Santharian Development

This is a draft entry for the Kh'omchr'om Principles page that I have been working on. I have tried to integrate as much as I could that has already been written about Kh'omchr'om, but I was forced as a non-executive to make some executive decisions. I would appreciate any comments that you could add.

Bla-HFMQ LFMO kroch!
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Introduction.
Kh'omchr'om is the common language of the North Sarvonian Orcs, used for intertribal communication, and trade. It is by no means their only language; most orcs, in fact, do not even speak Kh'omchr'om, instead speaking their local language. Despite that, it remains a unifying feature of the Orcish people throughout the North.

Basics.
   

• Kh'omchr'om uses gestures to convey grammatical ideas. Many grammatical ideas are conveyed entirely through gestures, which are explained in the Phonology section.
• Kh'omchr'om is somewhat agglutinative . That is to mean, a variety of morphemes can be combined to make larger ones, to form what in Tharian be a very big word
• Kh'omchr'om does not have a copula. Unlike many other languages, Kh'omchr'om does not use a copula, like Tharian verb "to be" or Stryásh's "styrán". Instead, adjectives and subjects are just placed next to each other. For instance, the phrase "The guard is good" can be translated as just "Haz kroch", literally meaning "Guard good".
• Kh'omchr'om is a VSO (verb-subject-object) language. That means that the verb starts the sentence, then the subject and then the object. For instance, the phrase "The orc hits the warg", would be translated into Kh'omchr'om as "Arq oc morgur", which can be literally translated as "Hit orc warg". The word order is strict; if the order of the words is changed, it changes the meaning. For example, if you switched "oc" and "morgur" in the example, into the sentence "Arq morgur oc", it would mean "The warg hits the orc". The same is true for when pronouns are used. The phrase "They eat the horse" would be translated as "Nom LCSO h'rok", never "Nom h'rok LCSO"

Spoken Phonology.
   

/a/ written as "a"

/e/ written as "e"

/i/ written as either "i" or "y"

/o/ written as "o"

/u/written as "u"

      

/ʔ/ written as "'"

/b/ written as "b"

/bʱ/ written as "bh"

/d/ written as "d"

/dʱ/ written as "dh"

/d͡ʒ/ written as "j"

/f/ written as "f"

/g/ written as "g"

/ɡʱ/ written as "gh"

/h/ written as "h"

/j/ written as "y"

/k/ sometimes written as "c" or also "k"

/kʰ/ written as "kh"

/l/ written as "l"

/m/ written as "m"

/n/ written as "n"

/p/ written as "p"

/pʰ/ written as "ph"

/ŋ/ written as "ng"

/q/ written as "q"

/ʁ/ written as "r"

/ɹ/ written as "rr", or sometimes "rh"

/s/ written as "s"

/ʃ/ written as "sh", or sometimes "sz"

/t/ written as "t"

/tʰ/ written as "th"

/t͡ʃ/ written as "ch"

/v/ written as "v"

/w/ written as "w"

/x/ written as "ck"

/z/ written as "z"

Gestured Phonology.
      Kh'omchr'om's gestural phonemes are just as important in the language as the spoken ones are. Each of the gestures is divided into four dimensions:
      

• Height
• Distance From Body
• Orientation from Center
• Shape of Hand

      Along each of those dimensions, there are just a few options, allowing each gesture to be cataloged.
      

Low	Close	Middle	Grasped
			Rounded
High	Far	Side	Open

      Each of those gestures can be identified by a four letter sequence, with each letter standing for each of the dimensions. For instance a gesture which is low and far from the core, to the side, and with a rounded hand, would be written as "LFSR". They are typically written  after the word, but they are signed at the same time as their proceeding word is being spoken.

      Thus, there is a set number (24) possible gesture radicals. They, and their instructions, can be found in the table below.
      

