Mhavos Dalat, a pleasure. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
murderbaby) wrote2017-11-09 03:12 pm
murderbaby) wrote2017-11-09 03:12 pm
Entry tags:
ELVHEN AND ME.
So I've gone on record saying Dragon Age's Elvhen is complete word salad and not worth analyzing, but I've felt the urge to try anyway so I guess that's what I'm doing. Elvhen has a pretty robust vocabulary, which is good for a conlang, but it seems to lack any real syntax rules or, like, verb tenses. This means translating it is easy, but in practice it's kind of broken. (There are potential in-universe explanations for why this is the case, but I don't care about them right now.)
Let me give you an example, to show you what I'm talking about.
The sun sets is an English sentence. It has a subject noun and a verb, which is the bare minimum for a complete English sentence. 'The' is a part of speech to denote the sun is singular, but that's not even necessary. We can make it sun sets, which is only gramatically questionable because there's only one sun Earth orbits, but whatever.
The important part of the sentence sun sets is the verb. 'To set' is the perfect form of the verb, sets is the present tense. We need that tense, because otherwise the sentence becomes garbled. You just get sun set, which, leaving aside the fact that sunset is a word in English already, just think about it.
Sun set.
This is caveman speak. My first reaction to the sentence 'sun set' is 'yes, it does'.
Yet, this is essentially the first line of the most complete bit of translated Elvhen we have in the game. It's translated as '[the] sun sets', but there's no evidence of verb tense anywhere in Elvhen. So now you see what I'm working with, and why I refused to do this for so long.
Anyway, here goes.
Elgara vallas, da'len
[The] sun set[s], little one.
Plenty of languages get along without definitive articles (in English, the), so I just added that for ease of full translation.
Elgara means 'sun'.
Vallas means 'set'.
Da'len means 'little one'. Specifically, 'len' is a word ending that denotes a person, and 'da' we can extrapolate is a modifier meaning 'little'.
(you could literally translate this to 'sun set little person/one', which, without any parts of speech or diclensions, could mean basically anything. Sun sets on little person/one? The little one's sun sets? C'mon now.)
Melava somniar
time [to] dream
Melava apparently means 'time'.
Sominar means 'to dream', in perfect tense apparently!
Interesting thing about 'melava'-- it also shows up in the sentence 'ma melava halani', which is translated as 'you helped me'. I suspect this translation is either in error or generally off, because 'ma' pretty consistently means 'I / my', while the sentence has nothing to do with... time. But whatever.
(This is what I mean about Elvhen being inconsistent. When you extrapolate further, it makes less sense. With Qunlat, once I'd gotten everything down, I was able to start seeing word roots and consistencies in translation. With Elvhen, even Elvhen in the same game written by the same writer, it gets extremely specious.)
Mala taren aravas
[Your/you/our] mind journey[s]
Mala in this context means 'your', apparently.
Taren means 'mind'.
Aravas means 'journey' in the present tense, I guess.
Mala is used a few times in Elvhen and it means 'you / your / our' in the same way 'ma' means 'I / me / mine'. Presumably this is contextual but that's a lot of fucking context for two syllables to carry. The word shows up when Solas says 'you are free', but it's also translated as 'I give you [your] freedom', which is its own level of hogwash because VERBS ARE IMPORTANT. I'm getting ahead of myself.
Aravas meaning journey is pretty obviously supposed to share the same word root with aravel, so that's some cool consistency.
Ara ma'desen melar
but I will hold you here.
The lack of brackets isn't indicative of a good translation so much as I don't know where to begin.
'Ara' doesn't show up anywhere, so let's skip it, even though Elvhen generally 1:1s English word order so it's probably supposed to be 'but'.
Ma is pretty consistently 'I / my', and when placed on a word like that as a modifier especially.
Desen doesn't show up anywhere either, though.
Neither does Melar.
This is fine in theory, rosetta stoning shit like this means there are holes you can extrapolate from. But with Elvhen having so little syntax, and the sentence 'but I will hold you here' having a lot going on (a subject noun, a verb noun, a verb, a part of speech, a fucking placement noun), its kind of conspicuous in its absence. Those kinds of sentences are, for me, where you begin to get into the real meat of a language, to know how to actually craft your own sentences.
