Thus far, the rules for plural nouns have been fairly straightforward - double last letter and add -e. Example plurals are:

• Dovah - Dovahhe
• Jun - Junne
• Nax - Naxxe

The following is a proposed change for nouns like "Nax" that end in x. Instead of adding, -xe, you add -se. This would carry the exact same pronunciation, but introduces a different way of spelling it. Examples of this exception would be:

• Nax - Naxse
• Rax - Raxse
• Wox - Woxse
• Lingrahbrax - Lingrahbraxse

The reasoning behind this is that, in Dovahzul, the letter x carries the pronunciation ks. For the purposes of pronunciation, the word "Nax" could be spelled like "Naks". Logically, the double x in "Naxxe" would then hold the pronunciation "Nakskse", which is unpronouncable. This exception simplifies the spelling to form the actual pronunciation.

Credit to Vulsaarkven for the idea. Community, thoughts on this? I'm interested in how you would feel about introducing this exception. I would say that the only thing that would for sure prevent us from being able to make this rule is if there exists a canon instance of a word like "Nax" being spelled "Naxxe". Very few nouns end with x, so this would affect just over 10 words total. They can even be added to the dictionary to demonstrate the exception.

Thanks for reading!

Hmm... this is an interesting idea, but I'm not so sure about it. There are plenty of words in English that have two of the same consonant beside each other that we don't pronounce; for example, the word snapped. It would be impractical to say it like "snap ped" -- it just doesn't flow right. It's much easier to go straight through it, which is exactly what we do -- but that doesn't change the spelling to snaped. Sometimes there are weird rules that don't make sense pronunciation-wise. I think the same kind of thing applies here. Yes, if you think logically, naxxe would be "nakskse", but we don't say it that way because it isn't practical. I don't think we should introduce this as an exception because, if I understand correctly, the only real reason would be to make the spelling match the pronounciation, which just isn't always the case.

Aaliizah

Hmm... this is an interesting idea, but I'm not so sure about it. There are plenty of words in English that have two of the same consonant beside each other that we don't pronounce; for example, the word snapped. It would be impractical to say it like "snap ped" -- it just doesn't flow right. It's much easier to go straight through it, which is exactly what we do -- but that doesn't change the spelling to snaped. Sometimes there are weird rules that don't make sense pronunciation-wise. I think the same kind of thing applies here. Yes, if you think logically, naxxe would be "nakskse", but we don't say it that way because it isn't practical. I don't think we should introduce this as an exception because, if I understand correctly, the only real reason would be to make the spelling match the pronounciation, which just isn't always the case.

In that respect you must remember, this is Dovahzul not English and the fact that Dovahzul is much more phonetic than English is.

Vulsaarkven

Aaliizah

Hmm... this is an interesting idea, but I'm not so sure about it. There are plenty of words in English that have two of the same consonant beside each other that we don't pronounce; for example, the word snapped. It would be impractical to say it like "snap ped" -- it just doesn't flow right. It's much easier to go straight through it, which is exactly what we do -- but that doesn't change the spelling to snaped. Sometimes there are weird rules that don't make sense pronunciation-wise. I think the same kind of thing applies here. Yes, if you think logically, naxxe would be "nakskse", but we don't say it that way because it isn't practical. I don't think we should introduce this as an exception because, if I understand correctly, the only real reason would be to make the spelling match the pronounciation, which just isn't always the case.

In that respect you must remember, this is Dovahzul not English and the fact that Dovahzul is much more phonetic than English is.

Yes, I see your point. I guess that means we'll just have to see if we can find any canon occurances of -xe. Is there a full list of the words that would be affected by this exception or would we have to sift through the dictionary to find them?

Canon words that end in "x":

• Bex - open
• Munax - cruel
• Nax - cruelty
• Ronax - regiment
• Zorox - create

Got it. Thank you. The search begins! Any suggestions as to where good places to look might be, other than in the game? If I had Skyrim on the PC, I might look in the game files, but I have it on the PS3 and I'm not even sure that you could extract the dialogue from game files (I know next to nothing about that kind of stuff).

Just an observation: looking at that, and knowing that Dovahzul doesn't conjugate verbs, there are only two canon words that could be made plural. I don't know whether that'll make the search easier or harder. Probably harder.

It does make a possible search easier. Words we should look for are naxxe and ronaxxe. They are highly unlikely to be in Word Walls, which never use plurals, so if they are anywhere it will be in dialogue.

Okay, I'm on it.

edit: Just found a file that contains the whole of Skyrim's dialogue. Maybe we could add this to the Library. It's here for download if anyone wants it, but it's totally raw and unformatted: http://www.filedropper.com/dialogue

Alright, I have searched the document with all of the canon words that would be affected (just in case) and I haven't found anything that says we can't make this rule. I say let's do it. :)

The only problem I see at the moment is if we currently have any words that end in "-xse," which could cause a bit of confusion.

Morovahdin

The only problem I see at the moment is if we currently have any words that end in "-xse," which could cause a bit of confusion.

Do you know of any words like that?

There are currently no words that end is "-xse". One thing that comes to mind now is a rather lesser-known suffix, "-se", which is briefly discussed here. It basically means "for", "ulse" = "for eternity". This could be a potential conflict.

paarthurnax

Thus far, the rules for plural nouns have been fairly straightforward - double last letter and add -e. Example plurals are:

• Dovah - Dovahhe
• Jun - Junne
• Nax - Naxxe

The following is a proposed change for nouns like "Nax" that end in x. Instead of adding, -xe, you add -se. This would carry the exact same pronunciation, but introduces a different way of spelling it. Examples of this exception would be:

• Nax - Naxse
• Rax - Raxse
• Wox - Woxse
• Lingrahbrax - Lingrahbraxse

The reasoning behind this is that, in Dovahzul, the letter x carries the pronunciation ks. For the purposes of pronunciation, the word "Nax" could be spelled like "Naks". Logically, the double x in "Naxxe" would then hold the pronunciation "Nakskse", which is unpronouncable. This exception simplifies the spelling to form the actual pronunciation.

Credit to Vulsaarkven for the idea. Community, thoughts on this? I'm interested in how you would feel about introducing this exception. I would say that the only thing that would for sure prevent us from being able to make this rule is if there exists a canon instance of a word like "Nax" being spelled "Naxxe". Very few nouns end with x, so this would affect just over 10 words total. They can even be added to the dictionary to demonstrate the exception.

Thanks for reading!

Even though it has been 2 years already, I think that it is needed to have an exception to the "rule of plurals" in Dovahzul. As this language pretty much uses sounds (and not letters) to create words, an impossible to pronounce word shouldn't exist (like Spanish words, each and everyone of them have their own meaning and pronounciation (I guess)). This idea of changing its plural form is great in my opinion, although we must make sure that those variants doesn't already exist...

There are not canon instances of plural nouns that end with x, so there wouldn't be any conflict there. There is a potential conflict with a rare suffix -se, which means "for" (as seen in ulse "for eternity"). However, this problem also exists with regular nouns that end with s, so eruvosse could be "years" or "for a year."

I think the plural exception to words with a final 'x' is a fantastic idea. There are inevitably going to be instances when more than one rule produces the same linguistic pattern. In English we have the same ending for possessive nouns as we do for contractions with 'is'. So "Fred's writing" could mean "Fred is writing" or "the writings of Fred". With that in mind, I agree that the consistency of the language overall (in this case, Dovahzul's existing uniform pronunciation of characters) should trump minor ambiguations.