“Seed 32.”
“Why that one specifically?”
“In this dialect, my name is Khwarino. It means WaterGodEar or the spy of the Water God.”
“That sounds pretty epic!” said Lloyd.
“Yeah, I think so too.”
“Wait! If you call yourself that, wouldn’t that make you on bad terms with this dragon from the start? Since it is a fire dragon?” asked Lesli.
“Yeah, that could actually hinder our progress.” said Quinci.
“Can you choose a dialect that has a neutral sounding name?” asked George.
“Hmm, I’ll have to think for a bit.”
Sharlan thought long and hard about the seed that he would use to communicate with the dragon. He didn’t want to mess up during conversation while at the same time, he didn’t want to sound like someone non credible if he chose a seed where his name has a funny meaning. He thought an additional 17 seeds past his level of fluency. Finally, seed 60 hit the mark.
“Seed 60.”
“Wait, I thought that you said that you can only speak 43 dialects?” asked Jolene.
“That’s the problem. I went through the other dialects and didn’t find any values that seemed to fit. I can technically learn this dialect, but it’ll take some time to be able to speak it.”
“Well, is it even the best option?”
“Yeah, I’d say so. Don’t worry. I am extraordinarily intelligent. It’ll take me no time at all.”
“So, what does your name mean in dialect 60?”
“It is pronounced Shdaron or the LegManTorzefirFireCheterashi. Which deconstructs to Free Man who consorts with Fire Beasts.”
“Wow, that is a fitting name!”
“Good job. That is actually reasonable.” said Quinci.
“Huh, didn’t actually expect a compliment from you, Q”
“Now Sh, Shh, and get to writing that letter.”
“Wait, now it’s Kh..oh wait, dialect 60. Oh no!”
“Haha, your fault.”
“Whatever. Let’s start writing. So, the writing system is super complicated but simple at the same time. Basically, just like speaking, we use placements of symbol…uh wait…brushstrokes to represent positive and negative correlations between words. So, to write the sentence ‘let’s make a peace treaty,’ we would have to first convert it to pseudo GodTongue. To do that, I have to select the most fitting words from the available words.”
“What are the available words?”
“GodTongue has a total of 20 base words. Those being
1. God - T
2. Man - TT
3. Nose - TF
4. Ear - TFF
5. Hand - TTT
6. Woman - FTT
7. Child - TTF
8. Leg - FTTT
9. Torsead - FTTF
10. -Torsead - TFFT
11. Bird - FFFF
12. Lizard - TFTT
13. Fish - TFFF
14. Cheterashi - TTTF
15. Bug - FFFT
16. Fire - FTFT
17. Torzefir - FFTT
18. Tree - FFT
19. Water - TFTF
20. Earth - TTTT”
“Why are you stating true and false values after the words? Also what’s a Torsead, Chetarashi, and a Torzefir?”
“So, every word in GodTongue has the previously stated truth tables that never change no matter what dialect you speak. We use these tables to evaluate the sounds of the dialects and to write the sym…… in the language. Torsead is my best attempt to translate the GodTongue concept of the portion of a living being’s body that includes the Torso and the Head. In most other languages, people assign things like thoughts and feelings as coming directly from the head or the heart. GodTongue recognizes this flaw and solves it by using the whole portion of the body that generates hormones, pumps blood and makes its way to the brain to be interpreted as emotions which affects our thoughts as well.”
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
“Wow, that’s deep! What about Cheterashi and Torzefir?”
“Once again, my attempt at translating the meaning as best as I could. Cheterashi means four legged beast. While Torzefir means eye. Also, I should mention that what I have dubbed as the negative Torsead is the mouth.”
“So, how are you supposed to use these 20 words to represent that you want to make a peace treaty with the dragon?”
“The best way I can think of saying it is my name, ShdaronFireLizard.”
“Wait, if lizard is in the available words, why didn’t you just choose Lizard as part of your name?” asked George.
“Well, it’s not that easy. I don’t have a choice in the matter. That’s just how the values hash when using GodTongue. It’s hard to choose a good meaning for loan words. The only other value that could have matched up with the last part of my name is Woman, but then my name would be pronounced as Shdarona which first of all sounds kind of effeminate and second of all, I’m not sure of the gender of the dragon. So, I just went with the one that gives me better chances.”
“Ooookkaaay. Anyway, why does ShdaronFireLizard work the same way as let’s make a peace contract?”
“Well, Technically, english can’t really explain it that well in writing as GodTongue can, but basically, there are only two words in that sentence: Shdaron being me, and FireLizard being the dragon. They are placed together as there is a positive correlation between them. I could technically be more specific and add ShdaronTorseadFireLizardTorsead which would mean I feel positively towards the dragon who also feels positively towards me, but depending on the sentence, that might not be necessary.”
“What do you mean, depending on the sentence? You already know it, so don’t you know if it is necessary or not?”
“What I meant is how to write it.”
“So, then, how would you write this?”
Sharlan started writing.
[https://i.imgur.com/ja2Amrz.png]
“What the hell is that?”
“I don’t even have a clue what I’m looking at.”
“Ok, I did my best to try and write it. Now, I’ll try explaining it to you guys and if I find any mistakes along the way, I’ll have to correct them. So, first of all, I would have to to title it with a seed to make sure the dragon knows how to pronounce my name, but I’ll do that later since that part is a bit grindy.”
