Games - D'ni language

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	Games - D'ni language

The D'ni language (pronounced duh-NEE) was the language spoken by the D'ni
, as presented in various games and novels of the Myst franchise. At the beginning of the Riven game, for instance, a native known as Cho
will try and talk to you in rather broken and simple D'ni.

The people of D'ni, who live in an underground city located in a cavern in New Mexico, have a rich and tragic history.

The D'ni alphabet

The D'ni alphabet consists of 24 standard and 11 accented characters, combining to a total of 35 letters (11 vowels, 24 consonants).

Alphabetical order

D'ni alphabetical order is as follows (note that accented characters are not counted as unique):

The sounds of the alphabet are as follows in D'ni alphabetical order:

'V' as in "victory"
'T' as in "take"
'S' as in "snake"
'J' as in "joke"
'Y' as in "year"
'KH' as in the 'CH' in the German "Bach" or Scottish "loch"
'AH' as in "far"
'F' as in "funny"
'IH' as in "lit"
'EH' as in "red"
'R' as in the 'R' in Spanish "arbol" (a single-trill or flipped 'R')
'M' as in "mother"
'TH' as in "thin", "thorn" and "with"
'DH' as in the 'TH' in "then", "the" or "there"
'H' as in "hat"
'O' as in "own"
'CH' as in "cheat"
'W' as in "weed"
'UH' as in "but"
'TS' as in "puts"
'L' as in "leaf"
'A' as in "and"
'Z' as in "zero"
'N' as in "no"

'B' as in "ball"
'SH' as in "shoot"
'G' as in "grab"
'K' as in "king"
'I' as in "ice"
'P' as in "pun"
'EE' as in "feet"
'AI' as in "maid"
'D' as in "dog"
'OY' as in "boy"
'OO' as in "shoot"

Transliteration

When transcribing D'ni using the Latin alphabet, two different standards are used.

Old Transliteration Standard (OTS)

The Old Transliteration Standard transcribes the sounds of D'ni using Roman characters, allowing readers unfamiliar with the D'ni writing system to read D'ni texts. It was devised by Cyan, and perhaps specifically by RAWA. This method of transliteration is used in the Myst novels and in the D'ni Language Guide included in the European Collector's Edition of Myst V.

This standard uses the system described above to transliterate D'ni text ('ah', 'kh', 'ih' etc.). The system makes use of digraphs to clarify the pronunciation of vowels and some consonants. The value assignments are based on English pronunciation. General rules of the OTS include:

'h', in vowels, distinguishes English short vowels from long vowels, as in 'eh' /ɛ/ ("red") and 'ee' /i/ ("reed").
'h', in consontants, creates digraphs for fricatives and affricates that cannot be represented by a single letter, as in 'ch' /tʃ/ and 'th' /θ/.
'y' (or 'i') indicates a final /ɪ/ in a diphthong, as in 'oy' /o^ɪ/ ("boy").
*Users vary in how they distinguish /a^ɪ/ ("rye") from /e^ɪ/ ("ray"). The latter is usually represented as 'ay', following the rules of English pronunciation, but leaving no convenient representation for the former. The long i sound of /a^ɪ/ may be represented with a capital 'I', although some fans have replaced this with other symbols for aesthetic reasons.
'å' is sometimes used for 'a' /æ/, which could be otherwise indistinguishable from 'ah' /a/ if the 'h' is dropped (see below).

An 'h' can be removed after a vowel when the vowel would be pronounced the same with or without it. For instance, "kehnehn" can be written "kenen". The 'h' of 'ah' is also frequently dropped, even though the vowel might then be indistinguishable from /æ/. This is permissible because /æ/ occurs infrequently in D'ni words, so the pronunciation problems caused by the ambiguity are also infrequent. However, an 'h' cannot be removed when it represents the consonant 'h' /h/ (as in "hevtee") or when it is part of a digraph that represents a consonant (as in "chev" or "shokhoo").

According to the fiction, this standard was maybe first implemented by either Ti'ana, Gehn, or more probably, Atrus himself, being the very first persons able to speak both English and D'ni. Cyan adopted this system from their journals. Since these people lacked linguistic training and spoke only these two languages, it is explained why OTS is raw and imperfect (transcribing D'ni words like if they were English).

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for D'ni language ]

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