol:

It was a personal name in East Slavic, which is rather odd given it's meaning.
Really, I didn't know that. Any examples?

Now regarding ъ and ь:Both had a weaker and shorter pronunciation than the other vowels. Whenever ы and н were replacing ъ and ь respectively in certain forms of words, they were also pronounced more weakly. This reduction of their pronunciation was the reason for their transformations. It is not clear how exactly they sounded in Old Slavonic. It is assumed that ъ sounded like a short o or short u, and ь like a short е or short i.

ъ is cognate to Lithuanian short u; e.g. Lithuanian budė́ti, OCS бъдѣти. Same with ь and i.
But which "ъ" is it that is a cognate? The modern or the OCS?


I think both ь and ъ could be confused either way after р, since South Slavic languages did not distinguish between soft and hard r. It is generally assumed that упирь is the original as it is found in most Slavic languages, while the innovative вѫпиръ is found in only a few South Slavic languages
IDK... until I see it written somewhere and can cross-check the "ъ" in different words.

Well, Tolkien did that with the Elvish languages and he was only 1 person, so why not them? I don't know if there is any point, I think the difficulty of such a thing outweighs its benefit. The philosophy of language (irl) is interesting, but whether it has practical usage in a game is questionable.
It took Tolkien 50+ years to get the LotR published... some corners might be worth cutting to get the game in 2018 instead of 2068.

Dont be dumb. Lord of the Rings took 17 years to get published.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/why-world-war-i-is-at-the-heart-of-lord-of-the-rings

Middle Earth world building was an ongoing project for Tolkien that started during his military service in World War I.

I took a look at the article. Didn't Tolkein always deny that LotR was a metaphor for WW1 or WW2?
 

Lacrymas

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It is obvious that both wars played a huge role in the development of artists as artists in that time, there's nothing "subtle" about it. How could they not? They were earth-shattering (both figuratively and literally) for everyone involved. That doesn't mean Middle-Earth or the events within it are "inspired by" any specific war or are somehow allegorical for any specific war. Tolkien himself denied this many times. If it was it wouldn't enjoy this enduring popularity, it would've died down as soon as the buzz around the wars did. It also doesn't mean that the war/s didn't shape him as a person who could and was willing to write a thing like LotR, the first of its kind. LotR is a product of its time, however, there's a reason it wasn't written sooner by someone else, it's absolutely logical to have been written exactly then.

Anyway, I think it's disingenuous to say it took him "50 years" to write it, some of the ideas may have come then, but it wasn't any kind of complete concept or plan. He started manually writing it in '37 and completed it in '49. 12 years is a lot of time for a single project as well. He might've worked on the process/concept of mythopoeia from 1917, but not LotR as LotR.
 

fobia

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This thread only reminds me why I stopped my excursion into slavic linguistics after learning serbo-croatian. :D
 

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Prime Junta

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It took Tolkien 50+ years to get the LotR published...

Dont be dumb. Lord of the Rings took 17 years to get published.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/why-world-war-i-is-at-the-heart-of-lord-of-the-rings

Middle Earth world building was an ongoing project for Tolkien that started during his military service in World War I.

Tolkien was born in 1892.
LOTR was published in 1954

Do the math.

So 62 years then?
 

Ulfhednar

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It is obvious that both wars played a huge role in the development of artists as artists in that time, there's nothing "subtle" about it. How could they not? They were earth-shattering (both figuratively and literally) for everyone involved. That doesn't mean Middle-Earth or the events within it are "inspired by" any specific war or are somehow allegorical for any specific war. Tolkien himself denied this many times. If it was it wouldn't enjoy this enduring popularity, it would've died down as soon as the buzz around the wars did. It also doesn't mean that the war/s didn't shape him as a person who could and was willing to write a thing like LotR, the first of its kind. LotR is a product of its time, however, there's a reason it wasn't written sooner by someone else, it's absolutely logical to have been written exactly then.

Anyway, I think it's disingenuous to say it took him "50 years" to write it, some of the ideas may have come then, but it wasn't any kind of complete concept or plan. He started manually writing it in '37 and completed it in '49. 12 years is a lot of time for a single project as well. He might've worked on the process/concept of mythopoeia from 1917, but not LotR as LotR.

He started working on the Book of Lost Tales during that time which would eventually be what we know as the Simarillion, and it included the crafting of the languages he would need for LotR. So that's why I start my countdown from there. LotR is basically a footnote in Tolkien's vision for Middle Earth history.
 

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