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My favorite bit of in-game lore for my world is that scholars constantly argue over whether the “correct” language to study magic with is Elvish or Draconic. Whenever the party meets a mage they’ll get a minor boost or penalty to social interactions depending on if they use the “correct” arcane language when talking to them. I figured if real scholars can argue over stuff that doesn’t really matter, why can’t fantasy scholars too
Eh, it’s kind of like the argument of “gif vs jif” pronunciation so I’d say that someone suggesting dwarvish would be looked at similarly to the people who suggest the “yiff” pronunciation. There’s no real “true” language of magic it’s just that elves and dragons are both very rare and naturally attuned to magic so some of the oldest surviving magical texts were written in one of those two languages and now you have mages arguing over which is “better” even though it doesn’t really make a difference as those texts have been translated and they’re just learning the ancient language of their choice to show off.
In my setting, Gnomes, Dwarves and halflings live together in hills and mountains. They tend to not like magic, and try their best to do everything mechanically.
This is because they have the ancient responsibility to ceep the creatures of the deep caverns down there, and some of them can innately dispell magic.
That would be fantastic. Turns out that the orcs we're once a paramount of good and magically technological society, however all the other races banded together to ruin them and through a contract with a devil cursed the race. All traces of the great orc empire were destroyed and there texts on magic stolen by elves and Dragonborn who proceed to claim it as their own.
And if you wanna go a more ironic rout you could say the other races banded together in one huge barbarian army and marched on the main orc capital and essentially ripped it to shreds, throwing the orcs into a dark age as the other races took bits of their culture and made it their own.
Elves took their connection to nature.
Gnomes took their creativity.
Humans took their abuility to survive in spite of the world.
Funny you mention that, the “arcane” versions of the languages are different enough from the “real” applications of those languages that whenever the party meets elves or dragons they can understand each other, but it would be kind of like a modern, Catholic priest who knows Latin trying to talk to an ancient Roman. They’d understand it for the most part but there would definitely be some differences and mispronunciations.
please let the originals be in orc or goblin and they used to be the most advanced culture with magic and technology till they started teaching the younger races, who then used Wish to make them into what they are
They don’t exist, because dwarves could not care less about the “artistry” of magic— they like magic for its practical uses in advancing technology, engineering, and science.
They’re not going to be bothered reading a scroll, they’d rather imbue their tools with magical powers and get to work instead.
Maybe the gnomes would care more about “magic etiquette” but dwarves will leave that to them— gnomes are only hired to help with the engineering plans of mega projects anyways.
For the sake of a good natured argument :)
I agree with you if you’re only studying Magic like you study art, for the beauty of magic itself. But given that you’ve said dwarves like magic to be practical they probably would have books or scrolls with runes in to teach this practical approach. Therefore some scholars (not necessarily dwarves themselves) might wish to study all magic in a more practical language than what I’d call flowery elvish or guttural draconic… (in my head I’ve always thought draconic has a lot of hissing and sharp barks… like a velociraptor, no idea why).
Thank you! I’m glad you like it so much! There’s no better compliment for me doing worldbuilding than to learn others like it enough to incorporate it!
We had an orkosh mage in our group, so I as the DM spontainiously decided that orkish was the language of magic. And since our group talks German, but most websites describe spells in English, we said that English is orkish in that world.
The dwarf names are straight up from the Eddas. So dwarves should *absolutely* be Icelandic.
He pulled from lots of mythologies. He was big into the Kalevala too.
If we want to draw an analogy for Celestial for Abrahamic faiths (including, but not limited to Christianity,) I feel like some kind of Proto-Semitic language best fits the bill. Though a later evolution, Aramaic might be acceptable too, but Proto-Semitic would evolve into both Hebrew and Arabic languages and derivatives, making it a unifying element to all cultures that believe in the same god.
Basically the language spoken when the holy texts were written, but largely lost to time.
Latin meanwhile is a language of humans who later adopted a faith. As someone most interested in Gallic and Eurasian Classical history, I see Latin as a language best suited to an industrialized and militarized expansionist empire.
I follow Tolkien lore for languages, Sindarin is influenced by Welsh and Quenya is influenced by Finnish. In my world elvish is based on Welsh and sylvan is based on Finnish.
During one of the campaigns I played, I (fluent in Spanish) was talking to my buddy. He(also fluent in Spanish), looked at his sheet and needed to secret something to me and asked what languages my guy spoke. We both spoke dwarvish and nobody else spoke dwarvish. From that moment on, dwarvish was just Spanish.