But whatever.
Iras ma ghilas, da'len
where will you[?] go, little one.
Iras means 'where'.
ma usually means 'I / my / me' though occasionally it's popped up as 'you', which is just general inconsistence.
Ghilas means 'to go'.
Da'len still means 'little one'.
I really just want elvhen pronouns and I bet they're all 'ma' 'mala' 'lama' 'mam' and various interchangeable nonsense. If 'ma' actually also means 'you', then Solas saying 'ma'vhenan' takes a new meaning. And while I think this is a fair read, I personally refuse the idea that 'ma' with an apostrophe means 'I / my' and when its alone it means 'you / your', because 1) they're pronounced the same, and 2) that still isn't consistent with other elvhen.
Ara ma'nedan ashir
lost to me in sleep?
There's 'ara' again, even though this sentence doesn't have anything in common with the translation of 'ara ma'desen melar' (but I will hold you here).
Nedan likewise is a mystery.
And so is ashir.
Aside from the fact that this is also a conspicuous absence sort of sentence, it seems strange to me that they didn't use word roots here. 'Lost' is semi-consistently 'bora/nehn' in other contexts. Sleep is easily 'somni' something. But they decided to use other word salad instead, once again undermining consistency.
Dirthara lothlenan'as
Seek truth in a forgotten land.
Dirth shows up in other contexts and generally means 'find' or 'learn', so translating it to 'seek' is legit.
The 'ara' tagged on could mean fucking anything. It could be a verb declension. I don't fucking know!
Lothlenan and various permutations don't show up anywhere else, so it could very well mean fucking anything.
I'll be nice and say '-an' as an ending could mean 'land', even though elvhen already has an ending modifier that serves that purpose ('-as' means place, like 'arlath'an'. 'Place' and 'land' are splitting hairs for a language where 'I' and 'you' are apparently homonyms, but I'll give this one the benefit of the doubt).
For me particularly, I'm willing to bet money that the more literal translation of this phrase is 'seek truth forgotten place', because parts of speech are hard. Where is my IN motherfuckers!!!
Bal emma mala dir
deep within your heart
Bal shows up nowhere
Emma seems to be 'within', but only because of context clues from other writings.
Mala is pretty consistently 'you'.
Dir never shows up without a 'th' anywhere else in Elvhen, so idfk.
The weird thing is, there's already a well-known word for heart (vhenan), so whyyyy doesn't it show up here.
Tel'enfenim, da'len
never fear, little one.
The only time that 'tel' shows up as a suffix is as a negative (tel'abelas = I'm not sorry), so 'never' is a poetic translation I'm fine with.
Enfenim is 'fear'.
We still know what da'len means.
Irassal ma ghilas
Wherever you shall go.
Irassal is pretty clearly 'wherever', since 'iras' is where.
Does 'ma' mean 'me' or 'you' today! (Apparently 'you'.)
Ghilas means 'to go' again, which annoys me.
...It annoys me because this is one of the few verbs that isn't present tense in this whole thing ('shall go' is future tense) but it's the same verb! Because Elvhen doesn't decline verbs!
So I'm betting the more literal translation is 'wherever you(?) go' which is fine!!! I'm fine!!
Ma garas mir renan
follow my voice.
Ma probably means 'my' in this context even though last sentence it meant 'you'. YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN
Garas is generally translated as 'come', as in the command, which works well enough.
Mir is often 'my' along with 'ma'.
Renan is voice.
So a more accurate translation could be 'you come my voice'. No 'to', because that would make too much sense.
Ara ma'athlan vhenas
I will call you home.
There's 'ara' again.
Ma' in this context always means 'my'.
I wanna say 'athlan' is a form of 'arlathan', which literally means 'the place of love', but it's missing a letter. Probably just a typo though, no reason to freak out.
Vhenas generally means home.
So this probably means more literally '[???] my [beloved?] home'.
Yaaaay? I win a headache.
Ending thoughts
- if this conlang has a consistent syntax / declension system, someone keeps typoing the fuck out of it
- however i do not believe it has a consistent syntax / declension system
- i think its just magnet word art: the language and they use 'POETIC CONTEXT' as a convenient handwave
Let me give you an example, to show you what I'm talking about.
