Japanese Linguistics...

[tacticslion]

... I'm in a game in another forum.

If you've heard of "Dawn of Worlds", it's basically that (and is so on purpose), only extended over more ages than just the three with slight variants on pricing.

Anyway...

The world in question is named Sekai; as you may be able to guess, it's sort-of-kind-of Japanese-themed (ish). Within that world are a race of Serpentfolk (akin to Lovecraftian serpentfolk rather than a yaun-ti or naga-style serpentfolk) with an off-shoot of feathered serpentfolk.

The question becomes, then, what to name them? It came up because the players most associated with them are wondering.

After doing some really, really basic "research" (i.e. google-ing "feathered" "serpent" and "folk" in Romanized Japanese), and refreshing myself by way of Wikipedia on feathered serpents of any kind, I created the following post:

Originally Posted by Me!

What about "couatl" as a name? Or any of the Feathered Serpent names: Quetzacoatl, Kukulkan, Q'uq'umatz, Tohil, or the rest? Alternatively, take "hane" - feather, from what I can tell, in Japanese -, and "hebi" - from what I can tell, the Japanese word for serpent -, and "hitobito" - folk in Japanese.

The Japanese words would generate "Hanehebihitobito" or "Hanihebi" for short. That could be really weird - I don't speak Japanese. If we wanted it to sound "kind of like Japanese" could be something like "Hanebito" for the feathered folk and "Hebito" for the serpent-folk. That would actually make a lot of sense, I think. Of course, that probably looks horrid to native Japanese speakers, or even fluent speakers - my apologies, all, I'm just trying to make it short, "comprehensible", and, most importantly, easily usable to English speakers. But if anyone speaks Japanese, let us know!

... so, how far off am I, and how would you suggest changing it? What I'm ultimately looking for is something short, descriptive, and slightly different enough so that we can refer to the two races slightly differently, but related enough that it's clear they're, well, related.

On races, is there a word for:
1) humans
2) angler fish (or something similar)
- 2a) beholders [or something indicating many eyes, lots of magic, and light; alternately fire-swimmers or fish, mutated creatures, or an amalgamated race]
- 2b) what's a good name for "Mother of <the race just named>"
3) dwarves (Pathfinder/D&D-style; they're a now-extinct race)
4) fey (I'm honestly thinking of just having them named "kami" and be done)
5) yeti (they might just keep their own name, and that might be the "proper" one anyway)

On locations, what would be:
1) Well of Blood
2) Pool of Quiescence

(These are technically the same place, and it's more than likely that they will retain their names, as noted above, but Japanese-sounding titles might be great, too.)

So, if you speak, read, write, or otherwise have some mastery of Romanized Japanese (and it needs to be Romanized - sorry), please comment on it, and help us out!

if you want more on the 'beholders'The "demon faced" Angler Fish now live not only under the sea, but also under the crust of the planet, having developed a volcanoeculture that permits this. They've a singular "arm" like appendage with several branching "finger-like" appendages on top, to lure, grab, and help them eat stuff. They otherwise function similar to angler fish, but sentient (at least the females are sentient, the males are not).

Originally Posted by the entry

demon-faced anglerfish
They develop elaborate, articulating lures and they start using their bioluminescence for communication, as a hand for manipulation, and to shepherd other lesser species of fish into abyssal abattoirs.
Anglers are located solely in the deepest ocean depths, under at least 2 km of water. They have an extreme sexual dimorphism; all active members of society are female fish, with gaping maws filled with needle-like teeth , and a robust arm growing out of their foreheads, between their eyes. The arm ends in a central pad with six long, dexterous fingers. Each fingertip is bioluminescent, and can be made to grow brighter or dimmer. Originally used to lure prey, these luminous ends are now mainly used for communication between females. Males of the species, on the other hand, are non-sentient, much simpler in body form, and are nearly a tenth the size of the female. They bite into and latch onto any female they find, and then fuse with them, losing all bodily form until it is subsumed into the female. She then uses the male to fertilize her eggs. A large portion of socio-economics in Angler culture revolves around the growth and trade of males, which are treated much like cattle or luxury items. High status members display and adorn the numerous males attached to them.