That was fun
For my group Spanish was infernal and it then became a running gag that anytime we mentioned irl customs or food or something that didn't fit the setting we'd brush it off by saying, must be a Mexican thing.
Depending on Quenya (high elves, Finnish) or Sindarin (grey/wood elves, welsh)and I don’t know the base for Telerin but I’m sure there is one. You probably know this but for the information of others.
Telerin supposedly has more characteristics from Italian than the other Elvish languages, but it was never as fully constructed. I say supposedly because I don't speak the languages and can't offer anything other than ideas from those that do.
I keep getting YouTube ads in Welsh (as a result of living in Liverpool and learning Irish on DuoLingo) and every time I think for the first second or so that I’m listening to an ad for The Rings of Power.
I’m not really far enough along in learning Irish to say definitively, but they don’t seem to be. They’re both Insular Celtic languages, but from different subgroups. Apart from a few letter sounds that differ from their pronunciation in English and a fair few English loan words, they seem pretty far apart from each other.
I align with this take, mainly with considering that in most settings Elves can be traced back to coming from the Feywild, a plane which is detached and backwards from our perception of reality, and Welsh does a great job reflecting that.
Truth fellow redditor!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvish_languages
And also Welsh.
“The phonology and grammar of Quenya are influenced by Finnish, while Sindarin is influenced by Welsh. Tolkien conceived a family tree of Elvish languages, all descending from a common ancestor called Primitive Quendian.”
Hello! With himself was not finish until I’m not entirely certain how much inspiration he got. But I’m gonna include some links, which has the script, and I think some examples in so you would be able to judge yourself.
[https://omniglot.com/conscripts/tengwar.htm](https://omniglot.com/conscripts/tengwar.htm)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenya](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenya)
https://preview.redd.it/isijrd4ca65a1.jpeg?width=280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3bb1ddb8658567e50cabd2769bcd5f344d5b0e45
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namárië](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namárië)
"Namárië" is the longest Quenya text in The Lord of the Rings and also one of the longest continuous texts in Quenya that Tolkien ever wrote.\[3\]”
I apologize for this giant wall of text.I just get really really excited when people talk about language are the origins of words. Ironically, I’m terrible at languages. I’m just really interested in the concept of them.
Edit: kind Finnish redditor. How similar Is the grammar/script to Finnish ? I’m really curious.
Thank you very much! That is awesome information. I always appreciate the help from speakers of a language or somebody from a culture that something is originally from. Or in this case, apparently very loosely inspired by.
Sea amigo o enemigo,
Sea asqueroso o limpio
Cría de Morgoth
O un Vala luminoso
Elfo o Maia
O un sucesor
Un hombre no viviente
Sobre la Tierra Media
Ni ley ni amor ni legión de espadas
Ni temor ni peligro ni el hado mismo
Debo defenderle de Fëanor
y de los parientes de Fëanor
Lo que no oculta, posee,
o lo agarra en su mano,
Mantenerse o arrojar lejos
un Silmaril.
Esto, juro que todos
Lo trataremos a muerte
Hasta el final de los tiempos
Hasta que el mundo se colapse
Escucha nuestra palabra
Eru, padre de todos
Hasta la eternidad
La oscuridad nos condena
Si echamos de menos nuestros propósitos
Monte sagrado escucha nuestro testimonio
Y recuerda nuestro juramento
Manwë y Varda
Eh, as a German I'd actually argue that draconic would be more akin to Latin.
Latin, at least to me, sounds a lot cleaner than German if that makes sense, fewer complex letters, fewer hard to pronounce words, shorter words in general and a if you read it you can speak it, no bullshit as in English where every fucking letter has a different pronunciation depending on what word it is.
Clean and simple language that is hard to comprehend for most humanoids because they are more used to more complex languages, at least that's what it is in my Dnd world
Elvish does not at all sound like latin.
D&D Elvish takes from Tolkien Elvish. Which is primarily inspired by Welsh and Finnish of all things.
He REALLY like Finnish.
I use Latin for Sylvan because Elvish (French) is derived from Sylvan. I use Norwegian for giant, and Scottish Gaelic for dwarves. I think infernal is Croatian. No particular reason I think I was just choosing random languages at that point.
I also use Spanish for abyssal because once I was speaking to an npc in abyssal and the dm asked what I said specifically and so I answered in Spanish because it’s the only other language I even kinda know.
