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Grimman Standard

Vlavaag regdgrim is used as a common language by the Grimmans. Humans think of it as "the" Grimman language, but the Grimmans actually have millions of languages and dialects, and none of them speak vlavaag regdgrim as a first language. In making this guide, I'm more or less following zompist's Language Construction Kit. Also useful: zompist bboard, LiveJournal conlangs community possibly YourFonts

Note that, within the setting itself, Grimman Standard is a constructed language, designed to be the common language for over a trillion Grimmans scattered through a thousand star systems. Thus, it's much more regular than you'd expect a natural language to be.

The Grimmans were originally from Earth in the far future. Thus the similarities of some Grimman words to words in Indo-European languages, and that of the Grimman alphabet to our own, were easily explained. However, the setting has evolved, and Grimmans are now from a distant planet. Now, the similarities can only be explained as one of those cosmic coincidences that crop up so often in science fiction. Nothing to see here, move along....

Sounds

The Grimmans' vocal apparatus is pretty much the same as humans', so their languages use the same sounds as humans'. Grimman Standard is spoken by over a trillion people, mostly as a second language, so it comes in a wide variety of accents. Therefore, I didn't bother getting fancy trying to make up phonemes that aren't used in English, because they would be correct for only a small number of speakers. The description below is how an English speaker would hear the sounds while listening to a conversation in Grimman Standard. There's probably some Grimmans who actually speak it this way.

Consonants

Pretty much the same as English, adding only the velar fricatives kh and gh, and the unvoiced velar nasal nk. I added pf, ts and dz as affricates, but I'm not quite sure that's what they are. The below table is probably unnecessary, but I did it for practice.

Vowels

Grimman vowels are pretty simple: 'i,' 'e,' 'a,' 'o,' 'u,' pronounced similarly to Spanish vowels. 'A' has a long form 'aa' which is considered a separate vowel, pronounced 'aah.' Some common vowel combinations are 'ai' pronounced as in 'aisle,' 'au' pronounced as in 'caught,' and 'ei' pronounced as in 'weigh.'

Alphabet

My attempt at a digital representation of the Grimman alphabet. I apologize for the quality. I used Microsoft Paint in zoom mode. This method is recommended if you have a pressing need to go insane in a hurry. Otherwise, not so much.

letter

name

pa

fa

ba

va

ta

tha

da

dha

sa

sha

cha

za

zha

ja

ka

kha

transliteration

p

f

b

v

t

th

d

dh

s

sh

ch

z

zh

j

k

kh

letter

name

ga

gha

ha

ra

la

ma

na

nka

nga

ya

wa

is

en

ad

on

ut

transliteration

g

gh

h

r

l

m

n

nk

ng

y

w

i

e

a

o

u

The names of the vowel letters form a phrase that's considered moderately profound: "this to that everything end." And I totally did not plan to end the alphabet with "end." Ut was "end," and the letter for 'u' was 'ut,' long before I realized that the logical place for 'u' is at the end of the alphabet. The names of the consonants don't really mean anything.

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Copyright © 2009 by Richard C. McCluney, III