Stormlight Archive Translation Guide

[Harakeke]

2 hours ago, jofwu said:

@Harakeke, is it possible that there are any letter's missing Or has Peter confirmed that we have the full "alphabet" figured out?

The "kk" gutteral stop is a feature of eastern (Azish) languages. There's no evidence I can think of that the sound exists in Vorin languages. They would render it awkwardly in women's script (like we do with English) and probably pronounce it wrong.

I believe he's confirmed that the Women's Script alphabet is correct for all the letters that we've seen so far, and also that X would be written as KS.

Edit: And as soon as I say that, I realize that I'm the one who's somehow mixed up L and R somewhere along the way!  Just goes to show you - don't always trust secondary sources, especially if you make them yourself! I'm gonna have to redo the keys... Any suggestions for improvements to the Women's Script guide as long as I'm at it?

2 hours ago, jofwu said:

The "kk" gutteral stop is a feature of eastern (Azish) languages. There's no evidence I can think of that the sound exists in Vorin languages. They would render it awkwardly in women's script (like we do with English) and probably pronounce it wrong.

There's even some awkwardness between different languages within the Vorin family. For instance, Shallan (a native Veden speaker) picks up Alethi easily but struggles a bit with the pronunciation of Thaylen.

Edited May 4, 2017 by Harakeke

[Harakeke]

Temporary image dump until I get a chance to fix the first post:

[Jofwu]

I noticed "dance" in the "see spren dance" practice is spelled DANSE. Is that final E correct? I mean, as Pagerunner pointed out, it's technically a bit of a hack to write in one language with a script intended for another. But my philosophy would be to focus on spelling English words as they sound rather than replacing letters one to one. So "dance" would be DANS. But perhaps I'm the only one who thinks this way? Or perhaps the official examples we have of women's script English work the way you have it there?

[Pagerunner]

34 minutes ago, jofwu said:

I noticed "dance" in the "see spren dance" practice is spelled DANSE. Is that final E correct? I mean, as Pagerunner pointed out, it's technically a bit of a hack to write in one language with a script intended for another. But my philosophy would be to focus on spelling English words as they sound rather than replacing letters one to one. So "dance" would be DANS. But perhaps I'm the only one who thinks this way? Or perhaps the official examples we have of women's script English work the way you have it there?

In the column on the right, look at "Once." It does look like it's letters, one-to-one, with C being either S or K depending on how it is pronounced.

[Jofwu]

25 minutes ago, Pagerunner said:

In the column on the right, look at "Once." It does look like it's letters, one-to-one, with C being either S or K depending on how it is pronounced.

Yep, definitely is. "Knife" and "cause" as well. "Attackers" has two T-symbols. Thanks for the response.

[Harakeke]

Personally, I prefer to use straight transliteration by letter like in the samples of Navani's writing, but we also have an example of phonetic transliteration from Jasnah:
 

Quote

 

Thu Statmint That Intregs Me Thou Is That Uv Keng Nohudan hch implis

Urithiru Kod Be Rechd If [__ __] [uv___ Md__] Sites If [_____ __] [Thaag]

War Pasibli Evadins Uv Thu Rods [__________] Be In Plas Umung Thu

Kengdums Uf Toda I Lav Sens Vitod [Th_________u] [s______] and Faond

Wut I Belev To Be Gatwas Ther But Thu [____ba] [_dgr] [A____] m

Uns An Hao To Work Them Is Likle To Dangerus To Aktuvat Them On Thu

Senter Of a Populatd Site As I [Ag_________du] Pland With Mi Unkl

I Hop To Find Them En Unpapulatid [_________]

 

 

[Jofwu]

24 minutes ago, Harakeke said:

example of phonetic transliteration from Jasnah:

Ah! Yes, I could have sworn it was supposed to be a phonetic thing. Must have had this decryption effort in the back of my mind.

So I guess they've been inconsistent, and that you can go either way with it. Which is fair since the whole concept is a bit of a hack anyways. The usage in the book is more about giving a sense for what the writing looks like, and that comes out the same either way.

