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Post by Auburn on Apr 1, 2015 9:01:29 GMT
So, so... Now that the software is usable for composing, I'm reeeealy interested in reading what you guys have to post. And also to show the software to others who are good at composing in Sindarin. Fifi, I'm definitely gonna take your lessons this year. But as far as the site goes, there is the dilemma of different modes (like Classical and Beleriand) and how the Tengwar letters are different in each. I briefly mentioned to Fifi that maybe the site can have different sections for the different modes, ....perhaps even matching the chronology of the evolution of the language. For example, imagine if we had sindarinlibrary.com/secondage/ and /thirdage/ and /fourthage/, then each directory would be a type of wing of the library... spanning the history of that age. The homepage can be a splash page of Arda History with large buttons for all of the ages, and the writings inside each of the ages would talk about the events of that time in history. That's just one idea, which I think would give Tolkien's history such a profound feeling; to be able to browse through dozens of poems and stories about that era, written in the language of the era. Or, we can get really creative with it and have multiple alphabets in the same copy of the software (if we name the symbol codes differently (allowing Quenya, Sindarin, and maybe even Cirth in the same Age). Other ideas may be to have an academic copy of the software, used for practice and learning, where Sindarin students are allowed to make their own entries, but which are checked by the Teacher/Admin. What are your thoughts or visions for using the software?
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Post by ruscthilion on Apr 1, 2015 15:03:11 GMT
I like the idea of a chronological history of the language, although I don't think it would be neatly defined in "Second Age", "Third Age", etc. Maybe you could define some end-points of languages, like Neo-Sindarin and Neo-Quenya as they are RIGHT NOW, and have the timeline work backwards from there.
Myself, I am partial the mode of Beleriand, and anything related to Doriath and Gondolin, but I think being able to see how the language has morphed and changed through the ages would be pretty cool.
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Post by Auburn on Apr 1, 2015 17:45:04 GMT
Right. hmmm... this makes me wonder - do we have a complete enough understanding of Noldorin and some other more ancient forms of current Neo-Quenya/Neo-Sindarin to make writings in them?
Maybe stories/poems can only be realistically written in current elvish forms, but speaking about past events. Like an elf telling a story about long ago.
It may even be interesting to create a persona/elf to speak through, using them as an alias. Perhaps even collaborating with other writers to weave the events of a story together from the accounts of different elves in that time period. Or even something more like roleplaying.
Oh oh oh, and maybe Neo-Khuzdul can be introduced too! So some characters are elves and some are dwarves! ^^ This is exciting and I'm getting way ahead of myself. lol. I have to first know how to write in these.
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Post by xandarien on Apr 2, 2015 8:20:49 GMT
Some people make Qenya and Goldogrin translations, but they tend to rely heavily on reconstructions so they're still Neo.
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Post by Auburn on Apr 7, 2015 18:38:06 GMT
-nods- Yeah, it'd make more sense to avoid large amounts of reconstruction, so keeping it in the same era would be good. p.s. - I think we need more entries. Since we promised our backers we'd create a library of texts, specifically for Sindarin, I need to make an official announcement of completion on Kickstarter at some point, but it'd be cool to make it with some preexisting texts for fans to read. I... need you guys' help for this *pleas* o: We'll probably get a small handful of backers who join in and try to learn -- or call the attention of other tolkiendil who'd like to test/use it.
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Post by Auburn on Apr 7, 2015 18:53:47 GMT
I am debating the decision of whether to make the Cirth & Quenya alphabets part of the Sindarin library. I'm totally ignorant of this <.<, but, how similar is Quenya's Tengwar from Sindarin Tengwar? Are the letters assigned differently? ~ *ponders* Dividing things by language (as opposed to alphabet) presents a bit of a dilemma since a language like Sindarin can be written in Cirth or Tengwar, and so forth. To simplify this dilemma, for convenience's sake, it might be best to assign one alphabet to each language.... *thinks* hmmm. I think I'll go forward and make the Quenya and Khuzdul libraries, using Cirth for Khuzdul. I'll invite David Salo to test out the Khuzdul library, and see if he'd be interested in making the grammar tree for it according to his Neo language. So they'll be at: linguisticlibrary.org/quenya-english/linguisticlibrary.org/khuzdul-english/..Come to think of it, I might just make the sub-domains for all the other languages, set them all up in advanced and then invite the respective linguists to come on by and try them out. I'll work on that sometime this week, as well as the hub site to list all the branches.
