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This thread has grown to be quite long. I don't want folks to be off put by the work of wading through a long thread to get to the heart of the discussion, so here's a tl;dr for newcomers and those checking back in:
tl;dr
- Napanii: government and military language in the Caldari State
- Non-canonical, but there's no alternative and who knows what could happen...
- We have developed grammar, vocabulary, and script for Napanii
- Made to enhance consistency and provide enrichment to Caldari RP
- Enjoy in detail by downloading the .pdf below
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The Napanii Primer (.pdf) (http://eve-files.com/dl/226035)*
*(not the most current edition; see the .html version)
The Napanii Primer (.html) (http://evechronicles.com/apocryphal/shorts/naprintro.html)
UPDATE: August 2nd, 2010; I won't be updating the .pdf again for some time, but I've added a link to the online version of the primer hosted on Artabanus' evechronicles.com. Head over there and check out the new Napanii script and phonology.
UPDATE: July 14th, 2010; Updated the .pdf again. The new forward was rubbish. I've rewritten it and you should re-download. I'll also include it in the OP.
UPDATE: July 13th, 2010; The .pdf has been updated with additions to the lexicon and a new forward. This will probably be the last edition of the primer for several months while I'm away. I am also taking down the raw copy of the grammar and lexicon in this post. It's all in the .pdf now.
UPDATE: June 2nd, 2010; Now too large to cram into one post, I've created a .pdf to carry the weight of this project's increasingly hefty vocab list. Some new additions to the list are courtesy of Vieve, who volunteered several roots and terms, and Veto Corp's forums, where I found some great terms for various corporate/guristas ranks and plundered them like... well, like a pirate. :yar:
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Hey folks, I posted the following up on the Chatsubo yesterday. I would have done so here, but I wasn't even aware of these forums until this morning. So here goes. In short, I love languages, love EVE, and had the free time and motivation to flesh out the Caldari/Napanii language. Let me know what you think.
Regards, Kenreikko Valitonen
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On Napanii, Reconsidered
What you have in front of you is the kernel of a created language, an entirely fictitious form of communication. Having found this document you may be wondering at its purpose and at my intentions for having created it. The simple answer is that it is a piece of fan fiction written for the setting of EVE Online. The harder answer is that it is an expression of the freeform play encouraged in the sandbox game world of New Eden and it is also homage to the deep, rich, and dark universe of EVE and the characters that inhabit it. Some players prefer to mission, some to mine, some to steal, and some to save. I enjoy these things too, but most of all I prefer to imagine. Here, myself and several others over the years have imagined the words and sounds of a far future world and brought them out to share.
This project is not aimed at creating a language in which an EVE player could carry on a full in-character conversation. Although there is enough vocabulary and basic grammar here to make that possible, I think doing so effectively would demand a great deal of time. That time one might as well dedicate to studying a language that other human beings actually do use. Instead, this project is meant to be a reference for those whose play might be enhanced with a few strange-sounding words or “authentic” citations of the languages that lie beneath a capsuleer’s automatic translation systems. Do not think of this as a study guide. I would prefer that you think of it as a window into Caldari thought, a peak past the interface of the neocom to a place where common people speak everyday words in an alien world.
The name “Napanii” describes one of two categories of written and spoken language in common use by the people of the Caldari bloc. The other category is simply called “Caldari” (sometimes, and some would say incorrectly, “Caldarese” or “Caldanese”) and it encompasses the several dozen dialectical vernaculars in use within the State’s more than five hundred sovereign systems and beyond. Caldari remains a fluid language, prone to regionalization and rapid changes in usage as well as development of idiomatic expressions specific to particular places and times. Napanii, on the other hand, is in its modern form an institutional language that was artificially resurrected and is today sustained within the umbra of the Big Eight by patriotic legal statutes. A State citizen born and raised aboard a space station in the far end of Lonetrek (say, Torrinos) may have trouble understanding the Caldari spoken by a citizen from a dirtside colony on Paala III. Accent and the impact of lifestyle on their use of everyday language would turn communication into a stream to be forded rather than a bridge to be crossed easily. Those same two citizens could, however, communicate using Napanii and never miss a beat.
Originally, Napanii was a major language of the Raata period. Chance saw that it rose from relative obscurity to widespread use by the time of the Raata Empire’s greatest height. During that time it served as the language of both street and stage and, after a while, of the state as well. The Raata Empire lasted for many centuries, and Napanii enjoyed some stability as a result, supported by the society of the empire and maintained by strict tradition. With the collapse of the Raata and the fracturing of civilization on Caldari Prime, Napanii was again free to shift and change. Linguistic historians today refer to the family of languages that emerged in the post-Raata period as the Napaniin languages, each sounding similar to the old imperial tongue but possessing its own flavor and local qualities. Thus there was no universal language on Caldari Prime when the Gallente made first contact. By that time, Napanii was effectively a dead language, already resigned to history and studied only for its ability to improve etymological understanding of contemporary languages.
Six hundred years of both subtle and overt cultural influence by the Gallenteans on Caldari society had left an indelible imprint on the Caldari vernacular languages by the time the Gallente-Caldari War began some two centuries ago. A war fought for independence, transformed into a war for the very survival of the Caldari people, the conflict would leave its own imprints on virtually every aspect of life for the citizens of the nascent State. Even the words they used to think and speak would not be left unchanged by the fires of bombardment and the traumatic exodus from their homeworld and flight from the old paradigm. Xenophobic patriotism ran so high among the Caldari leadership during the war that they sought to give their nation an entirely new language, free of hated foreign influence, around which the new society could be built. In Napanii they found what they sought. What data still existed on the old language of that last great Caldari civilization was compiled and used to build something new.
When it was reconstructed during the war, the linguists charged with the task set about simplifying the grammar and writing system of ancient Napanii so that it could be accessible to all citizens regardless of their education level or linguistic background. Although modern Napanii is little more than a century old, it is strongly supported by the corporations of the State. Presently, whatever dialect he or she may happen to speak at home or prefer to curse in, each citizen has a duty to study what is officially portrayed as the true language of the people. The actual use of Napanii varies from place to place and between different socio-economic groups in the State. Deeply patriotic corporations and persons are prone to use the “State language” (Napanii) more often than the “street language” (Caldari). Such speakers are also very strict in maintaining Napanii’s purity, intentionally avoiding the use of the few loan words that have nevertheless crept into the language. Napanii is found in a large percentage of official communications and documents and it is favored for use by State representatives in international relations. Napanii is also the official language of use for Caldari Navy operations and Caldari Business Tribunal proceedings.
In the lower tiers of corporate life and the poorer segments of State, one is less likely to hear Napanii in regular use. In fact, in places where the dynamics of the new post-war society have left the people resentful of their lot in life and mistrustful of corporate overlords, speaking Napanii is likely to come off as insulting or down-talking and might well earn one a close, personal meeting with the floor. In those low places, the local Caldari dialect is preferred for nearly everything and may be used for official communications regardless of the norms of the broader State. Enemies of the State are likely to reject the use of Napanii if they are aware of its origins, although some may be found speaking it in ignorance of the irony or merely out of utility. Artists and philosophers remain conflicted over the language.
This document is ultimately only a sample of the Napanii language. It remains open to expansion and improvement from any interested individuals and I make no claims to ownership or even origination of the material. Many of the words are borrowed from older attempts or donated by other players. I would, however, call for consistency. As one of the forefathers of this project said, “The main problem behind player-driven fiction is always the lack of consistency.” Overcoming that hurdle would give this incarnation of a Caldari language staying power, and that, I think, would be a good thing. It has been great fun putting this together and working with the members of the EVE RP community to make it happen, and I hope you can derive some fun from it in turn.
Anvatkaa, suuolot.
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What'd you use as the basis/inspiration for the words and rules?
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Little bit of Mandarin Chinese, English, and out-of-thin-airese went into the grammar. Most of the terms were selected by looking at machine translations in Finnish and Japanese and seeking a happy "Caldari-sounding" medium. Several terms are from the list of Caldari words and phrases that I first found on the CAIN forums.
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Well, I like it as much on this forum as on the other one :)
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As someone who occasionally uses Napanii/Caldanese in RP, I fucking love you for this post. Thanks! :D
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Great work!
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My eyeorbs, they glaze over - not from wall-of-text, but from happiness.
As someone who occasionally uses Napanii/Caldanese in RP, I fucking love you for this post. Thanks! :D
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Confirming that this is awesome, and that I'm using it.
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I spotted some words that are exactly the same as in Japanese (not that it matters) but I really like this. Even though my character is Caldari I never really bothered to use the native language, but this sure is a huge incentive. You put a lot of effort into it, hats off to you!
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This is an impressive compilation, nicely done!
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Pretty damn nice work, mate.
+1
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I could fall in love with Napanii. It just sounds so lyrical and fluid when you speak it aloud.
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Great stuff mate!
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Posting to request a sticky for this :3
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Congratulations, you has been awarded Ph.D of Caldanese. Have a cookie. :D
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Holy shit :eek:
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Holy shit :eek:
I had a similar reaction.
Followed by "holy hell, I should go look at my stuff and fixy, 'cause I like this".
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RP noob here.
Is this something you made up, or is there an actual reference to this language somewhere in the chrons/sci articles?
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RP noob here.
Is this something you made up, or is there an actual reference to this language somewhere in the chrons/sci articles?
It's a big cluster, CCP PF covers very little of it. Some of this stuff is grounded in PF, most of it is player created. The bit about Caldari being a mixture of Japanese and Finnish is pretty well established.
A lot of player created stuff like this makes it into broad RP use, and sometimes into official, CCP sanctioned fiction.
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Same applies for the Intaki language as well, and i assume other languages have been developed also although i have only seen the above scale of development in Caldari and Intaki myself.
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Thanks to everyone for the words of praise and encouragement. I've continued to add to this project as time and support from others permit. Went to make another addition tonight and found that the original post was busting the 50k character limit. Thus, I now present this project in a rough .pdf format (http://dl.eve-files.com/media/1006/Napanii_Primer.pdf) uploaded to EVE Files. Over time it'll hopefully morph into a more official-looking document.
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I've been meaning to want to mention this. I discovered this on the OOC forums, in the discussion about the Caldari language there:
http://www.eve-chatsubo.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=861&hilit=Caldari+Language
“No," he shook his head, serious. "Kigurosaka-Dai… old Napanii expression. Kigurosaka, "flowing smooth with the stream", is your… state of awareness with your surroundings, being able to inherently follow procedures, and know what needs to be done without being told to. The '-Dai' particle negates the previous.”
(as a spoiler, I will let you know this: 'Lai' means 'to forget' :D )
The very meaning to 'Lai Dai' is to 'never forget'. Of what, goes without saying.
This tempts me to perchase that issue of E-ON. :P
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Thanks! Good eye. I used a lot of stuff from that thread, but seems I forgot the verb for "forget". Lai "to forget" should give us a new root la- "forget". This -dai particle is also useful. I'll have to work it in.
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Dude. This is...this is just FREAKING AWESOME. I usually just use the grettings, but Im gonna have to put some brain cells to memorizing some of this stuff so I can use it.
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I did read the PDF thru. Might have some commentary while I am home (proposed in-character etymology for a few words as well as explaining the "original" meaning of those words that have obvious Finnish roots).
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That would be awesome, Mithfindel. :D Please comment away!
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So is hnolku as traitor slang or is it an actual word in the language? If the former why would it be so prevalent after only 5 years and what was its original meaning? If the latter then why was it ever used as a name? Just figured this should be tackled while there's a revision of sorts going on.
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Hnolku is definitely a slang term, being the name of a very recent traitor (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Year_YC107#March) to the Caldari State. Compare it to quisling (http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2004/06/29.html). Without an accompanying etymological explanation, future generations of English speakers (indeed, current ones) will use that term as a synonym for traitor in ignorance of it actually being someone's name. I think whoever first put forward hnolku as Caldari for "traitor" was going for the exact same thing, but it's only been a few years since the Insorum scandal involving the traitorous Hnolkus (YC107).
