More on the Sylphic language?

[Clawtooth]

Hmm. I'm a linguist-in-training (2nd year university student), so while I won't do anything exhaustive, I'll give a quick analysis of stuff I see in the part of the language we have so far:

Ula menida tula oh (Hoary Arbor, Lord of Light)
Tela omnida tula ei (Thine advent quelleth creeping night)
Ona ramuhda deme os (The wicked burn, their pyres bright)
Nola tulama tela ei (Smote by Levin's blinding might)

Now, in linguistic analysis, unfortunately there's only so much you can do with poetry. Poetry follows different rules for syntax (word order) than regular speech or prose, so any generalisations I made about Old High Sylphic (OHS) would be a bit tenuous.

Phonologically speaking, the language has some interesting structures. First, let me do a quick phonological transcription of the lyrics:

ˈula ˈmenida ˈtula oʊ
ˈtela ˈɔmnida ˈtula eɪ
ˈoʊna ˈɹamuːda demeɪ oʊs
ˈnoʊla ˈtulama ˈtela eɪ

The inventory of consonants and vowels in OHS is pretty restricted from this sample: There are 8 vowels which fit into a system like so (sorry for kinda crappy vowel table:

i u
ɪ ʊ
e o
[ɜ] ɔ
a

I'm adding in the [ɜ] vowel (it's not found in the transcript) because of the assumption that across languages, vowel systems tend to be symmetrical. Of course, there are some limitations to this: the [-ATR] vowels /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ do not occur on their own - only in diphthongs. The same is true of the /o/ vowel, though that may just be due to poverty of sample.

As far as consonants go, there is again not very much. However, here is the inventory as we know it:

Stops: t/d
Fricatives: s
Approximants: ɹ/l
Nasals: m/n

This is a very small system of consonants, though it is not untenable. There are probably more that we haven't seen. Alternatively, it could just be that this is all there is for an interesting reason. The sylphs are pretty small creatures, and so they might not have the articulatory apperatus that the player races have. Thus, it might be the case that they only have Bilabial and alveolar sounds because they simply don't have much else in the vocal tract. Still though, in that case, I'd expect to see some interdental sounds ... unless of course they don't have teeth ... need more stuff on sylph vocal biology ...

As far as syllable structure goes, it is overwhelmingly CV (which is unsurprising given that Japanese is also CV overwhelmingly). V syllables are permitted, as are Codas on syllables, though they appear to be rare, only /s/ and /m/ appear word finally in this sample. Interestingly enough from the vowel end of things, it appears that non-low vowels are diphthongised word finally. E.g. /eɪ/ and /oʊ/.

Stress-wise, obviously music kinda makes this difficult. Though based on patterns in the music, it appears that OHS is very strongly word initial stressed, regardless of syllable weight.

That's about all I have phonologically, which is about all I have in general. Things like glosses are a bit difficult to make ... especially with a limited sample like this. I hope this is interesting and not boring ... it's a bit jargony without knowing about Linguistics and stuff.

One interesting question I have is: This language is called Old High Sylphic. This would imply that there is an Old Low Sylphic - like we have Old High German and Old Low German in our world. An interesting thing to ponder. Were it not for the in-game explanation about the touched vs little solace sylphs colours, I would've been tempted to say that Little Solace spoke Low Sylphic and the Sylphlands spoke High Sylphic ... but because of the fact that that change was so recent and stuff it's kinda untenable. Oh well.

Anyway, sorry if this is a bit boring or interesting ...