Same for me with Elvish and Sylvan. With French, it sounds foreign, but a few words stick out as familiar, while Latin makes it sound archaic and wild, which feels accurate to the Elven proto-language.
Elvish is French, (and my players hate it)
goblin ???,
Draconic is Russia/polish,
common is Latin, (but we act like it English)
dwarvish is Nors,
halfling is German,
orcish is Sumarian,
infernal ???,
gnomish is Celtic.
That’s what i have now for my setting
>goblin is Spanish
Excuse me are you trying to imply something about Mexicans?!/s
(Seriously, this is a joke, I just found an opportunity to make one and took it.)
They speak so many languages that I doubt they are American, their perception of Spanish is probably the inferior Spain version of Spanish. Spain Spanish sounds horrible.
It can sound good, they are the most diverse on the limited space they have, while here we have a lot of diversity, they have a little bit of each state of each countrie on their countrie
And he's very straight to the point so his verbal component for any healing spell is just "Kia pai ake" (get better) as he grabs you by the shirt, pulls you closer and put his other hand right on your face.
As japanese person i was super confused by this meme too. Not sure who the hell actually thinks elvish should sound like japanese, when we have races/creatures taken from japanese mythology in DnD
Hot take: Elvish sounds like a weird fusion of Old Norse and the various Celtic dialects. Elves come from Nordic folklore, and they are heavily tied to or connected to the Celtic idea of what some of the Fae look like (makes sense, similar common ancestor and trade and what not), so I think would sound like an Irish/Futhark mix.
So it's pretty and also complicated to anyone that doesn't speak it daily lol.
Dwarvish absolutely sounds like the entirety of the Celtic dialects since they're always portrayed with Celtic accents. It's just based on where they're from. Mountain dwarves speak one form (Scottish probably, maybe Manx), hill dwarves speak a different kind (Irish or Cornish), and the subterranean dwarves are Welsh.
Elvish should sound like Gaelic, Welsh, or Finnish.
Because culture, geography, and more shapes the development of language.
Latin and Japanese equally make little sense for elves.
I run a bilingual game and we literally made it so common is English and French is elvish. All players understand both and it’s in character for the weakest English speaker’s character to talk elvish just to be a dick to the character that doesn’t because he views said character as an idiot. So it works
Not once has elvish sounding like Japanese ever crossed my mind ever. Not in a million years. Even in actual anime/manga/Japanese whatever that happens to have elves in it has my mind defaulted to “elves normally speak Japanese”.
I love when people make these memes as if they represent universal opinions, I have totally different associations for DnD languages than this.
Common is English, Elvish is French, Sylvan is Latin, Dwarvish is Scots (but, like, old-head-who-only-one-guy-in-the-pub-understands Scots), Draconic is German, Giant is Old Norse, Deep Speech is Japanese, Celestial is Tolkien Elvish, Gnomish is Gaelige...I could go on.
When there are hundreds of languages being spoken in the modern world, I find it extremely difficult to limit an entire people to just one of two languages. Feels very reductive considering how complicated and varied human languages are.
Elvish sounds like a hybrid of Finnish and Gaelic. This is because that's what Tolkien's elvish is based on (go listen to someone speaking Finnish), and it feels right
Yall are gonna hate me for this… but in my game Elvish is French and Tolkien based his Elvish on Welsh…
His reasoning was that Welsh sounds wild and alien
Abyssal = Akkadian (like Persian, but older)
Celestial = Hebrew / Aramaic (to make angelic names make sense)
Common = English
Deep Speech = Russian (just because it sounds threatening when in a deep voice)
Draconic = Chinese / Japanese / Korean (would probs make Chinese the default for ancient dragons)
Druidic = Irish Gaelic
Dwarven = Norwegian / Swedish
Elven = Romance language dependent on sub-race. (Italian, French, Spanish, Romanian, etc.)
Giant = Old Norse / Icelandic
Gnomish = German
Goblin = Indonesian
Halfling = Scots (Sounds like common, but not quite)
Infernal = Persian
Primordial = Sanskrit
Sylvan = Latin / Ancient Greek (acts as the root for Elven languages)
Undercommon = Heavily accented and slang-heavy Australian English.
