More on the Sylphic language?

[KamiyaJace]

I was simply wondering if we'd see a more thorough list of the ancient Sylph language. I really enjoy it in Ramuh's theme song and would really like to see more of it and such. That being said, I'd really like to see the languages of the other beast tribes! If people can elaborate on that or talk more about it or make a english to ancient beastman thing, I'd be the happiest person.

[Enkidoh]

Ironically though, because of the Echo's side effect of making the player's character an omniglot, no matter what the beastman language, the player's character will always see a beastman talking in the adventurer's native tongue - perhaps a good thing, as it was stated that beastmen languages are meant to be almost unintelligible.

The sylphic language especially gave Minfilia much trouble in version 1.0 when a party of sylphs broke into the Waking Sands desperate for help and she couldn't understand a word they were saying (she ended up having to get the player to translate for her, much to her embarrassment).

Unfortunately, because of this, there is little shown or mentioned as to the exact structure of beastmen languages - we can get some clues as to their peculiarities, such as the weird pidgin speak goblins have, or the 'sssss' sound of the sahagin, or the sylphs tendency to use the term 'this one', 'helpful one' or 'those ones' instead of 'me', 'you' or 'them'. But the actual structure and grammar of beastmen languages is a complete mystery sadly.

[KamiyaJace]

Ah, you're right about that. I hadn't thought much about 1.0 when the Sylphs weren't exactly speaking common tongue. Though, still, as a big-ish linguist nerd, I'd really like to see at least some more examples of the languages, or perhaps a few translations, as I really enjoy what they did with the first four lines of Ramuh's theme.

Another reason--and I suppose it might be a bit selfish--is my character that I roleplay would absolutely love to research the languages and probably trip up trying to speak them all too, haha.

I hope that in the future there will perhaps be more translations and the like.

[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 ...

[Alice_89th]

Pherhaps looking at the lyric translations in different languages can help us a bit:

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)

Ulamenidatula oh (Voute cendrée, Seigneur de Lumière)
Telaomnidatulaei (Ton avènement apaise la nuit sombre)
Onaramuhda deme os (Que les hérétiques brûlent sur un bûcher rougeoyant)
Nola tulamatelaei (Foudroyés par la puissance aveuglante du Levin)

ウラ・メニダ　トゥラ・オ （森の古老　光の主）
テラ・オムニダ　トゥラ・エイ （降りたまえ　光の神）
オナ・ラムウダ　デメ・オス （雷神ラムウよ　守護と調停を）
ノラ・トゥラマ　テラ・エイ （厳正なる裁き降す　大いなる神)

Sadly there is no German translation. What I find interesting is that the French version has a lot less spaces then the English one. The Japanese spacing is different from both of them.

ウラ・メニダ　トゥラ・オ 
テラ・オムニダ　トゥラ・エイ 
オナ・ラムウダ　デメ・オス 
ノラ・トゥラマ　テラ・エイ 

Una・menida tula・oh
Tela・omnida tula・ei
Ona・ramuhda deme・os
Nola・tulama tela・ei

For the transcription I stuck with the spelling used in the English and French versions, mostly because the Japanese phonetic script the lyrics are written in is somewhat limited when it comes to depicting the pronunciation of foreign words. But we have an official transcript, so I went with that.

Now let's get back to the matter of the uses of spaces, and in this case, the punctuation mark " ・". For this some explanation of written Japanese is in order.

Normally there are no spaces between words in written Japanese, where the words end and start is pretty self-explanatory thanks to how the language is written. I can go more in-depth if someone is interested. But for now you'll have to assume that where words start and end is self evident. Wiki is also your friend for a quick overview.

Obviously this creates some problems when transcribing foreign languages (in our case the sylphic language) because it is no longer evident where things start and end. This is where this " ・" comes into play as a divider; to indicate a space in the original language. A common use is for foreign names "Tom Smith" becomes "トム・スミス" (tomu・sumisu).

Now lets take another look at the Japanese lyrics:

ウラ・メニダ　トゥラ・オ 
テラ・オムニダ　トゥラ・エイ 
オナ・ラムウダ　デメ・オス 
ノラ・トゥラマ　テラ・エイ 

Una・menida tula・oh
Tela・omnida tula・ei
Ona・ramuhda deme・os
Nola・tulama tela・ei

We've got both spaces and " ・", which is odd.
As a result, my guess is that the words linked by " ・" somehow belong together. Maybe they enhance each other in some way. But this is al speculation based on interpunction /shrug.




