[YSDC] Into The Deep - User contributions [en]

R'lyehian

2016-01-12T23:59:37Z

Niscate: Corrected hyphens

'''R'lyehian''' is a fictional language created by [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and appears in many of his stories. It is named in ''[[Through the Gates of the Silver Key]]''.

==Written Language==
R'lyehian is written in R'lyeh Glyphs, a hieroglyphic lettering system which was brought to earth by the spawn of [[Cthulhu]]. It has been described as consisting horizontal word bars that the letters hang down from. It has also been compared to [[Naacal]].

==Examples==
[[Randolph Carter]] discovered an ancient parchment written in R'lyehian which he left untranslated after he disappeared in 1928. It was later found among the belongings of the mysterious [[Randolph Carter|Swami Chandraputra]] who similarly disappeared in 1930 in a related case.

Many cases exist of humans listening to R'lyehian. The famous words ''ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn'' chanted by the wide ranging [[The Cthulhu Cult|Cthulhu Cult]] is the most famous.

It is often described as very guttural and sounds inhuman when heard aloud.

==R'lyehian to English Dictionary==
:::''As extracted from the Yog-Sothoth Forums.''

''' ''An unofficial guide to R'lyehian (sometimes called Cthuvian)''' ''

The works of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft and his proteges, collectively known as the "Cthulhu Mythos," often contain fragments of an alien language. HPL himself never gave this language a name, but fan consensus has settled on "R'lyehian" or "Cthuvian", for the purposes of this article we will focus on the former.

HPL also provided translations of several fragments. Intrigued, I set out to learn more about R'lyehian, woefully unprepared for the sanity-blasting ordeal I faced. Fortune smiled, however, and the small lexicon below is the fruit of my efforts.
For more information about the Mythos, please visit the newsgroup alt.horror.cthulhu, or search for "Cthulhu Mythos" on the Web. You'll find more and better information than I can provide here.

A Note about Grammar: Unlike Earthly languages, R'lyehian makes no distinction between nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech. Pronouns may or may not appear. Verbs have only two tenses: present and not-present, since the Old Ones experience time in a non-linear fashion. Taken out of context, any fragment's translation is nothing more than guesswork.

===Vocabulary List===
{| class="wikitable sortable" border="1" align="center" style="text-align:left;"
! R'lyehian expression
! Type
! Meaning
|-
| -agl || suffix || place
|-
| ah || word || generic action, e.g. greet, eat, do
|-
| 'ai || word || speak / call
|-
| athg || word || sign (contract) / agree to
|-
| 'bthnk || word || body / essence
|-
| bug || word || go
|-
| c- || prefix || we / our
|-
| ch' || word || cross over / travel
|-
| chtenff || word || brotherhood / society
|-
| ebumna || word || pit
|-
| ee || word || answers
|-
| ehye || word || cohesion / integrity
|-
| ep || word || after; with hai, later / then
|-
| f'- || prefix || they / their
|-
| 'fhalma || word || mother
|-
| fhtagn || word || wait / sleep
|-
| fm'latgh || word || burn
|-
| ftaghu || word || skin/ boundary
|-
| geb || word || here
|-
| gnaiih || word || father
|-
| gof'nn || word || children
|-
| goka || word || grant
|-
| gotha || word || wish
|-
| grah'n || word || lost one / larva
|-
| h'- || prefix || it / its
|-
| hafh'drn || word || priest / summoner
|-
| hai || word || now
|-
| hlirgh || word || heretic
|-
| hrii || word || followers
|-
| hupadgh || word || born of
|-
| ilyaa || word || expect / await
|-
| k'yarnak || word || share / exchange
|-
| kadishtu || word || understand / know
|-
| kn'a || word || question
|-
| li'hee || word || on pain of
|-
| llll || word || at / beside
|-
| lloig || word || mind / psyche
|-
| lw'nafh || word || dream / transmit
|-
| mg || conjunction || yet
|-
| mnahn' || word || worthless
|-
| n'gha || word || death
|-
| n'ghft || word || darkness
|-
| na- || prefix || (contraction of nafl-)
|-
| nafl- || prefix || not / (not-present tense)
|-
| ng- || prefix || (conjunction) and / then
|-
| nglui || word || threshold
|-
| nilgh'ri || word || anything / everything
|-
| nnn- || prefix || watch / protect
|-
| nog || word || come
|-
| nw || word || head / place
|-
| -nyth || suffix || servant of
|-
| -og || suffix || (emphatic)
|-
| ooboshu || word || visit
|-
| -or || suffix || force from / aspect of
|-
| orr'e || word || soul / spirit
|-
| -oth || suffix || native of
|-
| ph'- || prefix || over / beyond
|-
| phlegeth || word || realm of information
|-
| r'luh || word || secret / hidden
|-
| ron || word || religion / cult
|-
| s'uhn || word || pact
|-
| sgn'wahl || word || share space
|-
| shagg || word || realm of dreams
|-
| shogg || word || realm of darkness
|-
| shtunggli || word || notify / contact
|-
| shugg || word || realm of Earth
|-
| sll'ha || word || invite
|-
| stell'bsna || word || ask / pray for
|-
| syha'h || word || eternity
|-
| tharanak || word || promise / bring
|-
| throd || word || tremble
|-
| uaaah || word || (finish spell)
|-
| uh'e || word || people / crowd
|-
| uln || word || call /summon
|-
| vulgtlagln || word || pray to
|-
| vulgtm || word || prayer
|-
| wgah'n || word || reside in / control
|-
| y'hah || word || amen
|-
| y- || prefix || I / my
|-
| ya || word || I
|-
| -yar || suffix || time of / moment
|-
| zhro || word || (lift spell)
|-
|}