Advance Civilization(10): Vulcanoculture
The Anglers discover fire. Or, more precisely, the thermal vents and abyssal volcanoes of the deepest ocean trenches. They learn how the energy feeds the chemosynthetic world in the depths, how to tap into the power source, how to feed the tube worms, how to harvest hot stones from the glowing extrusions of the magma upwellings.

Advance Civilization: Magical Evolution
The Anglers start dabbling with transformative magics, delved from power sources deep underneath the ocean floor. It allows them to develop more and larger lure-hands, as well as being able to start seeing from their bioluminescent tips.

Advance Civilization: Telekinesis
This deep well of transformation also teaches the Anglers how to move things with their mind, and how to swim and maintain buoyancy in all manner of densities. They still prefer to remain in the deepest ocean trenches.

Advance Race: Magma Travel
With the recent advances in telekinesis and physical hardiness, in conjunction with vulcanoculture, the Anglers learn to survive the dangers of lava, and can now swim in the vast fiery ocean beneath the world.

Command Race x2: Fleeing the oncoming cold, the Anglers retreat into the submarine volcanoes, and begin to spread from there into new regions, underneath the world, on chthonic currents of magma. They move into regions 3 and 16, underneath the world.

That's the last update on what they're like.

They have recently interacted with a crashed inter-dimensional starship from another world (a player in this game played in another, and had an "other event" occur in which a space-faring race of kobolds from that world crashed and died through a portal into the non-space-faring this world). That interdimensional magical-alchemical ship was inhabited by "corrupted" colony sophonts. What's a colony sophont? Well, it's a bit difficult to describe, and their entry on the other game is huge, but the short version is that a large collection of independent boneless creatures gather to form individual units, use telepathy (and thus have no language, but perfectly retain racial-wide memory in a [set of] centralized "Will of All" avatar[s]), and successfully managed to utilize science and technology enter space and leave the planet. The individual creatures are both independent - no central nervous system - but dependent, requiring the actions of all together to survive as a unit. They can vary their components as a result and have a "composite individual" personality, based on the current constituent creatures.

So some of those things were corrupted on an exploratory mission to the site long ago, where they effectively mutated the ship and themselves into a living entity that will soon become my avatar - the "mother of <insert race here>" noted above.

That ship and the angler fish will eventually create a new beholder-like race on behalf of another player (someone who had created the angler fish with that end-goal in mind, but had to stop playing due to life circumstances) that I'm doing this for.

So, with that way-too-much info out of the way, I'd appreciate any help. Thanks!

[phil_]

Hebibito and Hanebito are close enough for a game you're playing, as long as you don't plan to include other feathered folks. I might go with Hebigao for snake-faced lizardmen, but then I'd probably just call them snake people because I'm not trying to write a new canon here. I assume you aren't either, but maybe you care more about names sounding cool than phil_ does when he's drunk. Quetzacoatl is also a good name for feathered snake people, if you can justify it, or even if you can't. Again, I assume you aren't trying to create Japanese Middle Earth as a group that doesn't speak a word of Japanese. No need to write uncountable ages of history to justify Galadriel's name.

[tacticslion]

Man. My ADD kicks in, and I navigate away, and then refresh this page and lose my post! Yay!

Anyway, to try and recapture what I said...

Thank you so much! That's awesome!

What we're trying to do is ultimately create a semi-viable campaign world for people to play table-top RPGs, while creating a unique world history and having fun in the process. It's detailed enough that we can generally trace (in broad strokes) the timeline for the world, but "light" enough that we don't to etymologically prove where anything came from - just so long as technological (or magicalogical?) increases happen in a reasonable fashion with reasonable improvements, we're pretty okay with stuff.

In addition to the other changes from Dawn of Worlds, the method of changing ages is different as well. One player (either a volunteer or chosen randomly) is the cataclysm god for the current age; after they acquire 200 points (enough to affect every area on the planet), they unleash a world-wide cataclysm of their choice, ending the age.

The world is "themed" Japanese, and the game is free for anyone to jump into at any time (you too, if you'd like!) so I want it to not be completely offensive to sensibilities to others.

So, to be clear, you'd say, "hebibito" instead of "hebito"? And you'd generally recommend "hebigao" or "hanehebigao" (or "hanegao" if we have no other feathered folk) instead of the above?