Your average Caldari citizen then would use the word knowing full well its origin, and I think it would be reserved for someone particularly vile (or as I wrote in the current version of the primer, specifically for a contemporary traitor to the modern State). So, it's not a proper synonym quite yet, but it will become one someday. To give us an "original" term:
gaaira n. traitor
agatiri v. to betray (root: agatir "betray")
agatirone n. betrayal (root: agatir "betray")
I'll put these in the next time I update the primer.
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I've finished doing a bit more through read of the word lists and noted comparisons to some words. This is actually quite difficult due to the fact that several words are likely mix-and-match from Finnish and Japanese, with changed vowels. In addition, sometimes the root isn't what I'd first connect with the meaning of the word, but rather a related word. (Either close-to-same meaning or a word whose English word is a homonyme with the English word for the correct translation.)
To give some food for thought, Finnish phonology from the Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_language#Phonology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_language#Phonology)*
Also, Japanese phonology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology)
*) This together with the fact that when reading Finnish all letters match roughly to their IPA equivalents directly (with a few exceptions) makes it at times pretty damn hard to figure out what systems English-speaking FCs mean, specially in Caldari space since the system names are "almost Finnish" and it's harder to figure how to "read them in English".
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several words are likely mix-and-match from Finnish and Japanese, with changed vowels
In fact, the vast majority of them are.
My intent wasn't to recreate something discernibly Finnish, Japanese, or anything else, but rather give more body to the fictional Caldari language while providing a basic grammar. I'm sorry I don't know the full context of your post, Mithfindel, but I suspect you are a native (or at least capable) speaker of Finnish and/or Japanese. Napanii isn't meant to sound particularly Finnish or Japanese. Also, none of the roots or words in this primer are meant to naturally connect to any particular concept or meaning for anyone but a native speaker of Napanii. That they did not connect in that way for you (at least some of the time) tells me this is sufficiently differentiated from both of the source/inspirational languages that it fulfills my original intent.
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I'm a native Finnish speaker, with near to no knowledge of Japanese (only individual words). And yes, I agree on your points mostly - I didn't count, but a lot of words were taken only from one language with some individual sounds added or removed. I do believe I've read some old posts where the OOC origins of a few words were explained, so I am rather familiar with how they are formed.
For the "not connecting" part, I'll pick an example from my high school French lessons - one of the sentences in an essay had completely baffled the teacher, as it talked about the object of the sentence being "root" something. Well, the Finnish word for "exactly" (juuri sopiva, "exactly fitting") happens to be a homonyme of the word for "root" (puun juuri, "root of a tree"), and as they were not sufficiently explained in the dictionary, the writer of the essay had picked the wrong one. These cases didn't feel very numerous, though. (Again, didn't count.) Some of the connections to similar things might be partially imagined, as well - the human mind is very apt at seeing connections where none do really exist. There were a few very poetic ones, with a possible "etymology" to somewhat archaic words.
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I realized something... going back to what I pointed out. I couldn't find a word for 'forgive'.
There's the commonly used expession, 'Never forgive, never forget'. We need to be able to express this in Caldari language.
"_____ dai, lai dai."
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utuusi v. to forgive (root: utuus "concede, relent"; the preferred, modern term)
rukkui v. to forgive (root: rukku "forgive, absolve"; a somewhat outdated expression in daily conversation, but one that imparts a deeper, more complete meaning than merely accepting a fault/error and moving on)
rukkuone n. pardon, absolution (root: rukku "forgive, absolve")
Thus, rukkui dai, lai dai.
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As a note: Any words left from the "old world" would likely be mutated unrecognizable. As such, using "real world" languages as a background for any new invented languages should only consider the "look and feel" of a language, most importantly phonology, flow and possibly basic grammar (with hopefully the end result being internally consistent and compatible with the world it is set into). The following list of words that somewhat closely match to the real-world equivalents is provided just in case someone is interested.
The word meanings are as per memory, not from a dictionary.
From the list of sample roots:
anik- (panic): self-explaining
huv- (enjoy): huvi "fun, merriment"
iltak- (return): close to ilta "evening", though the connection is a bit loose (iltakutsu would be "last call" (mil.)
jaom- (divide, separate): jako "divide", jakaa "to divide"
kafuru- (barren): karu "harsh, barren"
kakkush- (luxury, delight): kakku "cake"
kayrt- (cycle, repeat): kierto "cycle", kiertää "to circle, to go around"
kektim- (study, research): keksiä "to invent" (originally from keksi, a long stick used in for example log driving and timber rafting - trying to catch something would be "keksiä")
kienj- (forbidden, taboo): kielto "ban, restriction", kieltää "to forbid"
kula- (come): tulla "to come"
kunniot- (respect, deference): kunnioittaa "to respect" (from kunnia "honour")
muut- (change): muuttua "to change (itself)", muuttaa "to change (something), to move residence"
myd- (sell): myydä "to sell", myynti "sales"
nahu- (see, observe): nähdä "to see"
nug- (play): See the explanation for Nugoeihuvi corporation name
onek- (luck, serendipity): onni "luck", onnekas "lucky"
osk- (buy): ostaa "to buy"
pik- (length, long): pitkä "long"
rakennut- (build, construct): rakentaa "to build" via rakennuttaa "to have built"
rask- (heavy, bulky): raskas "heavy"
saal- (permit, allow): sallia "to permit" - related sallimus "divine providence"
siir- (depart, go away): siirtää "to move something"
stama- (anchor, moor): satama "harbour, haven"
suf- (deep, dive): sukeltaa "to dive"
susk- (belief, faith): usko "faith", uskomus "belief", uskonto "religion"
tamas- (dance): um, just dance? (tanssi)
tanset- (fight): tanssia (to dance)
teknik- (advance, develop): tekniikka "technology" (as a note, you can "make science" in Finnish, but you can't "make technology" - the concept might be related, though)
tietosh- (know): tietää "to know", tieto "knowledge, information, data", tiede "science"
ud- (new, fresh): uusi "new", uudistaa "renew", uudis- "new-" (uudisraivaaja "frontiersman", uudisrakennus "new building/construction")
use- (many, much): usea "many, multiple"
valk- (bright, ligth): valkeus (archaic) "brightness", valkea/valkoinen "white"
vekiin- (oblige, require): possibly connected to velka "debt"
Edit: to be continued
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(Reserved)
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Oh, Mithfindel. Nothing better to do during extended downtime? ;)
Since I don't speak Finnish, I do appreciate your perspective on the words. I'd say you shouldn't look too deeply into it as I intended no hidden meanings and readily admit most of the words are a mash-up of Finnish and Japanese terms. Imparting the "look and feel", as you say, of the real world languages has been my intent all along.
Interestingly, huvi is a Caldari word straight from PF.
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Oh, Mithfindel. Nothing better to do during extended downtime? ;)
Since I don't speak Finnish, I do appreciate your perspective on the words. I'd say you shouldn't look too deeply into it as I intended no hidden meanings and readily admit most of the words are a mash-up of Finnish and Japanese terms.
But feel free to look for the hidden meanings in the words I contributed, because there may be some. :P
e.g. tamas- (to dance)
I initially parsed tanssi and odori(Japanese for "dance") comme ça:
Step One:
ta-ns+si = tasi
od+or-i = odor
Step Two:
ta-o+d-s+i-o+r = tadir
Step Three:
"Bleah, that looks like freaking Sindarian."
Step Four:
"Taadir and Tadiir don't look much better."
Step Five:
"Why the hell did you just jump into Tama?"
Step Six:
BSOOP1.
Step Seven:
"Crap, I'm still in Tama. I can't believe nobody noticed me sitting here IN THIS ITERON V on the Nourv gate. Why don't I get the hell out of Tama before someone does?"
Step Eight:
Look up 'Tama' in Wikipedia. (See Step Six). Go 'ooh' at 'part of the soul in the Japanese Shinto faith, roughly equivalent to ghost, spirit, or soul (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tama)'.
Step Nine:
Realize ITunes is playing The Police's "Spirits in The Material World". It's got a nice beat. I can dance to it.
Step Ten:
tamas- (to dance).
1BSOOP = "Bright Shiny Object Oriented Programming". My DH's term for how my brain works. For the record, I don't speak Finnish either, and I didn't retain much from my two semesters of Japanese (though it improved my French!). Thanks for the analysis, man.
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:eek: I want to know where eidzenshi came from, then.
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As a fact, I did go thru the words yesterday. Proofwrote those after I got back from work and before having dinner and going out. Now should just start adding the successive pages (that's only one page).
Also, a few things that might be interesting to have a look in ingame snippets (essentially names) is the -nen suffix (in Finnish, that refers either to a page or then is a diminuitive). -la does refer to a placename (roughly -ton). The basic twists seem to include messing up with short/long vowels and single/double consonants. Going back the steps for Mens Reppola, translating his last name in English: Reppo + -la => Repo (poetic "fox") + -la => Foxton. If you really want to double the second consonant, he'd end up being Foxxton. (And no, Tibus Heth sounds more like broken Latin to me along with his Templis Dragonaurs. Obvious corruptive Gallente influence!)
Edit: And oh, eidzenshi, my guess: z and sh don't appear in Finnish, so that's something Japanese-sounding. "eid" might be the first syllable from edetä "advance". So, splitting and mixing, it'd be a mix of edetä and iz-(something)-shi? (Edit of an edit: Japanese word for "advance" is shinpo)
If wanting to get serious, I'd recommend trying to figure out a few verb declensions (classes of verbs) and try to get them have regular endings for the nominative forms. Alternatively, make nominatives completely regular based on the last sound of the root, and list only roots (already having introduced how to use stems in the beginning).
Edit2: Grammar might require some work. Making nouns from verbs is covered - would all roots be considered possible to make verbs with verb stems? Could I say "marui" for "to ship, transport by ship"? Or is there a specific way "to verb" subjectives?
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:eek: I want to know where eidzenshi came from, then.
The collision of edistää, zen, and shimukeru with a couple bottles of Granny Apple Woodchuck and the urge to get rid of some poetry.
It also started out as edzenshu, but I tweaked the spelling/endings so that it'd better fit what you'd done.
Tsuun (ha) tamasi (http://cruxmeander.blogspot.com/2009/11/linear-part-8-tsuun-belle-danse.html). Pedoru.
Taaho ka (haanen) surova. Edzenshu.
Saam keitstad (haanen) kahioi. Arenya iltakui.
Taiso alaishi (haanen) vash.
Tsuun (ha) tamasi.
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Obvious corruptive Gallente influence!
Hey, I virtually resemble that.
Speaking of corruptive Gallente influences, you're probably about to explain to me that Nennamalia isn't a mish-mash of Caldari and Gallente that means "without effort". :P
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According to official databases collected since the 19th century, there have been 331 people in Finland with the given (first or middle) name Nenna, 330 of whom have been women. (Mostly born in 80s and 90s.) There have been 5923 Finns with the given name of Maila, all women. As people may be given a composite name instead of two separate given names, Nennamaila (possibly written Nenna-Maila) is a valid Finnish girl's name.
Btw, checked a few names I remember from ingame that appear ingame (with Finnish spelling) vs. real occurance:
April - 47 women (most likely immigrants or Swedish-speaking)
Arvo - 26320 men, 5 women
Dex - 1 boy (born 2008)
Hamish - 19 men (might be possible for Swedish-speaking Finns, though I assume immigrants)
Istvan - 58 men (is a Hungarian name, distantly-related language)
Johan - 33831 men, 5 women
John - 7312 men, 8 women
Juha - 63435 men, 4 women
Juhani - 336558 men, 8 women
Juho - 53444 men, 29 women
Jussi - 24337 men
Nicole - 2 men, 862 women (likely Swedish-speaking / Russian immigrants?)
