#silamvog

[rhythmroute]

your foes assemble

[brainshock-alpha]

ok here’s the dealio. there are some assumptions i’m not gonna make about the language situation of the hylics world wrt things like uhhh how many languages are in use, how many people speak a given language and where they are, etc. we’ve seen like two settlements in the games so far. but it’s reasonable to assume that the people of both settlements (i.e. the h1 region and the h2 region) speak the same language, or at least highly mutually intelligible varieties. therefore (and i hate to do this because most of my data will come from h1, but there aren’t any canon place names in h1, so) i will call the variety of language spoken by the characters of h1 and h2 the new muldul dialect of an unnamed language in the current hylics world. (i’ll, uh, workshop that later.)

more thoughts and data set (very long) follow

so i’m gonna be pulling from the randomly-generated city/mountain names of h1 as well as the made-up non-preexisting words in h2. i got the first set with the help of my good friend tenz; the second set was just, me looking at the enemy names and dialogue of h2 and writing down all the wacky words i could find. to show you exactly what it is i’ll be working with, here are both sets

h1 place names, first part

ban

bieg

caied

cath

dedu

druss

duurg

ela

ether

garm

garw

grule

halc

hoc

ireth

ish

jabs

mang

menth

morn

mortuu

mu

oun

ozul

pong

pozew

pren

qer

rel

rylj

shub

snat

tor

tral

tyi

voze

vus

yekh

yii

h1 place names, middle part (optional)

apelu

ble

elil

fil

gar

gra

har

loon

mul

zin

h1 place names, last part

beelek

blaec

bor

clarnaikh

eao

eeth

eltein

enurpon

footh

frit

imith

inex

ire

-irmath (e.g. Pren-Irmath)

iur

lian

maph

or

orma

pothex

poyley

roog

sheth

smuln

spux

theni

thorn (actually not in the pool of place name parts, BUT attested in dialogue, e.g. “Dread Knights of Yiithorn”)

urei

vuzh

wath

yuly

h2 names

silamvog

moodbleen

bomelaug

sauoplit

viewax(?)

odozeir

carsoro

muldul

amulom

mocetul

foglast

disthlarn(?)

blerol

smuldunde

larthulvool

trellebozur

i really don’t want to account for <viewax> and <disthlarn>; for the former i can’t shake the association with a “view” + “wax” portmanteau, and for the latter i’m not happy about that consonant cluster in the middle. i’ll still try somewhat to make them work, but if i can’t then i think i can figure out excuses to exclude them from the data set.

speaking of exclusions, you might be asking, “hey! where’s [character name] on these lists?” well here’s the rundown

<pongorma> and <dedusmuln> are actually comprised of parts from the h1 place name generator

<wayne> is a real-ass name, of germanic origin, and thus ineligible

similarly, <gibbulus> and <dracula> are latinate as hell

i think <fonthiltrelpine> is also... latinate.......??? i guess i should check sometime

<cineast> is a real word, believe it or not! it means cinephile. what does this have to do with the enemy itself? hell if i know

i’m on the fence about <ectrolan>... afaik it’s not a word in any language itself, but ectro- seems to come from ancient greek? so i’m leaning towards no

i think <decres> will also be excluded, since it’s probably derived from “crescent” or something? and it’s arguably not a canon name?

why exclude words of real origin? ideally i will make a language unrelated to (as in, did not descend from) any current human language; i think that just makes sense. whether you hc that the hylics world is a distant-future earth or a place entirely removed from our universe, it’s clear there is a gulf between our world and the hylics world.

how does it make sense to mix nmd names and real-world names in the game? well, it kinda doesn’t. so play along with me and call it a localizer’s prerogative: the characters of hylics are implicitly speaking in nmd, but the video games provide almost all text “translated” into english* for the benefit of the audience.

(*do the hylics games have official translations into other languages? they don’t, right? ah, but that would be neat...)

anyway. here are my current goals with the nmd conlang. i’d like to create a phonology for nmd, providing a chart of phonemes as well as some info on phonotactics, allophony, and other things, based on the canon data sets. and i’d like to... well, That’s Basically It ! everything beyond that will be firmly in the realm of speculation and headcanons, so whether i do fucking anything with syntax vocabulary etc will be highly dependent on if i feel like making that stuff out of whole cloth. i mean, it’s not out of the question! a lot of interesting cultural features reveal themselves through those things, so maybe it’ll be fun to imagine what the funney clay people’s societies are like. but let’s start with the sound system and see what happens from there

how’s my conlanging cred? honestly, pretty shit! i’ve never made a conlang before, i’m not super interested in conlangs in general, and i only have a working knowledge of linguistics overall. so this project defs isn’t something to take seriously, yeah? let’s just have fun thinking about one way (out of infinite possibilities!) the hylics characters could talk in-universe :)