Talk:Zamgrh

Adding To Zamgrh

I'm going to start adding to the language to develop it more as a tool for zombies and humans to communicate. Feel free to add in verbs and grammar specifications as necessary. --Gerbil 18:48, 2 May 2006 (BST)

Suggestions

Preterit and Gerund

I am not a zombie, but I am somewhat of a linguist. My knowledge is more with Spanish, so many of the tense names are just English translations of those names. I noticed in the article it states that kiZombie has no distinction between the present progressive tense and past: "Any verb not conjugated in the future tense refers to an action that began some time in the past and which may or may not still be going on at the present time." The the following example is used:

 mah zambah barg harmanz brahnz.
 I am eating human brains / I ate human brains.

If you added changed the word "barg" to gerund then you would be able to expand the amount of tenses available, such as past perfect progressive and so-on. Using your example, lets convert it to gerund using "bah" for example:

 mah zambah bargbah harmanz brahnz.
 I am eating human brains.

Obviously the "am" is implied because it is unnecessary due to the set gerund "bah". Here are some examples of other tenses that you could use with "bah":

Present Perfect Progressive

 mah zambah haz bargbah harmanz brahnz.
 I have been eating human brains.

Again, "been" has been removed because it is necessary.

Future Perfect Progressive

 mah zambah ganna bargbah harmanz brahnz.
 I will be eating human brains.

Again, "be" has been removed because it is necessary.

A preterit tense if you added a suffix to the verbs, such as "baz", just like the gerund. Example:

 mah zambah bargbaz harmanz brahnz  
 I ate human brains.

Another tense that could be used is the preterit perfect:

 mah zambah haz bargbaz harmanz brahnz
 I had eaten human brains.

I thought I would point these things out; you can take them or leave them.  Billy Club Thorton  T!  RR  19:24, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Sounds

It is possible to replace a hard 'c' and 'k' sounds with 'g' as they are similarly pronounced. These, such as 'z' for 's', 'ar' for 'er', etc... need to be properly documented.

I'm proposing a significant change to the orthology. That is to teach how to pronounce each set of letters as a specific sound. There are "basic sounds" and "replacement sounds". Here's an example chart. The yellow & green signify those sounds that can act as replacements. The basic phonetics from the main page are preserved, but a hard or soft sounding g would be determined by context. The replacement sounds don't change the pronounciation, but can be used to replace sounds in English that do not exist in Zamgrh.

z	h	g	b	r	m	n	a
za	ha	ga	ba	ra	ma	na	aa	a
zn	hn	gn	bn	rn	mn	nn	an	n
zm	hm	gm	bm	rm	mm	nm	am	m
zr	hr	gr	br	rr	mr	nr	ar	r
zb	hb	gb	bb	rb	mb	nb	ab	b
zg	hg	gg	bg	rg	mg	ng	ag	g
zh	hh	gh	bh	rh	mh	nh	ah	h
zz	hz	gz	bz	rz	mz	nz	az	z

Do we want to mess around with vowel length to allow for more than one vowel? I think that would be a plus, but I don't know if the average anglophone would pick up on it very readily...of course, I think that most of the sound changes, clicks and such are on the fringe as it is... Daniel Hicken 04:47, 14 October 2006 (BST)

"Two" Vowel system?

I've noticed in the field that the "letter" '!' is often used to substitute for the English letter 'i', effectively making Zamgrh a two-vowel language rather than one. Double-a however could be useful to substitute for the missing "silent e" - distinguishing bag and baag (although why a zombie would be concerned with something that's beige might be another matter altogether. ;-) ) Dst3313 22:23, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Being, of course an anglophone, I know that it's intentioned as an /i/ or /I/ sound; however, in the context of the game it almost seems to me to be a glottal stop, like the "sound" that precedes the vowels in "uh-oh." It would thus make the name /k?zamba/. I agree that it seemingly makes it a two-vowel system. I know that my zombie chars use vowel length of /a/...and they also use the ! as a short-hand roman-numeral.

I do agree with you about contextual use of ! as a replacement for the grapheme of "i". This of course will require a revamp of the system, since that actually adds at least two vowel flavors to the "language," (the vowels of "bit" and "beat", and quite possibly a third under "byte" or "bite".

Really, that's the hardest thing with kiZombie; it's not actually phonetically limited, it's graphologically limited, thus limiting the phonemes, but it presents a puzzle to linguists. Well, I think I agree with you about the additional vowel. What do you think of the different vowel senses I've listed at the end of the last paragraph? Daniel Hicken 16:03, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Proper Nouns

Proper nouns should be attached by a suffix representative of their state. For instance, -zam, -man, -bar could be suffixes for names of zombies, humans, and buildings respectively. Additionally, it may be best to add a '-' in place of spaces in names. Also capitalization helps.

 e.g.:  gerbil (a zombie) => Grbrhzam
        rob (a human)  => Rahbman
        Caiger Mall (building) => Ghargar-Marrbar

Negative

There are 2 ideas:

1) Use "nah" as "not" to refer to conjugate a verb to its negative state.

      e.g.:  zambahz nah bamarz barz!  =>  zombies don't attack barricades!