==Language Function==

===An example===
The best-known R'lyehian fragment comes from HPL's story, "The Call of Cthulhu":
*''ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn''
HPL translates this as:
*''In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu lies dreaming.''
Using this dictionary, however, a more literal translation is:
*''Dead, yet dreaming, Cthulhu waits in his palace in R'lyeh.''

Today's offering is a pair of fragments from Bloch's "The Unspeakable Betrothal," and some intriguing implications of these. Both start in English and finish in R'lyehian. You'd think, with an English lead-in, such fragments would be easier to translate, but noooo:
*''They would carry her ulnagr Yuggoth Farnomi ilyaa...''

We already know ''Yuggoth'' is the planet Pluto. ''Ulnagr'' might be a preposition, except that R'lyehian doesn't seem to have any free-standing prepositions - they're mostly implied. Suppose, then, that ''agr'' sounds a lot like ''-agl'', a suffix which denotes a location. The girl is being summoned, so ''uln'' is a verb for ''call'' or ''summon''.
''Farnomi'' might be a location, or an entity, or a group of entities, on Yuggoth. Assuming it's the entity to whom the girl will be taken, we can guess that ''ilyaa'' means ''expecting'' or ''awaiting''. So this phrase might be translated to:
*''They would carry her [from] the summoning place [to] Yuggoth [where] Farnomi awaits [her].''

And the other fragment:
*''Only perception is limited ch'yar ul'nyar shaggornyth''
Here's ''uln'' again (sort of), but now it's not a place but a time. That means ''ch' '' is also a verb, and the other action involved is travelling to Yuggoth, so ''ch' '' means ''travel''. ''Shaggor'' sounds like a cross between ''lloigor'' and ''shoggoth'', so let's run with this. ''Shagg'' is different from ''shogg''. The girl is attacked through her dreams, so let's say ''shagg'' refers to the Dreamlands. A ''shaggor'' is not an inhabitant of the Dreamlands (that would be ''shaggoth'') so it's more like an aspect of some force, or a manifestation. Finally the suffix ''-nyth'' could mean ''servitor of''. So a ''shaggornyth'' is a servant of a dream force - I nominate the Nightgaunts. And the translation:
*''Only perception is limited [at] the moment of departure, [at] the moment of summoning, [the] Nightgaunt... [incomplete].''
We've already defined ''shoggoth'' as ''inhabitant of the pit''. The suffix ''-oth'' indicates a native of some place or realm. We can extend this to Azathoth, and define ''Azath'' as the realm of nuclear chaos. At the moment, though, I can't define ''Yog-Soth''.
The suffix ''-or'' tells us that ''lloig'' means ''mind'' or ''psyche'', since the ''lloigor'' are mental constructs.
These names give us some insight into the cosmology of the Great Old Ones. There are separate words for the world below (''shogg''), the world of dreams (''shagg''), and the world of the mind (''lloig''), and no doubt others will appear. They can operate in any of these worlds at will. Even though their physical bodies are imprisoned, they can influence their servants (and psychically sensitive people) through mental sendings and dreams.