Niko - 17820 men (from Nicodemus, there's also a crapload of people named Teemu)
Nikola - 66 men, 31 women (Russian immigrants?)
Nikolai - 14572 men, 5 women (Russian name)
Nikole - 9 women
Vera - 2 men, 3601 women
Veera - 5 men, 11617 women
Veeri - 2 men
Veeti - 5565 men, 1 women
If you want to check, try http://verkkopalvelut.vrk.fi/Nimipalvelu/default.asp?L=1 (http://verkkopalvelut.vrk.fi/Nimipalvelu/default.asp?L=1). Edit: "Etunimihaku" means "first name search".
In the resulting page, "hae" means "search". "Syntymävuosi" is "year of birth". "Miehiä" is "men", "naisia" is "women" and "yhteensä" means "total". "Hae vuosi" means "search by year".
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the -nen suffix (in Finnish, that refers either to a page or then is a diminuitive)
Is that similar to the familiar names in Russian (i.e. Vasily becomes Vasha) and/or the English tendency to shorten names and put a long "e" sound at the end (i.e. Jessie, Eddy, Christy)?
I'm digging the -la sound meaning "place of", by the way. That's directly from Finnish as well?
I'd recommend trying to figure out a few verb declensions (classes of verbs) and try to get them have regular endings for the nominative forms. Alternatively, make nominatives completely regular based on the last sound of the root, and list only roots (already having introduced how to use stems in the beginning).
I have intentionally kept declension and case out of the Napanii grammar. Napanii is a lot like Chinese or Korean in that sense, where the context of an expression contributes to its meaning much more than conjugation. I did this mostly because conjugation sucks and is stupid. (I've studied Latin and speak Mandarin fluently, and believe me the latter of those two got this part right.) Also, this makes it much easier to pick up the primer and crank out a few words or sentences for casual RP.
would all roots be considered possible to make verbs with verb stems? Could I say "marui" for "to ship, transport by ship"? Or is there a specific way "to verb" subjectives?
As explained in the primer, any root can be modified to form several parts of speech, including verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. Some root-stem combos will produce words that we don't use in English. Anything listed in the glossary without an identified root in its definition can't be modified with stems. Maru is simply and always a noun meaning "(a) ship". There will be a different term for "to ship, transport".
However, you could have a Napanii speaker who's education is a little less than adequate who could use non-root words in that way. Saying marui for "to transport (something) by ship" could be understandable to other Caldari, but it would make the speaker seem silly. Imagine an English speaker saying he was going to "food the cat" rather than "feed the cat". You'd get his meaning (maybe!) even though he hasn't used a properly formed expression.
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-nen generally does not shorted words, rather being an additional suffix. For example "poika" would be "boy". "Poikanen" would be the diminuitive (though also a proper word for the young of an animal). As an example on being used at the "place of origin" meaning there's -lainen suffix. For example, "Englanti" and "englantilainen". Another example as a proper name would be (one of the most common surnames) "Virtanen". "Virta" means stream, river or current. Virtanen might have been someone who lived by a river. (Also as an adjective - for example, "valkeus" is "brightness, lightness, whiteness". "Valkea" or "valkoinen" is "white".)
Of course, the meaning might not be the same in Napanii.
Edit: Oh, on shortening names: Dropping a few syllables off is generally used, though there may be parts added. All the J-starting names in the previous post are considered related forms of Johannes (from St. John). Johannes appears additional 240436 times as a man's and 17 times as a woman's name, with Johanna 21 times as a male and 144343 times as a female name. The rest of the forms are shortened, resulting in (male) Juhani, Juha, Juho and Jussi (Jussi is to the other forms like Jack is to John in English, as well) and Johanna, Jonna and Jossu.
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Just as a note, your PDF seems to be corrupted.
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I just pulled it down from EVE Files again and didn't see any problems. It loaded fine and each page was there. Try again?
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http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=741.0
Made this post in the web development section to draw attention for the request for sticky on this - I figured a sticky with links to language primers in general would be neat - this one and ILF's one was mentioned in the post. Hope that gets attention for you because this is awesome and I don't even play a caldari.
But DT speaks five languages without a translator program - pre-capsuler if you will, so I love having the ability if I liked to RP one of em.
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http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=165189
Called "S’karpur stalaandi" (literally “sharp steel spirit”) it is one of the oldest surviving Caldari traditions,
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Basic_Caldari_for_Gallente
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Thank you, Hamish. I've never seen nor been referred to these before. Looks like there is some reconciliation to be done between this Napanii primer and the "Basic Caldari for Gallente" article you've provided.
The source Blake Rathen cites for the content of that article is this early 2005 EVE Fiction thread (http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=224596), much of which seems to have been either forgotten or replaced before this Chatsubo thread (http://www.eve-chatsubo.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=861&hilit=caldari+language) got started about a year later. The latter thread was the foundation on which this project has been built. If I had used the former, the product would be a very different beast indeed not least because the Napanii described in Herko's post has Western style verb tense/conjugation. Of course, Herko also participated to a significant extent in the later Chatsubo thread and did not bring up his earlier work in any detail.
I don't know whether by your brevity you mean to say that you dislike the direction of this project and/or that it should have been based on Herko's early work or if you simply wanted to throw out a quick post with pertinent links. It would be good to know your opinion better.
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The post was short because I'm posting via my phone. You should read through all of Herko's work including the unfinished Barriers novella he and others did.
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I'm taking a look at Herko's stuff, Hamish. Starting with the children's stories. Thanks again for pointing me in that direction. Do you know what ever happened to him?
Also, bumping to let everyone know that the Napanii Primer .pdf file has been updated and uploaded to EVE Files in its newest edition. See the OP or right here (http://eve-files.com/dl/225972) for the link.
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Napanii, as presented here, is presumed to be the most widely-spoken language in the Caldari State during the time period in which EVE Online is set.
A program of simplification, also called “Caldarification”, of Napanii reshaped the way the language was taught to children in the years following the war.
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=162092&page=1#13
The basic idea is that the Caldari have two languages; specifically Napanii and Caldari. Napanii would be the dual-vowel language that agent names use, whereas Caldari is the modern language.
-Having and "older" language like latin, resurrecting after the Bombing... oh man that idea ROCKS BIG TIME!!!! (had to add all the exclamation marks, had to!)
I think when Herko and Raem created Napanii their intent was for it to be a nearly dead language that had been resurrected only after the exodus from Caldari prime and is not used in everyday communication.
The Science of Never Again chronicle suggests that Caldari citizens were still running for the transport ships as the bombs were falling on Caldari prime. I imagine most of the surviors carried only the clothes on their backs; things like the ancient scrolls, paintings sculptures etc were left in the museums as they fled. Of course, Gallenteans being Gallenteans would have destroyed any such artifacts that survived the bombing.
The Exodus from Caldari Prime to my mind would have meant that the culture, values and norms of pre-war Caldari couldn’t have been transmitted all that well to the next generation. Especially with the tube child program. Think BSG pre-cylon invasion versus life onboard the Gallatica. The first generation to be born after that will be completely unrecognizable as the same society. The values and traditions that stemmed from necessity of survival in the old world don’t provide for survival in the new one.
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/New_horizons_%28Chronicle%29
Runia didn’t know much about the history of the Caldari; she knew that Caldari Prime - the old home of the Caldari - had several continents and that the different Caldari bloodlines came from different continents. Back in the days when the Caldari still occupied Caldari Prime the difference between the bloodlines was profound, not only in physical appearance, but also culturally.
Runia suspected that the beliefs that the Caldari bloodlines were very different from each other stemmed from these facts. But when the Caldari had to leave their home planet and the long and arduous war with the Gallente Federation erupted the Caldari race as a whole was uprooted and thrown into a melting pot were fighting for their survival was all that mattered. The frantic decades that followed altered the Caldari psyche forever. Traits such as discipline and loyalty came to the forefront and shaped - and continue to shape - Caldari society into something completely new.
The Chronicle New Horzions says that the change to the Caldari culture was a "profound" one and that the post-exodus Caldari society is "something completely new." Granted thhe story is told from the perspective of the character Runia who may herself may misunderstand the facts but I don't believe that really was the intent with the Chronicle.
The Caldari’s mere existence is threat to the Gallentean’s culturally ingrained self-image as the master race (http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=651&tid=4) and this why they fought so hard and long during the first war to see the Caldari people extinct and why after the Yulia treat they continued to wage a war of cultural imperialism (http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=343&tid=4)
I think that men like Matias Sobaseki, Taaiko Wiyrkomi and Orlan Mito would have understood this and helped to guide the new caldari culture towards norms and values that would help them survive against the more the more technologically advanced, numerically larger and richer Gallente military.
Today knights and Samurai are glamorized as honorable and loyal in tales of chivalry and bushido but in reality they were nothing of the sort. Nevertheless these fairtales are still used to reinforce certain cultural values even today.
I believe, with out any really evidence to back it up mind you, that early Caldari used a glamorized stories of the Raata Empire to teach the desired norms and values to the next generation and that Herko felt much the same way. Thus his ”16 autumn stories to share with our children”, YR98, Lai Dai Press series and the extra exclamation marks in his above quote.
I think that his intent with Napanii was that not much of it survived, and that it's been used by that state as a tool to promote the values of discipline and loyalty and that you will only really hear it used in formal ceremonies and by high-society Patriots.
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I'm not sure what happened to Herko... He disappeared without a trace shortly after his Cold Wind story became a chronicle and then CCP Abraxas showed up a short time later as CCP's newest writer. There was a lot of speculation that Herko and Abraxas are the same person and I subscribed to it for a while but now that we've seen more of Abraxas' work it just feels different to me than Herko's writing.
If it had just been a burn out I'm sure have returned to Eve by now or at least check into chatsubo. He loved the game way too much. I think he must died.
Or hopefully his wife just made him cut all ties to eve or she'd divorce him or something like that.
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Lots of important stuff.
More excellent perspective from the early days and explanations to boot. Thanks! I will have to rewrite that forward.
Now, how to do so properly...
At first glance, Raem Civire's description of the two languages from 2005 (Napanii as S-O-V and Caldari as S-V-O) contradicts how I've characterized Napanii here. I don't think that's a deal-breaker, but it means I need to redefine what this "Napanii" really is. No time to hash that out right now, but I'll be reading your links in detail and mulling that over later today. More thoughts to follow.
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I rethought and rewrote the forward describing the origins of Napanii and its place among the languages of the modern State. I think this is much closer to Herko and Raem's original vision and perhaps closer to your own, Hamish, while remaining true to my own perspective. The .pdf is updated with the changes.
Regarding Herko: it could be he is on the staff as Abraxas and he's just experimenting with different styles or is required to write certain things a certain way. Of course, if they are the same person I can't imagine why he'd never have revealed that fact... perhaps to keep what was written out of love and what was written for pay completely separate? Eh, speculation.
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<3
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It's nice for you to collect all this information into a file form that can be put into the neocomm therefore negating the whole thing.
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negating the whole thing
I assume you are referring to this (http://www.eveonline.com/background/potw/default.asp?cid=apr02). It's worth addressing that point since I don't think we've yet done so in this thread.
But in one field the language a person knows has become irrelevant and the field is that of a space captain...
...unique nature of the capsule with its sophisticated neural rigging gives ship captains the option to link their minds to all kinds of computer systems...
...steady increase in cyber-implants these translators have begun appearing outside the capsule as well...
...debate over which language should prevail in inter-racial communication a futile one.