LCMG	low hand, close to the body, middle of the body, grasped hand
LCMR	low hand, close to the body, middle of the body, rounded hand
LCMO	low hand, close to the body, middle of the body, open hand
LCSG	low hand, close to the body, side of body, grasped hand
LCSR	low hand, close to the body, side of body, rounded hand
LCSO	low hand, close to the body, side of body, open hand
LFMG	low hand, far from the body, middle of the body, grasped hand
LFMR	low hand, far from the body, middle of the body, rounded hand
LFMO	low hand, far from the body, middle of the body, open hand
LFSG	low hand, far from the body, side of body, grasped hand
LFSR	low hand, far from the body, side of body, rounded hand
LFSO	low hand, far from the body, side of body, open hand
HCMG	high hand, close to the body, middle of the body, grasped hand
HCMR	high hand, close to the body, middle of the body, rounded hand
HCMO	high hand, close to the body, middle of the body, open hand
HCSG	high hand, close to the body, side of body, grasped hand
HCSR	high hand, close to the body, side of body, rounded hand
HCSO	high hand, close to the body, side of body, open hand
HFMG	high hand, far from the body, middle of the body, grasped hand
HFMR	high hand, far from the body, middle of the body, rounded hand
HFMO	high hand, far from the body, middle of the body, open hand
HFSG	high hand, far from the body, side of body, grasped hand
HFSR	high hand, far from the body, side of body, rounded hand
HFSO	high hand, far from the body, side of body, open hand

   These can be composed, like the spoken phonemes, into sequences. Those are not typically used in mainstream Kh'omchr'om, but are sometimes used in Kh'omchr'om's dialects.

Pronouns.
   Kh'omchr'om uses gestures to express its twelve pronouns.
   

• LCMG singular 1st person pronoun
• LCMO plural 1st person pronoun
• LCSG singular 3rd person pronoun #1
• LCSO plural 3rd person pronoun #1
• LFMG singular 2nd person pronoun
• LFMO plural 2nd person pronoun
• LFSG singular 3rd person pronoun #2
• LFSO plural 3rd person pronoun #2
• HCSG singular 3rd person pronoun #3
• HCSO plural 3rd person pronoun #3
• HFSG  singular 3rd person pronoun #4
• HFSO plural 3rd person pronoun #4

   Each of these pronouns can be used in exactly the same place that nouns can be used in Kh'omchr'om, except that it is signed during the speaking of the preceeding word. Each of the third person pronouns can be used in a context to identify different objects. For example,
      Uon LCMG LCSG. I see it.
      LCSG kroch. It is good.
      Uon LCMG LFSG "I see another thing", or literally "I see it"
      LFSG ashz. "The second thing is noble", again literally "It is noble"
   It this context, the thing that was first seen that is good, and the second, completely different thing is noble.

   In addition, due to the lack of determiners in Kh'omchr'om, pronouns are used for that purpose. They are used as adjectives to describe the noun being determined. For instance,
      Arq LCMO mar LCSG. We hit that wolf.
      Nom oc LCSO ar h'rok. Those orcs are eating some of the horse

Verbs.
   Kh'omchr'om does not distinguish between tenses, like Styrásh or Tharian. Instead, it distinguishes based on aspect and mood.
   Each of the moods in Kh'omchr'om refers to what kind of event the verb refers to. It can refer to something that definitely happened, as in the indicative, or something that is commanded to happen, as in the imperative.
   

• The indicative mood is used to refer to things that definitely happened, are happening or will happen. "I jumped", "Fire is hot", and "Water is running in the river" are all examples of the indicative in Tharian. It is the default, unmarked mood. For some examples,
           Nom LCMO h'rok. We eat the horse.
           H'rrimt LFMO. You are (plural) stopping.
        
• The imperative mood is generally used for commands, and instructions, but also in Kh'omchr'om the future. "Go over there!", "Let's walk", and "Chop the onion!" are all examples of the imperative mood. The gesture HFMO is used to express this mood.
           Arq-HFMO LFMO h'rok! Hit the horse!
        Note the pronoun there, "LFMO", which marks the sentence as being a 2nd person plural command. The imperative is also used in Kh'omchr'om to express particular events in the future.
           Arq-HFMO LCSG h'rok. Literally "Him! Hit the horse", but really means "He will hit the horse"
        

   Within the indicative mood, there are two aspects. Each of the aspects marks a perspective on time, either a particular point, as in the episodic, or over all time, as in the gnomic.
   

• The episodic aspect refers to things that are happening in a particular situation at a particular time. "I jump", "They ate", and "He will go over there" are all examples in Tharian that would be translated using the episodic. The episodic is not marked by gestures in Kh'omchr'om; it is implicit in non-marked verbs. For example,
           Hnk oc. The orc bites.
           Nom LCSO h'rok. They eat the horse.
        
• The gnomic aspect refers to things that are generally true, and are broadly applicable. "People need to eat", and "Fish swim and birds fly." are some examples in Tharian. The gesture HFMR is used to mark this aspect. For some examples,
           Rat-HFMR morgur m'ruk. Wargs (always) have fangs.
           Khq-HFMR ngangz. Archers (always) fight.
           Resz-HFMR ghun. Tombs are (always) cursed.
        