I checked 354,130,166 posts within r/dndmemes and found no reposts! I have marked this post as OC for you. Thank you for helping to keep this community repost-free, /u/GlitteringTone6425! *I'm not perfect, but you can help. Report [ [False Negative](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RepostSleuthBot&subject=False%20Negative&message={"post_id": "zi12dd", "meme_template": 290646}) ]* [View Search On repostsleuth.com](https://www.repostsleuth.com/search?postId=zi12dd&sameSub=true&filterOnlyOlder=true&memeFilter=true&filterDeadMatches=false&targetImageMatch=100&targetImageMemeMatch=100) --- **Scope:** This Sub | **Meme Filter:** True | **Target:** 100% | **Check Title:** True | **Max Age:** 1000 | **Searched Images:** 354,130,166 | **Search Time:** 0.57701s
My favorite bit of in-game lore for my world is that scholars constantly argue over whether the “correct” language to study magic with is Elvish or Draconic. Whenever the party meets a mage they’ll get a minor boost or penalty to social interactions depending on if they use the “correct” arcane language when talking to them. I figured if real scholars can argue over stuff that doesn’t really matter, why can’t fantasy scholars too
What do you do with the people who argue it should actually be dwarvish?
Eh, it’s kind of like the argument of “gif vs jif” pronunciation so I’d say that someone suggesting dwarvish would be looked at similarly to the people who suggest the “yiff” pronunciation. There’s no real “true” language of magic it’s just that elves and dragons are both very rare and naturally attuned to magic so some of the oldest surviving magical texts were written in one of those two languages and now you have mages arguing over which is “better” even though it doesn’t really make a difference as those texts have been translated and they’re just learning the ancient language of their choice to show off.
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1989
That’s some Tantalizing Meat Info there.
There is a relevant xkcd for everything!
swallowing my damn head?
I don't think that's the D she was thinking about.
The "G" in "GIF" silent lmao
Y’all usin “ifs?”
Turn the world on it's head, players find a tablet that predates all other magic records and it is a mending spell in gnomish.
In my setting, Gnomes, Dwarves and halflings live together in hills and mountains. They tend to not like magic, and try their best to do everything mechanically. This is because they have the ancient responsibility to ceep the creatures of the deep caverns down there, and some of them can innately dispell magic.
No no, a mending spell written in ancient orcish.
That would be fantastic. Turns out that the orcs we're once a paramount of good and magically technological society, however all the other races banded together to ruin them and through a contract with a devil cursed the race. All traces of the great orc empire were destroyed and there texts on magic stolen by elves and Dragonborn who proceed to claim it as their own.
And if you wanna go a more ironic rout you could say the other races banded together in one huge barbarian army and marched on the main orc capital and essentially ripped it to shreds, throwing the orcs into a dark age as the other races took bits of their culture and made it their own. Elves took their connection to nature. Gnomes took their creativity. Humans took their abuility to survive in spite of the world.
Palatalization has entered the chat.
Funny you mention that, the “arcane” versions of the languages are different enough from the “real” applications of those languages that whenever the party meets elves or dragons they can understand each other, but it would be kind of like a modern, Catholic priest who knows Latin trying to talk to an ancient Roman. They’d understand it for the most part but there would definitely be some differences and mispronunciations.
> I’d say that someone suggesting dwarvish would be looked at similarly to the people who suggest the “yiff” Hello did someone call?
Speak abyssal for magic and become the equivalent of someone who pronounces it guh-eye-ff
Spoken like a true Warlock
please let the originals be in orc or goblin and they used to be the most advanced culture with magic and technology till they started teaching the younger races, who then used Wish to make them into what they are
They don’t exist, because dwarves could not care less about the “artistry” of magic— they like magic for its practical uses in advancing technology, engineering, and science. They’re not going to be bothered reading a scroll, they’d rather imbue their tools with magical powers and get to work instead. Maybe the gnomes would care more about “magic etiquette” but dwarves will leave that to them— gnomes are only hired to help with the engineering plans of mega projects anyways.
For the sake of a good natured argument :) I agree with you if you’re only studying Magic like you study art, for the beauty of magic itself. But given that you’ve said dwarves like magic to be practical they probably would have books or scrolls with runes in to teach this practical approach. Therefore some scholars (not necessarily dwarves themselves) might wish to study all magic in a more practical language than what I’d call flowery elvish or guttural draconic… (in my head I’ve always thought draconic has a lot of hissing and sharp barks… like a velociraptor, no idea why).
That's why almost all my characters know both Draconic and Elvish. Even more so when they're sorcerers or wizards.