A minor note: plurals in R'lyehian are usually formed by repeating the final letter. Hence, ''gof'n'' means ''child'', while ''gof'nn'' means ''children''. It makes a twisted kind of sense... so it's probably wrong.
To get caught up, we need a new definition of ''mglw'nafh'' to decipher the famous phrase in "The Call of Cthulhu". We propose keeping the original assumption that ''mg-'' is a prefix denoting a juxtaposition of opposites, like ''sino'' in Spanish. Suppose we call ''lw'nafh'' a verb meaning ''lives'' or ''acts''. The revised translation is then:
*''Dead (beyond the threshold) yet alive (working), Cthulhu [in Its] palace at R'lyeh sleeps/waits/dreams.''

We are now ready to tackle a phrase from Derleth's "The Return of Hastur":
*''Iä Hastur cf'ayak'vulgtmm, vugtlagln vulgtmm''
In this case, we need to guess at the meaning of this phrase before tackling individual words. Suppose it means something like this: "Hosanna, Hastur, we offer up our prayers to thee, we beseech thee with prayers."
''Iä'' doesn't really require translation, but it seems to have the same function as ''Hosanna'' (Aramaic for ''glory'', right?).
We've already seen a pronoun represented as a prefix (''y-'', see above), so we'll say that the prefix 'c-'' denotes the first person plural, i.e. ''we'' or ''our''. For reasons which will shortly become apparent, this prefix softens a following consonant, so the root verb is ''fhayak'', meaning ''send'' or ''offer up'' or ''place before''.
''Vulgtm'' thus means ''prayer'' (plural here, denoted by the second "m"). We've guessed that ''vugtlagln'' means ''beseech'' or ''respond to'', so, a more literal translation is:
*''Glory [to] Hastur! [We] send prayers [to thee], answer [our] prayers.''

The final fragment from "The Return of Hastur" is:
*''Hastur cf'tagn.''
Here again we see the prefix ''c-'', which reverses the normal sense of this verb:
*''Hastur, we wait [for thee], we dream [of thee].''

We can now turn to other fragments with some confidence. From Price's "Beneath the Tombstone", we have:
*''mglw'nafh fhthagn-ngah cf'ayak 'vulgtmm vugtlag'n''
We can handily translate it as:
*''...yet living, [It] sleeps/waits and then acts, we send [our] prayers [to thee], answer [us]!''

Or this, from Carter's "Dead of Night":
*''ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthugha Fomalhaut n'gha-ghaa naf'lthagn''
Glossing over some typos, we have:
*''Gone but not forgotten, Cthugha sleeps/waits at Fomalhaut, [promising] death to one and all.''

Comments, as always, are welcome.

[[Category:Mythos:Languages]]

User:Niscate

2016-01-12T16:10:29Z

Niscate: Created page with "Joined for the R'lyehian language."

Joined for the R'lyehian language.

Talk:R'lyehian

2016-01-12T16:08:13Z

Niscate:

No offense but have you taken into acount the probablity that not every word in these authers stories may be of the same language. In Through the Gates of the Silver Lovecraft mentions Hyoerborean Tsath-Yo and R'lyeh Glyphs. In Out of Aeons he mentions Muvian Naacal. Arthur Machen's Aklo language allso turns up in several stories.

Plus many of the words used in spells and rituals may be incantatory words with no actuel liguistic meaning.

: In ''Through the Gates of the Silver Key'', R'lyehian and Naacal are explicitly said to be different languages. [[User:Nescio|Nescio]] 20:51, 9 December 2008 (GMT)

Edit: Yes that is the point! Not very word may be of the same langauge.

== R'lyehian to English Dictionary ==
In order to introduce and understand R'lyehian better, I think it would be helpful to combine this section with the "Examples" section and the "Language Function" section. I don't see why they have to be three separate sections (if necesssary, subsectioning might be a solution). An explanation or a source of the rest of the vocabulary list, following the example in "Language Function", would also be very helpful.--[[User:Niscate|Niscate]] ([[User talk:Niscate|talk]]) 16:08, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

== Language Function ==
I found it hard to follow the text, because it sometimes uses premises which were not defined in the text previously. They are just stated as if they were facts that everybody knew. I could not really follow which translations have been deduced on what basis. Was the vocab list used as a source? Were other deductions by the author used as source?
For example: "We propose keeping the original assumption that mg- is a prefix denoting a juxtaposition of opposites[...]" What original assumption? I can't find it in the text. I got the impression that parts of this essay were not published on the wiki page. Generally, this section is great work, though! Sorry to be so critical, but I believe other fans that are passionate about the language would benefit from these improvements and I can see that the author put a lot of work in there that he or she might want to share with the rest of us.