Thank you so much for your help!

[phil_]

Originally Posted by tacticslion

So, to be clear, you'd say, "hebibito" instead of "hebito"? And you'd generally recommend "hebigao" or "hanehebigao" (or "hanegao" if we have no other feathered folk) instead of the above?

Thank you so much for your help!

"Hebibito" sounds better to me than "hebito" because dropping a "bi" like that doesn't happen, or at least doesn't happen often enough for my preschool Japanese to be aware of it. "Hebigao" works as well as "hebibito" as far as made-up words go, but "hanehebigao" is kinda iffy. "Hebigao" is "snake face," which is what I thought after google image searching "Lovecraftian serpentfolk" to see what you meant by that. I'm sure you can see why "feather snake face" is less than elegant, since it's not like their faces are just a feather.

I'd just go with the two "bito" names. We're not using real Japanese here, anyway, but those two are internally consistent.

[tacticslion]

Ah! Okay!

That actually clears some things up. Thank you!

I can... count to 10 in Japanese. That's about it.

I'm vaguely aware of some of the elements of Japanese, but I know enough to know how little I know, so I'm always interested in someone telling me more stuff. Thanks!

[phil_]

Originally Posted by tacticslion

I'm always interested in someone telling me more stuff. Thanks!

Man, the only Japanese I know is "anime" and "gundam." You need someone else (or a textbook) to actually learn something.

[Jagos]

Humans are always known as "Ningen" spelled ??

An Anko is probably one of the fish you could use in your game for some really ugly fish. But you can get away with calling it by the Katakana phrase "Angular" An- Gyu- Laa. Source

Since Beholders are a foreign entity to Japanese tales (their tales are more with snake people and tricky foxes...) you can use Katakana to call it "Bee-Hol- Daa"

If you want to carry possession of something, it's mainly with using the "mother" kanji "no" with something else. For example, mother of dwarves is "Kobito " among a few other writings.

fey - Yes, go with kami. Just know that "Kami-sama" means god.

Yeti is Yajin If you notice the last part, that's the main one for human or humanlike being. Helps out a lot in figuring out other races to use. You just find what you're trying to spell out and then slap a "hito" on it and it changes into a race.

Well of Blood - "Ido no chi"

"Pool of Quiescence"

Yeah... That's too high for me.

-e- And it seems the forums can't run Japanese...

[phil_]

Originally Posted by Jagos

-e- And it seems the forums can't run Japanese...

Not since we switched from forums.nuklearpower.com to nuklearforums.com, no. Honestly, though, kanji aren't going to be too helpful for someone who doesn't speak the language, and Bi Ho Ru Da— is just saying "beholder" funny.

However, in doing my spell checking, I remembered something useful. This is aimed more at tactics. You can totally look up a monster on wikipedia, then click the Japanese button under Languages which looks like this: and you have a reasonable equivalent term in Japanese. It works the other way, too, for when you come across something like "bannipu" in katakana and can't figure out what it is from sounding it out.

[tacticslion]

Oh, wow, thanks, guys! That's great to know!

And yeah, it's more "loosely inspired by Japanese" than actual Japanese.

Also, they decided to go with Couatl while I was talking to you guys, soooooo...

But! I actually am learning, so... thanks!
(Also, someone else was really interested in what I had learned about that, too.)

I'll definitely check out some of those wiki things, phil_! Man, that will help me a lot!

I'll probably start calling them Anko, Jagos! (Nice to see you again, by the way!)

For fey, yes, we'll likely go with "Kami", while "Yajin" might just be rejected in favor of "Yeti", I'll definitely recommend it.

Ido no Chi... sweet! I'll start using it!

---------- Post added at 11:41 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:23 PM ----------
You're in good company, Jagos!

So, this this Romanized Japanese-English dictionary doesn't have "quiescence" either.

So, you know, no big.

EDIT: It also lacks somnolence. Hm. I'm running out of pompous words.

[Jagos]

I'd pull out my Japanese dictionary but I'm lazy. Maybe tomorrow I can look them up, but right now it's sleep time.

(Nice to see you again, by the way!)

Thanks.

Had a lot of stuff to do away from the forums so it's good to be back. Hopefully I didn't miss too much...