2) Use ! to join the subject & verb together.

      e.g.:  zambahz!zzzz.  => zombies don't sleep.

Conditional

If the 2nd option in the negative conjugation is used it would be possible to create conditional statements with "?" in much the same way.

  e.g.:  manz?bam manz, zamz!barg.  =>  If humans attack humans, then zombies don't eat.

More complicated sentences could combine negatives and conditionals.

  e.g.:  manz?!bam ma, ah!barg manz brahnz.  => If humans do not attack me, I will not eat human brains.

Imperative

There's a problem with how imperatives are used currently. The language defines a standard S-V-O structure, but in those examples they do "manz bamarz" which is translated "attack humans!" This should really be "bamarz manz" so you can attach a subject for specific orders.

Issue with the Cardinal Directions

I noted that there seems to be two contradictory sets of definitions for cardinal directions. Although both agree that the letter "N" represents the direction North,

• Zamgrh uses "A" as "South." - Guides:The Zombie Lexicon uses "Z" or "Zah"
• Zamgrh uses "Z" as "West" - TZL uses "M" or "Raz"
• Zamgrh uses "M" as "East" - TZL uses "A" or "Az"

While TZL's list makes sense phonetically for North, South (Zouth) and somewhat for East (Aest? - vowel for a vowel at least), the use of M as an inverted W for West is basically just a convention (Phonetically, -R- makes sense for West, and isn't used in the scheme already... "Rast!") Zamgrh's use, however, instead seems to use the middle of words? sAth, weZZt and... M as a sideway "E"? Either way, it's as confusing since the two conventions can't be distinguished except by their meaning.Dst3313 00:53, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

That was put together before I came around, but if you can come up with a more coherent and easily accesible way, by golly, I'm all for using yours! Daniel Hicken 21:20, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm tempted to say, use TZL's version, substituting "R" for "M" (for West/Rast). Z, at least, makes more sense to me as South than as West. East and West are kinda a grab-bag. The use of surrounding dashes to indicate "I'm now indicating a direction" seems to make sense, as well, and allows the intermediates (North-west, and so forth) to be indicated directly. Gaah -ZA- = Go Southeast. It's not very phonetic however; it's more a "I'm pointing" symbol reflected in written speech. That being said, if a convention is seen in the field, that's preferable than declaring one to be the rule. My preference for the TZL version, therefore, is more a reflection that TZL is built (theoretically, at least) by what's actually seen and heard, and used, by zombies. My preference for the modification of West's definition is to avoid ambiguity. My concern is that there may in fact be no consensus, and that different zombies are using the dueling recommendations (Since, in a sense, these pages create a chicken and the egg scenario - we look at what's being used, and report it, and others then look at what we've reported, and use it) Dst3313 22:23, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Archived

There are twenty-one distinct phonemes in kiZombie: six low-tone +syllabic consonants, six high-tone +syllabic consonants, one low-tone and one high-tone vowel, and five clicks.

Letter	Tone	Notes
z	Low	a +syllabic +voice alveolar fricative
Z	High	a +syllabic +voice alveolar fricative
h	Low	a +syllabic +voice glottal fricative
H	High	a +syllabic +voice glottal fricative
r	Low	a +syllabic +voice uvular trill
R	High	a +syllabic +voice uvular trill
b	Low	a +syllabic +voice bilabial fricative
B	High	a +syllabic +voice bilabial fricative
m	Low	a +syllabic +voice bilabial nasal
M	High	a +syllabic +voice bilabial nasal
n	Low	a +syllabic +voice alveolar nasal
N	High	a +syllabic +voice alveolar nasal
a	Low	a mid-central unrounded vowel
A	High	a mid-central unrounded vowel
.	no tone	a bilabial click
?	no tone	a dental click
!	no tone	an alveolar click
-	no tone	a palatoalveolar click
,	no tone	an alveolar lateral click

kiZombie is a predominantly synthetic language, similar to English. There is some compounding but little declension or conjugation. kiZombie follows a standard SVO syntax, with the verb and subject inverted in the case of questions:

hamz z hrh

human.PL be here

'humans are here'

z hamz hrh

be human.PL here

'are humans here?'

Adjectives follow nouns:

zamz brn z hrh

zombie.PL brainrotted be here

'There are brainrotted zombies here.'