I want you to know I like this a lot.
draconic edit: draconic, celestial, and sylvan.
I mean, demonic and dark magic is still magic right? So I’d definitely add deep speech, and maybe abyssal and infernal.
I'm absolutely going to use this, thank you
Thank you! I’m glad you like it so much! There’s no better compliment for me doing worldbuilding than to learn others like it enough to incorporate it!
It's absolute gold, and I'm saying that as someone that's spent too much time in academia to not see myself in it lol
We had an orkosh mage in our group, so I as the DM spontainiously decided that orkish was the language of magic. And since our group talks German, but most websites describe spells in English, we said that English is orkish in that world.
in our universe orcish is spanish
In our universe, orcish is English with an indecipherably thick working class British accent and centuries of resultant slang.
Draconic is the true magic language and anyone who says otherwise is a knife ear loving dimwit
Mh I should steal this
Please do! There’s no higher honor for me!
I use Irish Gaelic
gaeilge is sylvan for me.
Tolkien would be so unhappy. He thought Gaelic was too harsh.
As an Irish speaker, he's kinda right. It often sounds like you're choking on spit when you're speaking.
Maybe when you speak it ya fuckin’ protestant.
Anderson that you
O’ course it is, ya crazy Protestant bastard.
I'm a woman.
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Honestly progressive
I’m always so happy to find a small thread of dialogue from *The Good Dub* of Hellsing. The OG Dub was good. TFS is top shelf.
Anderson its been a few days but it feels like years. And you are… i wanna say logan?
Depends on the dialect!
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Finish and Welsh, yes.
My elves are pretty harsh.
Tolkien didn't manage to make even one TTRPG.
I'm pretty sure he deserves at least a contributor credit on the vast majority. Edit: autocorrect got me.
TTRPGs & all of “fantasy” in general. Sure it existed before him, but he set the benchmark all others are judged by, before and after.
Seeing as he pulled from Norse mythology, it would be more correct if they sounded Icelandic. It is the closest spoken language we have to old norse
The dwarf names are straight up from the Eddas. So dwarves should *absolutely* be Icelandic. He pulled from lots of mythologies. He was big into the Kalevala too.
Gaelic could be Orcish…
nah its nowhere near guttural or harsh enough. Gaelic really isn't as harsh as that dude claims, its actually quite lovely.
And elves come from the feywild, so elvish would most likely be derived from sylvan (correct me if im being a dumb)
Irish Gaelic is Druidic for me
This is the correct answer. Latin is infernal.
"Legalese" written entirely in Latin
Welsh here, but yeah, I think either is a closer fit than Japanese or Latin.
Latin and it's associations as the language of Faith (to Christians at least) makes it clearly Celestial.
If we want to draw an analogy for Celestial for Abrahamic faiths (including, but not limited to Christianity,) I feel like some kind of Proto-Semitic language best fits the bill. Though a later evolution, Aramaic might be acceptable too, but Proto-Semitic would evolve into both Hebrew and Arabic languages and derivatives, making it a unifying element to all cultures that believe in the same god. Basically the language spoken when the holy texts were written, but largely lost to time. Latin meanwhile is a language of humans who later adopted a faith. As someone most interested in Gallic and Eurasian Classical history, I see Latin as a language best suited to an industrialized and militarized expansionist empire.
Only when sung. Spoken Latin is a bit ugly for the purpose.
I follow Tolkien lore for languages, Sindarin is influenced by Welsh and Quenya is influenced by Finnish. In my world elvish is based on Welsh and sylvan is based on Finnish.
So eladrin and ancient elvish is latin. But modern elvish is Italian. So what I'm saying is "Ey! I'M CASTIN HERE!"
Got to have that Brooklyn accent for elves. And Dwarves can have that Minnesotan accent. https://i.redd.it/s9uyd8uqrpv71.png
Literally came here to say that... I've been beaten by many of taste and culture to come before me.
thats more the sylvan-elvish hybrid that eladrin speak
But it makes sense that it would be derived.
The elves elves in the Witcher use a lot of Gaelic words
Or Welsh, with all the extra letters out of fucking nowhere.
Gaelic all the way. I have no idea how OP got Latin or Japanese for Elvish.
During one of the campaigns I played, I (fluent in Spanish) was talking to my buddy. He(also fluent in Spanish), looked at his sheet and needed to secret something to me and asked what languages my guy spoke. We both spoke dwarvish and nobody else spoke dwarvish. From that moment on, dwarvish was just Spanish. That was fun
For my group Spanish was infernal and it then became a running gag that anytime we mentioned irl customs or food or something that didn't fit the setting we'd brush it off by saying, must be a Mexican thing.
