General:Ta'Agra Phrases and Expressions

Book Information Ta'Agra Phrases and Expressions
Writer	Douglas Goodall

Ta'Agra Phrases and Expressions

by Jobasha

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This thread was originally started on December 26th, 2005. Jobasha is played by Douglas Goodall. The post was archived by The Imperial Library.

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Jobasha

((I don't have my notes on Ta'agra anymore, I don't remember what I was thinking, and I doubt anyone's taken it up officially. I might make an entirely new language up from "scratch," but it wouldn't be the same one.

A better (or at least more official) place to start would be with S'rathra's dialogue in Redguard.))

Jobasha

((Once I had a minimal grammar and dictionary for Ta'agra, I started "testing" it by trying to translate famous movie quotes. Those are from Sabrina.

But I don't remember the grammar that created those quotes. I remember bits and pieces... Rabi was "to have." Ahziss was something like "first-person genitive singular unspecific" or, as close as you can get in English, "my." That's about all I remember, though.

My original intent was to make Ta'agra darn weird. A hybrid inflectional/agglutinative language with some really odd features like rare cases (translative, instructive, inessive, etc), no articles, few (and highly unusual) pronouns, verb "moods" instead of tenses, etc.

If I re-made it again, I probably wouldn't make it so wierd [sic]. After all, if you make a language, it needs to be familiar enough for fans to actually talk in it. Not just a "ooooh, look at me, I made a really complex language no one else understands, therefore I'm smarter than you!"

Also, just FYI, here is S'rathra's dialogue from Redguard (thank you, Bink Player). I wrote it semi-phonetical, but I have a hearing loss... And this isn't how I imagine Ta'agra would be spelled.

"Kreenya, Cyrus. Ettofarwalkah etcher ohkudorrr."

"Smile, Cyrus. Here's the excuse you've been looking for."

"Bahlee jeehater atatami."

"All you mercenaries are the same."

"Seechoh."

"Sit."

"Renreejee entunoor hekohwoh Imperial jah eeko pofamerrr ohtoht velk."

"Ruffians in the night, heavy with Imperial coin, after some poor farmer who owes the kingdom his wife."

"On trahjeer."

"And he taketh away. For you." (I suspect the subtitles here are wrong, and "On trahjeer" (or "Ahn trajiir" in a more Khajiit-like spelling) just means "for you." Otherwise, that's one compact language.)

"S'rathra korukohteretoh Hammerfell. Boshay inroht."

"S'rathra knows you've said you'd never return to Hammerfell, but this seemed important."

"S'rathra wohreghaht."

"S'rathra was concerned."

"Nookoh Duadeen. S'rathra eks. S'rathra eks sky'ell."

"Don't worry about Duadeen. S'rathra fix. S'rathra fix anything."

"Roleeter dek ka uderrr."

"Your sister's disappearance draws a shudder."

"Teport tekoh eh S'rathra nak convek warahbarahshee."

"The port is full of them, and S'rathra's name goes far towards the price of passage."

"Sri Duadeens jah, ehpak cohjah sreek. Pur S'rathra kadoo ahliter bekoh?"

"Keep Duadeen's retainer. It's a family affair, after all. Tell S'rathra, why did you never mention your sister before?"

"Kahkahturrr?"

"What kind?"

Looks mostly isolating. Although you can't see it in the script, it doesn't sound tonal to me.

There's still room for some odd features in that example, even if it looks more like a "complex English cypher" than an actual alien language. There is obviously a little agglutination. There could be inflection, too, as long as you don't have to do vowel-matching.

Kreenya (Kriinya?) is smile (imperative, etc). Seecho (siicho?) is sit (ditto). Jah (Ja) is money or gold or coins or similar. Eks (Eks--no x in Daedric, remember) is "fix" or something close to that. Otherwise, even the vocabulary has quite a bit of wiggle room for someone who wanted to try and make a language consistent with that brief example.

Making languages from examples tends to make bad languages, though. Which is why I ignored the previous examples last time around. But in retrospect that was wrong of me. Published lore should take precedence. Especially when it sounds that cool. The voice actor did a great job with S'rathra.

Anyway, I might get around to re-creating some kind of Ta'agra, but it would be extremely unofficial. And I suspect there are only about two dozen people in the whole world who would care. But we could email each other in Ta'agra and confuse people and wave our freak flags high. It would be fun!

Well... Talk talk talk when we gonna eat? Or sleep? So, that's all for today.))

Jobasha

Someday Jobasha tells you about the house of the Big Walker.