Hallowspeak Update 39

Hi everyone! We’re back!! The exams are all over and it’s the holiday, so we’re all gearing back up to get back into Hallowspeak! Thank you for all the “good lucks” for my exams, and by “good luck” I mean eighteen spambot comments! Seriously why do they keep commenting on Hallowspeak posts in Russian. Why are 92% of our comments spam.

In any case! We’re just getting back into Hallowspeak now, so there aren’t any big updates yet. However, there is something I’ve been saving for a slow spot like this, so that you only have to wait two months for the next update, instead of three! How merciful of me. :p

If you don’t already know, The Shellwood Ordeal discord server is where you can go to request translations of phrases into Hallowspeak! And so, late last year, one of the members of the server requested us to translate a little server inside joke: “Davey, I need cock!”

Since all of the words of the request had an equivalent in Hallowspeak, it could be translated fairly cleanly, and I took that oppurtunity to go through the process of translating it! For each word, I explained not only why I translated it the way I did – including any suffixes that the word needed – but also where and how we found the word in the game, and where our theories for that piece of grammar came from.

All in all, it was a step-by-step, start-to-finish translation with explanation of all the work that lead up to it, all in as beginner-friendly language I could. I think you’ll really enjoy it!

Below is the entire process, copied from The Shellwood Ordeal discord server:

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alrighty! for the spectacle, let me go through each step of the process to translating this

so the first word here is “Davey”. you might think this needs no modification since it’s a name, but actually the word davey in that sentence is in the vocative case, which marks that a noun isn’t a participant in the sentence, but instead the person that it is directed to

english doesn’t have a unique vocative case, unless you count “O [name]!”, but Hallowspeak does! we know this from the line “trosje kalimo” from hornet. we don’t know what kalimo means, but trosje is actually tros+je, with je being the vocative suffix to show the statement is directed at tros. we know that because we know that tros means sibling, which is backed up by how the mantis lords say “Trosa!!” before the fight, meaning “siblings!”

so the first word will be Davey-je. if you wanted to write it like Hallowspeak words, it would be Deivije. nothing different, just the way we chose to write Hallowspeak sounds. if you’re wondering about that, make sure to check out the “how to read Hallowspeak” page on our website

now, the sentence structure of Hallowspeak is OVS, which we have proven through countless extensive analyses. that means the thing the verb is being done to comes first, then the verb, then who is doing the verb.

that means in the phrase “i need cock”, the thing that is needed, the cock, will come first.

we have a word for penis! of course it was not taken from the voice lines, and it’s just a joke word. however, it is a Hallowspeak Official joke word! it’s wingazingi, because it sounds funny. each of our joke words has a fun story behind why it was added, and i won’t go into the story behind wingazingi today, but if you want, you can go and try and find it yourself!

the thing that the verb is done to, in this case cock, needs to have a -k suffix to show so. this is called an accusative case suffix. this has even proven over and over again through our many theories, all making this one of the strongest pieces of Hallowspeak grammar

so far, we have “Davey-je, wingazingik…”

now the rest of the sentence: “i need”. like many languages you may be familiar with, such as french or spanish, Hallowspeak shows who is doing a verb by putting a suffix on it. and also like spanish, since the verb shows who is doing it, you don’t need a pronoun.

the suffix for when “i” am doing the verb, is simply nothing. we see verbs with suffixes in the voice lines, and also sometimes verbs without suffixes. and when we go with the lack of a suffix meaning “i” am doing the verb, it makes the most voice lines make sense out of any other option

now the verb “need”. we found this word from snail shaman’s voice lines. you can read the full process in Hallowspeak Update 11. unfortunately, in snail shaman’s line, the word for need has a suffix, which removes the final vowel of the word. for example, hega “prepare” + ek “them” becomes hegek.

that means, we don’t actually know what the last vowel of the word “need” was before the suffix removed it. we have reason to believe that “a” is Hallowspeak’s “default vowel” though, so through an educated guess, we assumed that. so the word for need is “na”

now, we have all the pieces to construct the sentence! the first vocative noun at the start, the noun that the verb is being done to, and the verb, which will have no suffix to show that “i” am doing it.

that leaves us with the final translation:

drumrolls

“Davey-je, wingazingik na!”

i hope you all enjoyed this very thorough translation explanation! i love giving all of you a glimpse into how Hallowspeak functions on the inside!