   Kh'omchr'om does not conjugate verbs in any context. Verbs are always used in the root, raw form. In contexts where the object of the verb is another verb, such as in the usage of the verb "pak" meaning "to wait", the verb alone is used, For example,
       Pak oc nom. The orc is waiting to eat.
   When the verb being used as an infinitive in English itself takes an object it is translated using the standard order. For example,
      Pak oc nom h'rok.  The orc is waiting to eat the horse.
   If the subject is different, it can be done using the typical order. For instance,
      Pak oc nom cha h'rok The orc is waiting for the female to eat the horse

   Voice, as in passive or active, can be translated using the affixes "k'" and "'u". The active voice rarely requires additional markers, such as,
      Nom cha. The woman eats.
      B'rak oc. The orc declares war.
   Yet in some contexts, the active does use the prefix "k'". It is used with a transitive verb to refer to verbs that would typically take a direct object, but do not in the context. For instance,
      K'uon LCMG. I see something.
      K'arq LCSO. They hit something.
   On the other hand, the passive involves the usage of the suffix "'u". For instance,
      Uon'u LFMG. You are being seen.
      Arq'u h'rok oc. The horse is hit by the orc.
   Note that without the affix "'u", the phrase would mean "The horse hits the orc".

Nouns.
   Nouns in Kh'omchr'om are not declined for gender, number, definiteness, or case. For instance the word "oc", can mean "an orc", "some orcs", "the orc", or "the orcs". It can be used interchangebly for any role in a sentence. Despite that, in some contexts the preposition "ar" is used to mark the partitive. For example,
      Rat LCSG ar yrr'la'h'rok. He has some milk of horse
   The usage of "ar" stresses the fact that that the subject of that phrase does not have all of the milk of horse, just some of it. Therefore, the following is also correct.
      Rat LCSG yrr'la'hrok. He has the milk of horse

Adjectives and Adverbs.
   Adjectives in Kh'omchr'om generally follow the noun they describe. For some examples,
      Shan wrosz. The lake is cold.
      Urdan oc hef itus ha'akh. The large orc destroys the tall tree.
   When more than one adjective is used to describe a single noun, the adjectives are used in series. There is no particular order for doing this.
      Ogm LCSO gob wrosz ghun. They move into the cold, cursed cave.
      Ogm LCSO gob ghun wrosz. "They move into the cold, cursed cave" or literally "They move into the cursed cold cave"
   Kh'omchr'om does not make the distinction between adjectives and adverbs. Instead the difference can be seen in the order. For instance,
      Ogm sa'ak tak. The boar moves quickly.
      Ogm tak sa'ak. The quick boar moves


   However, there is a set of irregular adjectives that precede the noun they describe. They are listed below.
   

• y' diminutive meaning "young" or sometimes "weak".
• m' negator meaning "not"

   To use these words, the following is done.
      Arq LCMO m'oc. I hit the non-orc
      Rat-HFMR y'oc h'rok. Young orcs always have horses
   Yet when the sentence does not have a verb, where in the Tharian the verb "to be" would be used, the object being described still comes first, as is regular. For instance,
      Y'haz. The guard is weak.
      LCMG m'y'oc. I am not a young orc.
   These, again, can be used as adverbs, as well as adjectives.
      Y'b'rak LCSO oc. They weakly declare war on the orcs.
      Haz oc m'ha'akh. The guard is not a tall orc.
    
Comparison.

    To compare objects to one another, Kh'omchr'om uses the gesture HCMG, signed during the noun being described. It can be translated as the  word "more". For instance,
        Haz saak-HCMG ar oc. The guard is quicker than the orc or literally Guard quick-more of orc
        Oc-HFMR dak-HCMG ar cha. Orcs are (always) more violent than women
    On the other hand, to form a superlative the gesture is used twice, both signed while the word is being spoken. As an example,
        LCSG HCMG-kroch-HCMG. He is the best
        Ogm HCMG-losh-HCMG gob. The truest moved into the cave


Possession.
   The possesion of objects is express in Kh'omchr'om in two ways:
      

• First, the usage of the suffix "'om". For some examples,
              Resz'haz'om The Tomb of the Guards
              Rhom'y'oc'om The Plain of the Young Orcs
• Second, the word "ar". This is used more commonly in day-to-day speech. For an example,
              H'rok ar LCMO Our horse

The name of the language is Kh'omchr'om.  You have an extra apostrophe.

