Hi everyone!

Yesterday, I tried to submit the word Carbon in Dovahzul. However, the reviewer said the following :

Most chemical/element names do not have unique words. If you need to use them, I would recommend borrowing them (eg. "Karbon").

I should have thought about that, because it's quite true. In English, at least, it is. And since Dovahzul is highly inspired by English, if I remember correctly, it's completely logical.

But I am okay with this, in fact. That means we won't have to create a new complicated word for each chemical element that will be discovered in the following years or even those who may or may not exist.

TL;DR: Do not submit chemical elements, we should just borrow them from english and pronuounce them with the Dovah alphabet.

I wonder how we should write them in Dovahzul, then. For instance, if we stick to the phonetics between English and Dovahzul, Uranium becomes

Romanized, Yureyniem. Looks neat. :P

If the ones up there who know this stuff want to borrow the names, then so be it. Something about the idea makes me feel a bit uneasy, though. What's the in-universe explanation? Many names of chemicals in English are derived from languages like Latin and Greek that don't even have equivalents in Tamriel.

I understand that there are too many chemical compounds in existence to invent words for in any reasonable amount of time, but I honestly think we should at least get to name the elements. For instance, oxygen could be "Veikaar", derived from "Veik" for "acid", as Scandinavian languages have done. Creating the Dovahzul names would be a nice challenge.

One could argue that the elements as we know them may not exist in the universe of TES.  But we have words for "video game" and "airplane", for crying out loud!

Thoughts?

I myself submitted "Kirg rukor" (Coal residue) as a word for Carbon. :p

I am neutral about this, to be honest. Since Dovahzul is expanding every day, maybe each question of that type may have its best moment to be asked. Alternatively said, we maybe should wait before bringing a definitive answer to this proposal. But I'll let the others say what they think about it.

There's really no rationale or in-universe explanation for modern words. They exist for their own sake. I recommend borrowing words in cases where it will be difficult or impractical to create Dovahzul versions, such as for scientific or medical terms. It's easier for everyone involved, and is realistically what would occur if an ancient language came in contact with the modern world.

You're of course more than welcome to invent element or compound names on your own and share them with the community. I just don't think they would be a good fit for the dictionary.

Thank you for sharing your point of view on the topic, Paarthurnax. ^^ We shall let our minds invent some lil' atoms names on this thread, then! :D

Of course, some elements (like gold and silver) do have their own words, purely by coincidence.

I guess it's because they're common jewelry metals :D

problem 1. new chemical elements are researched and could indeed be found so you would have to be updated on the scientific status

2. most elements likely will never be used anyway. unless you speak with a scientist and then i recommend not speaking dovahzul. why create a word for bor if you never use it anyway

3. languages evolve and do adapt words. take english - english is almost 50% latin and 10% french with about 10% old norse and the rest is actual saxon. the whole language is a huge borrowing competition. and in modern world some modern words are adapted directly like bretzel, kindergarten etc.

For Dovahzul i think its likely, that a word will be "dovahzulised" meaning the word itself will stay but it will be pronounced like a dovahzul word and will adapt grammatical dovazhul endings (just like berserker is a protogermanic word "berserkeruz" and english just dropped the grammatical ending to get berserker while old norse used berserkr - using berserk as word stem adding the old norse grammatical ending.

though ofc that is difficult to do without a case system for nouns.

the other thing is, that, as said, the elements dont have to be existant or at least accounted for in TES - like in ancient societies on earth the chemical elements would be put into elemental categories like acidic are fire, alkaline air, metal earth, rest water. or in chinese organic - wood.

in modern days languages usually either do adapt words they dont have themselves or describe the word they lack with their own words. a tsunami could also be giant wave.

and you gotta keep in mind how likely it is that a tongue of a race that is very traditional will adapt to the new world. just like icelandic tries to stay pure by not adapting new words and rather invent own words for new things.

@Orkar Isber

Please see paarthurnax's response above. There really is no in-universe mechanism for the formation of modern words, so no linguistic logic should apply to them anyway.

1: Yes, but I doubt we will ever get that far. I'd consider it wisest to stop when the names start going (scientist's name)ium. If necessary, I'd do Gelt do Rutherford, "Rutherford's metal", and so on.

2: You don't know me. I might one day translate a chemistry textbook just for the lols ;)

3: The dragon language, intelligently created by Akatosh and spoken by immortal beings, would find it easy to resist change, so all bets are pretty much off. Also, what you said about Icelandic is exactly what I am trying to promote.

Oh, and: the names we might invent here are never getting official status. Everyone else's Dovahzul can stay free from foul chemistry's maw.

We could create a word for "atom", or borrow it from English, then add "-{atomic number in Dovahzul}"?

E.g.

• Hyrdrogen would become "{word for atom}-gein",
• Helium would become "{word for atom}-ziin"

@Freymulaar Concerning chemical elements- some elements exist in the lore such as 'iron', 'gold' & 'silver'; others could be lore-friendly if used in real world historical alchemy practices such as Cobalt and Sulfur, or if it is a naturally occurring element like copper. Other than that, I imagine the only reason to learn Dovahzul names for chemical elements and compounds is for modern conversation or writing.