forum Gestures and swear words

Started October 24, 2018 by @yeetus

tune

Nachkoalnasl von eimin willdhurun kinzireba!
(Offsping of a wild boar in Dwarvish.)
(I need to shorten it.)

I couldn't help reading that with a Swiss German accent XD That's great! It made me think how that's also something to keep in mind when creating languages, how they sound to people who don't speak it. Like Swiss sounds adorable, French kind of elegant, Russian rough and almost threatening etc.

Arabic-German splice. That's why the words are so long.

Oh I see, cool! That's an isteresting way to create a language for sure.

Elvish: Greek/Latin
Dwarvish: Arabic/German
Goblin: German/Latin?
Magic: Latin/Hebrew
Common: English

My main language is like a mixture of German and like Irish
I know that sounds extremely weird

Another gesture I've developed is extending your arms slightly in front of your stomach and crossing your wrists, palms up and fingers slightly curled. It's used to apologize/ask forgiveness.

I have a thing. You raise up the left arm in the air, palm pointing towards someone. It is a sign of great honor. Normally "Havé" is said. meaning "hail".

In one culture the rudest thing you can do is cross your arms with palms out and splay your fingers. It's the kind of thing people throw knives at each other for (though in my story throwing knives at each other happens a lot)
My MC and her best friend have a secret hand shake which ends with them doing that and the only other character from that culture gets mad but no one else knows why.

in the culture I'm piggybacking for my TTRPG, waving how we wave to say hello is a rude gesture essentially meaning 'this is how much your mouth moves.' it's more rude in the context of the culture and the language, and it's a pretty bad thing to do.
They wave underhand for a method of greeting