[Jofwu]

Any thoughts on sas nahn versus sas morom?

Quote

This man’s forehead brand was older than Kaladin’s, the skin around the scar faded to white. What was that glyphpair? “Sas morom,” Kaladin said. It was the highlord’s district where the man had originally been branded.

The wording here suggests that the glyphpair notes the district where he was branded. Can we assume sas nahn is the district Kaladin was branded in?

[Windrunner]

Well we know that the sas refers to Sadeas's princedom. I think the question is probably whether or not nahn refers to the district the army was in when Kal was branded or if it refers to Amaram's district since he was branded under Amaram's authority. I suspect the latter, as it would have been awkward to get a new brand every time the army moved districts.

[Jofwu]

6 minutes ago, Windrunner said:

Well we know that the sas refers to Sadeas's princedom.

We know that it does?

[The One Who Connects]

1 hour ago, jofwu said:

1 hour ago, Windrunner said:

Well we know that the sas refers to Sadeas's princedom.

We know that it does?

We don't actually know, at least as far as the Coppermind is concerned. However, on the assumption that Harakeke's glyph translation is accurate, then is almost certainly refers to Sadeas's princedom. By comparing the two (Sadeas) and (Sas) and ignoring the "d" in Sadeas, they are identical. And the only other "S" Highprince is Sebarial, whose glyphpair looks nothing like "Sas" at all.

Quote

Sadeas      Sas  

   S     D    S    |||   S     D     S                                  S          S     |||     S           S

Additionally, the two glyphpairs that refer to Highprince districts are "sas morom" and "sas nahn." Given that "Sas" is the common factor between them, it should refer to the overall princedom. Considering that Sebarial's glyphpair is "Sebes Laial," I would imagine that his princedom glyph would be "Sebes," thus leaving "Sas" for Sadeas.

Edited June 28, 2017 by The One Who Connects
Spellcheck

[Jofwu]

Hey @Harakeke, would it be useful to put together something like this?

Trying to collect instances (or suspected instances) of each "letter". To the left are glyphs that we KNOW have the phoneme; to the right are unknown glyphs that seem to have it. Red highlighting means we're pretty certain that stroke is the instance. Blue highlighting means it's unclear, because of appearance or position.

[PeterAhlstrom]

The transliterations are meant to give a representative flavor in the translation of the whole book into English. There are multiple ways to accomplish that.

[Botanica]

I once asked Peter about this, and here is his answer (Hope it helps!):

 

[Jofwu]

Found a problem?

This quote says khokh (first) is a crown and linil (second) is a tower.

Quote

Eventually, they reached his personal complex, marked by fluttering blue banners with the glyphpair khokh and linil, the former drawn in the shape of a crown, the second forming a tower. Dalinar’s mother had drawn the original design, the same his signet ring bore, though Elhokar used a sword and crown instead. (TWoK Chapter 28)

This is the reverse order that the glyphs are shown in Dalinar's chapter icon. At first glance, this isn't a big issue. We might assume the order of the glyphpair is irrelevant, or that writing them top to bottom isn't unusual.

However all of the research in this thread indicates that this order is backwards. The K/Kh, L, and N graphemes have been studied in this thread quite a bit and they seem to be readily identifiable in other cases. Our conclusions regarding these support the idea that khokh is the tower and linil is the crown.

Assuming this portion of the text hasn't been revised already, either we have a typo that needs fixing or we need to take a step back and reevaluate our assumptions for these glyphs.

Am I missing something? Could you comment @PeterAhlstrom?

[Argent]

37 minutes ago, jofwu said:

This is the opposite of what I've seen in this thread. I think Argent was the first to identify the K/Kh grapheme, and Harakeke made some comparrisons here. I've shown a few instances of the same grapheme a few posts up. And I believe the grapheme for L and N are also fairly well known.

I am pretty sure I've had no contribution in the translation effort, other than run my mouth about random stuff

[Harakeke]

On 6/29/2017 at 2:46 PM, jofwu said:

Hey @Harakeke, would it be useful to put together something like this?