The sun sets is an English sentence. It has a subject noun and a verb, which is the bare minimum for a complete English sentence. 'The' is a part of speech to denote the sun is singular, but that's not even necessary. We can make it sun sets, which is only gramatically questionable because there's only one sun Earth orbits, but whatever.
The important part of the sentence sun sets is the verb. 'To set' is the perfect form of the verb, sets is the present tense. We need that tense, because otherwise the sentence becomes garbled. You just get sun set, which, leaving aside the fact that sunset is a word in English already, just think about it.
Sun set.
This is caveman speak. My first reaction to the sentence 'sun set' is 'yes, it does'.
Yet, this is essentially the first line of the most complete bit of translated Elvhen we have in the game. It's translated as '[the] sun sets', but there's no evidence of verb tense anywhere in Elvhen. So now you see what I'm working with, and why I refused to do this for so long.
Anyway, here goes.
Elgara vallas, da'lenis translated to
Melava somniar
Mala taren aravas
Ara ma'desen melar
Iras ma ghilas, da'len
Ara ma'nedan ashir
Dirthara lothlenan'as
Bal emma mala dir
Tel'enfenim, da'len
Irassal ma ghilas
Ma garas mir renan
Ara ma'athlan vhenas
Ara ma'athlan vhenas
Sun sets, little one,Let's break it down sentence by sentence.
Time to dream
Your mind journeys,
But I will hold you here.
Where will you go, little one
Lost to me in sleep?
Seek truth in a forgotten land
Deep with in your heart.
Never fear, little one,
Wherever you shall go.
Follow my voice--
I will call you home.
I will call you home.
Elgara vallas, da'len
[The] sun set[s], little one.
Plenty of languages get along without definitive articles (in English, the), so I just added that for ease of full translation.
Elgara means 'sun'.
Vallas means 'set'.
Da'len means 'little one'. Specifically, 'len' is a word ending that denotes a person, and 'da' we can extrapolate is a modifier meaning 'little'.
(you could literally translate this to 'sun set little person/one', which, without any parts of speech or diclensions, could mean basically anything. Sun sets on little person/one? The little one's sun sets? C'mon now.)
Melava somniar
time [to] dream
Melava apparently means 'time'.
Sominar means 'to dream', in perfect tense apparently!
Interesting thing about 'melava'-- it also shows up in the sentence 'ma melava halani', which is translated as 'you helped me'. I suspect this translation is either in error or generally off, because 'ma' pretty consistently means 'I / my', while the sentence has nothing to do with... time. But whatever.
(This is what I mean about Elvhen being inconsistent. When you extrapolate further, it makes less sense. With Qunlat, once I'd gotten everything down, I was able to start seeing word roots and consistencies in translation. With Elvhen, even Elvhen in the same game written by the same writer, it gets extremely specious.)
Mala taren aravas
[Your/you/our] mind journey[s]
Mala in this context means 'your', apparently.
Taren means 'mind'.
Aravas means 'journey' in the present tense, I guess.
Mala is used a few times in Elvhen and it means 'you / your / our' in the same way 'ma' means 'I / me / mine'. Presumably this is contextual but that's a lot of fucking context for two syllables to carry. The word shows up when Solas says 'you are free', but it's also translated as 'I give you [your] freedom', which is its own level of hogwash because VERBS ARE IMPORTANT. I'm getting ahead of myself.
Aravas meaning journey is pretty obviously supposed to share the same word root with aravel, so that's some cool consistency.
Ara ma'desen melar
but I will hold you here.
The lack of brackets isn't indicative of a good translation so much as I don't know where to begin.
'Ara' doesn't show up anywhere, so let's skip it, even though Elvhen generally 1:1s English word order so it's probably supposed to be 'but'.
Ma is pretty consistently 'I / my', and when placed on a word like that as a modifier especially.
Desen doesn't show up anywhere either, though.
Neither does Melar.
This is fine in theory, rosetta stoning shit like this means there are holes you can extrapolate from. But with Elvhen having so little syntax, and the sentence 'but I will hold you here' having a lot going on (a subject noun, a verb noun, a verb, a part of speech, a fucking placement noun), its kind of conspicuous in its absence. Those kinds of sentences are, for me, where you begin to get into the real meat of a language, to know how to actually craft your own sentences.
