derith
Novitiate
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
Posts: 13
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Post by derith on Sept 23, 2006 10:24:34 GMT -6
I there any way to pronounce this in english? "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"
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Post by Yevathik on Sept 29, 2006 23:38:49 GMT -6
Yes. "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." ;D
Just kidding. The pronounciation of the phrase normally? I'm not entirely sure.
I think it's something like "Fingloo mloonaf cthulhu rlyeh wahnal......"
Fhtagn is the only one I have real trouble with. There aren't enough vowels to easily carry it over to English.
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Post by JJ Burke on Sept 30, 2006 12:38:41 GMT -6
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Post by youma on Dec 9, 2006 11:40:49 GMT -6
You know one idea that gives me?
Ok that's a purely geeky one, but whatever.
Making up a R'lyehian language, that people can actually speak. As nerdy trekkies can learn Klingon, and Tolkien fans have en elfin language, and internationnalists have Esperanto.
Granted, it wouldn't be particularly useful, but whatever, who ever said art had to justify itself?
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Post by stretloth on Dec 13, 2006 12:10:32 GMT -6
on the movie ' DAGON ' there is a complete phonetic-pronunciation of this phrase which seems pretty accurate to me
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Post by stretloth on Dec 15, 2006 7:54:35 GMT -6
actually, im not sure if there is a right or wrong way to say it since its not a human language
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Post by ruan7321 on Feb 8, 2007 1:16:58 GMT -6
You can get The Call of Cthulhu audio book here. www.greylodge.org/gpc/?p=106This could give you a better idea of how to pronounce it. Side 1 (33:24 - 33:39)
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Post by Crow of Coal on Feb 8, 2007 21:04:24 GMT -6
You know, that idea for a whole language was pretty cool... Maybe we could collaborate on something like that? Perhaps assign different people different letters and make a dictionary.
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Post by youma on Feb 11, 2007 8:48:29 GMT -6
Don't forget a whole alien syntax and grammar! ;D I'd imagine plenty of particule-words, with prefixes and suffixes, and adjectives that can be turned into verbs and so on... plurals not made by just adding a S to the words, and odd verb tenses. Therefore less actual vocabulary, but more complexity once the basics are learned. And the whole all very guggutal and full of consonnants
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Post by Crow of Coal on Feb 12, 2007 19:09:04 GMT -6
Well, you certainly seem to have taken some time to reflect on the language. If we're going to organize something, I've got dibs on writing letters to English words that begin with C. No synonyms! Only ONE word for "great"- Innovative, ingenius, brilliant, ground-breaking, awesome, and so on and so forth will not be a part of the 'great' speech of the gods!
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Post by youma on Feb 13, 2007 18:24:01 GMT -6
Well I know a bit about artificial languages, and how they typically work, that's why I already had something in mind. Half of them are fan-creation, not necessarily logical, and generally hard to learn, and the other half are attempts at creating an universal exchange language, and therefore designed to be as easy to learn as possible. This, I think, should combine a bit of both: being fan work, and based on a Lovecraftian theme, it should be alien and complex, but to be of any use it should also be easy enough so some people will take the time to learn to use it. The sounds not seemingly designed to accomodate a human throat is important, and it should come with its own alphabet. Everything that it will take to sound eldritch.
I agree that there should not be useless synonyms, and in fact when I'm thinking of simplifying using prefixes and everything like that, I can give an example with Esperanto. Esperanto is meant to be easy, so after you know the basics, learning one word means knowing ten.
Example: In Esperanto, you learn the root "Grand/" (tall), then, you know: Granda: tall (adj) Malgranda: short Pligranda: taller Plejgranda: tallest Plejmalgranda: shortest Grandi : to be tall Grandeco: height Grandighi: to become tall Pligrandighi: to become taller Plimalgrandighinta: that has become shorter (adj) Plimalgrandighonto: one that will become shorter (noun) Grandigi: To make taller Grandulo: Tall person Grandularo: all the tall persons as a whole Grandularano: One of all the tall persons as a whole Grandighema: that tends to become tall Grandighemeco: the tendancy to become tall And that goes on and on, and as you see combining affixes with the same very common root can give a whole lot of words, including some that don't exist in English, and even some that make no sense (with the same root for example: grandero = component of tall = wtf) I just wrote the first couple of words I could think of by deriving this one root, there are other possibilities. That principle allows great flexibility for a minimal learning load. For a R'lyehan language, I'd say numerous, stranger affixes, and dumping the Latin base since it's way too familiar, plus some twisted rules here and there just for people to stumble upon and say "Woa, what were they thinking?"
