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Human language

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v50.14 · v0.47.05
This article is about the current version of DF.
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Not to be confused with any real-life language.

The human language is one of the five languages the player will come across. This language is used in-game for the names of the universe, continents, rivers, human governments and settlements, humans, artifacts and engravings, However, as of yet, it lacks everything necessary for proper conversation, like grammar or personal pronouns.

Alphabet[edit]

The letters of the human alphabet are:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters)
A Á B C D E F G H I J K L M N Ñ O P Q R S T U V W X Z
Minuscule forms (also called lowercase or small letters)
a á b c d e f g h i j k l m n ñ o p q r s t u v w x z

Of these 27 letters, 6 are vowels (A, Á, E, I, O, U); the 21 others are consonants.

The letter Y of the ISO basic Latin alphabet does not occur in the human alphabet.

Letter frequency[edit]

N Letter Frequency
1 A 1022 10.51%
2 Á 48 0.49%
3 B 251 2.58%
4 C 255 2.62%
5 D 341 3.51%
6 E 753 7.74%
7 F 38 0.39%
8 G 229 2.35%
9 H 89 0.92%
10 I 770 7.92%
11 J 56 0.58%
12 K 316 3.25%
13 L 515 5.3%
14 M 448 4.61%
15 N 350 3.6%
16 Ñ 56 0.58%
17 NG 65 0.67%
18 O 799 8.22%
19 P 261 2.68%
20 QU 59 0.61%
21 R 586 6.03%
22 S 656 6.75%
23 SH 124 1.28%
24 T 442 4.54%
25 TH 289 2.97%
26 U 690 7.1%
27 V 47 0.48%
28 W 57 0.59%
29 X 32 0.33%
30 Z 81 0.83%

Graphemics[edit]

The study of the graphemes, or writing units, of a script, and of their relation to the phonemes of the spoken language.

  • Digraphs th, sh, ng, and qu.
    • q only occurs in the digraph qu.
  • Common consonant clusters st, sl, sm, sp, str, and thr.
  • Human has no diphthongs.
  • x, ñ, and j are always followed by a vowel.
  • Possible syllable structure (C)3VC(C).

Diacritic meaning[edit]

The human language only has one diacritic (◌́) used on one vowel (a). It is probable that this is used to represent syllable stress. With the words revealed to us so far, this probably means only the syllables with an a can be stressed.

Vocabulary[edit]

Main article: Language#Vocabulary

The average word in the Human language is 4.723 letters long, while the longest known words are thrathdad ("fortress") and stithngat ("profane").

The average word has 1.792 syllables. Words either have one or two syllables.

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