All this for a few lousy XP...

[featherynscale]

I have a coat, it is a good coat, and it has somehow, through no particular fault of its own, become a gnome coat. For people that I don't play D&D with, I have a most favorite character who is a gnome illustionist/thief rogue with a tendency towards obscure mathematical relationships, the science of data collection, alchemy, and random acts of arson. She's lovely, and one day I showed up to play her while wearing the very goggles and trenchcoat now immortalized in my userpic. I had really only intended the goggles to become part of the gnome gear, but apparently they require the trenchcoat to really work. Since then, the coat has become stained with several various chemicals and has gotten all sorts of things pinned to it, and is really not much good for general use anymore. So I thought I'd convert it to a character costume piece.
So I had the bright idea that I'd set it up as an illusionist robe, with various symbols and sigils painted or embroidered on. And the thing that called to me most was adorning it with the Gremlin motto, "The difficult we do right away, the impossible takes a little longer". Of course, this would have to be in gnomish, or it wouldn't be as entertaining to me.
Now gnomish, in D&D, is written in dwarven script (or a rounded version of dwarven script, depending on which setting you're in). And there are examples of dwarven script in some of the setting material for (I think) Dragonlance, but it's really ugly. Really, really ugly. So I thought I'd go back to the source - my assumption is that the first real fantasy dwarven language comes from Tolkien. So I go looking for the Dwarven language, and I find what? Elves. Elves everywhere. Whole guilds of people who spend their free time translating poetry into Quenya and Sindarin. But, of course, nobody with the same level of interest in Dwarven. Not that it matters all that much to me, as Gnomish and Dwarven wouldn't be the same language anyway, they just use the same alphabet. It took me several hours to find a reasonable representation of the Dwarven alphabet, but I've got one now. However, I came across this quirk: I'm using Tolkien's Dwarven as a base for my Gnomish, but Tolkien at some point actually defined a Gnomish language, which works out to be an early ancestor of Sindarin, the low-elven language. So meh. Do I use the Dwarven script, but a Sindarin-like text? Or if I'm going to write in Sindarin, should it be in the tengwar-script that goes with the elven languages?
I at least have access to the resources necessary to translate the phrase into Sindarin... I don't have access to the Gnomish "dialect", if you will - it was published in a fantasy linguistics journal (it's hard to believe that there are such things) at some point, but the journal is long out of print and out of stock, so I'd be tweaking the translation quite a bit...
I fully understand that no one will care about this at all, except me, and I only care because I've already invested too much time in the research of it. I find that there is a certain number of hours that is a project threshhold: Once you hit the magic number, you'll finish the damned thing no matter what, because you don't want to admit that you put in that much time and then failed.
Anyway, geek points to me.

Comments

[kaikias.livejournal.com]

Well, Khuzdul wasn't worked on enough to be anywhere near usable - I could count the number of words on my fingers, if I recall. I think the MERP people may have expanded it a bit, and what they've produced is, I'd imagine, close enough to canon for your purposes.

Yes, early-stage Noldorin eventually became Sindarin, though the Noldor of the later versions of canon spoke Quenya. All elves would have written with Tengwar (or Sarati before those were invented). As far as the journal goes, I'm not sure you'd need it - the information would be in the Etymologies, which is in one (I sadly forget which) of the History of Middle-Earth series.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Oh ah. I've never been far enough into the Tolkien thing to attempt Histories, but I might have to now.

If the Noldorin eventually got upgraded to Quenya, that make the game even easier - Half the geek world seems to want to talk about Quenya.

Thank you for further linguistics geeking - more research at hand.

And you say *I* don't know how to slack?

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

Ms. Kettle, there's a Mr. Black on line 5... there's a problem with the Black account...

Re: And you say *I* don't know how to slack?

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Bah. This is slack. It has no useful purpose whatsoever, and will only serve to create an artifact that nobody will get. Hell, not only is it slack, it's art. :-P