The raymanian language

[Domnibus]

Not necessarily. The scripts are related to eachother (which you can see in the shapes of the letters, for example the k and the p), so maybe one was derived from the other. If that is the case, it would actually be more likely that the second one was derived from the first one, but who knows...

[hoodlumsworld]

I see! I asked because I thought the templates were the oldest.

[Domnibus]

Hello everyone! It has been a while again, but i have now finished the parts of the document about the pronunciation and the scripts. I am still working on the grammar section, and that will take some time to complete.
Here is the link to the document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17U0 ... sp=sharing. I haven't worked with google docs or shared a document like this before, so I hope it works.
In the future I will probably add links to wikipedia pages for some words, so I don't have to go in-depth to explain them.

Right now I have about 200 words in a list in the spreadsheet that I use, so I am looking for a way to make an online dictionary, where I can also write about a word's pronunciations and usages in other dialects once I start making those. Do you have any ideas where I can do this? (perhaps just in another shared spreadsheet or document.)

About the dialects, this is an idea I had:
If we make a dialect tree, we could make three main groups of dialects: divine (dialects of Polokus, non-tribal teensies, Rayman, fairies...), earthly (globoxes, tribal teensies, other side characters and species), and nightmarish (nightmares of Polokus, most enemies). There are still some problems with this, because some characters are hard to categorise, and not all enemies are nightmares of Polokus, so it would be weird if all enemies spoke similar dialects.
It gets more difficult when we get to more specific dialects. We don't know much about the geography of Rayman's world, so it is difficult to make dialects based on location. The best way is probably to divide the dialects by species, and then further by making dialects of species that live in the same place influence each other. For example, there could be a dialect for the teensies. Non-tribal teensies could have a dialect influenced by other "divine" dialects, while teensies living in the forest could have a dialect influenced by dialects of other species living in the forest.
I am also still thinking about whether the kind of raymanian that I made until now will be Rayman's dialect or a "standard" raymanian dialect.

[hoodlumsworld]

Which one is standard? The Teensies'?

[Domnibus]

The "standard" dialect would probably be a neutral, mixed dialect resembling all other dialects. The current version is pretty neutral if you compare it to real-world languages, so it could be such a standard form.

[Elite Piranha]

I wonder if Jano's language is so corrupt that is considered taboo for earthly beings to speak or write like him.

[PluMGMK]

When I first played I thought the General spoke a bit like him… But then he's not earthly…

[Domnibus]

Yeah that is one those difficult things... maybe there are just some dialects that don't belong to any of those three categories.

Anyway, I tried experimenting with a simple calligraphy pen. It is not the most neatly written text, but I got to test out a more curly style on the dairi script, and I liked it a lot. I wrote three simple words:
Fipi (hello)
Nanu (hi/bye)
Lekteis (welcome)

[PluMGMK]

Very nice-looking!

I may have asked before… Is it always written left-to-right, or can it vary?

[Domnibus]

Thank you!
It is always written left-to-right.

[Elite Piranha]

They look great!

[Domnibus]

hi everyone, I'm just here to let you know that the project isn't dead. I kind of didn't really do anything for it for some time, but now I'm planning on picking it up again as far as I can (because I also have to do more things for school now).

I've started working on an actual font for the dairi script. I'm still a beginner at typography and I want to make it look good, so it might take a while to finish it (or at least the first version). The letters are mapped to the letters of the latin script, so we'll be able to actually type in the script.

I'm not working on the grammar document at the moment, instead I'm making a dictionary in a spreadsheet with a search function and giving the words a more in-depth definition than just a corresponding English word.

I also want to give the language more "historical depth" by including more remnants of older language and making them contrast with newer elements. For example, older compound words would have been just two separate words with one in the genitive (such as "taing dajeic", the heart of the world), while newer compunds are two words put together into a new word (such as "gouru-kwai", robot pirate). (I'm not sure if I will make "old raymanian" a whole language/dialect or just some characteristics that I need when making dialects and this "historical depth")
like this "historical depth", I'm looking for other things to make raymanian more into art than just a language, but I haven't yet figured out what a "conlang as art" might look like.

[PluMGMK]

Good to hear from you again! I like the sound of this historical depth very much, looking forward to seeing more!

[Domnibus]

A little update:

I've finished the basic shapes for the letters of the dairi script font (image below), which still need to be improved a lot. All sounds are mapped to the latin letters that they're otherwise written with, except for ng, lh, ø, and ê, which are mapped to q, x, O, and E, respectively.

I've started working on the dialects a little bit. My high school final project (I don't know what this is called in English) will be about how to make a conlang with a "realistic" sounding accent, with intonation, rhythm, specific pronunciation of consonants and vowels, etc (or perhaps just about "how to make a conlang with a more in-depth phonology than the average conlang", I haven't made a specific plan for the project yet), so hopefully I'll be able to make realistic sounding dialects in the end.

[Hunchman801]

Nice to see more progress on this: I hope this gets reused in other projects such as fan games as you develop it further.

[DaveRattlehead]

This reminds me a lot of a game I played last month in which written and "spoken" language (i.e. sounds) were related, and part of the "fun" of the game was that it blew your mind the moment you realize it's like that

The fact that it's gibberish doesn't help at all and makes everything more complicated when it comes to establishing a criterion, but hey, in the end someone has to do that job, right?

[Greengoop]

I really love this visualisation of the Raymanian language! I was wondering if this is based on any pre-existing scripts