Another minor note: For my taste, the writing style is too casual. It might be "just" a fan wiki, but I still propose using a more formal style like in the original Wikipedia.--[[User:Niscate|Niscate]] ([[User talk:Niscate|talk]]) 16:08, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

R'lyehian

2016-01-12T15:37:13Z

Niscate: Did some formatting and editing on the derivation

'''R'lyehian''' is a fictional language created by [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and appears in many of his stories. It is named in ''[[Through the Gates of the Silver Key]]''.

==Written Language==
R'lyehian is written in R'lyeh Glyphs, a hieroglyphic lettering system which was brought to earth by the spawn of [[Cthulhu]]. It has been described as consisting horizontal word bars that the letters hang down from. It has also been compared to [[Naacal]].

==Examples==
[[Randolph Carter]] discovered an ancient parchment written in R'lyehian which he left untranslated after he disappeared in 1928. It was later found among the belongings of the mysterious [[Randolph Carter|Swami Chandraputra]] who similarly disappeared in 1930 in a related case.

Many cases exist of humans listening to R'lyehian. The famous words ''ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn'' chanted by the wide ranging [[The Cthulhu Cult|Cthulhu Cult]] is the most famous.

It is often described as very guttural and sounds inhuman when heard aloud.

==R'lyehian to English Dictionary==
:::''As extracted from the Yog-Sothoth Forums.''

''' ''An unofficial guide to R'lyehian (sometimes called Cthuvian)''' ''

The works of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft and his proteges, collectively known as the "Cthulhu Mythos," often contain fragments of an alien language. HPL himself never gave this language a name, but fan consensus has settled on "R'lyehian" or "Cthuvian", for the purposes of this article we will focus on the former.

HPL also provided translations of several fragments. Intrigued, I set out to learn more about R'lyehian, woefully unprepared for the sanity-blasting ordeal I faced. Fortune smiled, however, and the small lexicon below is the fruit of my efforts.
For more information about the Mythos, please visit the newsgroup alt.horror.cthulhu, or search for "Cthulhu Mythos" on the Web. You'll find more and better information than I can provide here.

A Note about Grammar: Unlike Earthly languages, R'lyehian makes no distinction between nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech. Pronouns may or may not appear. Verbs have only two tenses: present and not-present, since the Old Ones experience time in a non-linear fashion. Taken out of context, any fragment's translation is nothing more than guesswork.

===Vocabulary List===
{| class="wikitable sortable" border="1" align="center" style="text-align:left;"
! R'lyehian expression
! Type
! Meaning
|-
| - agl || suffix || place
|-
| ah || word || generic action, e.g. greet, eat, do
|-
| 'ai || word || speak / call
|-
| athg || word || sign (contract) / agree to
|-
| 'bthnk || word || body / essence
|-
| bug || word || go
|-
| c - || prefix || we / our
|-
| ch' || word || cross over / travel
|-
| chtenff || word || brotherhood / society
|-
| ebumna || word || pit
|-
| ee || word || answers
|-
| ehye || word || cohesion / integrity
|-
| ep || word || after; with hai, later / then
|-
| f' - || prefix || they / their
|-
| 'fhalma || word || mother
|-
| fhtagn || word || wait / sleep
|-
| fm'latgh || word || burn
|-
| ftaghu || word || skin/ boundary
|-
| geb || word || here
|-
| gnaiih || word || father
|-
| gof'nn || word || children
|-
| goka || word || grant
|-
| gotha || word || wish
|-
| grah'n || word || lost one / larva
|-
| h' - || prefix || it / its
|-
| hafh'drn || word || priest / summoner
|-
| hai || word || now
|-
| hlirgh || word || heretic
|-
| hrii || word || followers
|-
| hupadgh || word || born of
|-
| ilyaa || word || expect / await
|-
| k'yarnak || word || share / exchange
|-
| kadishtu || word || understand / know
|-
| kn'a || word || question
|-
| li'hee || word || on pain of
|-
| llll || word || at / beside
|-
| lloig || word || mind / psyche
|-
| lw'nafh || word || dream / transmit
|-
| mg || conjunction || yet
|-
| mnahn' || word || worthless
|-
| n'gha || word || death
|-
| n'ghft || word || darkness
|-
| na - || prefix || (contraction of nafl-)
|-
| nafl - || prefix || not / (not-present tense)
|-
| ng - || prefix || (conjunction) and / then
|-
| nglui || word || threshold
|-
| nilgh'ri || word || anything / everything
|-
| nnn - || prefix || watch / protect
|-
| nog || word || come
|-
| nw || word || head / place
|-
| - nyth || suffix || servant of
|-
| - og || suffix || (emphatic)
|-
| ooboshu || word || visit
|-
| - or || suffix || force from / aspect of
|-
| orr'e || word || soul / spirit
|-
| - oth || suffix || native of
|-
| ph' - || prefix || over / beyond
|-
| phlegeth || word || realm of information
|-
| r'luh || word || secret / hidden
|-
| ron || word || religion / cult
|-
| s'uhn || word || pact
|-
| sgn'wahl || word || share space
|-
| shagg || word || realm of dreams
|-
| shogg || word || realm of darkness
|-
| shtunggli || word || notify / contact
|-
| shugg || word || realm of Earth
|-
| sll'ha || word || invite
|-
| stell'bsna || word || ask / pray for
|-
| syha'h || word || eternity
|-
| tharanak || word || promise / bring
|-
| throd || word || tremble
|-
| uaaah || word || (finish spell)
|-
| uh'e || word || people / crowd
|-
| uln || word || call /summon
|-
| vulgtlagln || word || pray to
|-
| vulgtm || word || prayer
|-
| wgah'n || word || reside in / control
|-
| y'hah || word || amen
|-
| y - || prefix || I / my
|-
| ya || word || I
|-
| - yar || suffix || time of / moment
|-
| zhro || word || (lift spell)
|-
|}