Automatic translation does not mean that people stop learning or using languages or that they only use one language. It only means that interpreters are out of a job. I might argue that the widespread availability of very efficient machine translation (which that chron describes as a possibility in the EVE universe) would actually increase the diversity of languages in the world. Nevertheless, as quoted above, the technology was last described as being available only to pod pilots. The rest of the cluster is still making due with less effective machine translations or living interpreters, not to mention that two people of the same background wouldn't need a translator at all to communicate. Sometimes its just fun to imagine how they might do so.
The neocom doesn't negate the whole thing, it simply makes it easier for pilots to conduct operations. When they unplug and de-pod, it's back to the slow-thinking, untranslated world.
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With the tech in EVE, basic language hardwirings or translation implants would be available to most wealthy people, capsuleers or not - the capsule isn't a requirement. Knowing languages would be for those cases where the translators yet don't know the language (i.e. an ancient language or a regional one, not one of the major languages) or, simply, as an art. Specially for Caldari, the art would be important, if furthering the themes in Herko's writing. (Consider tea and swordsmanship.)
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Finally getting into reading this.
Thank you Ken, well done.
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Ken:
Just wanted to congratulate you (and of course, everyone else who put time into this subject over the years) on a masterful work. The language seems to me very simple and elegant, but with room to grow and for depth of expression. At least for the purposes of player fiction that is.
I have a question. I know it probably was mentioned earlier, but has the matter of phonology been broached with regards to Napanii? I know it may be seem to be a minutiae, however, I think it may be a simple matter to establish, or suggest a "Standard Napanii" pronunciation guide. This, of course, does not preclude the existence of regional and dialectal pronunciations; it would just suggest that there does exist a "Standard Napanii" (perhaps referred to by State linguists as, "SN"). This would perhaps be a good addition to your primer.
Knowing things like vowel and consonant pronunciation, syllable division, length, timing and stress, the existence of glottal stops (or not), sandi, etc, etc., could also make it easier for some to know how to pronounce some of the names we find in-game.
I have some thoughts/suggestions on a very simple guide that perhaps could be included and definitely expanded upon if necessary, if anyone is interested. At the very least, I thought I could jump-start this aspect of the Napanii tongue.
Thanks for listening.
Art
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Well.
Finnish is pretty much spoken like Latin is.
So is Japanese, therefore its said that it is quite easy for finns to learn Japanese.
So as a primer for that you really do not need that much work...
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Here's a little something I kind of threw together...perhaps to stimulate more discussion on the matter if so desired.
Art
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Here's a little something I kind of threw together...perhaps to stimulate more discussion on the matter if so desired.
Art
Sorry. Here's a smaller, editable version.
Again, these are just my humble ideas. I'm sure they can be improved upon. Maybe they're not that good, and if so, I guess that will be revealed.
Thanks.
Art
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Well.
Finnish is pretty much spoken like Latin is.
So is Japanese, therefore its said that it is quite easy for finns to learn Japanese.
So as a primer for that you really do not need that much work...
Very good to know; but there are a lot of folks who may not be familiar with Finnish, Japanese or Latin for that matter. I personally am fluent in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, (as well as some Esperanto) and have a slight familiarity with Arabic, but nonetheless find having a phonetic guide helpful in knowing how to pronounce those languages that I do speak. And it seems logical to me to have a phonetic guide included in any primer, especially one for a new conlang. But that's just my humble opinion...I'm sure your opinion is shared by a great many also.
Art
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Art, for some reason I either didn't notice or haven't been able to see your linked document. Just realized it was there today. Sitting down to take a look right now...
First thought is simply that I never considered any rules for the pronunciation of the language at all.
Looking at how you broke down the phonology, there are only two differences between how I've been saying things in my head and how you've presented them that really stand out: the vowels "i" and "u". With Ishukone, for example, I've always imagined it pronounced with a short /ɪ/ sound, making the first syllable sound like "fish" without the "f". Using the long /i/ or "ee" sound just doesn't feel right at all there. Both letters come up in guristas, where my preference for the "short u" sound makes it "gʌr-ɪs-tɑhs" to me, but comes out as "goo-rees-TAHS" in your phonology chart. Conversely, I use a "long u" in Ishukone, giving the second through fourth syllables the exact same pronunciation as you do.
This makes me curious as to how other players say some of these very common terms.
Looking at the terms you picked out for use in your document, I can't really articulate any rules by which my pronunciation of those two vowels is guided. In some places I use the short vowels, sometimes the long. Like I said, I never considered rules for this sort of thing so my assumptions about pronunciation are just based on whatever rolled off my tongue as I put the lexicon together. As an English, Mandarin, and Korean speaker I'm sure my natural preferences for sounds are different from yours and from anyone else who might pick this up. Thanks for starting the project down this path. I think it's well worth fleshing out... as long as we can factor in a rule that keeps the (f)ish in Ishukone.
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Looking at how you broke down the phonology, there are only two differences between how I've been saying things in my head and how you've presented them that really stand out: the vowels "i" and "u". With Ishukone, for example, I've always imagined it pronounced with a short /ɪ/ sound, ... Using the long /i/ or "ee" sound just doesn't feel right at all there. Both letters come up in guristas, where my preference for the "short u" sound makes it "gʌr-ɪs-tɑhs" to me, but comes out as "goo-rees-TAHS" in your phonology chart. Conversely, I use a "long u" in Ishukone, giving the second through fourth syllables the exact same pronunciation as you do.
Looking at the terms you picked out for use in your document, I can't really articulate any rules by which my pronunciation of those two vowels is guided. In some places I use the short vowels, sometimes the long. Like I said, I never considered rules for this sort of thing so my assumptions about pronunciation are just based on whatever rolled off my tongue as I put the lexicon together. As an English, Mandarin, and Korean speaker I'm sure my natural preferences for sounds are different from yours and from anyone else who might pick this up. Thanks for starting the project down this path. I think it's well worth fleshing out... as long as we can factor in a rule that keeps the (f)ish in Ishukone.
Interesting Ken; you are quite right. Your background has colored your imagining of the language, and I have to admit that I too pronounced "Ishukone" and "guristas" using the short vowel sounds...after I thought about it, I went with trying to produce a consistent rule for the vowels, and kind of used a mix of Japanese and Romance languages. But that definitely goes against what is probably the norm for most if not all players/writers.
It did cross my mind that Standard Napanii may not be the norm for most in speech, even amongst the corporations. I'm sure Tibus Heth would not speak Standard Napanii, and it would be something that perhaps would be heard only in the media and perhaps amongst professionals. Not sure.
I will try to rework the suggestions to prefer open vowels sounds over the closed. And perhaps Napanii is similar to English: lots of rules and more exceptions to the rules.
Thanks for being open to my suggestions.
I've also worked up an idea for a Napanii Script, and a font to type it to go along with it. I'll post both when I can. I'd be interested to see what people think about it. The script is based on a variation of the Hangul alphabet called Rohal.
Thanks.
Art
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It did cross my mind that Standard Napanii may not be the norm for most in speech, even amongst the corporations. I'm sure Tibus Heth would not speak Standard Napanii, and it would be something that perhaps would be heard only in the media and perhaps amongst professionals. Not sure.
...
The script is based on a variation of the Hangul alphabet called Rohal.
I imagine the opposite, actually. As a diehard proponent of a more centralized State, the language of the government and national military seems to me to be one of Heth's greater tools. Even if he didn't grow up speaking it as a lowly planetary laborer, he is certainly using it now (when autotranslation isn't available or preferred).
As for "Standard Napanii", the definition is almost a redundancy. Napanii is meant to be the standard. Still a young language, it has been under the control of State regulation for its entire modern existence. Not enough time nor freedom has been available for it to diverge significantly enough to require the definition of standard and alternate varieties. At most, there might be a "Military Napanii" with an exclusively active voice and preference for simple sentence structures and a "Civilian Napanii" used for high-minded speeches and board room subtlety. Accents certainly exist (think of how different English sounds when spoken by an American from Alabama, a Scotsman from Edinburgh, and an Indian from Mumbai), but no substantive variations in form or content.
Finally, Hangul is a wonderful alphabet. Clear, precise, and adaptable; qualities that the State linguists would have sought when sitting down to create a language that every citizen could easily learn. Never heard of Rohal before, but a quick Googling shows that its derives from an attempt to write Korean linearly. Interesting! In any case, the Rohal letters look plenty alien enough to serve our purposes here. Good choice.
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I imagine the opposite, actually. As a diehard proponent of a more centralized State, the language of the government and national military seems to me to be one of Heth's greater tools. Even if he didn't grow up speaking it as a lowly planetary laborer, he is certainly using it now (when autotranslation isn't available or preferred).
As for "Standard Napanii", the definition is almost a redundancy. Napanii is meant to be the standard. Still a young language, it has been under the control of State regulation for its entire modern existence. Not enough time nor freedom has been available for it to diverge significantly enough to require the definition of standard and alternate varieties.
Ken:
I did not think about that issue, the fact that Napanii is still a young language and that variation in the language may not have had time to develop yet.
I was thinking after I wrote the last post that my intention for phonological guide was not as a guide for how we as players/writers/readers should pronounce Napanii...I thought of it more as an imaginary guide for us to approximate how native Caldari might pronounce the language. How anyone else might pronounce it based on their language experience most certainly would be different.
Nonetheless...I do agree with your thought and I will try working your pronunciation ideas into the primer. Perhaps Napanii is similar to English in the sense that the open and closed vowels are mixed throughout words...in other words the vowels are not fixed as in - for example Esperanto, or Spanish. Knowing the correct pronunciation is then a matter of memorization. English and Arabic are like that...and Portuguese to some extent. I will work out the ideas we spoke about.
Take a look at the script/cipher that I made up and let me know what you think. I did not include glyphs for "q" or "x" since I didn't see those letters in your primer. I could always add them if you think they are necessary.
Ignore the pronunciation rules for the vowels that I included in the prior suggestion; I'm just re-posting the same document so that you can see which glyph corresponds to which English letter. I'm working on refining the font, but it takes some time to get it just right. Let me know what your thoughts are. The Rohal alphabet can be seen at Omniglot.com.
Thanks for considering my ideas, Ken, and for patiently entertaining my detail-oriented obsessions :!: :bash: :eek:
Art
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Here are the files.
Thanks.
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And one more...enjoy.
Art
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Work in progress
An example of prototype Napanii script used to write the English pangram "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" (note there is no "q" or "x" in Napanii; those letters were omitted):
(http://go-dl.eve-files.com/media/1007/quickbrownfox.png)
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I still have some design issues to work out with the font...I think the glyphs should all be relatively the same size...in a few days more I will release an update.
I hope all like the glyphs.
Art
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Another thought...the Napanii script is ideally suited for Napanii...perhaps if using it for writing out English transliterally, we could replace the English "q" with the Napanii "k" and the English "x" with the Napanii "ks".
Just a thought.
Art
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Already ahead of you on the TrueType. ;)
This preview (http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/napaniimilitaryblockpreview.png) shows you all of the unique characters in a Napanii font that I put together today based on Art's work. All vowels have the same height, which is about 140% that of the consonants. There are unique letters for the doubled vowels "aa", "ii", and "uu" as well as unique letters for "kk" and "ss". You'll also see numerals and several punctuation marks. Spaces are interpuncts, making the separation of words clearer. Alternatively, you can use the underscore key to give a space of the same size without the interpunct.
I'm calling this font "Napanii Military Block (http://www.2shared.com/file/6dgkC-dN/Napanii_Military_Block.html)" (<<download there; EVE Files didn't like .ttf for some reason). It's bold face and simple, precise angles find a home in signs, stenciling, and computer readouts throughout the Navy and broader State.
To use this font, turn on your CAPS LOCK. All of the single letters reside in the uppercase portion of the font. To get the unique doubled letters, use shift to input a lowercase a, i, u, k, or s. Napanii doesn't use capitalized letters in its native script.
