The raymanian language

[Domnibus]

There aren't really ipa text to speech engines that actually sound good, and most are only for english, but the wikipedia pages for the sounds do have sound files.

[hoodlumsworld]

That's too bad, maybe it's not so easy when it comes to joining the different sounds together.

[Domnibus]

I now have made changes to the romanization system. It should now be easier to type on computers and on phones, and it also looks a bit better:

ǎ, ě, ǐ, and ǔ change to à (alt 183, alt 133), è (alt 212, alt 138), ì (alt 222, alt 141), and ù (alt 235, alt 151), using grave accents instead of carons.

Length is marked with a double vowel instead of a macron, so ē becomes ee, and ǔ̄ becomes ùù.

ts, tš, and dž become c, ç (alt 128, alt 135), and j.

ň becomes ng.

The words in the memrise course need to be changed, and maybe the script charts as well.

The next thing I plan to do is to give the letters of both scripts names and an alphabetical order, because before they were just ordered like the phoneme charts (the charts with the pronunciation).

[hoodlumsworld]

I'm - again - not very familiar with the IPA but from what I can read on Wikipedia the new romanization is not just easier to write but it also feels a lot more natural, with the letters actually corresponding more to the sounds.

[Domnibus]

Hello everyone! I have been inactive for a pretty long time now because school started again. Now it is autumn break for a week, so I decided to work on raymanian again. I have learnt a lot of new things about creating languages, so I decided to almost completely redo raymanian.
I already did the pronunciation and romanization today:

There are 20 consonants:
- /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/, /f/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /h/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /ɾ/, /w/ (romanized as p, b, t, d, k, g, f, v, s, z, h, m, n, ng, r, w) are the same as before. (See this post)
There are 4 new consonants, each with 2 ways to pronounce them:
- /l̥/ ~ /ɬ/ (romanized as lh) is similar to the ľ sound from before. /l̥/ is more like a whispered L sound, while /ɬ/ is pronounced tighter or harder. The difference is not that big, and both can be pronounced the same.
- /l/ ~ /ɮ/ (romanized as l): /l/ is pronounced like before. /ɮ/ is pronounced differently. It is a voiced version of /ɬ/, just like z is a voiced version of s, or d is a voiced version of t (see this video for an explanation of voicing). Here the difference is bigger than with /l̥/ or /ɬ/.
- /ç/ ~ /ʃ/ (romanized as c): /ç/ is pronounced like the "h" in "hue". /ʃ/ is pronounced like the "sh" in "shell".
- /j/ ~ /ʒ/ (romanized as j): /j/ is pronounced like the "y" in "yes". /ʒ/ is pronounced like the "s" in "vision".
The first version (the "soft" version) is used when the consonant is not in a consonant cluster or when the consonant is right after a vowel. The second version (the "hard" version) is used when the consonant is in a consonant cluster, but except for when it is right after a vowel.

There are 8 vowels:
- /i/ (romanized as i) is pronounced like the "ee" in "free".
- /y/ (romanized as y) is pronounced like the /i/, but with your lips rounded, like when pronouncing the "oo" in "boot". It sounds similar to the "oo" in american english "too".
- /ɯ/ (romanized as ï, alt 0207 and alt 139) is pronounced like the "oo" in "boot", but without your lips rounded, like when pronouncing the /i/.
- /u/ (romanized as u) is pronounced like the "oo" in "boot"
- /ɛ/ (romanized as e) is pronounced like the "e" in "help"
- /œ/ (romanized as ø, alt 0216 and alt 0248) is pronounced like the /ɛ/, but with your lips rounded. It sounds similar to the "i" in british english "bird".
- /ɑ/ (romanized as a) is pronounced like the "a" in "father".
- /ɔ/ (romanized as o) is pronounced like the "ough" in american english "thought"
Vowel length has been replaced with diphthongs, are a vowel gliding into another vowel. There are 6 diphthongs:
- /ɑi/ (ai) is pronounced like the "y" in "my".
- /ɛi/ (ei) is pronounced like the "ye" in "yes" if you say it backwards.
- /ɯi/ (ïi) is a /ɯ/ sound gliding into a /i/ sound. There is no equivalent in english.
- /yu/ (yu) is a /y/ sound gliding into a /u/ sound. It is pronounced roughly like the "ew" in "few".
- /œu/ (øu) is a /œ/ sound gliding into a /u/ sound. There is no equivalent in english.
- /ɔu/ (ou) is pronounced similar to the "ow" in american english "show".

The stress falls on the first syllable of the word.