==Language Function==

===An example===
The best-known R'lyehian fragment comes from HPL's story, "The Call of Cthulhu":
*''ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn''
HPL translates this as:
*''In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu lies dreaming.''
Using this dictionary, however, a more literal translation is:
*''Dead, yet dreaming, Cthulhu waits in his palace in R'lyeh.''

Today's offering is a pair of fragments from Bloch's "The Unspeakable Betrothal," and some intriguing implications of these. Both start in English and finish in R'lyehian. You'd think, with an English lead-in, such fragments would be easier to translate, but noooo:
*''They would carry her ulnagr Yuggoth Farnomi ilyaa...''

We already know ''Yuggoth'' is the planet Pluto. ''Ulnagr'' might be a preposition, except that R'lyehian doesn't seem to have any free-standing prepositions - they're mostly implied. Suppose, then, that ''agr'' sounds a lot like ''-agl'', a suffix which denotes a location. The girl is being summoned, so ''uln'' is a verb for ''call'' or ''summon''.
''Farnomi'' might be a location, or an entity, or a group of entities, on Yuggoth. Assuming it's the entity to whom the girl will be taken, we can guess that ''ilyaa'' means ''expecting'' or ''awaiting''. So this phrase might be translated to:
*''They would carry her [from] the summoning place [to] Yuggoth [where] Farnomi awaits [her].''

And the other fragment:
*''Only perception is limited ch'yar ul'nyar shaggornyth''
Here's ''uln'' again (sort of), but now it's not a place but a time. That means ''ch' '' is also a verb, and the other action involved is travelling to Yuggoth, so ''ch' '' means ''travel''. ''Shaggor'' sounds like a cross between ''lloigor'' and ''shoggoth'', so let's run with this. ''Shagg'' is different from ''shogg''. The girl is attacked through her dreams, so let's say ''shagg'' refers to the Dreamlands. A ''shaggor'' is not an inhabitant of the Dreamlands (that would be ''shaggoth'') so it's more like an aspect of some force, or a manifestation. Finally the suffix ''-nyth'' could mean ''servitor of''. So a ''shaggornyth'' is a servant of a dream force - I nominate the Nightgaunts. And the translation:
*''Only perception is limited [at] the moment of departure, [at] the moment of summoning, [the] Nightgaunt... [incomplete].''
We've already defined ''shoggoth'' as ''inhabitant of the pit''. The suffix ''-oth'' indicates a native of some place or realm. We can extend this to Azathoth, and define ''Azath'' as the realm of nuclear chaos. At the moment, though, I can't define ''Yog-Soth''.
The suffix ''-or'' tells us that ''lloig'' means ''mind'' or ''psyche'', since the ''lloigor'' are mental constructs.
These names give us some insight into the cosmology of the Great Old Ones. There are separate words for the world below (''shogg''), the world of dreams (''shagg''), and the world of the mind (''lloig''), and no doubt others will appear. They can operate in any of these worlds at will. Even though their physical bodies are imprisoned, they can influence their servants (and psychically sensitive people) through mental sendings and dreams.