In compounds, however, the semantic head is at the end of the word:

zamgrh but grhzam and grhzamarz

zombie.speak speak.zombie speak.zombie.IMP

'kiZombie' 'a zombie who can speak' 'Speak to the zombie.'

examples

You know, the examples illustrating the SVO word order aren't really correct, since in "Humans are here," the "here" is not an object noun ("are" is not transitive) but an adverb. Also in "Here are humans," the "Here" is not a subject noun either. I would make up some different examples, but I didn't know if vocabulary can be made up. Thoughts? --Quadalpha 16:03, 8 June 2006 (BST)

It seems to me that much of what we're doing is a relex of English, although the grammar structures are taking on a distinctively creole feel. My two cents. Daniel Hicken 07:11, 14 October 2006 (BST)

Zambah Ranghrazz?!

Zombie Linguists! I'm in heaven! How can I help!? Daniel Hicken 04:12, 14 October 2006 (BST)

• I'm quite impressed! Having taken a few classes in Linguistics myself (and I'm still surprised I passed ANY of them), I appreciate the level of thought and skill that went into this. --MorthBabid 23:28, 18 October 2006 (BST)

Why, Morth Babid of YPR (Yagoton Public Radio), you're one of oure merrye bande? Any contribution you feel like giving (though I know you play a survivor) would be well appreciated! Daniel Hicken 00:59, 19 October 2006 (BST)

Phonemic Correlation Table?

Since it seems that lexically Zamgrh uses mostly AmE, it would be useful to have a sound correspondence table available to the end user...we'd have to adjust this for the main page, but for the talk page, I'll be deferring to X-Sampa:

p

b

t

d

tS

dZ

k

g

f

v

T

D

s

z

S

Z

h

m

n

N

l

r

w

j

n

x

x

n

m

x

m

r

x

x

r

b

x

x

x

b

g

x

x

x

x

x

x

g

h

x

x

x

h

z

x

x

x

x

z

p

b

t

d

tS

dZ

k

g

f

v

T

D

s

z

S

Z

h

m

n

N

l

r

w

j

Having marked those that I feel are fairly transparent, there are some that I'm at a loss for. I suppose we could go Scooby-Doo on the /w/ and /j/ and simply make them /ra/.

For /t/, /d/, /tS/, /dZ/, /T/, and /D/, I'm not sure if we should assimilate them to the M, N, or B, since they're all in the alveo-dental range. What are your thoughts/comments?

In a related comment, I suggested the idea of vowel length to add at least a binary level to the vowels of Zamgrh; what do you think of that? Could we say come up with a blanket statement, like "all diphtongs will assimilate to /aa/ whereas all other vowels will assimilate to /a/?

Daniel Hicken 07:10, 14 October 2006 (BST)

I've just reviewed Gerbil's page. Are we possibly adding /Z/ to the phonemic/phonologic group as zh in orthography? That would help matters, and soak up the /S/ as well. Daniel Hicken 07:18, 14 October 2006 (BST)

on language not representing english

i don't know how many people who are actual linguists contributed to the article, however i've got to say that although it doesn't represnt english sounds it is build upon english constructions, words are spin-offs of english words. I speak 4 languages: ukrainian, russian, english and german and there are a lot or words in german or russian that can be represented in death rattle, but their english form cannot. and i like to use such words a lot with my role-playing dual naturist character. just my 2 cents. --~~~~ [talk] 15:58, 10 October 2007 (BST)

Well, I am a linguist and I agree with you Duke. Zamgrh is not English (nor any other language) with a Death Rattle accent. The most accurate analogy would be with a pidgin or creole, a trade language which developed to help communication between two or more groups with no common language. To create grammar or a dictionary for it is largely redundant. Grammar and spelling come second to simply conveying meaning. For example, it doesn't matter if a zombie says "ahg bra!nz", "barg brahnz", "brahnz azzan", "mangh bra!nz" etc as long as the zombies he speaks to understand what he means. --Pavluk ^{A! E!} 16:22, 10 October 2007 (BST)

In other words, Pavluk, a grammar or dictionary of Zamgrh would be descriptive, not prescriptive. If ahg, barg, azzan and mangh all mean eat, then all four of these variants should be listed in a dictionary of the language. Creating a dictionary and a grammar is not at all redundant-- it's a useful reference tool to help us understand zombies when we don't understand them. Creoles are languages too, and they have their own grammars and dictionaries. --Buddhagazelle 16:57, 10 October 2007 (BST)

Well said, Buddhagazelle. I, too, am a linguist, Pavluk. I've approached everything I've done with Zamgrh as a descriptivist, because there's no sense in really prescribing what to do with this language. Daniel Hicken 21:47, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

That's interesting, Duke. Could you teach me some non-English words that fit through the Death Rattle filter? --Settone 00:47, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I've added a lot and a lot of them were already present in that excellent dictionary. Few examples, anyway

• Abar - similar to german "aber" = "but" in english.
• Bazaar - similar to russian "базар" = "market" in english (used for Mall)
• Gagarah - similar to russian name of a certain duck/goose type = "loon" in english (used as duck)
• Mahr - well, it's already close to english "more", but german "mehr" which is the same word is even closer.

