Utterances

Utterances are a special form of "language" used by kobolds in Dwarf Fortress. Unlike all other languages, utterances carry no actual meaning - instead, they consist of a random sequence of sounds.

Orthography

Utterances are made from several different sets of vowel and consonant sounds, depending on their position within each "word".

Consonants	Outer, plus "r"/"l"														Internal
	b	d	st	sh	s	t	th	ch	l*	f	g	k	p	j	b	d	l	f	g	k

Vowels	Primary					Final
	a	i	o	u	a	o	u	ay	ee	i

Endings	Consonants															Vowels
	m	r	ng	b	rb	mb	g	lg	lb	lm	k	nk	ld	d	rsn	is	us	er*	in*

Phonetics

Each utterance is constructed from one to five syllables, each consisting of a consonant sound followed by a vowel sound.

The first and last syllables begin with one of the "outer" consonants listed above, each potentially followed by an "r" or an "l" (except for "l" itself, which can only be followed by "r"). All other syllables begin with one of the "internal" consonants.

The last syllable ends with one of the "final" vowels, while all others end with one of the "primary" vowels.

After generating all of the syllables above, the utterance ends with an additional consonant and vowel drawn from the "Endings" listed above, though the vowel sounds "er" and "in" cannot occur if the vowel sound from the final syllable was "ee" or "i".

Trivia

• Utterances don't actually mean anything, and creatures which use utterances are treated as being incapable of speech (and thus cannot form diplomatic relationships).
• The shortest possible utterance is 5 letters long (e.g. "Sober"), while the longest is 20 letters (e.g. "Stribokafithleersnis").

V · T · E Languages
Races	Divine · Dwarven · Elvish · Goblin · Human · Kobold
Modding	language_words.txt · language_SYM.txt · Language token
Text Sets	text_book_instruction.txt · Text dwarf.txt · text_curse.txt · text_general.txt