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Post by dreamingfifi on Apr 8, 2015 18:19:46 GMT
I don't think 1 language, 1 alphabet is a good idea, at least in the long run. I think that the author should choose which writing system they'll use in their compositions. That way there could be different fonts too.
Also, having subdomains for all of the languages we promised people already available on the main website is a good idea. I believe we promised server space and instalation, after all.
Sent from my LGL75C using proboards
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Post by Auburn on Apr 8, 2015 19:52:20 GMT
Yea. At the moment we don't have the functionality to toggle alphabets within the same copy of the software... though there's workarounds that could be implemented. Multiple alphabets can be uploaded via the admin panel, just by assigning different codes to the letters. For example, the code for all Tengwar letters would just be as it is (example: "m" = "m"), but for their Cirth counterparts the code can just have a dash in front of the letters (example: "m" = "-m") adding up to something like this: Alphabet -- Word -- Alphabetic Column Tengwar ~ angmar = a ng m a r Cirth ~ ~ angmar = -a -ng -m -a -rThat's about as good as we can do for this version. >.> But I think this can be optimized later pretty easily. But you can see how it's a bit confusing and sketchy... which is why I was thinking maybe keeping one alphabet for each copy (at least for the 10 language packs we're making) would be more professional?
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Post by dreamingfifi on Apr 9, 2015 18:50:52 GMT
Yea. At the moment we don't have the functionality to toggle alphabets within the same copy of the software... though there's workarounds that could be implemented. Multiple alphabets can be uploaded via the admin panel, just by assigning different codes to the letters. For example, the code for all Tengwar letters would just be as it is (example: "m" = "m"), but for their Cirth counterparts the code can just have a dash in front of the letters (example: "m" = "-m") adding up to something like this: Alphabet -- Word -- Alphabetic Column Tengwar ~ angmar = a ng m a r Cirth ~ ~ angmar = -a -ng -m -a -rThat's about as good as we can do for this version. >.> But I think this can be optimized later pretty easily. But you can see how it's a bit confusing and sketchy... which is why I was thinking maybe keeping one alphabet for each copy (at least for the 10 language packs we're making) would be more professional? No, that'd be less flexible. We need flexibility. This will have to do for now - but we should keep thinking of ways we can make the website more customizable - not just per the language, but per the translation.
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Post by ruscthilion on Apr 9, 2015 19:09:56 GMT
DISCLAIMER: I am just an enthusiast, not a linguist, so I might be using the wrong words, or just generally talking crap.
Any chance of tying an alphabetic letter to a phoneme? Then a "word" could have the appropriate phonemes assigned, and the user could toggle between alphabets at will?
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Post by Auburn on Apr 9, 2015 20:08:24 GMT
The Alphabet settings are extremely flexible. I've never really gone over this with you guys... so I'll explain it more in depth here. You can take a look by logging into here: sindarinlibrary.com/admin/Username: team@adiondesigns.com Password: linguistics If you then navigate to the tab that says " Alphabets" in the left column you get to the page that adds the letters. Every letter is assigned a code, and you'll see the existing letters and their codes listed. If you click " Add Letter" you go to the addition page, which should look like this: By being creative we can do a lot of things. Here's a few examples of what could be done: - Symbol per Letter : This is how we usually use it, but there are many ways to go about it. Basically, you enter a code such as "n" in the symbol Name field then browse your computer and upload an image like . What this basically does is, whenever you type "n" in the Alphabetic Column of your Add-Entry page, that image will pop up in your finished entry after submitting it.