Art, as you can see in the preview, I made a few changes to your choice of glyphs and knocked all the curves and rounded edges away to give the font a very rigid appearance. If you have no objections, I'd like to go with the basic shapes of these glyphs as the working versions for Napanii script. Handwritten and artistic renderings of the glyphs would incorporate stroke order to give everyday Napanii a distinctive, Hangul-like look. This is something we can look at for additional font faces.
if using it for writing out English transliterally, we could replace the English "q" with the Napanii "k" and the English "x" with the Napanii "ks"
Sounds good. The above example where I used the script to write an English sentence was just to demonstrate how the letters looked together.
Edit: Further examples of the font in use...
(http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/logo_kk.png)(http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/logo_laidai.png)(http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/logo_wiyrkomi.png)(http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/logo_suvee.png)(http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/logo_hyasyoda.png)(http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/logo_ishukone.png)
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Art, as you can see in the preview, I made a few changes to your choice of glyphs and knocked all the curves and rounded edges away to give the font a very rigid appearance. If you have no objections, I'd like to go with the basic shapes of these glyphs as the working versions for Napanii script. Handwritten and artistic renderings of the glyphs would incorporate stroke order to give everyday Napanii a distinctive, Hangul-like look. This is something we can look at for additional font faces.
Ken...
Dude...beautiful work...I was just working on improving the look of the fonts, when I checked the forum, and saw the Military font. Very nice. Absolutely no objection on my part.
I do have a question: do you think that in official Caldari State culture and training, that Napanii would be written vertically, as in Chinese and Korean? Right to left, or left to right? I ask not for how we should write in it. Just a thought that I had about what the Caldari might do. I guess its more of a fiction question.
Another question: what software did you use to manipulate the glyphs? Just curious.
Beautiful work. I plan to release the primer with the changes and the font on my website this upcoming Friday (http://www.evechronicles.com).
As soon as I get those phonological changes done, I'll post to see what you think.
Thanks.
Art
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Hey Ken (and all others):
Here is a reworking of your font; this one has all the glyphs the same size. I've called it Napanii Military Equiblock.
I've done a bit of experimenting with six of the State Eight logos also.
Enjoy
Art
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(http://www.evechronicles.com/docs/artabanus/LINGUISTIC%20PROJECTS/napanii_script/Lai_Dai.jpg) (http://www.evechronicles.com/docs/artabanus/LINGUISTIC%20PROJECTS/napanii_script/Kaala.jpg) (http://www.evechronicles.com/docs/artabanus/LINGUISTIC%20PROJECTS/napanii_script/Sukuuvestaa.jpg) (http://www.evechronicles.com/docs/artabanus/LINGUISTIC%20PROJECTS/napanii_script/Wiyrkomi.jpg) (http://www.evechronicles.com/docs/artabanus/LINGUISTIC%20PROJECTS/napanii_script/Ishukone.jpg) (http://www.evechronicles.com/docs/artabanus/LINGUISTIC%20PROJECTS/napanii_script/Hyasyoda.jpg)
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I do have a question: do you think that in official Caldari State culture and training, that Napanii would be written vertically, as in Chinese and Korean? Right to left, or left to right? I ask not for how we should write in it. Just a thought that I had about what the Caldari might do. I guess its more of a fiction question.
Perhaps it can be read in any direction? A starting & ending character indicates which direction to read the characters?
A very basic Raata crypto was to remove these characters and create a bloc of characters that when read contained several overlapping messages.*
*speculation
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Hmmm...interesting concept...I like it.
Art
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do you think that in official Caldari State culture and training, that Napanii would be written vertically, as in Chinese and Korean? Right to left, or left to right?
Another question: what software did you use to manipulate the glyphs? Just curious.
Horizontally, left to right.
Ancient Napanii was vertical, right to left, and this was attempted during the "beta testing" of modern Napanii. The average citizen simply found it too unusual, Gallentean influences having long before brought everyday writing to a standard horizontal and left to right configuration across the Federation. Reluctantly, the State linguists went with that format (already used by the other contemporary Caldari languages), but retained the vertical style for art and decoration. The only thing I think we need to alter for vertical writing is to turn the vowels 90 degrees.
I also think that ancient Napanii should be considered a character-based language like Chinese or perhaps a hybrid of characters and alphabet(s) like Japanese. Modern Napanii is entirely alphabetic and is written using the exact same or only slightly modified letters from the main group of Caldari languages that were in use on the homeworld at the start of the GalCal War.
And, I used Paint Shop Pro X2 and FontCreator 6.1
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Ken:
Sounds great; I'm going to include these details in your primer.
This is so cool, I just have to say. Thanks for doing this.
Art
PD - I was actually using Photoshop for the design and FontCreator for font manipulation, but perhaps Photoshop is too high-powered.
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I realized that the letters used for the double vowel combinations could actually be confused for a non-duplicate vowel pair. The letter for "aa" could be misread as "ai", which is a combo that comes up often.
(http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/9108/previewk.png)
A E I O U AA II UU Y
B C D F G H J K KK L M N P R S SS T V W Z
I've reworked those letters and incorporated them into Napanii Equiblock 2 (attached to this post and previewed above), in which I also went back and tweaked the proportions on a few letters. The marks that distinguish vowels from one another (their basic form is simply a single vertical line a la "|") are rendered above the line. The vowel "stem" is the same height as the consonants and all other letters are of equal height. I think this gives the font a uniform appearance while still providing emphasis on the placement of vowels and avoids giving them a squashed look.
Some examples of the font follow:
(http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/923/preview2c.png)
This is so cool, I just have to say. Thanks for doing this.
Hey, thanks for throwing your own ideas and motivation into the mix.
EDIT: Uploaded the font again with a change to the "e" letter, making it a mirror of "y"
EDIT: Few more examples of the font in use:
(http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/calnav.png)(http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/kaalakiota.png)(http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/ytz.png)(http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/ldis.png)
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Great work Ken.
Thanks!
Art
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Oh hey guys what's goin on in this thr-
[walls of delicious Caldari racial language text, fluff and assorted details]
(http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/6523/1278825877078.jpg)
Hello there
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You and your crazy pictures....
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Incredible work, guys.
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Final results to be posted Friday both here and at Chronicles of EVE (http://www.evechronicles.com (http://www.evechronicles.com)). I'll have some nice wallpapers up there too under the art section highlighting the new script, as well as two downloadable fonts for the Napanii script if anyone is interested.
Thanks.
Art
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(http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/ytz.png)(http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/ldis.png)
Wait a second... I know those guys.
Good job.
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Interesting and good work! I'll admit to only reading the last few pages and looking at the results, but I'll still throw in a few comments. Overall, I think this looks very nice. I am a bit iffy on the use of a single letter to designate a double vowel. That's coming from me as a native Finnish speaker, btw.
If AA, EE, UU, YY and OO are single letters, so should AI, EI, UI, OI, AE, OE, UE, AU, EU, OU, etc. They're pretty much the same concept and having one designated by double letters and not the other does not seem logical at all. It would also be a very distinctive element in the language, separating it from the more typical (to most of us) Latin based letter sets.
One particular letter or pair of letters needs to be separately addressed as well, in regards to pronunciation. That's Y and J. The Japanese "Ayo" is pretty much unpronounceable in the Finnish way (well, not unpronounceable but it sounds very funny/ugly). Y is after all always a vowel sound in Finnish, so the way to write the Japanse pronunciation out in a Finnish way is to use "Ajo". My gut instinct is to say that the Caldari Y (and J) is in all cases similar to the Finnish one (it fits the words and pronounciations I've seen). Hence, btw, the english "yo" would be written as "jou" in Caldari. However, as above, I suggest that should only consist of two actual Caldari letters (since OU should be a single letter).
Just a few thoughts.
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If AA, EE, UU, YY and OO are single letters, so should AI, EI, UI, OI, AE, OE, UE, AU, EU, OU, etc. They're pretty much the same concept and having one designated by double letters and not the other does not seem logical at all. It would also be a very distinctive element in the language, separating it from the more typical (to most of us) Latin based letter sets.
Could it be that the English/Latin-based letters "AA" "II" and "UU" that are included in the list are just transliterations of the Napanii characters?
After further thought on this matter, I thought of a couple of more questions regarding the fictional Caldari language, Napanii. Of course, any human-based language in New Eden would have descended from a language/languages spoken on Earth. However, that does not mean (in my humble opinion) that they would be identical to any language that was spoken on Earth 16,000 years ago. It may share striking similarities to certain languages, especially the ones that most greatly influenced it...but it would not be those languages, just like Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French or Romanian are not Latin, just like English is not German...they may descend and have been influenced by certain tongues, but they are something new, and thus to explain how the language functions say in to an English-speaker (for example), it may be required to show certain things in a way that the English-speaker will understand. Thus the concept of double-vowelled letters.
Just my thoughts.
Art
Art
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Could it be that the English/Latin-based letters "AA" "II" and "UU" that are included in the list are just transliterations of the Napanii characters?
I do think that absolutely makes sense. In fact, while I thought about it I totally came around to thinking that's better. However, following that logic, I think the other vowel pairings (including things like IE, OU, etc) should also be single letters in Napanii.
Actually, looking at it I now realize you have only made the double AA, UU and II into single letters. The same should follow for EE, OO and YY. It might be that those don't feature on system names, but I don't see why they wouldn't in the general language.
One more bit of critique/thinking, too. I think it might be better to have the vowel letters have some internal logic to the way they are marked. Or it totally could be that I'm just not seeing why you chose those particular variations on the basic I-shape to depict each vowel. I think the additional symbol added to the basic I-shape should somehow reflect the nature of the sound in question. For example, your letter for A feels like it should be O instead because it is a round, all-encompassing sound. A single vowel letter might use a shorter, more curt designator while a long double vowel sound would use longer, more flowing symbols. That kind of linguistic logic seems to appeal to me, in any case.
Edit - Added:
After further thought on this matter, I thought of a couple of more questions regarding the fictional Caldari language, Napanii. Of course, any human-based language in New Eden would have descended from a language/languages spoken on Earth. However, that does not mean (in my humble opinion) that they would be identical to any language that was spoken on Earth 16,000 years ago. It may share striking similarities to certain languages, especially the ones that most greatly influenced it...but it would not be those languages, just like Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French or Romanian are not Latin, just like English is not German...they may descend and have been influenced by certain tongues, but they are something new, and thus to explain how the language functions say in to an English-speaker (for example), it may be required to show certain things in a way that the English-speaker will understand. Thus the concept of double-vowelled letters.
I agree totally.
It's just pretty amazing how exactly like Finnish the Caldari in the game is (I don't mean "kind of exactly", but rather "totally exactly") and since it is also a cited source for the Caldari, I'm offering my advice here with a fair bit of emphasis on that similarity. While most players struggle to pronounce Caldari system names, Finns generally have no problems at all communicating those (on Vent, or whatever). Taking things further than those origins and in different directions is cool though and indeed should be emphasized, I feel (indeed, I'm usually the one on the boards preaching about why we shouldn't just look at Eve cultures as simple extensions of singular earth cultures, like Intaki->India or so on).
btw, "Saisieni" is "Gotmushroom" in Finnish. Ahem. :yar:
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Wi-fi is a beautiful thing. Not quite off the grid yet! :D Short on time though... and it looks like you've been typing at the same time as me. So, this applies to your first post, GoGo, not the one immediately preceding.
I am a bit iffy on the use of a single letter to designate a double vowel.
Only five such letters in the current version. Three double vowels and two double consonants.
Biggest thing to keep in mind is that this isn't meant to conform to a Finnish standard, a Japanese standard, or an English standard. Napanii is its own thing with its own quirks.
