User:Shynoe/sandbox5

Dialect Chains

Vana'dielian	Latinization	Original Word	Original Language	Source of Word	Meaning	Alternate Meaning	Notes	Misc
Altana	Altana	altana	Italian	altanas are tiered terraces or balconies that can be found in Venice on the tops of roofs	altanas are good for looking out across the horizon or sunbathing or stargazing	An altana could refer to other tiered structures. The word "tier" can also refer to a tower. The Goddess Altana is associated with Tears more than she's associated with the Dawn. In FFXI's stories that mention tears, I've found it always relates to a female character, magic, and/or something black-and-white like a magpie or a cait sith	The scriptures of Altana seem to have nothing to do with Altana : "blessed are the believers, for her icy blade will not touch us", and the way there are alternative versions of those scriptures in Bastok, Tavnazia, Adoulin, and Windurst would suggest that Altana had multiple different incarnations of different elements.	Most interesting to me is that the Mithra lived in the city of Al'Taieu (named after Altana according to the Kuluu) but they have a shamanistic religion where there are spirits or anima within the Earth and that doesn't include Altana.
Beadeaux	be dough	be dough	English	dough. it's used to make bread. ingredients : grain, yeast. don't forget to remove the shell from the grain, that's what mills are for	dough. bread. turtle bread	bread turtles. or even turtle dumplings: Ang ku kueh (紅龜粿)	Beadeaux is the fortress of the Quadav, but also resembles a place for baking. Their structures look like kilns. According to their history, they invented metalworking on their own. We see metal windmills and smokestacks in Beadeaux. It's inclear whether those are older than the ones in Bastok.	The shortest of Jesus's parables is the Parable of the Leaven which says that Paradise started out as a bit of flour and yeast that was left out overnight and the next morning it was all leavened, it was a big mound of dough. There's an alternate translation of it where the parable is the Parable of the Mustard Seed and it grows into a tree, but that's odd because mustard doesn't grow on trees. The second translation is worth mentioning because there's a story in Windurst where they put the star fruit seeds in the basement of Heavens Tower and overnight they came back to find the Great Star Tree sticking out of the roof.
Blueblade Fell	Fell / Fjell	Fjell	Norse	Fell comes from the word "Fjell" which is a Norse word for plateau	Blueblade Fell overlooks Tavnazia. One interesting geographical feature is that it has a natural archway, like a canal, which could've formed from a waterfall carving a hole through the rock.	In Vana'diel there are very sudden shifts in the tectonic plates. We're told that at the end of the Crystal War, not only did Tavnazia got pushed out to sea but the Vollbow region (Cape Terrigan area) also moved into Quon and formed the mountains on the western side of Gustaberg and Valkurm Dunes.	That same archway/canal formation also exists in Selbina, which the stone monument claims is a "natural harbor" and that it had dolphins.	Dolphins were on the flag of Ephramad. Dolphin is also a nickname for eldest son of the King of France, from the word Dauphin.
Kam'lanaut	kam la naut / kamalanaut / kami la naut / kamla naut	かみ la naut	English kam / Japanese kami / Greek ναύτ	A Kam is a part of an engine that starts the motion in a rod or piston as it turns	"Kam la naut" - Set an voyage in motion.	"Kamalanaut" - Water lily sailor. "Kami la naut" - False god. "Kamla naut" - Emptiness butterfly	I imagine similar to the Tower of Babel story of the builders trying to reach God and being cursed to speak different languages to prevent them from working together, the Zilart are also cursed with names clobbered together from different languages.	One of the ways these markers (') get used when transcribing hieroglyphics is to help read the word accurately when there's some ambiguity: like if you had a word translated as "hardanger" and it could be read as "hard anger", but the glyphs were actually "har-" (a curve) and "danger" so you place a distinguishing marker (') which serves as a particle to clarify the operative word is "har" instead of "hard". But we have no idea what the language of origin is, so it could be an abbreviation and the word may need to be assumed based on clues around the name in question. Though Kam'lanaut is also a bit of a mystery.
Kupipi	Kupipi	kūpe'e / kūpīpī	Hawaiian	kūpīpī is the Hawaiian word for the damselfish or sergeant major. During their mating season in the Spring, they change their grey colors to black and white stripes and the male kūpīpī will sing to entice the female kūpīpī to lay eggs in his reef.	No Alternative meaning here. Seems pretty clear cut.	Kupipi likes to si~ng if you couldn't te~ll. ♪ What a wo~nderful time I had! ♪ She has the matching outfit with vertical white and black stripes.	There are other singing fish in the sea : Big Mouth Billy Bass from 1998. And other NPCs who like singing. At the hat shop. On Adoulin's Big Bridge. Also, doesn't Cait Sith change between grey and black-and-white?	There isn't a Kupipi fish that you can catch, is there? I didn't find one.
Pso'xja	psomi xja / psoxja / psomi zea / psomi zeia / psomi zeidoron	ψωμί ζεί / ψωμί ζείδωρον	Homeric Greek	A Greek pharo grain very resistant to milling, but makes very soft and nutritious bread. In "The Odyssey", Homer uses the word for "Life-Giving", Zeidoron, in place of grain or bread, which is either based on or caused ancient urban legends that zeia is bread from the gods. In the Epic of Alexander, this bread is also said to be the source of Alexander's strength. This Pso'xja abbreviation seems to refer specifically to an altar bread, given by Jesus to represent his death and rebirth (John 6:53-58), teaching them of communion and to reflect on the sacrifice of God as they eat the bread. Their (Jewish) ancestors ate mana and died, but whoever eats this bread will live forever.	Altar Bread / Sacrificial Bread	Bread of Life-Giving / Sacrifice of the Body (Communion in Christianity) / Words Unspoken (Communion as in communicating without words)	Pso'xja is filled with Magic Millstone enemies and blood-sucking ticks, as well as statues that come to life. Diabolos says he was born in the city of Pso'Xja, and became a terrestrial avatar in order to assist mankind. It also seems to have effigies to other terrestrial avatars who have died: Fenrir and Pheonix. But it is also a shrine to an avatar who wants to kill all humanity: Bahamut. And another avatar who was neutral, friend to both humans and other avatars: Carbuncle.	Reminds me of the magic bread given to the Fellowship by the elves in LotR : Tolkien was a philologist (language enthusiast), may have carried the dialect chain into Middle Earth.