In conclusion, there are 20 consonants: p, b, t, d, k, g, f, v, s, z, lh, l, c, j, h, m, n, ng, r, and w
8 vowels: i, y, ï, u, e, ø, a and o
And 6 diphthongs: ai, ei, ïi, yu, øu and ou

You can use this page to listen to the consonants, and this page to listen to the vowels.

The scripts will also get a new version.

[PluMGMK]

Starting over, eh? Did you want to add more symmetry to the system? Also, will the lexicon be similar, or are you going to redo that too? If it's similar, one could perhaps imagine them as different stages of the same language, given that the Rayman games probably take place over a long period of time…

Also, /ɯi/ and /yu/ remind me of the height-harmonic diphthongs of Old English!

[Domnibus]

I started over mainly because I wasn't really experienced when making the grammar, so most of the lexicon will be similar. The idea of different stages sounds interesting, but I decided to redo the language because the old version just isn't that good, so it's better not to use it as a different stage.

Anyway, raymanian now has alphabetical order and letter names. The scripts are mostly the same as before. They also got new adjusted names, the left one is the "dairi" script, and the right one is the "syksa" script.
In the syksa script, the first vowel of a diphthong is written in the consonant letter, and the second vowel is written under it.
The "no consonant" letter is not included in the alphabet, but is used to write the vowel letters.

The vowels under the consonants can make it look confusing to read, but that is just because I wrote it a bit too big.

[hoodlumsworld]

Nice! Are those real raymanian words you used as examples?

[Domnibus]

Those words are actually just the letter names, the new version of raymanian doesn't have vocabulary yet.

[hoodlumsworld]

I get it. Will it be consistent with the Rayman 2 dialogues?

[Domnibus]

The voice lines in rayman 2 are repeated, so it won't be possible to make a language out of it. In rayman revolution each line also has its own voice line, so maybe they could be used for inspiration.

[hoodlumsworld]

Not possible unless we create a language with a lot of homophones... maybe.

[Domnibus]

Hello everyone! It has been a while since I last posted something here. I have been working on the language, and the grammar is now almost complete. The only change that should be mentioned is that I finally decided how to write /ɯ/. It used to be ï, but that doesn't look good in the diphthong ïi. Now it is ê and êi.

In the past I made posts about updates to the pronunciation and the script(s), and since I started over, it must have been pretty messy to follow everything. I have now started making a document in google docs with the pronunciation, scripts, grammar, and other things explained. I will share the link once the section about the scripts is finished.

I am also thinking of making dialects. It would not be realistic if an entire planet with different species speaks a language in exactly the same way. The most differences will probably be in pronunciation, but there will also be some in grammar and vocabulary. I am not sure about what dialects there should be, so what do you think they should be?

[hoodlumsworld]

I think an easy solution is to attribute dialects to races/species, but would it not make more sense to have them based on the different regions of the Glade?

[PluMGMK]

What about the way Globox speaks in Rayman 2? Is that a dialect or just ungrammatical?

[Domnibus]

A mix between regions and species is probably the best way. For example, the sylkins (the teensie tribe that lives in the forests) might have a teensie dialect that has some influence from the dialect of the livingstones.
We can also make a dialect tree like this one (but bigger, because this one is a bit small).

Globox probably speaks a dialect, but his grammar might not be that good anyway.

[Hunchman801]

Mutual intelligibility is an important point here as they all seem to understand each other.

[KingEngine]

Hello, i really like your work!

I am currently building a Rayman M "Fairy Council"- Race Parkour in 3D.
I am looking forward to create some Runic stone - Assets i can use more often.

I recently stumbled across this very nice post. I want to create some runic stone- textures with this language, and wanted to ask you
if i could use the Raymanian Language on those runic stones, in words like "Peace" "Order" "Happiness" in the Fairy Council.

Also what would we great: A Raymanian.font file so we can write our own words with it!

Really nice work.

[Domnibus]

Thank you There is no real font yet, but I've mostly finished modelling the letters in blender in the style of the inscriptions in the games. Here are a few of such words (from top to bottom):
1 ckomso (happiness)
2 nandru (peace)
3 glimas (order)
4 gêso (friendship)
5 mêmif (hope)
6 taing (heart)
7 dairi (an adjective meaning light or good)
8 psenga (magic)

the script in the first image was inspired by the inscriptions in mr. Dark's dare and the desert of the knaaren, and the second one by inscriptions in the sanctuaries in rayman 2. It doesn't matter which one you use, maybe even both.

[hoodlumsworld]

Is the second one meant to be more ancient?