Consider in English where we use the letter 'x' to express a sound that can also be expressed with 'cks' and sometimes 'z'. Even though 'x' and its associated sounds appear relatively infrequently in English, there's an entire letter dedicated to it. At the same time, the sound produced by 'tion', 'sion', and 'cion', which is heard all over the place in English, does not have a unique letter. We spell it out every time. The same goes for diphthongs 'ch' and 'th'. We're still writing them with a two letter combo.
I think that while providing a unique letter for certain sounds (like the very prevalent 'aa', 'ii', 'uu' in PF Caldari words and proper nouns) while leaving others out gives the project a realistic flavor. After all, it's fewer letters the aspiring industrial cog-in-the-wheel needs to learn in his corp-mandated Napanii classes.
One particular letter or pair of letters needs to be separately addressed as well, in regards to pronunciation.
Art has worked out a rather thorough phonology for Napanii that will appear in the edition of the primer he's about to publish over on his site, evechronicles.com (http://evechronicles.com/).
I'll try to take a look at your follow up post in more detail when I can. Thanks for taking an interest and jumping in to the discussion! Be sure and take a look at the new edition of the primer once it's up on Art's site.
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GoGo:
Lol. I appreciate your input; at least from my standpoint their well-taken. As far as the alphabet system for Napanii...I based it upon a variation of the Hangul alphabet.
This has been a group project with Ken taking the lead in trying to keep some consistency in the language for the PF base. I know that right now, he's away, but maybe when he gets back, he can take a look at your posts and chat with you regarding it. Since consistency and stability is one of the aims of this project, I'd prefer to take no action on this for the moment.
Its interesting what you mention about the Caldari words being similar or exactly like the Finnish, which is great for you!
Thanks.
Art
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Ha! You are online! Great!
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Just offering my views is all and appreciation while at it, too.
So yeah, I'm totally in support of Napanii not being a carbon copy of Japanese or Finnish. However, like I said in my previous post, I feel I have something to contribute in regards to the Finnish influence on it, however strong that is chosen to be, and that's why my comments. If either of you wants consulting on that angle, just let me know.
Curiously, I sometimes wonder what might be the reason for the designers to have Japanese and Finnish as the influence on the Caldari State. Looking at the main points of the culture, it isn't exactly clear where the Finnish influence is, but looking at the language it is apparent. I do somewhat humorously suspect that the company Nokia has something to do with it, being a Finnish company which many mistake for a Japanese company due to its also-Japanese sounding name and it was enjoying its heyday around the time Eve was designed. They had a joke about that in Transformers the Movie as well, heh.
Anyway, I'm installing Starcraft 2 now so see you guys in 10 years. :yar:
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Thanks a lot GoGo. Much appreciated.
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Hey folks:
Check it out and hope you enjoy.
http://www.evechronicles.com/apocryphal/shorts/naprintro.html (http://www.evechronicles.com/apocryphal/shorts/naprintro.html)
Thanks.
Art
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Hello Ken:
What do you think about producing a Napanii Glossary from what we've put out with the Primer? Over at Eve Fiction Search, there was a request for such; perhaps a glossary that were separate from the Primer would facilitate the acceptance and use of the Napanii language by the player base.
What do you think?
Art
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Definitely a great idea. Go for it. I've been wanting to provide a reverse lexicon (English to Napanii) for some time now. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to help much for the time being. :s
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No problem. I'm on it.
Art
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Saisieni!
Glossary available for download here:
http://evechronicles.com/apocryphal/shorts/napr/napr5.html (http://evechronicles.com/apocryphal/shorts/napr/napr5.html)
Thanks.
Art
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Saisa!
New font uploaded. "Napanii Flow.
Download here:
http://www.evechronicles.com/apocryphal/shorts/napr/napr6.html (http://www.evechronicles.com/apocryphal/shorts/napr/napr6.html)
Thanks.
Art
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I've browsed the last version of the Primer looking for the -guri suffix to no avail... Anyone that can enlighten me about the meaning of the -guri suffix? Thanks in Advance!
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I think it's something like criminal or naughty person? Comes from the description of 'Guristas' which says the word is an amalgamation of a word meaning 'naughty person' and a word meaning 'gang' IIRC.
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Silver:
Is this a suffix/root that should be added to the glossary and primer?
Art
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Probably. You should talk to someone who uses it and stuff to get a better opinion on what the meaning and context usually is.
I've seen it used when addressing pirates, for example. (Rather than -han etc)
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Sounds good. I'll confirm with Ken; or wait to see any other posts to that effect.
Thanks.
Art
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I've browsed the last version of the Primer looking for the -guri suffix to no avail... Anyone that can enlighten me about the meaning of the -guri suffix? Thanks in Advance!
I started using it in relation to "honorable" pirates of Caldari origin like "Jenneth-guri" and "Sakoda-guri." It was taking the "naughty" and making it a suffix for those who are no longer -haani, but still are very much Caldari.
I got backlash for referring to Sakoda using the term in Heiian College, but eh. It is not meant as a term of disrespect (using -jagii towards another Caldari for example), but rather one of being apart from the whole, but not foreign.
Perhaps another translation of guri might be wandering along with naughty. Those who were naughty being caste out into the wilds to wander in ages past.
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If it's being used, tepid reactions from the mainstream aside, it ought to be included. Languages are dynamic in their use, even government-regulated official languages.
guri n. criminal, selfish person (suffix sometimes found in use in place of -haan(i) when referring to a rival or enemy (especially of the Caldari criminal underbelly) who is or once was a fellow Caldari citizen as in Sakoda-guri, the term literally implies the modified subject has acted selfishly or strayed from the group in a serious way, but remains worthy of some respect and is perhaps still redeemable through sufficient trial, see: Tea Maker Ceremony)
I think I may have a few more new terms forthcoming in a little while. Thanks for bringing this up, April.
Edit: modified per Aria's observations
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Hm. A point that your definition skirts the edge of, Ken, is that "guri," as described in the Guristas history, seems to mean "naughty person," as in, "criminal," more than "adversary." The distinction becomes important when you're talking about, say, a business rival you feel has strayed from proper behavior. Calling someone like that "guri" would probably be flat-out slanderous. Likewise, criminals, even in Caldari culture, need not always be adversaries; see, for example, the Japanese Yakuza distributing supplies after a major earthquake.
IE, I'd suggest that it be used specifically as a title for members of the criminal underbelly of Caldari society-- "adversary" or not.
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Aria, appreciated and re-defined.
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Additionally, I have the following new terms and phrases to add to the lexicon. Art, if you get a moment please add them to the primer?
ojikuu adj. self-sufficient (root: ojik- autonomy; one of the highest Caldari virtues from ancient times and a great compliment to an organization, when used to refer to an individual it means "humble" or more precisely "asking for nothing beyond his/her basic needs")
ojikone n. autonomy (root: ojik- autonomy)
vuraa imeit n. the long view (lit: "old eyes"; meaning to make short term sacrifices for long term benefits)
inukuu imeit n. the short view (lit: "young eyes"; favoring short term gains over long term prosperity)
inukuu adj. young (root: inuk- young)
inukone n. youth (root: inuk- young)
imei n. eye
estreikkone n. strategy, plan of action (root: estreik- plan)
estreiki v. to strategize, make plans (root: estreik- plan)
ajuutaska n. arcology (an enormous, self-contained urban structure)
anvakone n. stability (root: anvak- stable, even)
tekkotusone n. efficiency (root: tekkotus- efficient)
haakken kilen phr. we will return (an ancient Napanii expression and the preferred modern rendering of the last words of Admiral Yakiya Tovil-Toba)
saakanui v./n. to flow with clarity, the flow of wisdom (an ancient Napanii expression)
tuvoi v. to be/stand strong (root: tuvo- strength)
tuvon adj. strong (root: tuvo- strength; irregular adjectival stem)
tobai v. to fly, to operate an air or spacecraft (root: toba- flight)
tobaone n. flight (root: toba- flight; in military flight also means "sortie")
nokoni conj. as, as _ as (correlative expression followed by an adjective or adverb to convey a equal (or unequal) level with the following noun; as in nokoni hova "as good as", nokoni vuraa "as old as", or do nokoni anvakuu "not as stable as")
ark tuvon hova marut phr. two good strong ships (memorable quote of Admiral Yakia Tovil-Toba, answered with do nokoni tuvon tobaya oyiitdei hantat; often said by the senior officer present upon the dedication of a new ship, especially in the Caldari Navy, regardless of the number of vessels being launched, with the reply being spoken by the shipyard director; sometimes called "the warrior's words")
do nokoni tuvon tobaya oyiitdei hantat phr. not as strong as the men that will fly them (second part of a pair of quotes by Admiral Yakiya Tovil-Toba and Kaalakiota founder Kaatoni Surei, the answer to ark tuvon hova marut; sometimes called "the engineer's words")
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Ken/all -
Sounds good; on my way to work, but when I get there, I'll have about half an hour of free time, so I'll add it then. I'll post an update here when it's all done.
Thanks.
Art
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Saisieni:
The glossaries have been updated with the new words and is available for download (in both MS Excel or OO Calc format):
http://www.evechronicles.com/apocryphal/shorts/napr/napr6.html (http://www.evechronicles.com/apocryphal/shorts/napr/napr6.html)
Thanks.
Art
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Just to prove the Napanii project yet lives and grows I'd like to post up a new font face for use in your oh-so-Caldari writings.
Napanii Brush gives the impression of handwritten text that is still very readable, showing the separate strokes in each letter and giving us the handwritten versions of numbers 5-9.
As a bonus, the lowercase "b, c, d, e, f, g, h & j" characters produce the pseudocalligraphic symbols for the races of the pre-war Federation as imagined by Civire artist Aatos Zakai as well as the Caldari State symbol rendered in the same style. You can see these in the preview below: Caldari, Civire, Deteis, Achura, Intaki, Gallente, Jin-Mei, and Mannar.
(http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/8421/napaniibrushpreview.png)
^ small error in the image you see there; when using the font, the letter for "aa" has an additional stroke above it that is not visible in the preview because I hit the wrong key :oops:
You can find the font attached to this post as a .ttf file. Edit: And Art has caught this and put it up on Chronicles of EVE for you as well. ;) Enjoy!
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Ken:
You are amazing. That Napanii Brush looks incredible.
Sadly, I've been so busy with the Intaki project that I haven't been able to work much on Napanii, so I'm glad to see more being done with it.
Unfortunately I'm not at my computer, and won't be until later tonight, but when I am I'll update the Resources page of the Primer posted over on my site.
Thanks.
Art
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Great work! All we need now is for someone who happen to know the language to make something like this based on French, hindu and Spanish for the Federals. French for obvious reasons, Spanish because I believed I heard it said somewhere the Mannar is likely more 'spanish like' (I have no clue of this is accurate or not) and hindu for the Intaki. That is, in order to generate some kind of 'common tongue' for the Federation - with all those different societies and languages having one that 90% of everyone can speak would be wise. Unless ofc 'Gallentian' is the prime one or everyone just go around with their own.
I believe I heard a rumor a year or so ago that someone tried something like this for Amarr too? Or was it Minmatar... I dunno, long time ago. Even if it's only a nice set of words and phrases having something like this for the separate factions would be great.
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Spanish because I believed I heard it said somewhere the Mannar is likely more 'spanish like' (I have no clue of this is accurate or not)
A scanned note in the Art of EVE book has a picture of a Mannar lady, with a few comments scribbled in the margin. One of these, iirc, is "Hispanic?"
It's about how they look, not their culture.
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Yes, and one of the reasons that people consider the Intaki more hindu-like are some accessory options under character creation, as well as the cultural aspects shown so far.
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Saisieni all:
The beautiful new Napanii Brush font has now been added to the Primer Resource page over at Chronicles of EVE for your download pleasure:
http://www.evechronicles.com/apocryphal/shorts/napr/napr6.html (http://www.evechronicles.com/apocryphal/shorts/napr/napr6.html)
Enjoy!