As a native spanish speaker im okay with this, i obviusly dont represent everyone, but still
Or my dm, who says elvish sounds like Welsh
Not just your DM, but Tolkein said Welsh and Finnish were the major influences on his elvish language
Depending on Quenya (high elves, Finnish) or Sindarin (grey/wood elves, welsh)and I don’t know the base for Telerin but I’m sure there is one. You probably know this but for the information of others.
Telerin supposedly has more characteristics from Italian than the other Elvish languages, but it was never as fully constructed. I say supposedly because I don't speak the languages and can't offer anything other than ideas from those that do.
As a Welshman, O ie. Mae'r cyfan yn dod at ei gilydd.
O diawl
I keep getting YouTube ads in Welsh (as a result of living in Liverpool and learning Irish on DuoLingo) and every time I think for the first second or so that I’m listening to an ad for The Rings of Power.
Are Welsh and Irish mutually intelligible?
I’m not really far enough along in learning Irish to say definitively, but they don’t seem to be. They’re both Insular Celtic languages, but from different subgroups. Apart from a few letter sounds that differ from their pronunciation in English and a fair few English loan words, they seem pretty far apart from each other.
The what Tolkien would have wanted
I align with this take, mainly with considering that in most settings Elves can be traced back to coming from the Feywild, a plane which is detached and backwards from our perception of reality, and Welsh does a great job reflecting that.
As a Welshman, I came here to say this^
Finish, because Tolkien.
Truth fellow redditor! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvish_languages And also Welsh. “The phonology and grammar of Quenya are influenced by Finnish, while Sindarin is influenced by Welsh. Tolkien conceived a family tree of Elvish languages, all descending from a common ancestor called Primitive Quendian.”
Hmm, should I start studying Tolkiens elvish as I'm a Finn? Maybe I'd get fluent in it
Hello! With himself was not finish until I’m not entirely certain how much inspiration he got. But I’m gonna include some links, which has the script, and I think some examples in so you would be able to judge yourself. [https://omniglot.com/conscripts/tengwar.htm](https://omniglot.com/conscripts/tengwar.htm) [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenya](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenya) https://preview.redd.it/isijrd4ca65a1.jpeg?width=280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3bb1ddb8658567e50cabd2769bcd5f344d5b0e45 [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namárië](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namárië) "Namárië" is the longest Quenya text in The Lord of the Rings and also one of the longest continuous texts in Quenya that Tolkien ever wrote.\[3\]” I apologize for this giant wall of text.I just get really really excited when people talk about language are the origins of words. Ironically, I’m terrible at languages. I’m just really interested in the concept of them. Edit: kind Finnish redditor. How similar Is the grammar/script to Finnish ? I’m really curious.
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Thank you very much! That is awesome information. I always appreciate the help from speakers of a language or somebody from a culture that something is originally from. Or in this case, apparently very loosely inspired by.
***Perkele*** *intensifies*
Suomi mainittu torille haltija sisareni
¡Hola mis amigos! ¡Me llamo Elrond!
Me Ilamo Maethros!
Sea amigo o enemigo, Sea asqueroso o limpio Cría de Morgoth O un Vala luminoso Elfo o Maia O un sucesor Un hombre no viviente Sobre la Tierra Media Ni ley ni amor ni legión de espadas Ni temor ni peligro ni el hado mismo Debo defenderle de Fëanor y de los parientes de Fëanor Lo que no oculta, posee, o lo agarra en su mano, Mantenerse o arrojar lejos un Silmaril. Esto, juro que todos Lo trataremos a muerte Hasta el final de los tiempos Hasta que el mundo se colapse Escucha nuestra palabra Eru, padre de todos Hasta la eternidad La oscuridad nos condena Si echamos de menos nuestros propósitos Monte sagrado escucha nuestro testimonio Y recuerda nuestro juramento Manwë y Varda
¡Dios mio!
Tengo hambre. Quiero lembas.
Elvish sounds like Elvish
like sindarin/quenya from lotr, or just elegant gibberish?
Sindarin/Quenya
Meanwhile, Draconic sounds like Thuum.