Okay, I revised the spoken phonology. The sounds are bit weird, and not entirely in the right arrangement for a Terran language, but I think this can be safely ignored for green people. ;)

In terms of verbs, I just put together some stuff that I think is a bit exotic, and combined it. If true tenses are needed, those of course can be added as desired.

I think the next step for this is the noun synthesis rules.

Thank you so much for your patience here Mina!

Looking good so far.  Y'oc actually means "orcling", although I suppose it could also mean "weak orc" depending on the context. 

One thought I had while working on the Volkek-oshra language is that they have bilabial instead of labiodental fricatives, due to their tusks getting in the way.  The northern orcs' tusks seem to be less prominent, at least according to the illustrations, but maybe it's influences their speech similarly?  Or maybe their labiodentals are made by placing the lower teeth against the upper lip? 

Hi.

I thought "y'oc" could mean "weak, young orcling", but if you disagree that could be changed.

In terms of the anatomy of Orcish mouths, I've been roughly assuming that they are identical to that of humans, but I think that that will need to be changed. There seems to be pretty dramatic variability among different orcish tribes, http://santharia.com/pictures/faugar/faugar_pics/rhom_oc.jpg
http://santharia.com/pictures/seeker/seeker_pics/orcristh_orc.jpg
http://santharia.com/pictures/faugar/faugar_pics/shakgrah_the_searer.jpg

Despite that, I think just dialectal variety could be taken into account, and it could be that just that the Rhom and the Losh speak with different sounds! The Volkek-oshra look pretty human-like, so I think that they wouldn't need too much modification. I think that it would interesting to have one main page for the shared dialect, but also have other Orcish language pages for the different flavors of Kh'omchr'om, as well as unrelated langauges.


On another note, I really like the idea of the gnomic, particularly in the context of already existing chants like this one. Each one of these lines could be in the gnomic, and I think that would really add some gravitas to the entire thing.

"The First Warrior is the best!
The First Warrior is the greatest!
The First Warrior is the strongest!
The First Warrior defeats all others!
The First Warrior pushes his enemy into the dust!
K’ahn’uck will rule the world!"

Unfortunately, this reminds me that I need to add comparatives and superlatives.

The problem with settling on a definite meaning, I think, is how to express the other possible meanings.  If y'oc means "weak, young orcling", how do you say things like "orcling" (the current dictionary definition) or "weak orc"?  I suggested relying on context to tell the difference, but there might be other solutions if you prefer, such as having other adjectives with similar meanings. 

I'm certainly in favour of having more orcish languages, especially unrelated ones.  :grin:

More linguistic diversity is probably more realistic anyway.  At the very least, orcish tribes outside of North Sarvonia should probably not speak Kh'omchr'om or anything too closely related to it.  It'd be nice too if the northern tribes had their own languages besides Kh'omchr'om; a whole continent speaking only one language just seems implausible to me.

Okey Dokey!

I think I have this entry in a sort-of acceptable place. I was wondering what the process would be for getting this on the site.

Is the IPA Santharian enough, or what?

I'm not sure, but probably not.  For Styrash, I went with describing the sounds instead. 

As for getting it on the site, you probably need to get it approved by Artimidor, since it doesn't look like this subforum has a mod.  I'll take another look later to make sure I didn't miss anything, but you should probably get some input from someone who doesn't know linguistics too to make sure it's not too technical. 

Upon reading more details on the Principles page, http://santharia.com/languages/styrash/styrash.htm (http://santharia.com/languages/styrash/styrash.htm), it looks like it uses Terran words and ideas, like the comparison to Latin.

Perhaps IPA can slip in after all?

That would be useful. 

You should probably specify North Sarvonian orcs, since other continents have orcs too. 

That should be North Sarvonian continent.  South Sarvonia is considered a separate continent, and its orcs aren't in contact with northern ones so they shouldn't have a common langauge. 

I think having an example here would be nice. 

Having just one voiced aspirated plosive seems a little odd.  Maybe there could be "bh" and "dh" too?  I don't think any of the current words use them, but we could always invent some. 

Maybe the gestures could be made the same time as the words they modify are being spoken?

You might want to note that the indicative is the default unmarked mood.  Also, "you stop" sounds rather imperative in English.  Maybe some other example would be better?

If the second verb has a different subject, I guess it goes in the usual place?  Eg. Pak oc nom mar h'rok  "The orc is waiting for the wolf to eat the horse"?

Are there demonstratives like "this" and "that"?

