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Hi guys,
Lately, I have been reading about constructed languages, and now I'm wondering: is there any language from Warhammer that has been fully developed ? At least more than a quick description and a few words ?
There is room for a lot, obviously Gothic but eldarish too, and Tau, etc

Orks had an alphabet in their 4th Ed Codex.

 godardc wrote:
Hi guys,
Lately, I have been reading about constructed languages, and now I'm wondering: is there any language from Warhammer that has been fully developed ? At least more than a quick description and a few words ?
There is room for a lot, obviously Gothic but eldarish too, and Tau, etc

Afaik the best-developed constructed language of the setting was Khazalid, the dwarven language of the Old World, for which a grammar, rudimentary lexicon and such were written and circulated at least internally back during 6th edition times. Iirc parts of that material were later used in various sourcebooks for several incarnations of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Khazalid

Tsagualsa wrote:

 godardc wrote:
Hi guys,
Lately, I have been reading about constructed languages, and now I'm wondering: is there any language from Warhammer that has been fully developed ? At least more than a quick description and a few words ?
There is room for a lot, obviously Gothic but eldarish too, and Tau, etc

Afaik the best-developed constructed language of the setting was Khazalid, the dwarven language of the Old World, for which a grammar, rudimentary lexicon and such were written and circulated at least internally back during 6th edition times. Iirc parts of that material were later used in various sourcebooks for several incarnations of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Khazalid

There was something similar in the 6th (or maybe 7th) edition Warhammer Chaos Army Book for the Dark Tongue. I think Tau might have something similar. But nothing even approaching something like Klingon.

 godardc wrote:
Hi guys,
Lately, I have been reading about constructed languages, and now I'm wondering: is there any language from Warhammer that has been fully developed ? At least more than a quick description and a few words ?
There is room for a lot, obviously Gothic but eldarish too, and Tau, etc

Orks have their own language down pat, it's just not what we humans would consider "developed" (because Orkz iz all about fightin and don't a've time fer da ummie'z wurdz) Joking aside, I feel you could make the argument Orks have their language developed to the point of understanding it as an Ork.

Tau would probably have the closest things to schools for a sect where you would be able to learn such knowledge. Eldar of course would have the Black Library, and of course their Aldari language as well as Craftworlds where they can study it. Humans speak a bastardization of Latin, (to the point Games Workshop uses real world words correctly like Custodes, and then they make up words like Necromunda and Van Saar).

GW to my knowledge has never been in-depth to Necron hieroglyphics but I could be wrong.

Chaos to my knowledge can be Low Gothic, except if you're Tzeentchian or something. But I feel they're not going to make it an exclusive language for sake of making your antagonists more playable.

Votann probably have words and dialects that I'm sure GW will elaborate on over the next few editions.

Pretty sure the House of Van Saar is supposed to be the name of a Dutch family that survived into the 41st millenium. They call latin High Gothic and then you have "Low Gothic" which is just anything not latin enough.

I think, officially, High and Low Gothic are translated into faux latin and english/local language of your choice so that we can understand them. The actual languages would be very different after 39,000 years of linguistic development, but faux latin is a nice short-hand for fancy with your local language for the common tongue.

True, you have the fenrisian dialec which is, bascially norse or at least anglo-saxon. The HH novels had some south-east Asian sounding names too, because family names presumably retain their sounds longer, given they are used by people who would constantly pronounce them.
Also last names are commonly occupations (Schneider, Smith, Taylor) and place names (England, von XXX, van YYY), so expect to see a lot of these in names of 40K. Lexi showed a dude from the Catachan Devils whose name is just Captain Catachan. While that can be a nickname or a propaganda caricature (dude's a character from the Regimental Standard website who teaches guardmen survival tips), it could also work as a last name since Catachan is an in-universe planet.

 lcmiracle wrote:
Pretty sure the House of Van Saar is supposed to be the name of a Dutch family that survived into the 41st millenium. They call latin High Gothic and then you have "Low Gothic" which is just anything not latin enough.

I always understood high/low Gothic to be somewhat similar to e.g. the Languages spoken in the late Roman era or the Byzantine empire: you have some sort of 'Church Latin' that is also the language of the courts and official documents, which is supposed to be intelligible all over the Empire because it's mainly learned from common religious texts and taught ny centralized authorities, and then you have a lot of mostly mutually intelligible, but diverging dialects and linguae francae that are in use in integrated economic or political bodies. Stuff like e.g. Frankish or the mediterranean trade languages like Sabir.

 Gert wrote:
Orks had an alphabet in their 4th Ed Codex.

Tau too

Not as such.

High Gothic is Latin, after a fashion.

Low Gothic is……everything else.

Even then, I suspect they’re stand-in comparisons. As in High Gothic isn’t actually Latin, or even Latin based in-universe. Rather it’s a proxy for any pre-fall common tongue now the near pointless and irrelevant language of the Great and the “Good”. But the writers use Latin to the same effect for a now broadly literate customer base.

Jarms48 wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Orks had an alphabet in their 4th Ed Codex.

Tau too

Many a Commander was given the name Kais Ukos due to that. Commander Swift Spoon.

So I got an answer from GW itself and they told me that they didn't develop any language from the worlds of Warhammer. I thought I had to ask, just in case