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lethe-gray In reply to TheBrickster [2021-09-28 02:36:55 +0000 UTC]

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TheBrickster In reply to lethe-gray [2021-10-28 01:07:07 +0000 UTC]

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lethe-gray In reply to TheBrickster [2021-10-29 20:02:40 +0000 UTC]

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TheBrickster In reply to lethe-gray [2021-11-18 13:24:20 +0000 UTC]

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lethe-gray In reply to technomach [2020-04-05 19:42:03 +0000 UTC]

Not official in the slightest, I just used the brief words that you hear in HL 1, 2, episodes, and the like. I didn't use subtitles while playing, so I'm sure that some of my interpretations of the sounds may differ from what other people hear, it's kind of hard to distinguish (and I didn't really think until much later, to isolate the sound files, but... oh well!). So basically aside from about a dozen words that can EASILY be seen as 'hey you' and 'attack now' as pulled from the games directly, it's all my own work. I add to it when I need a specific thing, it's sort of difficult now because I'm seeking sounds that haven't already been put in, and Vort doesn't necessarily HAVE those in use. And Humans don't have the ability to produce some of their sounds either, that huge lung capacity I expect they have, and a very long neck, and a mouth that may or may not have the same potential shape as ours, and a nasal cavity? Do they even have one? I mean they say they can smell, but I don't know whether to imagine their mouth does all the smelling too, or their skin maybe, or even their 'hearing' cones but... ??? The differences in their biology would make their ability to create certain sounds hard, so that's why I left out letter/sounds, though they clearly can learn how to make them I wanted to put a more 'inherently able' feel to their basic language. 

Not the first to ask about the IPA but I am honestly nowhere near good enough at it to use that I really should try, perhaps with the next overhaul I may attempt it. 

I'm not experienced nor trained in linguistics, but I do have a keen interest in it. I can speak only English, but I do occasionally let slip a Vort curse or two... because they're kinda fun to say. I did research a few things - a lot of the 'ch' endings really should be pronounced as in Hebrew, for instance, and some other human-language sounds can be equated here and there. But I haven't really dedicated myself to 'college level' understanding of it. I sadly can't even roll my R's, lol, Spanish class decades ago kinda sucked! I do have about a dozen different language dictionaries at my desk at all times, and one 'chapter' of this guide that I didn't produce here (at least, I don't remember including it) is 'Earthly words as said in Vort' and some of their meanings are pretty funny. Thing is I would also imagine that like any Human learning another language from their own, Vorts would learn how to pronounce English or French or Russian, and anything further they would have an accent or pronounce things differently. I do imagine they have dialects - so it wouldn't necessarily be wrong to think that a word could be said in a number of ways. The vowel sounds I know are still a bit shaky in that regard, "ih, ii, ie, ia" or whatnot may be pretty hard to distinguish even in IPA clarity. Personally I kind of 'excuse' it by saying 'the Vortal context could provide the right vowel'

I wouldn't mind if you put your own slant on it, at all - though I'm also just using it mainly myself to provide dialog in Vort for my story Repurposed, as well as name items and creatures / people in other parts of my fiction. (I use it and variations with the missing letters re-added (F and P specifically) for a completely different and much older rpg that I've been writing since the early 80s... the World of Zekira, i had a script for it, but no actual words - so now it has both, and pretty much no one's ever even seen that...) I'd love to see what you do with it.

There is a web page with some of it - not all - up on my site, but since Godaddy hosting is absolute shite I haven't been able to update it in nearly 6 years now so it's ... pretty far behind what exists here. I'm hoping to put together a more interactive style that you could use to sort by usage (since many words are able to be used as verbs, adverbs, nouns, almost everything, based on context) but that's been on the back burner since my site can't be updated. 

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lethe-gray In reply to UltimateFanOfRoblox [2019-09-18 20:01:47 +0000 UTC]

I would absolutely love that lol. 

I actually have a very old program that you can insert your own vocabulary and use it to search / translate, I have yet to put all of it together but it's so much easier to search for things. Still working on getting a proper web page up with all the newer stuff, usage, and the like.

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