It might be worth pointing out how that is different from "the quick boar moves", ie. that the adverb follows the verb instead of the noun.  It's not hard to deduce from the example, but making it clearer doesn' hurt. 

Again, maybe it could be signed while the noun is being spoken?  There's nothing preventing them from being done at the same time, after all. 

Updated the entry with all of your suggestions Mina.

I also added /dʱ/ and /bʱ/.

Hmm, although there are only 24 basic gestures, it should be possible to combine them to make more complicated gestures, if more gestures are ever needed. 

That's a cool idea. I mentioned in the entry, but I think that idea is sufficiently unique to be used for one of the dialects, not for the standard language.

Hello there, Stargazer! :wave:

From what I can see this is quite a commendable effort! I think  it's also good that this entry is quite straight to the point with examples etc. without too much theory, as that's pretty much how Kh'omchr'om works as well - at least if you know the basics by heart. You've got it all down on one longer page I'd say, right down until commands, comparisons, possessive forms and so on, complete with the new ideas of the gestures and their transliteration (is that the right word?). So what more can one ask for? :D Though in general I'm not really that much into language (the Styrásh stuff was done pretty much out of necessity, because we need to have it), so I'm definitely not the best candidate for commenting here, and unfortunately there aren't many around these days.

Anyway, but from what I read this looks quite feasible to me and makes a lot of sense. It's a bit strange when you see the gestures written down like that however, but it helps to get the point across and with a bit of studying/practising one might get used to talking in Orcish in no time. We could train some orcs in coming fantasy movies! :lol: The signs of the spoken phonology perhaps also look a bit weird, but you're the language expert here, so you probably know much better what signs to use... So yeah, from my point of view this is quite cool and helpful to flesh out the orcen culture, I'm all for it!  :thumbup:

Aura +1 at any rate for your efforts!  :cool:

Awesome!
 :grin:

I'm really glad that you are a fan of the language. I hope that this can go up on the site when/if you would be ready.

Thanks.

Hey, Seagazer... I'm in the process of preparing the entry, but have difficulties with the characters you use in the Spoken Phonology section - can you tell me exactly how you can produce the fancy ones? Copy paste doesn't work unfortunately, but they are displayed correctly here in the Forum...

I don't know aout Seagazer, but I normally copy them from somewhere.  Not all fonts can display them though, so that could be the issue.  Maybe you could switch the font just for that section? 

Well, I found out that when I copy the Forum text into Word the chars make it into Word and the font is displayed as "MS Mincho". Now when I copy these chars from Word into Frontpage it works.

However, two letters for some reason are still wrong:

/d͡ʒ/ written as "j"

/t͡ʃ/ written as "ch"

Hmmm.... The "roof" part of the second letter seems to be the problem. The rest looks fine.

I think it's acceptable to write them as /dʒ/ and /tʃ/. 

As for the font, Arial is usually pretty good for such things, I think. 

Yep, methinks that should work. Can't be mixed up with other things, because its unique without the "roof" thingy as well :)

The Arial font BTW doesn't work. I'm not exactly sure how the Forum is capable of displaying the font properly, because there's no specific code in the source code of the post made by Seagazer that would hint at another font, but anyway. Here's (http://www.santharia.com/languages/khomchrom/khomchrom.htm) the languages page I've prepared BTW - see if you can see the chars displayed properly. MS Mincho seems to be a standard Windows font, so chances are that most users should be able to see it properly without having to install a new font.

Yup, I can see them. 

By the way, it should probably be "vowels" instead of "vocals". 

Edit: Might be Arial Unicode MS instead of plain Arial.  Although if MS Mincho is standard, I guess we could use that.  MS Mincho is apparently a Japanese font.  I'm not sure what it's doing on the forum, if that's indeed what it's using and not Word being weird. 

Hey!

I've been busy on both real life and my ongoing project to develop the language of the Rhom-Oc. That should be forthcoming.  Regardless, I think that the font stuff looks great, and as Mina says the bar for affricatives, or the "roof" as you called it, is totally cosmetic. However would be easier in your font is fine.

Hello! Just poking my head in after a long absence.

Your work on the language is much appreciated, Seagazer. My orcs up north welcome the effort you are taking to develop their language.

:)

+1

Yay. I'm glad you like it Azhira.

 :D

Hello again, Azhira! :wave:

It's been quite a while, eh? I've even written the Mystrán story a couple of weeks ago I've talked to you about last millennium or so... Took me only years to get to it... :lol: Anyway, hope you're fine and we hear more from you in the future ;)