Rikaato,
Art
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I'd like to create the Napanii expression "to make a thousand cuts" or just "one thousand cuts" in reference to practicing or training for something. I couldn't find the word for cut in the primer so we will need to make one up first.
Finnish
leikata: clip, cut, shear, slice
hakata: chop, cut, hack
särkeä: Break
tauko: break, intermission, pause, recess
Japanese
kai: cut, clip, shear, reap, trim, prune
sai: cut
kireme: break, pause, gap, end, rift, interruption, cut
kire: cloth, piece, cut, chop, strip, slice, scrap
wakemae: share, portion, quota, cut
katto: cut, cutting
kizu: wound, injury, hurt, cut, gash, bruise, scratch, flaw, weak point
Here are some ideas;
Kaia
Kei
Taaka
Kaal
Taka
kakata
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Interesting application of such an expression, Hamish. Isn't the 'thousand cuts' supposed to be a form of execution IRL? (And just a traveler's tale, I believe.) In any case, an interesting proposal for a new expression.
Let's see... using my trusty old method of Napanii word thinkerupmejiggery...
New roots:
katak- cut, slice
taska- endure, suffer
viirasu- cleave, separate
eikuge- slash, cut
New terms:
kataki v. to cut
katakkone n. a cut (generic term)
taskai v. to endure, take
viirasui v. to be separate, apart (also a euphemism for dying)
viirasuone n. separation, cleavage (yes, in that sense)
eikugei v. to slash (as with a sword or knife)
eikugone n. a slash, laceration (usually means a clean cut, as made by a sharp edge; irregular stem)
Now as for "one thousand".
Hmm, I haven't thought about the Napanii number system past 10 but I'm in favor of a four digit separation between ordinal levels. By that I mean in English we have a different term for 10 (ten), 100 (hundred), and 1000 (thousand), but afterward we start back at the beginning with 10,000 (ten thousand). In Asian languages, there is usually a fourth term used in the same way we use "ten thousand". In Mandarin 10,000 is not ten thousands, but just one wàn (and is properly written 1,0000). If we take the same basic structure for Napanii numbers, let's establish the following:
kyem 10
baikku 100
utsei 1000
zaan 10000
Couple of ways these can be put together. Hopefully this is enough for you to find the expression you're looking for with the best meaning.
In the sense you're talking about, I would say it: Taskai ynzaan shenaa eikugonet.
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Ken this is spectacular. A++++ would read and not understand a word of again. :lol:
I have a question for you (or Hamish since he's pretty S-M-R-T in this area too) regarding the honorifics.
I've seen them used (han, guri, etc...) but how prevalent would you think they would be in normal culture?
Example: Was writing a short story and was wondering if Usagi would call her teacher Teacher-oipeiridei (I assembled that one myself; one who teaches, I think... I'm not good at this - and no, his name isn't actually 'Teacher'... ;)) or Mister Teacher, or perhaps even Col. Teacher as he's a SWA instructor.
With that in mind, how would Random Caldari A address Random Caldari B if they bumped into them on the street? That is, assuming they were both Napaniiese speakers and they even bothered to speak to each other.
Again, super work to all involved.
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Interesting application of such an expression, Hamish. Isn't the 'thousand cuts' supposed to be a form of execution IRL? (And just a traveler's tale, I believe.) In any case, an interesting proposal for a new expression.
It is a method of execution, I believe but I got the idea for this meaning with the Caldari from the technique of ''practice cutting' in kendo. For example, if a new student wishes to get better his teacher would instruct him to go make a thousand cuts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6oePAjfkYw&feature=related
Example: Was writing a short story and was wondering if Usagi would call her teacher Teacher-oipeiridei (I assembled that one myself; one who teaches, I think... I'm not good at this - and no, his name isn't actually 'Teacher'... ;)) or Mister Teacher, or perhaps even Col. Teacher as he's a SWA instructor.
I think it would depend on the relationship Usagi has with the teach. His rank of Colonel might trump all if they are very formal or in formal situations. If they are close and the teach considers him or herself to be Usagi's mentor then the teacher honorific would be perfect.
With that in mind, how would Random Caldari A address Random Caldari B if they bumped into them on the street? That is, assuming they were both Napaniiese speakers and they even bothered to speak to each other.
Again, super work to all involved.
In the streets of the financial district on New Caldari, yes. On the lower decks of a mining station in low-sec probably not.
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Saisieni:
The glossaries over at Chronicles of EVE (http://www.evechronicles.com/apocryphal/shorts/napr/napr6.html) have been updated with the new roots, numerals and expressions.
Rikaato,
Artabanus
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<3 Hamish
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Eh.
I may be the only one here that stands out, but I don't think this is useful. Not that you haven't worked hard on this, but to me this seems like too much intrusion into canon, even if a language wasn't specifically stated by CCP. Nice work with linguistics, though.
You must be a professor of some sort.
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Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Obviously this is not Canon...which is why it's found in the thread calld Player-Driven Content. But, on that note, it's interesting that CCP Dropbear has said regarding this project.
Check it out:
http://eve-search.com/thread/1362548 (http://eve-search.com/thread/1362548)
Of course, if anyone finds this useless, then I would perhaps suggest just ignoring this thread and finding something else that gets your goose.
Art
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:roll: Oh, that's just Ben Shepherd. He doesn't like anything Caldari anymore. :P
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Why is that??? Caldari are the bomb!
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In your opinion. Perhaps he disagrees.
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Lol. I love EVE and everything EVE-related...but I never cease to marvel at how personal people take things sometimes. I never meant my statements as serious as they are being taken. Ok...here's some political correctness...everyone has a right to their opinion, and a right to feel they way they feel, and to state the way they feel, and to disagree, etc., etc. Disagreements can enrich a discussion tremendously, and everyone should feel good about any position they may take regarding a matter at hand.
Really.
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Gentelmen, gentlemen. What is all the hubbub about? This is Backstage, but you don't have to be that civil. :yar: Back to language topics!
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I have two language-related points. This can really be addressed to anyone who feels like discussing, I just want to keep this thread going because it interests me so much... if this needs to be split into a new topic, I won't complain, but I doubt it'll spark a huge amount of conversation.
1. In one of my English courses we've been discussing how language is affected by rhythm. The English language, because of its syllable construction, among other things, is a language of "twos," so to speak. Iambic pentameter is something that comes to us naturally because of the nature of our language. Similarly, other languages developed their own styles of poems based on the rhythm inherent in their languages.
I'm wondering, do people see Caldari language mirroring any real-world style of rhyming speech, based on the kinds of extrapolations we can make from the existing names/words? This is again completely speculative, but I think it'd be an interesting topic if only to touch on, if only to get another feel for the language. Personally, I could see this language fitting trochaic meter (think the lyrics of "Dies Irae").
2. Caldari rule, losers drool.
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1. I'm wondering, do people see Caldari language mirroring any real-world style of rhyming speech, based on the kinds of extrapolations we can make from the existing names/words? This is again completely speculative, but I think it'd be an interesting topic if only to touch on, if only to get another feel for the language. Personally, I could see this language fitting trochaic meter (think the lyrics of "Dies Irae").
Hey Senn:
I suppose this may fall within my camp (Orthography and Phonology).
Here is a quote from the Primer:
Napanii is a mora-timed language. A mora (plural, moras, or morae) is a unit of sound used in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in turn determines stress or timing in some languages. Napanii moras possess the same approximate time value and stress[...] each mora [...] is pronounced, with the accent falling on the first or second mora depending on the word. Knowing which mora to stress is oftentimes a matter of rote memorization.
Having said that, it seems to me that Napanii would not possess a prosody similar to anything within Western languages; or perhaps I should say that the foot that Napanii uses would be found more easily in languages such as Japanese, and even Finnish, but that these meters would be more rare in languages like English. My uneducated guess would be that Napanii uses (what we call in English), either a Trochee...a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one, or a Dactyl... a long syllable followed by two short syllables. For example, I-SHU-KO-NE (or more frequently, I-SHU-KON), seems to be a good example of this.
That is just my guess after having worked with the language; I suspect that due to the wide range of users/players, from varying linguistic backgrounds, that there may be a need for some flexibility when it comes to something like this for the Napanii language. Esperanto for example, allows for speakers to superimpose their native language meter/rhythm upon it, so that even though two different speakers from different parts of the world are using the same words to say the same thing, the meter which they use to say it may be different. This in turn may cause them some difficulty in understanding each other, initially, until each becomes accustomed to the other's rhythm of speech. Something of the sort may occur with Napanii, although, I also suspect that Napanii - in reference to RL - is primarily a written language and not spoken; not to say that that has to remain the case...I just think that that is reality for the moment.
These are just some of my humble thoughts. I wonder what (if anything), anyone else has thought of for this.
This is a fascinating aspect of language in my opinion.
Art
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This is all insanely impressive work, mate.
Love it.
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Greetings:
If you like Napanii, check out what's going on with Modern Classic Intaki over at the ILF Forum: http://freeintaki.freeforums.org/intaki-history-f10.html (http://freeintaki.freeforums.org/intaki-history-f10.html). More language stuff.
Art
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Oh also, if anyone is interested, I should still have a bunch of eve-mails sent between me and Herko when we were trying to flesh out the basics of Napanii. I think most of it ended up being about the Caldari spiritual philosophy and was obviously written, what, five years ago, but I figure for the sake of posterity it might be worth a mention.
Again, super impressive. I had a very distinct WTF-moment when I decided to google "Napanii" on a whim this morning and saw that someone had fleshed out an idea mentioned almost in passing years ago.
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Oh also, if anyone is interested, I should still have a bunch of eve-mails sent between me and Herko when we were trying to flesh out the basics of Napanii. I think most of it ended up being about the Caldari spiritual philosophy and was obviously written, what, five years ago, but I figure for the sake of posterity it might be worth a mention.
Saisieni Sham:
Perhaps this would be something that you could post here? Or perhaps at the Eve Fiction Forums? I think it would be good to put this out there on the web, so that that information is not lost forever...just my thoughts.
Rikaato.
Anvatkaa,
Art
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I too am interesting in this correspondence. Went to a bit of trouble trying to keep the foundations of this project true to whatever I could find of the early go Herko and others took at the Caldari language.
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This is correspondence from ingame, back when the mail system did not have a "Sent Mail" function and there was also a max-char limit ;|
Heyya mate!
Sorry this took so long. Long time offline, just coming back now to EVE.
'bout your idea!
There is a saying among the samurai, that a warrior's will has to be so strong, that no man, spirit or buddha can change his intention.
Note that it is about a man's intention, not the results. Greeks and Japanese knew very well that if the Gods are angry at you, your are fucked... but even if they can screw you, a warrior's will should be so strong that he should die facing his objective.
Perhaps this is an angle worth exploring for this tale?
Two brothers go against the flow. Kaionen because he wants to discover a secret and no god could change his wish, Juzkei because a brother's duty is to protect his kin and no spirit could drive him away from his duty.
Perhaps this is the Caldari way of giving counsel? You want to jump out of the window; instead of telling you not to, I tell you: "If you jump, I jump, because we are friends and it is my duty to stick by your side. If the fall kills us, my death will be your fault"?
Will check my evemail every two or three days from now on! :)
Cheers
Herko
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2006.05.14 02:22
'sup Herko. Had a few thoughts, figured you were the go-to guy with these after all.
I feel that the Caldari lack a Castor/Pollux story. Not like Cold Wind, but a core story of brotherhood, with that Caldari twist. I was writing a story, and this little bit emerged;
"Itima was familiar with the tale, closing his eyes as he heard the woman’s voice recite the tale of the man that went against the stream, and the man who followed because he was his brother, of how the spirits took offence and struck against them, of how the brother that was behind was washed away while the brother that was ahead waded on, how in the end he found the truth he was looking for at the source of the river. "
I was THIS CLOSE of feeling pitty for you and your headache...