Trying to collect instances (or suspected instances) of each "letter". To the left are glyphs that we KNOW have the phoneme; to the right are unknown glyphs that seem to have it. Red highlighting means we're pretty certain that stroke is the instance. Blue highlighting means it's unclear, because of appearance or position.

That would indeed be very helpful! I can send you some vector versions of my working files if that would be useful.

[Jofwu]

13 hours ago, Harakeke said:

That would indeed be very helpful! I can send you some vector versions of my working files if that would be useful.

Yes! If you could send those it would be super helpful!

[Harakeke]

Here you go: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B19mpDUN_8rSY2N2dXhRSnB6aG8/view?usp=sharing

One observation that may help with your hunt -- in both of the instances where glyphs are presented in a list (highprince names and fundamental glyphs), the list has reflected symmetry. The first half is rightside up, while the second half is upside down.

• one
• two
• three
• four
• five
• ~~~~
• xᴉs
• uǝʌǝs
• ʇɥƃᴉǝ
• ǝuᴉu
• uǝʇ

[SilverTiger]

Could someone please put the that first key on women's script in Coppermind on the women's script page? The current key is a bunch of pictures which make it hard to decipher.

[Argent]

Some news, folks.

Several months ago I was talking with @Pagerunner in the (then only) Discord server, and the conversation turned to some of the finer points of the women's script. He was going to ask Isaac about them, but I since I was already trading emails with him (about something else entirely), I offered to take his questions and send them instead. Isaac has been busy with Oathbringer until just a few days ago, but he finally got back to me. Here's my original email:

Quote

Hey Isaac,

Some time ago (about a month now) Brandon announced on Reddit that the women's script was not only your creation (something we knew already), but that it was also yours to share - should you choose to. I and a few other guys like to geek out about the made-up languages of the Cosmere, so I wanted to gather a few questions for you, in case you were willing to share some behind-the-scenes details about how that particular script works. 

In the interest of time, I'll just drop a few of the questions here, and if you want to answer (any number of) them, that'd be great. If not, that'd also be great - just a little less so

• That Reddit thread established that the "H" sound is produced by writing another letter, and then marking it to denote that it should be pronounced as /h/ (while still looking like the other letter, for symmetric purposes). What does this "mark" look like?
• And on that note, the name of that traditional Vorin dress is "havah" - how would that get written? Is there a dedicated symbol for /h/ when it's not a "symmetric placeholder", or would the women just pick any letter and mark both instances here? Or something else altogether?
• In English, "N" is articulated the same way "T" and "D" are - on the alveolar ridge (as all three are nasal alveolar). It seems like in the women's script "N" belongs to a different family from "T" and "D". The former is a "left facing arrow" while the latter two are "right facing arrows", to use some very basic description of the symbol shapes. Why is that?
• None of the Alethi names seem to have a "ch" sound in them - except for Chana / Chanarach, the Herald. Do they have a sound and written symbol for it? And if not, would they use a different sound when saying or writing Chana's name ("sh" maybe?)?

And his answers:

Quote

Q: That Reddit thread established that the "H" sound is produced by writing another letter, and then marking it to denote that it should be pronounced as /h/ (while still looking like the other letter, for symmetric purposes). What does this "mark" look like?

A: So, it turns out we weren't able to work in the diacritic mark into Oathbringer like I wanted to, so I'm happy to tell you how it works. Don't reveal it yet, but for your own knowledge, here goes, [REDACTED].

Quote

Q: And on that note, the name of that traditional Vorin dress is "havah" - how would that get written? Is there a dedicated symbol for /h/ when it's not a "symmetric placeholder", or would the women just pick any letter and mark both instances here? Or something else altogether?

A: I believe they would just use the dedicated symbol for /h/.

Quote

Q: In English, "N" is articulated the same way "T" and "D" are - on the alveolar ridge (as all three are nasal alveolar). It seems like in the women's script "N" belongs to a different family from "T" and "D". The former is a "left facing arrow" while the latter two are "right facing arrows", to use some very basic description of the symbol shapes. Why is that?