A minor note: plurals in R'lyehian are usually formed by repeating the final letter. Hence, ''gof'n'' means ''child'', while ''gof'nn'' means ''children''. It makes a twisted kind of sense... so it's probably wrong.
To get caught up, we need a new definition of ''mglw'nafh'' to decipher the famous phrase in "The Call of Cthulhu". We propose keeping the original assumption that ''mg-'' is a prefix denoting a juxtaposition of opposites, like ''sino'' in Spanish. Suppose we call ''lw'nafh'' a verb meaning ''lives'' or ''acts''. The revised translation is then:
*''Dead (beyond the threshold) yet alive (working), Cthulhu [in Its] palace at R'lyeh sleeps/waits/dreams.''

We are now ready to tackle a phrase from Derleth's "The Return of Hastur":
*''Iä Hastur cf'ayak'vulgtmm, vugtlagln vulgtmm''
In this case, we need to guess at the meaning of this phrase before tackling individual words. Suppose it means something like this: "Hosanna, Hastur, we offer up our prayers to thee, we beseech thee with prayers."
''Iä'' doesn't really require translation, but it seems to have the same function as ''Hosanna'' (Aramaic for ''glory'', right?).
We've already seen a pronoun represented as a prefix (''y-'', see above), so we'll say that the prefix 'c-'' denotes the first person plural, i.e. ''we'' or ''our''. For reasons which will shortly become apparent, this prefix softens a following consonant, so the root verb is ''fhayak'', meaning ''send'' or ''offer up'' or ''place before''.
''Vulgtm'' thus means ''prayer'' (plural here, denoted by the second "m"). We've guessed that ''vugtlagln'' means ''beseech'' or ''respond to'', so, a more literal translation is:
*''Glory [to] Hastur! [We] send prayers [to thee], answer [our] prayers.''

The final fragment from "The Return of Hastur" is:
*''Hastur cf'tagn.''
Here again we see the prefix ''c-'', which reverses the normal sense of this verb:
*''Hastur, we wait [for thee], we dream [of thee].''

We can now turn to other fragments with some confidence. From Price's "Beneath the Tombstone", we have:
*''mglw'nafh fhthagn-ngah cf'ayak 'vulgtmm vugtlag'n''
We can handily translate it as:
*''...yet living, [It] sleeps/waits and then acts, we send [our] prayers [to thee], answer [us]!''

Or this, from Carter's "Dead of Night":
*''ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthugha Fomalhaut n'gha-ghaa naf'lthagn''
Glossing over some typos, we have:
*''Gone but not forgotten, Cthugha sleeps/waits at Fomalhaut, [promising] death to one and all.''

Comments, as always, are welcome.

[[Category:Mythos:Languages]]

R'lyehian

2016-01-12T15:06:41Z

Niscate: Formatted the vocabulary list into a table

'''R'lyehian''' is a fictional language created by [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and appears in many of his stories. It is named in ''[[Through the Gates of the Silver Key]]''.

==Written Language==
R'lyehian is written in R'lyeh Glyphs, a hieroglyphic lettering system which was brought to earth by the spawn of [[Cthulhu]]. It has been described as consisting horizontal word bars that the letters hang down from. It has also been compared to [[Naacal]].

==Examples==
[[Randolph Carter]] discovered an ancient parchment written in R'lyehian which he left untranslated after he disappeared in 1928. It was later found among the belongings of the mysterious [[Randolph Carter|Swami Chandraputra]] who similarly disappeared in 1930 in a related case.

Many cases exist of humans listening to R'lyehian. The famous words ''ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn'' chanted by the wide ranging [[The Cthulhu Cult|Cthulhu Cult]] is the most famous.

It is often described as very guttural and sounds inhuman when heard aloud.

==R'lyehian to English Dictionary==
:::''As extracted from the Yog-Sothoth Forums.''

''' ''An unofficial guide to R'lyehian (sometimes called Cthuvian)''' ''

The works of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft and his proteges, collectively known as the "Cthulhu Mythos," often contain fragments of an alien language. HPL himself never gave this language a name, but fan consensus has settled on "R'lyehian" or "Cthuvian", for the purposes of this article we will focus on the former.

HPL also provided translations of several fragments. Intrigued, I set out to learn more about R'lyehian, woefully unprepared for the sanity-blasting ordeal I faced. Fortune smiled, however, and the small lexicon below is the fruit of my efforts.
For more information about the Mythos, please visit the newsgroup alt.horror.cthulhu, or search for "Cthulhu Mythos" on the Web. You'll find more and better information than I can provide here.