...then I read about the Islands and envy almost killed me!! :P
'bout superior beings in Caldari: I really, really like the 'primal beings / spirits' approach, rather than a Greek-ish pantheon. I've been following your 'stream-flow' idea since we discussed it some time ago, and I think it fits the view many have about Caldari.
A stream is also a path, and you can always defy the spirits and try to swim upstreams.
Plus, the idea (still not developed) that your own spirit goes back to the Flow after you die appeals a lot to me.
And plus II... religions with Gods tend to have temples; temples can be rebuilt, so even if teh Gallente bombed the crap out of the Church of Whoever, it can be rebuilt in Lonetrek or The Forge or whatever.
Primal forces and nature spirits, on the other hand, are attached to a place. They are still in Caldari Prime. The Kaalakiota Mountains are already in PF, twice, and bombed by the Gallente once... those spirits gotta be really, REALLY pissed off. :)
Haven't watched EVE TV; I can't get broadband easily where I am now. Feel free to put me up to speed. :)
Have a nice Canary.
Herko
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2006.08.07 00:53
Before anything else, you'll have to excuse any incomprehensible bits this mail might contain. I'm dying of headache and am leaving the country for the next two weeks on tuesday (Canary Islands ftw), so I can't wait with writing it until tomorrah.
Humm....
Been thinking about your views (now copied in full!! :P), and it somewhat connects with a discussion I had with some guys trying to beef up the Practical faction of the Caldari (they say Traditionalists have all the good press!)
Now, the interesting twist they are putting into it, is showing the Practicals not as thieves with no scruples, but rather the guys that will rather break some rules in order to get things done, rather than following the book by the letter.
In this view, the Practicals are, in a way, they guys inside the Caldari society that have the initiative and can deal with new, unexpected things.
Kind of those 'rogues' in your view.
So, here is the questions: if the Caldari have some mystical philosophy, would you say it is shared by all Factions? (in the way that, in our world, Catholics from different political parties still believe in the same religion).
In that case, could we perhaps explain the Factions somehow linking them with their perceived roles in the spirit world?
Something like: the Traditionalists being those that respecet the most ancient spirits, the Practicals maybe having in higher regard the 'trickster' spirits, and so forth?
Or perhaps with their view of the afterlife... the goal of a Traditionalist being to completely 'melt' with his clan's spirit, but a Practical goal being to retain as much of his self as possible in the afterlife?
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2006.08.23 08:38
Damn you for not including my whole mail as a Re. Or maybe damn CCP for the character limit in eve-mails. Or damn them for not having an "outgoing" column where sent messages are stored. Two weeks down the road I can't remember anyfing I wrote.
Anyway, yeah. The Flow, to me, mostly represents the Caldari world-view that your place is predestined, the fatalistic vision of the world with that exception for truly unique individuals. The original idea for the spirits of the dead was that they would join the "megaspirits", towering entities composed of the spirits of your forefathers; i.e. a large and old Caldari family might be a seperate spirit. You remember how my first descriptions were of the spirits "playing" in the stream, throwing rocks and splashing in it. These primordial god-entities would number in the hundreds, the largest families dominating their designated spirit. This is to drive home the clan-based vision that the Caldari still maintain, although as of late it has been channeled into corporatism (You Are Your Corp), causing each individual to belong to two "clans"; his family and his employer.
As a result, the average Caldari may not be the most independent thinker ever.
Those without a "clan", black sheep and those of less savory families, criminals or simply people far too individualistic and independent for the common rungs of Caldari society, those become the fluttering, tiny lights that are the nature spirits, representing either metaphors, terms or places, trickster gods and muses, even carrions of diseases or ill fortune. Of course, conduct in former life will directly affect the afterlife for those souls, great poets that break the barriers of their own social structure becoming muses that inspire and influence art and culture for eons to come, rebels and folk heroes becoming demi-gods in their own rights, entities that control their very limited portfolio. For instance, Tovil Toba may be silently regarded as havi
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While I'm on it anyway...
Caveat: While I no longer feel I have any sort of ownership of this project, the work presented here (and much before it) having long since eclipsed my contributions in pitching the concept, I do have a rather strong fondness for it, which is why I feel compelled to attempt to contribute after all this time.
Early emphasis was put on creating a set of terms and concepts that could be used in passing speech. An example of this is Herko's "Kanisaka" story, which was the Caldari explanation of a Deja Vú. The word literally translated to "Rock in Stream", but is meaningless without the story behind it and the entire context of Caldari culture (and more importantly, an understanding of Caldari spiritualism).
This was all to emphasize the concept of displacement in Caldari culture; that the loss of their homeworld was more severe, more crippling to the Caldari spirit than the mere loss of a home would suggest. The ideas of the spirits (largely influenced by Shinto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto)) was to reinforce this notion, by introducing the idea of your roots being bound to a physical place by the spiritual idea of your ancestry (again, Shinto).
This would go a long way of explaining the importance of Napanii to expatriate Caldari, as they could begin to see their ancestral language as the only true remaining link to their ancestry. Bereft of their place of birth and that of their ancestors, they had to find a way to bring a piece of that land to them, and language was the immediate choice.
Caldari society is inherently insular. It had a strong focus on maintaining cohesion within tribes, which was effortlessly transformed into a focus on maintaining cohesion within the Corporation (which are, in a way, a mere extension of the Caldari idea of familial tribalism into a capitalistic construct). We had the idea of binding all of this together into a coherent mythology, so me and Herko were tossing around ideas behind The Flow (until he disappeared).
The Flow is the stream of time and mortality in which the spirits play. For a cohesive, tribal structure to properly function, a strong sense of fatalism and reinforcement of the strength of unity is extremely useful in suppressing individual dissension from the group's overall interests.
If you go against your corporation, if you go against your nation and your family, you are alone, both in reality and spirituality. You are shunned by your people, and your soul cast adrift in the Flow, where it is easy prey to the more predatory spirits that inhabit it.
How does this go back to Napanii? Well, the language could very well reflect this, by tying both fundamental and more esoteric concepts into almost incomprehensible phrases and compound nouns; phrases that make little or no sense unless you know the story, the culture and the history of the Caldari people. Phrases that you cannot understand unless you are, in essence, a part of it.
You described Napanii as a reclaimed, constructed language, and I think that is very apt. But it was not built entirely from scratch, but rather built around surviving words and concepts that had been kept alive in colloquial usage (much like Latin, to an extent, is kept alive by mottos and obscure technical phrases).
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Sham...
Sounds like you have the makings of a new story in that information...since Herko is "gone"...how about it? I would be more than happy to host it over on my site...
Art
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You described Napanii as a reclaimed, constructed language, and I think that is very apt. But it was not built entirely from scratch, but rather built around surviving words and concepts that had been kept alive in colloquial usage (much like Latin, to an extent, is kept alive by mottos and obscure technical phrases).
Thank you for the post, sham. I would love to see the lines of backstory development that you and Herko brainstormed back then resurrected. What have you been up to since '06?? As for the above quoted portion, that is exactly how I hoped to portray Napanii (with some guidance from Hamish Grayson). See below:
Originally, Napanii was a major language of the Raata period. Chance saw that it rose from relative obscurity to widespread use by the time of the Raata Empire’s greatest height. During that time it served as the language of both street and stage and, after a while, of the state as well. The Raata Empire lasted for many centuries, and Napanii enjoyed some stability as a result, supported by the society of the empire and maintained by strict tradition. With the collapse of the Raata and the fracturing of civilization on Caldari Prime, Napanii was again free to shift and change. Linguistic historians today refer to the family of languages that emerged in the post-Raata period as the Napaniin languages, each sounding similar to the old imperial tongue but possessing its own flavor and local qualities. Thus there was no universal language on Caldari Prime when the Gallente made first contact. By that time, Napanii was effectively a dead language, already resigned to history and studied only for its ability to improve etymological understanding of contemporary languages.
Six hundred years of both subtle and overt cultural influence by the Gallenteans on Caldari society had left an indelible imprint on the Caldari vernacular languages by the time the Gallente-Caldari War began some two centuries ago. A war fought for independence, transformed into a war for the very survival of the Caldari people, the conflict would leave its own imprints on virtually every aspect of life for the citizens of the nascent State. Even the words they used to think and speak would not be left unchanged by the fires of bombardment and the traumatic exodus from their homeworld and flight from the old paradigm. Xenophobic patriotism ran so high among the Caldari leadership during the war that they sought to give their nation an entirely new language, free of hated foreign influence, around which the new society could be built. In Napanii they found what they sought. What data still existed on the old language of that last great Caldari civilization was compiled and used to build something new.
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Sham...
Sounds like you have the makings of a new story in that information...since Herko is "gone"...how about it? I would be more than happy to host it over on my site...
Art
I guess I could write a story about a Caldari businessman who suffers severe head trauma and starts hallucinating translucent, amorphous phosphorescent blobs towering over the thoroughfare avenues, chucking pieces of mountains at him as he scurries back and forth through the crowds...
I haven't written EVE (http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=77054) fiction (http://www.eveonline.com/background/potw/default.asp?cid=28-02-05) for ages though, so no promises.
What have you been up to since '06?
Couple of years traipsing about (http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=522635) and pretending to be a Vice President in IAC, then quit after that went south (I blame Tyrrax Thorrk entirely).
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I love it! But why is the html link gone!
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I love it! But why is the html link gone!
QFT
The html link no longer works
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Did anyone happen to mirror it or have it saved? I have (essentially) unlimited bandwidth/disk space on my server and would be happy to host it till a new home could be found for it.
It would be a shame to let such an awesome resource just vanish.
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http://web.archive.org/web/20110208183629/http://evechronicles.com/ (http://web.archive.org/web/20110208183629/http://evechronicles.com/)
I think that is the latest Wayback Machine snapshot of the site. Unfortunately, the Napanii Primer is not archived. The PDF is available at EVE-Files, though it may or may not be slightly outdated: http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/Napanii_Primer_%28July_10%29%5B1%5D.pdf (http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/Napanii_Primer_%28July_10%29%5B1%5D.pdf). (I would assume Ken has the originals, of course.)
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Necroing due to a debate that's popped up on both the Summit and OOCly in the last few days over the use of 'haan' as a gender neutral suffix vs 'haan/haani'. Ken's primer (http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Ken/Napanii_Primer_%28July_10%29%5B1%5D.pdf) goes with the gendered version, but Herko's original invention (http://www.eve-chatsubo.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=861) was gender neutral.
vOv Seven years is a long time and fashions in language change. Quite possibly the use of 'haan' in the original gender neutral style dates the pilot, IC, just as it dates the player.
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I've always used it haan/haani, and so has Ken as far as I recall. In the end, whenever we've discussed the language stuff and the slight differences done by various people (intentional or unintentional) it boiled down to:
Dialects. vOv
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Absolutely, it's a big cluster etc, and I had no intention of suggesting otherwise, just pointing out that there are differing OOC sources and at least one (and no doubt many other) understandable IC explanations.
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Could even be part of corporate culture, some corporations emphasizing gender equality more than others. After all, if my understanding is correct, "modern Napanii" is essentially a reconstructed language (much in the way of our IRL understanding of "Classical Latin" and Hebrew). Some dialects might even make a distinction whether the person mentioned is married or not (like, say, Russian surnames).
In some cases, one of these forms might be the default if unsure - and this might lead to eventually dropping off the use of the others. (Several languages have this with "mister" and equivalent terms.) Some kind of a variation of this might be the armed forces' custom of calling all women "ma'am" regardless of whether they're married or not - at least in Finland, "rouva" (Mrs.) is always used of a female soldier. Which is funny in the case of 18 year old conscripts. ("Fastest way to become a Mrs. is to join the Army!")