From: Paul Reilly (paul@phyast.pitt.edu)
Date: Tue 02 Nov 1993 - 21:56:56 EET
Paul Reilly here.
The America Online people mention written languages and say:
> Darktongue - lumps, bumps, rough spots.
In our campaign an important Uz artform is 'sound sculpture'. This is made by chewing or otherwise inscribing pits and rough spots in some object with a smooth surface. This can get very elaborate and involve several materials. When Darksensed the sculpture evokes a Darksense image that is not apparent to the eyes of a human beholder (compare looking at a hologram to shining a laser on it and viewing it.) Written Darktongue incorporates this artform along with denotative symbols, pictures 'read' with the fingers or tongue (or even eyes), evocative sounds produced by running a stick or claw over the inscribed Darktongue etc. Thus it is quite easy for Trolls to learn to read Darktongue but the work of many years to learn to write it properly. Proper 'high' Darktongue is an artform in itself, with a cultural place perhaps similar to calligraphy in China (among civilized tribes.) Value Trollkin (enlo) and Argari merchants learn a debased form of the denotative script that can be chewed into record-sticks; it is largely concerned with numbers along with mnemonic symbols and is similar in spirit to knot-writing (Andean) or Ogham.
Darktongue is agglutinative, intuitive, and has many onomatopaeic words - these latter can be based on the characteristic echo produced by an object as well as sounds made by something. Thus the 'word' for distances greater than a few tens of meters consists of two clicks that have a time in between them indicating the echo time of a distant object. The 'word' for a short distance is a whistle whose pitch is inversely proportional to the size of the object. 'Hard' is a click indicating a hard echo and 'soft' is a palatized click indicating a 'fuzzy' echo. Etc.
That Darktongue is agglutinative can be seen in the small samples we have seen.
Repetition indicates emphasis. Thus 'uzuz' - Mistress Race Troll, or Hombombobom the Great Drummer. In our campaign 'ju' indicates mana and 'juju' great magic. Pavic slang has borrowed this with their term `juice` for magical power (actually 'jhur', a popular drink) and 'juicy', describing a magical person or item. Many human languages include words of Darktongue origin.
Darktongue includes many specialized words for eating and digestion, such as 'yoat' - to swallow whole in the manner of a snake. "The uzko _yoated_ the rubble runner."
> Kralori - ideograms
THis seems inevitable.
Mostali - Printed, looks a lot like Braille. Maybe punched?
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