“Anyway, I will explain what all of this means now. First of all, the writing is omnidirectional which means that the reading is as well. That’s why it’s best to try and write most of your sentences in a way that makes sense from both directions. But let’s look at that first character.”
[https://i.imgur.com/rkvWHKj.png]
“This is the character that will stand for Leg in my name. Obviously it doesn’t have a standard way of being written since the writing system is non logographic and non phonetic, but it can still be recognized even if it takes on different forms. Here, I’ll write this same character completely differently but it will mean the same thing.”
[https://i.imgur.com/rWhbx7W.png]
“How does that make any sense at all?”
“Well, if you compare the two, it is quite clear that both have a brushstroke that is unconnected to anything else at the start, here look at them side by side.
[https://i.imgur.com/9piBkts.png]
[https://i.imgur.com/ZnpJyvd.png]
“Since this character is by itself, it means that it is a false value. Now, look at the other character. For the one on the left, it has 4 straight strokes all connected which means that there are 3 positive correlations in the character. The same goes for the second symbol. Except now, we have curvier and even closed shapes. Remember, read these naturally as if you were counting the amount of different shapes in the image. And also remember that the amount of truths is equal to n-1 where n is the amount of shapes in a character. Either way, both of these match to FTTT which is the truth table for Leg.”
[https://i.imgur.com/1om5gJq.png]
“What would happen if I wrote this backwards?” asked Quinci who tried to move the pen that was bigger than her.
“Oh, well, that’s one problem that can occur. Say I wanted to write it like…”
[https://i.imgur.com/JluZb5o.png]
“This is a perfectly valid writing and should be read from the right to the left if you want it to mean Leg. Otherwise, it means Cheterashi which is similar but not the word that you wanted to convey.”
“Wait, then what if the dragon messes it up while reading?”
“That’s quite unlikely. You usually read the text the way that the seed flows. I’ll show you later.”
“So, wait. That character means leg? So does that mean that this whole big thing spells out your name?”
[https://i.imgur.com/NQYRc6I.png]
“Yes, that’s correct. Also, notice how the size of the character of the right is bigger. It is to match the font and show that the character on the left is a compound rather than just a bunch of different characters. You are supposed to be as careful as possible with the sizing and placement of your characters while writing. That is why it is so difficult.”
“So, then, this character is pronounced Shdaron in dialect 60?”
“Yes.”
“Then what is dragon pronounced as?”
“Let me think for a second.”
Sharlan thought to himself. “I think it would be pronounced as ‘da’ with a tone 10 which matches to A.” He then proceeded to pronounce da in the proper tone. “However, I must be careful in order to not pronounce it in the base tone of 11 which just matches to Eye. This could cause some confusion between the dragon and me. Sadly I’m not too good at tone sensitivity so this will be challenging. Anyway, let’s get back to the letter. I think that I did everything right.”
“So how will the dragon know that these characters are attached and not far apart?”
“I will write the seed value to give the dragon a reference.”
[https://i.imgur.com/OLwIl3G.png]
“How does that seed work? Like, how does that mean dialect 60?”
“Basically, it’s just a binary representation of the value 60. It’s using the character for God a certain amount of times and then breaking and repeating to represent the placements of 1s in the seed. When greeting someone, you say the seed value using any sound that you want because there exists at least one dialect where the sound for God is the sound that you choose even if you don’t know that specific dialect. So, if I were to repeat A 6 times, this would give me 1_ _ _ _ _ . If I stop there, the rest of the slots are assumed to be 0s and the value would be 100000 which is the equivalent of 2^5 which is 32. But after a defined pause, just like expressing a negative relationship between things during ordinary speech, you start again, and then you say it five times, so 1 1 _ _ _ _. This continues until you finish giving the seed, which in this case is 111100 or 60 in decimal.”
“What the fuck?”
Maybe I should add a modifier to dragon to make it great dragon so that I show more respect? What do you guys think?”
“How would you go about doing that?”
“I can place a character for God in front of dragon.”
“I mean sure. Why not? Might as well try our best to get on its good side since we already attacked it earlier.”
[https://i.imgur.com/tIOAJR9.png]
“Wait, so if placing that character means that you increase the greatness of the word, then what would you use to decrease the quality. I don’t see a word that can be used as the opposite of God.”
“You’d use an ordinary single False value in front of what you’re making. Here, since the letter is done, I’ll just write it over here.”
“So, say I have this character for hand:”
[https://i.imgur.com/db5xytf.png]
“Since the seed hasn’t been placed yet, I feel like writing the statements slightly downwards. So, I can add a positive or true value at the top to show that I am good with my hands or something along those lines.”
[https://i.imgur.com/DTlBoUr.png]
“But what if I feel like adding another value to show that I am just alright and not the best. I can add another character for false. And, you know what, let’s read this diagonally down.”
[https://i.imgur.com/VRmgLyC.png]
“So, yeah, that’s why you generally want to place all your consecutive true values together when writing so that you can distinguish which ones are modifiers and which are not. Sadly, you are not able to tell which False values correspond to the word itself or to the quality. But only 8 of the words have the first value as a False. So yeah, that’s pretty much it for the writing portion of GodTongue. Time for me to start memorizing every compound word I can in dialect 60 to be able to talk to the dragon.”
“Oh, yeah, you never completely explained how to get the sounds for each dialect.”
“Ok, I guess I can explain that to y…..”
Suddenly, A terrifying roar resounded above their heads. The atmosphere shook and the temperature rose.
“OH, NO! It seems it has found us sooner than expected!”