A Note about Grammar: Unlike Earthly languages, R'lyehian makes no distinction between nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech. Pronouns may or may not appear. Verbs have only two tenses: present and not-present, since the Old Ones experience time in a non-linear fashion. Taken out of context, any fragment's translation is nothing more than guesswork.

===Vocabulary List===
{| class="wikitable sortable" border="1" align="center" style="text-align:left;"
! R'lyehian expression
! Type
! Meaning
|-
| - agl || suffix || place
|-
| ah || word || generic action, e.g. greet, eat, do
|-
| 'ai || word || speak / call
|-
| athg || word || sign (contract) / agree to
|-
| 'bthnk || word || body / essence
|-
| bug || word || go
|-
| c - || prefix || we / our
|-
| ch' || word || cross over / travel
|-
| chtenff || word || brotherhood / society
|-
| ebumna || word || pit
|-
| ee || word || answers
|-
| ehye || word || cohesion / integrity
|-
| ep || word || after; with hai, later / then
|-
| f' - || prefix || they / their
|-
| 'fhalma || word || mother
|-
| fhtagn || word || wait / sleep
|-
| fm'latgh || word || burn
|-
| ftaghu || word || skin/ boundary
|-
| geb || word || here
|-
| gnaiih || word || father
|-
| gof'nn || word || children
|-
| goka || word || grant
|-
| gotha || word || wish
|-
| grah'n || word || lost one / larva
|-
| h' - || prefix || it / its
|-
| hafh'drn || word || priest / summoner
|-
| hai || word || now
|-
| hlirgh || word || heretic
|-
| hrii || word || followers
|-
| hupadgh || word || born of
|-
| ilyaa || word || expect / await
|-
| k'yarnak || word || share / exchange
|-
| kadishtu || word || understand / know
|-
| kn'a || word || question
|-
| li'hee || word || on pain of
|-
| llll || word || at / beside
|-
| lloig || word || mind / psyche
|-
| lw'nafh || word || dream / transmit
|-
| mg || conjunction || yet
|-
| mnahn' || word || worthless
|-
| n'gha || word || death
|-
| n'ghft || word || darkness
|-
| na - || prefix || (contraction of nafl-)
|-
| nafl - || prefix || not / (not-present tense)
|-
| ng - || prefix || (conjunction) and / then
|-
| nglui || word || threshold
|-
| nilgh'ri || word || anything / everything
|-
| nnn - || prefix || watch / protect
|-
| nog || word || come
|-
| nw || word || head / place
|-
| - nyth || suffix || servant of
|-
| - og || suffix || (emphatic)
|-
| ooboshu || word || visit
|-
| - or || suffix || force from / aspect of
|-
| orr'e || word || soul / spirit
|-
| - oth || suffix || native of
|-
| ph' - || prefix || over / beyond
|-
| phlegeth || word || realm of information
|-
| r'luh || word || secret / hidden
|-
| ron || word || religion / cult
|-
| s'uhn || word || pact
|-
| sgn'wahl || word || share space
|-
| shagg || word || realm of dreams
|-
| shogg || word || realm of darkness
|-
| shtunggli || word || notify / contact
|-
| shugg || word || realm of Earth
|-
| sll'ha || word || invite
|-
| stell'bsna || word || ask / pray for
|-
| syha'h || word || eternity
|-
| tharanak || word || promise / bring
|-
| throd || word || tremble
|-
| uaaah || word || (finish spell)
|-
| uh'e || word || people / crowd
|-
| uln || word || call /summon
|-
| vulgtlagln || word || pray to
|-
| vulgtm || word || prayer
|-
| wgah'n || word || reside in / control
|-
| y'hah || word || amen
|-
| y - || prefix || I / my
|-
| ya || word || I
|-
| - yar || suffix || time of / moment
|-
| zhro || word || (lift spell)
|-
|}

==Language Function==

===An example===
The best-known R'lyehian fragment comes from HPL's story, "The Call of Cthulhu:"
:''ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn''
HPL translates this as, "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu lies dreaming."
Using this dictionary, however, a more literal translation is, "Dead, yet dreaming, Cthulhu waits in his palace in R'lyeh."

Today's offering is a pair of fragments from Bloch's "The Unspeakable Betrothal," and some intriguing implications of these. Both start in English and finish in R'lyehian. You'd think, with an English lead-in, such fragments would be easier to translate, but noooo.

"They would carry her ulnagr Yuggoth Farnomi ilyaa..."

