Interesting enough.
Real question though.
Does the elven languages have any basis on real life languages? or are the “ishnu allah” and “ishnuldaldieb” and “baladash malanore” things made up?
Interesting enough.
Real question though.
Does the elven languages have any basis on real life languages? or are the “ishnu allah” and “ishnuldaldieb” and “baladash malanore” things made up?
On the topic of names, the fal’dorei appear to be an interesting exception to the rule. Wherein, they are named after their home, rather than some trait of them. Initially, one might suspect “Fal’dorei” to mean “Children of Spiders” or “Spiderborne” (Arachnidborne?).
However, they’re from Falanaar, which is apparently from where their name derives. “Anaar” is typically a suffix for “Town” or “Ville” (Dolanaar, Astranaar).
So, perhaps it is that “Fal” means something in-and-of itself. The city itself is almost entirely subterranean, which is exceptionally notable for a kaldorei settlement. Sure, they have the Barrow Dens, but largely, they avoid all things underground. Additionally, there is a local “Temple of Fal’adora”, which is a partially-subterranean temple to Elune.
I doubt that the elves originally named some town Spiderville. And, I doubt it got that name after the fal’dorei moved in, because they definitely wouldn’t name a temple to Elune “Spider Shrine”, or whatever “fal’adora” means.
So, I’d guess “Fal” probably means “ground” or “fallen” or “dark” or “blind” or something, moreso than spider. Or, it’s some dude’s name.
One of my friends once speculated their culture is partially based on Korean culture, though I’m not sure from where that derives specifically. That said, there’s no reference on the Darnassian Wiki article…
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Darnassian
To any mirrored “real-life” languages. I’d say Blizzard just tried to make “melodic” words that sounded fancy, but rolled off the tongue easy.
Oh yeah! The Driders! I forgot about them.
I can only assume their name equates to something like “Children of the Fallen” … but I would like to assume they just embraced their weirdness and are “Children of Spiders”.
I don’t think I would? But I tend to default emphasis on the first syllables of words I hadn’t otherwise heard someone else pronounce first. I assume a lot of people do this, at least, it is the most common mispronunciation of my own name, as well.
More evidence that the people of Quel’Thalas don’t have the best grasp on even their own language, as the Thalassian word for Stars is Dal, not Kal.
Nuh uh. There’s no way I would stay up too late and then totally make up some nonsense that people shouldn’t take absolutely seriously.
Well, I would put in a the. “Children of the Stars” But only cause I think it sounds better. And maybe “Children of the High” for Quel’dorei.
Ahh, Children of Blood, or some say Bloodborne…
I’m so incredibly disappointed that there isn’t a major rivalry between Worgen and Blood Elves. Get me some Fromsoft in my WoW.
Their non-ancient architecture is a fantastic version of Korean architecture, night elf food vendors sell Korean foods (such as kimchi), and there’s a night elf “specialty dress maker” in Moonglade who sells danguis and hanboks (which are both types of traditional Korean clothing).
That’s it, then!
Malfurion, more proof you should’ve went ahead and enforced that death for practicing the arcane law.
'dorei means children.
So with the prefixes, Kal, Quel, and Sin; That would man Children of the Stars, High, and Blood, respectively. I believe that Blizzard has not been consistent with Kaldorei as there are times when they’ve put in the apostrophe and times it’s been left out. Some NPC speakers like Tyrande tend to draw out the pronounciation which would imply an apostrophe at that point.
Except the world Kaldorei was the “root” word for all the rest. Calling it Kaldorei would be akin to how a good chunk of romance languages have roots in Roman.
Ontop of that, multiple people loosely translating “Sin’dorei” to “Bloodborne” just makes my mind equate them to infectious disease. Instead of a Victorian-Gothic RPG, the phrase just reminds me of my annual OSHA refreshers for bloodborne pathogens.
I think the answer here is just bad continuity. That or they explicitly added apostrophes to night elf offshoots to give the impression that the Kaldorei were the OG?
My bet is on the former.
Just to add to the confusion, there have also been times when the apostrophe was left out of all of the above names. I always thought myself that for consistency’s sake Kal’dorei should have the apostrophe. and it fits the way that Tyrande pronounces the word.
While we’re at it, I always find it funny, cute, charming and creative at all the traditional fantasy trappings within WoW, one of them being the apostrophed names. Like what the heck is “Garrosh’ar” for instance? What does it even mean?
-ar/-mar is used fairly consistently for a place named after an orcish hero (Orgrimmar, Thrallmar, Durotar, etc.). Sometimes it has an apostrophe for no discernable reason (Garrosh’ar, Vol’mar)—probably because whatever developer was naming subzones that day thought it looked cool.
I doubt they’ve put this much thought into it, but " 'ar" could theoretically be something along the lines of “for” in orcish. Like Garrosh’ar Point being named as “for Garrosh!” during the invasion of Pandaria or Dranosh’ar Blockade being named “for Dranosh!” when the Horde debarked to Northrend (it was named in-game during Cataclysm, but that doesn’t mean said naming didn’t happen prior.)
Conversely, the lack of an apostrophe in, say, Garadar and Durotar could mean “of” and more past-tense as a result of those places’ namesakes being dead when they were named.
At the same time, while we’re nor privy to them all, orcish seem to generally have direct literal meanings in their own language, but Thrall isn’t an orcish word. So Thrallmar might mean “for Thrall!,” but be called such instead of Thrall’ar because unlike Garrosh’ar it’s a case of attaching the orcish suffix to a non-orcish word that has no literal meaning in the orcish tongue. In the same vein, Vol’mar in Tanaan was named under Vol’jin’s reign, meaning it’s likely another example of a place so named using a non-orcish word.
We also don’t know if orcish has its own internal rules about different words and names having varying tenses and linguistic genders that might determine whether or not they receive a glottal stop represented by an apostrophe when appended with suffixes.
Admittedly locality naming conventions as presented in-game tend to be inconsistent because the playable races (elves are particularly notable in this regard) vacillate between places being named on the maps in their own tongue, places being translated into Common, and places being a hybridization of the two.
That said, for the whole elf apostrophe thing, one might speculate that it could originate from the apostrophe and an associated glottal stop coming from some distinct Highborne dialect (that would eventually become Thalassian) putting deliberate emphasis on the “Quel” to differentiate themselves from the common rabble, and that linguistic practice simply surviving into the languages of their high elf, blood elf, void elf and nightborne descendants even if the original intent didn’t.
Or given that the Kal’dorei were originally Dark Trolls, it’s probably a hold over from the root Zandalari tongues.