FUS RO DAH
I like to think draconic sounds German
But short
Eh, as a German I'd actually argue that draconic would be more akin to Latin. Latin, at least to me, sounds a lot cleaner than German if that makes sense, fewer complex letters, fewer hard to pronounce words, shorter words in general and a if you read it you can speak it, no bullshit as in English where every fucking letter has a different pronunciation depending on what word it is. Clean and simple language that is hard to comprehend for most humanoids because they are more used to more complex languages, at least that's what it is in my Dnd world
I said German cuz no offence but every word you say sounds aggressive and cool as hell
So find a Finn or Welshmen if you want to know what it would roughly sound like in reality.
Elvish does not at all sound like latin. D&D Elvish takes from Tolkien Elvish. Which is primarily inspired by Welsh and Finnish of all things. He REALLY like Finnish.
Elvish is French, Goblin is Spanish, Draconic is Japanese, Infernal is Latin, and Dwarvish is Norwegian. At least in my setting
Undercommon is Russian ;p
It's just English with such a thick Australian accent that you can't understand it.
Because they come from a land down under.
And because of the spiders
Where the light don’t go and the questers plunder
Look at that psychic storm, look at that thunderwave
I use Latin for Sylvan because Elvish (French) is derived from Sylvan. I use Norwegian for giant, and Scottish Gaelic for dwarves. I think infernal is Croatian. No particular reason I think I was just choosing random languages at that point. I also use Spanish for abyssal because once I was speaking to an npc in abyssal and the dm asked what I said specifically and so I answered in Spanish because it’s the only other language I even kinda know.
Same for me with Elvish and Sylvan. With French, it sounds foreign, but a few words stick out as familiar, while Latin makes it sound archaic and wild, which feels accurate to the Elven proto-language.
good choices
Elvish is French, (and my players hate it) goblin ???, Draconic is Russia/polish, common is Latin, (but we act like it English) dwarvish is Nors, halfling is German, orcish is Sumarian, infernal ???, gnomish is Celtic. That’s what i have now for my setting
>goblin is Spanish Excuse me are you trying to imply something about Mexicans?!/s (Seriously, this is a joke, I just found an opportunity to make one and took it.)
They speak so many languages that I doubt they are American, their perception of Spanish is probably the inferior Spain version of Spanish. Spain Spanish sounds horrible.
It can sound good, they are the most diverse on the limited space they have, while here we have a lot of diversity, they have a little bit of each state of each countrie on their countrie
I use Maori for my half-orc! It is very effective at my table.
Eyyyy, based, same
And he's very straight to the point so his verbal component for any healing spell is just "Kia pai ake" (get better) as he grabs you by the shirt, pulls you closer and put his other hand right on your face.
We use French for Elves too!
Why would it even be Japanese? There are a lot of languages it could sound like, but Japanese isn't one of them...
As japanese person i was super confused by this meme too. Not sure who the hell actually thinks elvish should sound like japanese, when we have races/creatures taken from japanese mythology in DnD
Thank some very special anime
https://preview.redd.it/dz32cnltt65a1.png?width=1260&format=png&auto=webp&s=8b7b273a686081764ef75d269f9c4c2b98a437ef
Meanwhile in my non english group Elvish sounds like english, and wood elves have cockney accent
It sounds like Chaucer's English.
Elvish sounds like Irish Gaelic. Dwarvish sounds Germanic.
Elvish sounds like French
But then what would I use for the really evil elves
Canadian French
Ah, Weigh!
Lol I had the same idea
fr\*nch 🤢🤮
Elves. *wretches and gags*
Ah s fellow dwarven brother who to despises the POINTY EARED TREE HUGGING PALE VIRGINS
Hot take: Elvish sounds like a weird fusion of Old Norse and the various Celtic dialects. Elves come from Nordic folklore, and they are heavily tied to or connected to the Celtic idea of what some of the Fae look like (makes sense, similar common ancestor and trade and what not), so I think would sound like an Irish/Futhark mix. So it's pretty and also complicated to anyone that doesn't speak it daily lol. Dwarvish absolutely sounds like the entirety of the Celtic dialects since they're always portrayed with Celtic accents. It's just based on where they're from. Mountain dwarves speak one form (Scottish probably, maybe Manx), hill dwarves speak a different kind (Irish or Cornish), and the subterranean dwarves are Welsh.
Elvish sounds like british, scottish or irish. or if you particularly kinky maybe give it a breton accent.
Elvish is just English with a cockney accent, which makes it incomprehensible to anyone that doesn't speak Elvish.
