Thursday, July 3

nah - enemies

User Kranah in my previous entry's comments pointed out something I hadn't noticed (thanks to him for that). It's the two expressions Shindu fallah nah ('our enemies are breaking through) and [Darnassian]Tor ilisar'thera'nal! (let our enemies beware!). As noticable, 'enemies' are found in both expressions. The only similarity in them are nah and [Darnassian]nal, which, I assume, means 'enemies'. Probably by removing the last letter, you'd get a singular, but I am unsure of that, as it would be same as my suggested translation for 'way' a few entries ago.

nah
- enemies

5 comments:

UNBROKEN said...

Hi, I'm a Chinese WOW player and I really like your blog about the Thalassian language. I cannot see what those NPCs say or yell because of Chinese edition.

nah--enemies, I agree with your assumption, I saw something similar on the WOW communitysite(the encyclopedia).

hope you can find more interesting stuff about the WOW language, it's great!

doqunbop said...

你好!

It's cool to see Chinese people playing WoW too :) I have a Chinese friend, who's using a Chinese WoW client to play on the private server that I play on... and the NPCs use Thalassian too, though not in scripts, but in speech. Also, it's mostly the WoW lore through quests and some NPCs (usually bosses) that yell these Thalassian phrases... just FYI ;)

Best regards,
doqunbop

UNBROKEN said...

It's great to see your reply, thank you!
In China there are also lots of people playing WOW on a private server, bur the fact is those servers are so lagging(am I using the right word?) that sometimes it's harder than playing on the U.S servers through proxy!:)
By the way, do you still play WOW now? The articles about Thalassian seem to be a long time ago.Hope to see more stuff!
Oh, and ,I wonder if this blog has something that I can leave a message?It's not very convenient that I talk to you everytime by leving a comment on a particular article,I guess. :)

Al diel shala.

doqunbop said...

I do still play WoW. It's just that I haven't had much free time to put into the language research, and that there's still only very few sources where to seek for information.
I have only this blog here, but feel free to PM me or send me a mail (I'll update my info and include my email there)!

Best regards,
doqunbop

Manuel Hergea said...

"Enemy" doesn't have to have a plural form in all lenguages, we have to remember the uncountable nouns, such as "furniture" or "water". "Nah" could mean "the totality of our enemies", so it doesn't need a plural form.

About plural forms of countable nouns, maybe all words ending by vowel, maybe all words, add an "i" to take their plural form, not only words ending by "ore". I cannot say i am 100% sure of this, but it is very probable.

Languages use to make "groups" of words to make their plural form by looking at their final sounds, not by looking at their suffixes.
In spanish, my mother tongue, though the word has a suffix which indicates person (-dor, like -er in english (fisher) or -ore in thalassian), the rules to make plural forms never change: word ended by vowel: +s; word ended by consotant: +es.

When I saw thalassian for my first time, I noticed that it sounds very similar to quenya, in which words finished by consonant take their plural form by adding an "i". Maybe the creators of thalassian knew something about quenya, they thought it sounded very "high elf" and took it as source of inspiration, making the "i" be the prural form of all nouns.