And another thing: You know what? I think some publishers like Chaosium might totally publish a R'lyehan grammar and dictionnary like that. Why, we could get in contact on MSN or something, work on it together (two brains always better than one) and make plenty of gold! What do you think of it?
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Post by Crow of Coal on Feb 13, 2007 19:43:06 GMT -6
Ingen- Wait, I mean 'great'. I'm all up for it!
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Post by Yevathik on Feb 13, 2007 21:11:37 GMT -6
Well, you certainly seem to have taken some time to reflect on the language. If we're going to organize something, I've got dibs on writing letters to English words that begin with C. No synonyms! Only ONE word for "great"- Innovative, ingenius, brilliant, ground-breaking, awesome, and so on and so forth will not be a part of the 'great' speech of the gods! What? Then it will always be the 'great' _______. That'd be kind of lame. Why can't we have any other adjectives besides 'great'? At a certain point, you'd have people with no synonymous adverbs either, "That was greatly.....great....."
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Post by Crow of Coal on Feb 14, 2007 21:54:46 GMT -6
Do the gods have need of taste? Of course, there are words that have different meaning then great which could be used. Dread _____, for instance.
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Post by youma on Feb 16, 2007 10:13:11 GMT -6
Absolutely. To use my Esperanto example again, you don't, in fact, have many words to say "great", yet, you do. The most literal word would literally mean awesome: Mirinda (mir/=Awe -ind/=worthy -a=adjective) Then, according to context, you can have bonega (very good), which can be combined with the verb: Tiu kuko bongustegas (this cake tastes-very-good) or combine the ind/ suffix with other words: shatinda = worthy of appreciation, aminda = worthy of love, kultinda = worthy of worship, etc. But it's all about context, you can't literally translate an artificial language into a natural language or back, saying the same thing in two different languages often gives entirely different sentences. If we do desing a new language, it's not going to be some sort of cryptical empoverished English.
Crow: I'll PM you my e-mail. I won't post it because the spambots from the nether world could take it, nasty little entities!
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Post by youma on Mar 16, 2007 18:16:19 GMT -6
Hey Crow! I just got an answer from Chaosium, they're interested in publishing this project, if we can elaborate it well. Are you still interested? I haven't got feedback from you. I'm sorry I didn't reply directly to your e-mail, my inbox was lost with all the data in it... Anyway... we could be STARS ;p
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Post by Crow of Coal on Mar 17, 2007 23:24:43 GMT -6
*Squeels* Yes! Great Cthulhu, YES!!!
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Post by Crow of Coal on Mar 17, 2007 23:28:59 GMT -6
*A'hem* I had replied some time ago, but I can resend the email. I'll do that. *Later* Is your inbox still lost? My email acted like it didn't send it to you when I just resent it.
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Post by Latheeb on Mar 24, 2007 17:04:26 GMT -6
I was taught to pronounce it like "Fin-gloo-ee Mah-Glah-win-off-in Ka-thoo-l-hoo Rill-ee-ah w-gah-hin-ogle f-h-tagn" so that is the way i do it except for the fact that there aren't enough letters in the english language to right down all the sounds. I pronounce it using the space between the cheeks and the teeth... along with the tongue.... and a big more henogoul sounding noise type thing.... but hey it sounds good to me.
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Madguten
Moderator
CoC forum moderator
Woe, to he who hears the howling
Posts: 2,785
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Post by Madguten on Mar 24, 2007 18:39:18 GMT -6
Sounds pretty much like the way i pronounce it too. Personally i think my danish dialect makes it easier to pronounce such thigs, also sumerian. But who knows. Dialects are tricky things.
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Post by youma on Mar 25, 2007 11:26:29 GMT -6
I believe you. There's only the W in mglw'nafh that I have trouble with, the rest is easy enough, and I'll say that's also because of my native language. Though Québécois is practically French, it allows further use of contractions, and it's absolutely possible to combine several words into one consonnant-ridden syllable. While Lovecraft picked unusual sounds, he still picked them in a pronouncable way: L and N and are useable as vowels (as well as some others)
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Post by Latheeb on Mar 25, 2007 16:27:47 GMT -6
I also like to say "Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh" quite fast and pause shortly before saying the name of Great Cthulhu, and then continue getting progressively slower. And as far as pronunciation goes... practice makes perfect.
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Post by Timotheus Prophet of Darkness on Apr 11, 2007 12:25:52 GMT -6
You know, that idea for a whole language was pretty cool... Maybe we could collaborate on something like that? Perhaps assign different people different letters and make a dictionary. I like that ideal ;D
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