Now lets take a look at the Japanese translation:

森の古老　      光の主
降りたまえ　     光の神
雷神ラムウよ　   守護と調停を
厳正なる裁き降す　大いなる神

mori no korou       hikari no nushi
oritamae            hikari no kami
raijin ramuh yo     shugo to choutei o
gensei naru sabakikudasu    ooi naru kami


Old man of the forest    guardian of light
decend [imperative]      god of light
god of thunder ramuh     protection and conciliation [object]
giving impartial judgement    great god

Yes, that is a literal translation.
And to be quite honest, I am not sure how to make a correct, sensible translation of it. But if I have to make anything of it, it would be something close to this:

old man of the forest, guardian of light
descend god of light!
oh ramuh god of thunder, give [us] protection and conciliation
bring down your impartial judgement, great god

If someone can come up with a better translation, please post it!
I am staring myself blind on conventions and can't seem to rhyme certain lines with each other. Most notably the first and last lines seems to be more factual, while the middle two are not. Especially the last line makes more sense to me as "the great god that brings down impartial judgement", but that makes it hard to rhyme with the rest and aaarrrrgggggg.


Now looking at the three languages we get some very interesting contradictions, and it becomes very obvious that the French version is a translation of the English one:

Hoary Arbor, Lord of Light
Thine advent quelleth creeping night
The wicked burn, their pyres bright
Smote by Levin's blinding might

Voute cendrée, Seigneur de Lumière
Ton avènement apaise la nuit sombre
Que les hérétiques brûlent sur un bûcher rougeoyant
Foudroyés par la puissance aveuglante du Levin

mori no korou, hikari no nushi
oritamae, hikari no kami
raijin ramuh yo, shugo to choutei o
gensei naru sabakikudasu, ooi naru kami

• In the first line the English and French versions talk about an old or ancient forest, while the Japanese version specifically talks about an old man of the forest.
• In the second line the English and French versions talk about Ramuh his coming ending the night, or bringing light to it. In the Japanese version he is urged to descend.
• The third line is the most puzzling of all, the English and French versions talk about how the wicked burn, in the Japanese version pleads for protection and help.
• And the forth line in the English and French versions is a continuation of the third one, while the Japanese version talks about how Ramuh his judgement is impartial.

EDIT: word of god (ie: Ferne on the next page) states that all translations are based on the English one and that any differences are simply due to choices the translators made.

Of course I am comparing translations of translations and that is a very bad way to learn something about the original language (but an interesting thing to do on it's own).

[Saikou]

Occam's razor would seem to imply that either changes were made to the English translation to make it rhyme, or changes were made to the Japanese version for other stylistic reasons. That the French version and any probable German version are consistent with how original FFXI translations were from the English version before those regions were better staffed. It is also probable that the French translator worked closer with Ferne rather than his Japanese counterpart due to the fact that these European languages have broadly shared grammatical structure.

To put it another way... Japanese is Subject Object Verb. English is Subject Verb Object. French is Subject Verb Object. German is a bit more complicated in its word order, but I'll leave that for anyone curious to google.

[Clawtooth]

To put it another way... Japanese is Subject Object Verb. English is Subject Verb Object. French is Subject Verb Object. German is a bit more complicated in its word order, but I'll leave that for anyone curious to google.

Well ... German is largely SOV but has some V2 stuff.

As for the consistency of the translation, it's interesting that you bring up word order. The weird thing is that Syntax and poetry are a bit ... strange. As you say, the English and Japanese might have been trying to fit stylistic patterns. Unfortinately I don't know enough about German and French poetical structure to tell if the same has happened there.

I wonder if we could diagnose the word order in Sylphic ... it'd be a bit tricky ... the French translation makes it look like a polysynthetic language which would make it nearly impossible.

[Shake0615]

I think Clawtooth's inventory of the phonological system is about all we can do at this point without a larger sample. The translations in Japanese, English and French are so loose that they're basically useless in trying to understand any of OHS's morphemes (It's almost certainly agglutinative, which means each word consists of various parts that hold grammatical and semantic meaning, but as I said it's extremely unlikely that any of the modern language translations will serve as a Rosetta Stone so to speak).

[Eggnook24]

In Ogre voice:
"NEEEEEERRRRRRRRDDS!"

[Clawtooth]

In Ogre voice:
"NEEEEEERRRRRRRRDDS!"

Lol you're just jealous.

I think Clawtooth's inventory of the phonological system is about all we can do at this point without a larger sample. The translations in Japanese, English and French are so loose that they're basically useless in trying to understand any of OHS's morphemes (It's almost certainly agglutinative, which means each word consists of various parts that hold grammatical and semantic meaning, but as I said it's extremely unlikely that any of the modern language translations will serve as a Rosetta Stone so to speak).

I kinda agree on this tbh ... maybe Fernehawles will give us some insight onto the Sylph language at some point.

It's been really nice to see so many interested linguists in the community tho ^_^