--~~~~ [talk] 16:25, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

My Attempted Contribution

Zamgrh Modification
I've tried to make it echo English as much as possible. I'm not sure how well it is. S Buick 01:51, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Interesting, but you're working in a wrong direction. Zamgrh is not a derivative of english and shouldn't echo it by any concern. It's a self-created language that uses words that sound familiar to many and many various languages. you could actually see the discussion in the section right above this. But as it is any alive language - you're free to use whatever dialect of it you come up with. Actually i'm quite sure every zombie speeks his own dialect of zamgrh!

Now, some more criticism on what you did. there are already meta-languages that adjust full english alphabet into death-rattable sentences. look Zombish, Zombese, and Zomban. However, if you wanted to stick to the kiZombiesh idea of words being words and language being language you shouldn't "encode" letters. An example from your page "! hagaa har-manz. => I hate humans." . Why the malton would you want to substitute "e" in "hate"? it's a "silent e", it's not spoken and zombies won't speek it too! --~~~~ [talk] 19:30, 26 June 2008 (BST)

I see what you mean. For the "hate" example, it would be better to substitute a long "a" sound rather than making an "e" at the end. I didn't mean so much echoing English as much as attempting to make the entire alphabet accessible. S Buick

Verbal translations, and missing words.

Maybe a pointless question, but has anyone produced audio files of the sounds used to make up Zamgrh? They could be useful as the language is phonetic originally, and there does seem to be relational patterns for the evolution of words.

Also how are new words defined/established? Are new words defined by recombining the established language set? And what about words which have to be created from scratch? Portalcore 13:05, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Clarifications and observations.

I know that each zombie has it's own version of Zamgrh, so what I'm asking is redundant, but it would be nice to have some clarification of some aspects, as I am attempting to produce a translation, where the majority of the words are not in the dictionary yet.

How are words put together? example: Everywhere - would it be a combination of 'every' & 'where' or the whole word 'everywhere'?

Because looking at the dictionary, the combination of the separate words seems to be the case, in addition of adding a 'z' for multiples of an item.

Would zombies use abbreviated words? We use 'don't' instead of 'do not', to state just one example, but would a zombie have the facility of this as the apostrophe is not present in death rattle.

Just an observation, but when a zombie refers to itself, it does so in the 3rd person (usually).

And one last thing, would a zombie word be able to refer to more than one english meaning? as 'hra' means 'a' but has also been used as 'to' in some instances.

In the dictionary, there doesn't appear to be much if any overlaps of different meanings for the same word.

Just wondered if anyone could enlighten me, as I'm trying to translate the most common used english words into Zamgrh.

Portalcore 15:51, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

As a zombie, I can tell you that a lot of what's become Zamgrh seems to stem from a zombie's attempts to form words too complex for our rotten, dead faces. We remember the words well enough, but can only express them fully at a keyboard. The reason for this is that our facial muscles are just too far decomposed to be able to form the more complex sounds. That's how I developed my own understanding of our language: Trying repeatedly to form words my face can no longer pronounce.

Try talking like a zombie. Go ahead, give it a shot. Groan everything out and don't put any clear inflection on anything. Go ahead, I'll wait.

It's tough, isn't it? This is because the muscles in our jaws have atrophied to the point where we can only perform basic functions, so everything comes out sounding like it's got an "a" overtone. We want to say "I", but since our faces can't properly form the word, it comes out as "Ah." Don't even get me started on trying to say "You." Y is one of those sounds that requires a lot of work from the facial muscles, so when we try to imitate it, you hear a rolling growl. "Rrgh" is probably the closest I've come to actually being able to say "You." It's irritating. That's why we tend to describe people based on what they do. Some words are just too hard to try to form.

I'm sure some of us make frequent use of abbreviated words, but most of us don't bother. It was hard enough having to re-learn an entire language. I for one don't see the sense in using them in daily speech.

Not sure about the self-reference business. I use "mah zambah" to refer to myself sometimes, while I just use the aforementioned "Ah" at other times. But really, I think we just do it for fun. I know I do.

I'm very sure there are words I haven't even discovered, or that I've used by accident, that refer to more than one word. When this happens, it's probably because that sound most closely represents many similar-sounding words. Since we're on this vein, I'll continue my examination of "Ah" as a zombie word. It can be used to represent the self-indicator "I," as well as a variant of "hra" to refer to "a" as a singular indicator. It could also be used as an expression of understanding, such as, "Ah, I see what you mean." In speech, I would pronounce that sentence as, "Ah, ah zaa ragh rrgh maahn."

I hope this article has answered at least some of your questions. I look forward to eating your brains soon. ;)

Aaarrgh 21:51, 18 August 2009 (BST)