90 replies to this topic

[isledebananas]

I noticed that some of the units don't have lines for certain things like moving to the castle, is that intentional? Also are we only aloud to try out for one of the units?

[Nertea]

Don't worry, all the cues that are required are there.

You can try out for as many as you want.

[Isillme]

my bro can absolutely make voice for uruks, my microphone sucks, but the voice of my borther is kind of a monster freak... nice ;D

Edited by Isillme, 20 January 2010 - 10:14 PM.

[Neth]

I have a friend that has a fair enough deep voice and can simulate perfectly the scottish accent. Might ask him if we wants to do this .

I'm Scottish but I don't have a microphone And my voice probably isn't low enough for a dwarf anyway

[NewErr]

I wasn't talking about you . . Btw my dude has voice problems , he can't do it right with his mic in his mouth .He'll send some smaples soon.

[Isillme]

BRoOoOoOoOoOTher.... just tell me if you are interested, otherwise i cannot stealhim time .-.

[isledebananas]

Is it possible for you guys to give like a pronunciation guide for the linguistically challenged amongst us for some of the words in Khuzdul? Not with just the pronunciation marks but with the comparative guides like ei in neighbor sounds the same as ay in way sort of thing?

[Pasidon]

... Erm... Hi. Pasidon here. I need more crap in my resume... ... This might sound awkward, but I could use the job. I've got microphone technology and a voice that could match Christopher Lee. ... There a sample of dialog I could try out?

[Nertea]

isledebananas: I honestly don't know how to pronounce them

Pasidon: check the links in the first post.

[isledebananas]

Well who scrounged up the words they must have some clue right?

[Námo]

I'm sorry I can't be of much help with this, as I'm far more 'visual' than 'audio' - that is, I can write Khuzdul, but not speak it. The quote below is about all there is of help from sources on the internet, and then there are some hints in Appendix E in The Lord of the Rings.

Introduction

Khuzdul, the language of the Dwarves, is for natural reasons difficult to analyze, since it is very sparingly used, and virtually never outside of purely dwarvish business. Aulë the Vala created the language at the same time as he created the dwarves, and he made it hard and harsh just like its speakers. This stiffness in the language is probably a contributing cause for its looking practically the same now as when it was made (this, and its being employed mostly in rituals and archaic usage). For this reason there are also almost no dialectal variants of the language; Dwarves understand one another even if they come from quite different geographic areas, provided that they talk together in Khuzdul.


Structure

To begin with, the words (at least the nouns — other words are badly underrepresented in the available material) in Khuzdul consists solely of three (or two) consonants, that are supplemented with vowels in between to constitute words. These consonants are called radicals, and are common to all words with a similar meaning. An example is the radicals that designate things having to do with dwarves: Kh-Z-D. We see this stem in the attested words Khazâd, Khazad-dûm, Khuzd and Khuzdul. The word is fully defined only when vowels and any necessary endings or prefixes have been added between, after or before the stem radicals.


Pronunciation

Khuzdul has the five classic vowels a, e, i, o, u. These exist in short and long versions, and the latter are written with a circumflex (^) above. The pronunciation of the vowels ought to have been similar to that in the languages of Elves and Men, but in a note on Daeron’s runes in Appendix E in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien hints that there were also reduced mid central vowels ...

Khuzdul words beginning in a vowel are probably pronounced with a fairly strong glottal stop ...

The consonants are also in principle the same as in other languages, as well as their pronunciation, with a few exceptions: Some Dwarves pronounced <r> as an uvular, i.e. in the back of the mouth, like Orcs. This seems to be the only dialectal distinction in Khuzdul. Also the combination of a voiceless stop and a following <h> is not pronounced as a fricative, as in the languages of Elves, but as an aspirate. <th>, <kh> and probably also <ph> (there is no example) indeed designate phonemes different from those written <t>, <k> and <p>, but they are pronounced as stops accompanied by a strong breath (more or less as in backhand, outhouse). [...] The combination <gh>, on the other hand, was presumably a (voiced velar) fricative, like in Black Speech and Orkish, as nothing special is said of that combination in the context of Khuzdul. And that should go for the combination <sh> as well, which would then be pronounced as in English.

Concerning syllabic stress not much is said, but ... the stress is often on the last syllable, except for a group of nouns (the 2nd declension) that in their basic form have a long vowel in the first syllable and a short vowel in the second. Here it sounds most natural to stress the first syllable, and these nouns would then in pronunciation [have] an <e> in both of its syllables, and the stress on the first one.

Mid central vowel: ... it is said in Appendix E of The Lord of the Rings: “vowels like those heard in English butter [i.e. mid back and mid central] ... were frequent in Dwarvish and in the Westron”. They do actually have runes of their own in the certh table, reduced variants of which could be used when the vowels were “weak or evanescent” (Appendix E, II). But the runes for these sounds are not transcribed in the value table, and so were probably not pronounced enough to motivate a transcription.

The glottal stop: Some words that show only two consonants and begin in a vowel seem to be patterned in the same way as words with three radicals. Furthermore, this glottal stop might have been assimilated to a following consonant in the joint between two elements in a compound ... Concerning the matter of a rune for this sound, it is said in the Appendices that one rune in the Angerthas Moria was used for “the clear or glottal beginning of a word with an initial vowel that appeared in Khuzdul” (Appendix E, II). ... (Of additional interest in this connection is a theory that Scandinavians too used a specific rune for the glottal stop, or at least pronounced vowels in the beginning of words with a very clear glottal stop. This would possibly explain why Old Norse poetry alliterates words beginning in any vowel — what really alliterates is the glottal stop.) ... Although Appendix E only speaks of the “glottal beginning of a word”, I expect that this consonant may appear as first, second or third radical, though no example calls for a glottal stop as second radical.

For more info, go here: An analysis of Dwarvish

[Baki]

BRoOoOoOoOoOTher.... just tell me if you are interested, otherwise i cannot stealhim time .-.

Just let your brother do some cues, and then send them to Nertea via PM.
The staff will then tell you if they fit or not.
You don't need permission from the staff to try.

[Isillme]

BRoOoOoOoOoOTher.... just tell me if you are interested, otherwise i cannot stealhim time .-.

Just let your brother do some cues, and then send them to Nertea via PM.
The staff will then tell you if they fit or not.
You don't need permission from the staff to try.

ok i´ll try, sorry...

[Bart]

I'm curious what this will result in. Most of the time voices in mods are not the best area, but with your attention to detail my expectations are high.

[Baki]

and progress doesn't seem really good atm

[Mathijs]

Progress doesn't seem good? Haha!

[Baki]

I mean the voices.
Only Thorin is finished so far. Or are there already more which we weren't told of?

[Mathijs]

Oh. Well, there's a lot more units ingame already that have custom voices. These are just left over. But yes, progress here could be better.

So, more volunteers?

[Baki]

What if there aren't enough volunteers? Will you do them on your own too?

(btw where can I post my questions concerning general gameplay in the mod?)

[Mathijs]

You can post your questions in The Dwarf Holds Discussion.