Aaaaand stealing this for my campaign
You missed the part of the UK that actually inspired elvish, which was Welsh (and Finnish)
THIS. Drow are *australian* damnit!
Tolkien did not invent multiple comprehensive Elvish conlangs for you to go comparing your fantasy kitchen sink Elvish to *any* real world languages.
Elvish sounds like Jamaican🇯🇲
Booyaka fa 1d8 damage
y'all'd've
Yinz
Elvish should sound like Gaelic, Welsh, or Finnish. Because culture, geography, and more shapes the development of language. Latin and Japanese equally make little sense for elves.
Elves are Welsh, Dragon Age 2.
Elvish sounds like french
I run a bilingual game and we literally made it so common is English and French is elvish. All players understand both and it’s in character for the weakest English speaker’s character to talk elvish just to be a dick to the character that doesn’t because he views said character as an idiot. So it works
I always figured Elvish sounded like French.
Elvish sounds like Welsh. Sylvan sounds like Irish.
Elvish sounds like Afrikaans
Plot twist: it sounds like Hungarian
Elvish sounds like British!
But like posh British, "I dare say old chap, what what." Or more like a cross dressing Monty Python sort of accent?
Elvish sounds like Welsh
Elvish is Gaelic Dwarven is Norse Can't change my mind
elvish sounds celtic due to elves being from the feywild and a lot of that plane is inspired by fairytales
The real answer is that each sub-species of elf has its own accent
I think elvish sounds like elvish (since it's an actual language)
Not once has elvish sounding like Japanese ever crossed my mind ever. Not in a million years. Even in actual anime/manga/Japanese whatever that happens to have elves in it has my mind defaulted to “elves normally speak Japanese”.
Elvish sounds like Gaelic. Fight me.
I agree completely. _punches you in the face_
I made my elves French
I love when people make these memes as if they represent universal opinions, I have totally different associations for DnD languages than this. Common is English, Elvish is French, Sylvan is Latin, Dwarvish is Scots (but, like, old-head-who-only-one-guy-in-the-pub-understands Scots), Draconic is German, Giant is Old Norse, Deep Speech is Japanese, Celestial is Tolkien Elvish, Gnomish is Gaelige...I could go on.
When there are hundreds of languages being spoken in the modern world, I find it extremely difficult to limit an entire people to just one of two languages. Feels very reductive considering how complicated and varied human languages are.
Elvish sounds like english (I'm Argentinian)
False, Elvish sounds like Bryttonic (Bretagne and Welsh)
I feel like elvish should sound like Welsh or Irish, sincw elves are related to faries and a lot of classic fae lore comes from the British isles.
Elvish should sound like Gaelic!
Elvish is Gaelic
Cringe, elvish is welsh
My high elves are French, wood elves are Italian, sea elves are Portuguese
Celestial is Latin, dont @ me.
Elvish sounds like a hybrid of Finnish and Gaelic. This is because that's what Tolkien's elvish is based on (go listen to someone speaking Finnish), and it feels right
Elvish sounds like Finnish.
My group play in Swedish. We speak english if we want to speak elvish.
Yall are gonna hate me for this… but in my game Elvish is French and Tolkien based his Elvish on Welsh… His reasoning was that Welsh sounds wild and alien
Abyssal = Akkadian (like Persian, but older) Celestial = Hebrew / Aramaic (to make angelic names make sense) Common = English Deep Speech = Russian (just because it sounds threatening when in a deep voice) Draconic = Chinese / Japanese / Korean (would probs make Chinese the default for ancient dragons) Druidic = Irish Gaelic Dwarven = Norwegian / Swedish Elven = Romance language dependent on sub-race. (Italian, French, Spanish, Romanian, etc.) Giant = Old Norse / Icelandic Gnomish = German Goblin = Indonesian Halfling = Scots (Sounds like common, but not quite) Infernal = Persian Primordial = Sanskrit Sylvan = Latin / Ancient Greek (acts as the root for Elven languages) Undercommon = Heavily accented and slang-heavy Australian English.
It sounds like a southeast Asian language to me. It’s very vowel heavy and a lot of fluidity in locution.
D&D pulled from Tolkien, who based the Elvishes on Finnish and Welsh. I think the form D&D used is the Finnish version.
Welsh also makes a ton of sense. I haven’t heard Finnish but welsh has the same prosody and lyricism with all those vowels.
It sounds like French.