Comments on the Pictorial Dictionary?

KathAveara · **Posted:** Wed Jun 01, 2016 11:26 am

Yeah, see, that's a very misleading description of what the suffix actually does. To put it succinctly, the most likely linguistic description is that it denotes the object of the base verb, and so erþkanrædtan kanræden erþkanrædaloþ "[one who thinks] thinks [one which is thought]"

larryf58 · **Posted:** Thu Jun 02, 2016 12:23 pm

In my illustration for "kor", I modified the picture of a book by erasing the original text and inserting D'ni characters on one of the pages. If you're wondering what the D'ni characters say, it's just a standard typesetting filler called Lorem Ipsum that I substituted letters and punctuation into to make it look D'ni. Here's a larger, unobstructed view of it. The letters are D'ni, but the language is Latin.

larryf58 · **Posted:** Fri Jun 03, 2016 8:58 pm

There are several of the dictionary images I'm not all that happy with, and there are many words I haven't found good illustrations for. If anyone thinks they know of one, please tell me. I'm not so proud that I won't take suggestions that might make an illustration better.

Two that I'm not really satisfied with are "kotsa" and "lesa", just off the top of my head.

larryf58 · **Posted:** Sat Jun 04, 2016 5:55 pm

Today's images happened to be min and miro, the words for woman and toxic. That reminded me of one of the entries in the Devil's Dictionary written by Ambrose Bierce.

The entry was: “BELLADONNA, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.”

G'mi Bear · **Posted:** Sun Jun 05, 2016 2:20 am

Would the gate at Ferry Terminal work for Kotsa?
For Lesa I picture the back of a sealed envelope. Just my thoughts.

larryf58 · **Posted:** Sun Jun 05, 2016 2:33 am

G'mi Bear wrote:

Would the gate at Ferry Terminal work for Kotsa?
For Lesa I picture the back of a sealed envelope. Just my thoughts.

That's a no for kotsa. While it might be innocent enough, Cyan's textures are copyrighted. I'm either using public domain images or making my own for these illustrations. The D'ni font is an exception; that's something they clearly stated was being distributed for people to use freely.

When I was hunting for an image for seal, I did find many that were just an envelope with a wax seal on it. However, the seal was almost always a letter or word in Roman characters. That picture was the only one I saw that was both large enough, not cartoonish, and which didn't have Roman letters. If you can find something better, though, I'm willing to look at it.

As much as I can, I've been trying to use pictures that feel like they could be something out of the games, although that's not always possible.

larryf58 · **Posted:** Sun Jun 05, 2016 2:47 am

Some more speculation outside the existing lexicon.

One of the words I'll be uploading tomorrow is mor, the D'ni word for mother. Mor'okh'mor means grandmother. What's of interest to me is that morpa is the word for queen.

In the currently known list of D'ni words, there's no word for father. There's a guess that avo might be it, but that's a stretch based on the name Yavo, which is given to the D'ni creator god. The guess was made based on phrasing in Atrus' Prayer, one of the source documents used to decipher D'ni.

However, if we use the same pattern as the word for queen, we get another word. Porpa is the D'ni word for king. That could mean that por means father, since mor means mother.

I have no clue what the -pa suffix would mean, though.

larryf58 · **Posted:** Sun Jun 05, 2016 1:16 pm

A W.A.G. about the -pa suffix:

I wonder if it could be related to "paʦ", the D'ni word for city? If it is, then porpa and morpa would literally translate as the father and mother of the city.

G'mi Bear · **Posted:** Sun Jun 05, 2016 3:12 pm

Thanks for the explanation. It's so easy to forget about the copyright issues. My mind just automatically goes to the features in the game. I think the images you have chosen work well. No need to change them in my opinion.

larryf58 · **Posted:** Sun Jun 05, 2016 3:46 pm

Talashar · **Joined:** Sun Dec 08, 2013 12:24 pm **Posts:** 91

larryf58 wrote:

However, if we use the same pattern as the word for queen, we get another word. Porpa is the D'ni word for king. That could mean that por means father, since mor means mother.

And of course /p/ and /m/ are common in father and mother words cross-linguistically, which is part of the reason that I'm fairly confident mor does mean 'mother'.

larryf58 wrote:

I have no clue what the -pa suffix would mean, though.

Possibly pah is a shortening of pahrah, so porpah and morpah would be 'great father' and 'great mother'.

larryf58 · **Posted:** Sat Jun 11, 2016 2:31 pm

For the word ūsha, I have two chemical formulas. If you're wondering, they are ethanol and citric acid, two important ingredients if you want to make a screwdriver.

larryf58 · **Posted:** Sun Jun 12, 2016 12:57 pm

I have a picture of a fairly well known city as the illustration for paʦ. Anyone care to guess which one it is? Native residents are disqualified; you'd deserve a slap on the hand with a ruler by a Catholic nun if you don't recognize the place you live.

G'mi Bear · **Posted:** Wed Jun 15, 2016 6:57 pm

Looks like Los Angeles!

larryf58 · **Posted:** Wed Jun 15, 2016 7:33 pm

G'mi Bear wrote:

Looks like Los Angeles!

Correct on the first guess.

The skyline is fairly distinctive, and the City Hall tower is a dead giveaway. The photo is from an unusual angle, though, and the zoom makes the San Gabriel mountains look a lot closer than they really are. Plus, I don't think many people who do not live there realize that they get snowy in the winter. I thought one or two might mistake it for Denver or something like that.

LA is a strange place; in winter, you can go water skiing in the ocean in the morning, have lunch downtown, and then go snow skiing in the evening. Those locations are all within about 30 miles of each other. Comes of having large, tall mountain ranges nearby.

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