But whatever.
Iras ma ghilas, da'len
where will you[?] go, little one.
Iras means 'where'.
ma usually means 'I / my / me' though occasionally it's popped up as 'you', which is just general inconsistence.
Ghilas means 'to go'.
Da'len still means 'little one'.
I really just want elvhen pronouns and I bet they're all 'ma' 'mala' 'lama' 'mam' and various interchangeable nonsense. If 'ma' actually also means 'you', then Solas saying 'ma'vhenan' takes a new meaning. And while I think this is a fair read, I personally refuse the idea that 'ma' with an apostrophe means 'I / my' and when its alone it means 'you / your', because 1) they're pronounced the same, and 2) that still isn't consistent with other elvhen.
Ara ma'nedan ashir
lost to me in sleep?
There's 'ara' again, even though this sentence doesn't have anything in common with the translation of 'ara ma'desen melar' (but I will hold you here).
Nedan likewise is a mystery.
And so is ashir.
Aside from the fact that this is also a conspicuous absence sort of sentence, it seems strange to me that they didn't use word roots here. 'Lost' is semi-consistently 'bora/nehn' in other contexts. Sleep is easily 'somni' something. But they decided to use other word salad instead, once again undermining consistency.
Dirthara lothlenan'as
Seek truth in a forgotten land.
Dirth shows up in other contexts and generally means 'find' or 'learn', so translating it to 'seek' is legit.
The 'ara' tagged on could mean fucking anything. It could be a verb declension. I don't fucking know!
Lothlenan and various permutations don't show up anywhere else, so it could very well mean fucking anything.
I'll be nice and say '-an' as an ending could mean 'land', even though elvhen already has an ending modifier that serves that purpose ('-as' means place, like 'arlath'an'. 'Place' and 'land' are splitting hairs for a language where 'I' and 'you' are apparently homonyms, but I'll give this one the benefit of the doubt).
For me particularly, I'm willing to bet money that the more literal translation of this phrase is 'seek truth forgotten place', because parts of speech are hard. Where is my IN motherfuckers!!!
Bal emma mala dir
deep within your heart
Bal shows up nowhere
Emma seems to be 'within', but only because of context clues from other writings.
Mala is pretty consistently 'you'.
Dir never shows up without a 'th' anywhere else in Elvhen, so idfk.
The weird thing is, there's already a well-known word for heart (vhenan), so whyyyy doesn't it show up here.
Tel'enfenim, da'len
never fear, little one.
The only time that 'tel' shows up as a suffix is as a negative (tel'abelas = I'm not sorry), so 'never' is a poetic translation I'm fine with.
Enfenim is 'fear'.
We still know what da'len means.
Irassal ma ghilas
Wherever you shall go.
Irassal is pretty clearly 'wherever', since 'iras' is where.
Does 'ma' mean 'me' or 'you' today! (Apparently 'you'.)
Ghilas means 'to go' again, which annoys me.
...It annoys me because this is one of the few verbs that isn't present tense in this whole thing ('shall go' is future tense) but it's the same verb! Because Elvhen doesn't decline verbs!
So I'm betting the more literal translation is 'wherever you(?) go' which is fine!!! I'm fine!!
Ma garas mir renan
follow my voice.
Ma probably means 'my' in this context even though last sentence it meant 'you'. YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN
Garas is generally translated as 'come', as in the command, which works well enough.
Mir is often 'my' along with 'ma'.
Renan is voice.
So a more accurate translation could be 'you come my voice'. No 'to', because that would make too much sense.
Ara ma'athlan vhenas
I will call you home.
There's 'ara' again.
Ma' in this context always means 'my'.
I wanna say 'athlan' is a form of 'arlathan', which literally means 'the place of love', but it's missing a letter. Probably just a typo though, no reason to freak out.
Vhenas generally means home.
So this probably means more literally '[???] my [beloved?] home'.
Yaaaay? I win a headache.
Ending thoughts
- if this conlang has a consistent syntax / declension system, someone keeps typoing the fuck out of it
- however i do not believe it has a consistent syntax / declension system
- i think its just magnet word art: the language and they use 'POETIC CONTEXT' as a convenient handwave