Raogrimm	Rao grimm	Rao grimm	Old Norse	From Norse : "Red Masque". Could reference from Norse myth / Gothic Poetry	Grimm is one of the aliases of Odin in Norse myth and he uses it as a disguise. Red could refer to the color of anger or wrath.	"Red Masque" may bring to mind the Edgar Allan Poe story about a Prince and his court throwing a masquerade party in a locked castle abbey while the world outside died of a plague of red death. The rooms in the castle were arranged linearly, each representing a phase of life, but none would enter the disturbingly dark-tinted room at the top that only contained a large grandfather clock which they ignored whenever possible, any time it wasn't bellowing a reminder of the passage of time. Until a mysterious man in a Red Masque began to chase the Prince through the castle and there was nowhere else to run.	Odin's Wrath is referenced in the regional description of Konschtat Highlands and on the stone monument in the same area. Odin's Wrath is the wind that blows through the valley and turns the mills, producing their bread.	The talekeeper could have an "Eye of Odin". In Norse myth, Odin's eye of seeing (seidr) lets him see the future. There's strange jump cuts and a blurry haze around Raogrimm's memories, with inconsistencies such as Cornelia suddenly appearing or Ulrich seemingly switching between 2 different personas. Another factor connecting Odin and Raogrimm is that Odin's weapon in Odin's backstory was a spear. Raogrimm was the greatest swordsman in Bastok. In ToAU, the new Odin avatar uses a sword.
Tonberry	tonsure / chudakarana	tonsure / चूडाकरण	Latin / Sanskrit	Ritualistic haircut of friars and monks to show their devotion. been around so long that the origin was lost. Christians trace it back to an Apostle who was assaulted and had his head shaved to mock him. Merovingians at one time had long haired kings who had pride in their hair. Alexander conquered a nation of long-haired kings and ordered their King's hair be cut. Buddist monks also shave their head bald as symbol of achieving a state of purity. Tonsure is also a hindi ritual known as chudakarana.	Cutting (of hair)	Shaved head	Uggalepih is the goddess of the Tonberry, and their legend says that they hate Altana because they transformed her into something ugly. That would fall under one usage of tonsure initiation. Tonberry are also dressed as friars and never let go of their knives. For the hindi ritual: your first haircut can symbolize the close of a chapter on the journey of rebirth. The journey of rebirth is referenced throughout Rhapsodies of Vana'diel.	There are quite a few NPCs that have particularly long hair. Leaving out the female characters: "Long-haired kings" would make be think of Valaineral or Kam'lanaut.
Zeid	zeidoron	ζείδωρον	life-giving	Homeric Greek	see Pso'xja		ζείδ : That kind of summaries why Humes have trouble with Galkan names and prefer to use monikers like "Darksteel Hurricane" or "Peppermint Twist"	Note to self: keep a tally of the number of bread references.
Zilart	zil-art	zil / art	"universal language", or not a language	A zil is a musical instrument from Turkey: worn on the fingers, resembles cymbals. They were used in ceremonies to find a rhythm to appease the spirits. Art is symbols that you find meaning in. Who's to judge what is or isn't art.	Cymbal-symbols	Too many to count	Many common symbols are found throughout different areas, implying connections across borders and in unlikely places	During development of FFXI, they conceived the idea of a world working together and communicating with a universal language. They were initially going to use Esperanto, and the lyrics for Memoro de la S^tono in the opening movie were written in Esperanto. There's also the auto-translate function and emotes. The story also references the tuning forks and how people were able to speak with the gods in the past but now they can't understand. There are common symbols all throughout Vana'diel that get used in different ways, and that's intentional. The lead scenario writer likely gave every artist or planner the same shape and said to put it somewhere, leaving it up to them. There are examples in the sketches of concept art of things like "make this part look like the RDM AF pauldrons" written on the paper for the sketch of an NPC that's not wearing RDM AF.
Zvahl	zvahl / zahl	ɀahl	Shona language group (South African, primarily Zimbabwe)	Tale / To Reckon / Reckoning	reckon / räckan can also refer to a chain you use to hang a pot from to boil it over a fire	Zvahl is the castle of the Shadow Lord in Xarcabard, an icy paradise of volcanic glass inhabited by demons. Said to have a portal to another dimension, which the demons were summoned from. The castle was built on top of ancient ruins near the Vahzl ark.	The beliefs of the Shona may shed some light on the Galka. If you wonder why newly rebirthed Galkan children are always found with an item, which is used to identify them and give them a name : totems are significant to the Shona. When someone dies, a chief with the same totem must recite the history of the totem going back to the totem's founder.	ɀ in unicode is called "Z with swash tail": latinized as "zv". Assumed to be a variant of the latin alphabet that was used by colonists and missionaries in Africa. That letter is also in the Tswa language (natively Xitswa), which may relate to the Vana'dielian nation of Zhwa. Galka and Mithra both have tails like that letter.
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