We already know Yuggoth is the planet Pluto. "Ulnagr" might be a preposition, except that Cthuvian doesn't seem to have any free-standing prepositions - they're mostly implied. Suppose, then, that "agr" sounds a lot like "agl," a suffix which denotes a location. The girl is being summoned, so "uln" is a verb for "call" or "summon."
"Farnomi" might be a location, or an entity, or a group of entities, on Yuggoth. Assuming it's the entity to whom the girl will be taken, we can guess that "ilyaa" means "expecting" or "awaiting."
So this phrase might be translated: "they would carry her [from] the summoning place [to] Yuggoth [where] Farnomi awaits [her]."
:And the other fragment:
Only perception is limited ch'yar ul'nyar shaggornyth
Here's "uln" again (sort of), but now it's not a place but a time. That means "ch'" is also a verb, and the other action involved is travelling to Yuggoth, so "ch'" means "travel."
"Shaggor" sounds like a cross between "lloigor" and "shoggoth," so let's run with this. "Shagg" is different from "shogg." The girl is attacked through her dreams, so let's say "shagg" refers to the Dreamlands. A "shaggor" is not an inhabitant of the Dreamlands (that would be "shaggoth") so it's more like an aspect of some force, or a manifestation. Finally the suffix "nyth" could mean "servitor of." So a "shaggornyth" is a servant of a dream force - I nominate the Nightgaunts.
And the translation: "only perception is limited [at] the moment of departure, [at] the moment of summoning, [the] Nightgaunt... [incomplete]."
We've already defined "shoggoth" as "inhabitant of the Pit." The suffix "oth" indicates a native of some place or realm. We can extend this to Azathoth, and define "Azath" as the realm of nuclear chaos. At the moment, though, I can't define "Yog-Soth."
The suffix "or" tells us that "lloig" means mind or psyche, since the lloigor are mental constructs.
These names give us some insight into the cosmology of the Great Old Ones. There are separate words for the world below (shogg), the world of dreams (shagg), and the world of the mind (lloig), and no doubt others will appear. They can operate in any of these worlds at will. Even though their physical bodies are imprisoned, they can influence their servants (and psychically sensitive people) through mental sendings and dreams.

A minor note: plurals in Cthuvian are usually formed by repeating the final letter. Hence, "gof'n" means "child," while "gof'nn" means "children." It makes a twisted kind of sense... so it's probably wrong.
To get caught up, we need a new definition of "mglw'nafh" to decipher the famous phrase in "The Call of Cthulhu." We propose keeping the original assumption that "mg" is a prefix denoting a juxtaposition of opposites, like "sino" in Spanish. Suppose we call "lw'nafh" a verb meaning "lives" or "acts." The revised translation is then: "Dead (beyond the threshold) yet alive (working), Cthulhu [in Its] palace at R'lyeh sleeps/waits/dreams."
We are now ready to tackle a phrase from Derleth's "The Return of Hastur:"
Iä Hastur cf'ayak'vulgtmm, vugtlagln vulgtmm
In this case, we need to guess at the meaning of this phrase before tackling individual words. Suppose it means something like this: "Hosanna, Hastur, we offer up our prayers to thee, we beseech thee with prayer."
"Iä" doesn't really require translation, but it seems to have the same function as "Hosanna" (Aramaic for "glory," right?).
We've already seen a pronoun represented as a prefix (Y, see above), so we'll say that the prefix C denotes the first person plural, i.e. "we" or "our." For reasons which will shortly become apparent, this prefix softens a following consonant, so the root verb is "fhayak," meaning "send" or "offer up" or "place before."
"Vulgtm" thus means "prayer" (plural here, denoted by the second M). We've guessed that "vugtlagln" means "beseech" or "respond to."
So, a more literal translation is: "Glory [to] Hastur! [We] send prayers [to thee], answer [our] prayers."
The final fragment from "The Return of Hastur" is "Hastur cf'tagn." Here again we see the prefix C, which reverses the normal sense of this verb: "Hastur, we wait [for thee], we dream [of thee]."
We can now turn to other fragments with some confidence. From Price's "Beneath the Tombstone," we have:
mglw'nafh fhthagn-ngah cf'ayak 'vulgtmm vugtlag'n
We can handily translate it as, "...yet living, [It] sleeps/waits and then acts, we send [our] prayers [to thee], answer [us]!"
Or this, from Carter's "Dead of Night:"
ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthugha Fomalhaut n'gha-ghaa naf'lthagn
Glossing over some typos, we have, "Gone but not forgotten, Cthugha sleeps/waits at Fomalhaut, [promising] death to one and all."
Comments, as always, are welcome.

[[Category:Mythos:Languages]]