A: Peter might have a better explanation for this, but because of the three sizes, we had to group things in ways that didn't always make sense. The N was a fourth letter in a set (TDL), so looking back, maybe we should've grouped N with TD instead of the L, but then that has a cascading effect, so this was the best we could do in the time we had. But we don't know exactly how the Alethi speak. There's always a chance that the Alethi Z sounds more like "dz," and the Alethi "S" sounds more like "ts" (like the German Z), in which case the SZN grouping makes a lot more sense. But that's just conjecture.

Quote

Q: None of the Alethi names seem to have a "ch" sound in them - except for Chana / Chanarach, the Herald. Do they have a sound and written symbol for it? And if not, would they use a different sound when saying or writing Chana's name ("sh" maybe?)?

A: I could be wrong, but I think there is a symbol for "ch" in Alethi women's script.

 

[Harakeke]

6 hours ago, SilverTiger said:

Could someone please put the that first key on women's script in Coppermind on the women's script page? The current key is a bunch of pictures which make it hard to decipher.

Hold on, I've somehow gotten my L's and R's mixed again... I need to double-check those images to make sure they're correct -- but after that, please do!

Edit: Okay, I think I've got it sorted now.
 

6 hours ago, Argent said:

Q: That Reddit thread established that the "H" sound is produced by writing another letter, and then marking it to denote that it should be pronounced as /h/ (while still looking like the other letter, for symmetric purposes). What does this "mark" look like?

A: So, it turns out we weren't able to work in the diacritic mark into Oathbringer like I wanted to, so I'm happy to tell you how it works. Don't reveal it yet, but for your own knowledge, here goes, [REDACTED].

Interesting. So (without prying into the super-secret spoilers), it would look something to the effect of:

, yes?

Edited September 13, 2017 by Harakeke

[PeterAhlstrom]

The symbol sets are all based on historical place of articulation (and articulating tongue part), and there have been some sound changes over the centuries so they don't currently all line up exactly. The t/d/r/th/l group (historically alveolar) is articulated with the tip of the tongue, and the s/z/n/sh/h group (historically postalveolar) is/was articulated with the blade of the tongue.

The modern h sound (like h in English) used to appear only in the palindromic locations, and was written only with the diacritic. This diacritic is mirrored on the top and bottom of the character. Some writers may use only the top or bottom because lazy. Also, sometimes the diacritic can be left out entirely and people just know to pronounce it as h because it's a very common word or name.

The h character used to stand for a weakly-voiced postalveolar non-sibilant fricative. This later shifted backward to a velar fricative (first weakly-voiced, later voiceless) as in Kholin. In modern times the h character is usually for the same h sound that we have in English. Sometimes kh is written using a combination of the k and h characters, and sometimes it's written just as h for historical reasons. Different regional dialects also shift the pronunciation one way or another.

The L sound has also shifted. It used to be a voiced alveolar lateral fricative, and this is still seen in names like Lhan. It's now a regular L sound.

The final group, k/g/y/ch/j, used to have dual articulation, similar to velarized postalveolar. Now the articulation has separated, with some velar and some postalveolar.

Currently y and j are pronounced the same or differently based on class and regional dialect. So, a darkeyes name like Jost or Jest will be pronounced with a regular j sound, while with the upper class it has merged with y so that Jasnah and Jezerezeh are pronounced with a y sound. Historically they were always separate sounds.

Edited September 13, 2017 by PeterAhlstrom

[flying_shadow]

On 6/28/2017 at 9:25 AM, jofwu said:

Can we assume sas nahn is the district Kaladin was branded in?

'Nahn' is the name of the system of ranks for darkeyes, so maybe it means something like 'not part of society' or something along these lines?

[Jofwu]

Just now, Kalinovsky said:

'Nahn' is the name of the system of ranks for darkeyes, so maybe it means something like 'not part of society' or something along these lines?

No, I think Peter answered that. Kaladin's "nahn" glyph is not associated with the caste system name.