- Symbol per Consonant Cluster : And naturally you can also designate a longer code such as "ng" to an image such as . Or other consonant clusters like "thw", "ngw" and so forth. The code can be as long as it needs to be - it doesn't have to be one letter - and you can assign whatever code to whatever image you have in mind.
- Symbol per Punctuation : And of course, you can upload an image that is actually not a letter but a punctuation mark, and assign it a code too. The code of "!" could be assigned to the image and then it would appear whenever you enter "!".
- Symbol per Syllable : You could designate the code "ka" to the image , and so forth, making an alphabet that is syllable based like Hiragana and Katakana. Still, you could intermix single letters with this. Japanese has a lone "n" too, and that can have a single code of "n" while the others have double letter codes.
- Symbol per Word : If someone really wanted to, they could use one image for each word. 鱼 means "fish" in Chinese, and a conlang with a similar setup as Mandarin or Japanese Kanji could use this method.
- Diacritic Markers : You'll notice the "Regular" and "Diacritic" options in the Add-Letter page. Diacritics are things like the Hebrew vowels and Tengwar Tehtar vowels.
But any function can be assigned to them. If there is any instance when you need to add an extra marking (whether an underline, a dot, a jot) to one of your letters/symbols, you can do so with this. For example, look at this image:
"northant" (it/they rode). The little question mark at the end of the letter "nt" is a diacritic and in a situation like this it could be used to represent a questionable or unattested translation. The code for this could be "?", and then that code would insert a tiny question mark below the previous letter. This would be useful to use if the Grammar column is not set to be visible. - Symbol per Pictograph : Since there is no limit to the size of the image you use, you could even have a code pull up a 300px x 300px image in the Alphabetic column, for example... for an image of the cave drawings/ruins of an old Native American language.
- Symbol per Alternative Letter : Sometimes a language has different forms of the same letter. As Fifi mentioned before, normally this would be impossible to capture directly using an automatic translator, but here you can just account for the alternatives. A code of "a" can bring up a regular "a". But you can create a new letter and assign it the code of "a2" and then upload an image of its alternate form. Then when you go to enter the letters in the Alphabetic column of the Add-Entry page, you write something like "a d a2 m" and you would get the first "a" looking normal while the second looks different.
- Multiple Alphabets : This leads to the next point, which is multiple alphabets. You can have the abc's uploaded, say, three different times through the Add-Letter feature, but each time you do you give one a different code. So you can have ".a" and ":a" and "-a" and each of these a's belongs to a different alphabet. So, within the same entry/post, you can have one word coded as ".a .d .a .m" and another as ":a :a :m", and another as "-a -d -a -m" ...... and you'd see the same word visible in the three different writing systems.
~~~
Phew! I prolly missed some but... having said all of that, you can see how the Alphabet can be an elegant creation of each admin. And this is a feature built into the software, so there's no need to know coding or anything. ruscthilion - I couldn't fully grasp your question, but... did the above cover your envisioned function by any chance? Let me know if it didn't and I'll try to address it. ^^
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Post by dreamingfifi on Apr 10, 2015 2:49:37 GMT
DISCLAIMER: I am just an enthusiast, not a linguist, so I might be using the wrong words, or just generally talking crap. Any chance of tying an alphabetic letter to a phoneme? Then a "word" could have the appropriate phonemes assigned, and the user could toggle between alphabets at will? Well, some alphabets are tied to phonemes (IPA works this way, and English orthography works this way, sometimes), some use a combination of letters to make a single phoneme (like T+H = /θ/), some use one letter to make multiple phonemes (like x = /ks/). Some have more than one way to make a single phoneme (PH, F, and GH = /f/) Some writing systems are based on morphemes, and 1 morpheme = 1 symbol (道 = "way"). And some do all of these in a single word. Therefore, having the orthography generator based only on phonemes won't work. :/
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