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Marisa · **07-07-2015, 02:52 AM**

I'm looking for basically anything that might increase my understanding of the goblin language. I've had my character on something of an adventure while I was grinding OOC, and it's about time I got back into the rp game. I figure any good adventure ends with new skills or knowledge, and to add to Marisa's incredible repertoire of useless talents, she's coming back from this one knowing how to tongue-flap gobbie-talk.Â
I remember Koji laying out some grammatical rules for it at one point, but my google-fu is proving too weak.

Sounsyy · **07-07-2015, 01:31 PM**

There was definitely a lore post somewhere talking about gobbiespeak and now I can't find it. /grumbles.

What I can say off hand while I'm looking for the lore is that names ending in the -IX suffix are Male and names ending in the -OX suffix are female. So Brayflox Alltalks is a female goblin. And Mutamix Bubblypots and Sweetnix Rosycheeks are male goblins.

There's also a lot of "pshhhh shkohhhh" -ing in gobbiespeak, which may either be from their masks or just how they communicate with little clicks and such. But the way I recall Fernehalwes explaining it (god I need to find that post) is that goblins speak a very broken down Eorzean, combining two basic words together to create the rough idea of what they're trying to express.

Tongueflaps = speaking
Rosycheeks = blushing

etc etc

Melkire · **07-07-2015, 01:36 PM**

(07-07-2015, 01:31 PM)Sounsyy Wrote: What I can say off hand while I'm looking for the lore is that names ending in the -IX suffix are Male and names ending in the -OX suffix are female. So Brayflox Alltalks is a female goblin. And Mutamix Bubblypots and Sweetnix Rosycheeks are male goblins.

Relevant.

Also relevant.

I can't seem to find the original reference to -IX and -OX. Was it dev commentary or in-game?

Sounsyy · **07-07-2015, 01:42 PM**

(07-07-2015, 01:36 PM)Melkire Wrote: I can't seem to find the original reference to -IX and -OX. Was it dev commentary or in-game?

FFXI lore actually that was carried over to XIV. That and this description of Brayflox's Longstop:

Brayflox Longstop Wrote:After a tiring journey across Eorzea, it is deep within the quiet jungles of Raincatcher Gully where the charismatic and enterprising young goblin, Brayflox Alltalks, choose to build her tiny empire.

Also original lore on Materia/Mutamix refers to him as a male. So, several examples of gender identification were given in game. Just some mis-placed gender pronouns when 2.0 first came out caused some confusion. But yes, OX = female, IX = male.

Melkire · **07-07-2015, 01:50 PM**

(07-07-2015, 01:42 PM)Sounsyy Wrote:
(07-07-2015, 01:36 PM)Melkire Wrote: I can't seem to find the original reference to -IX and -OX. Was it dev commentary or in-game?

FFXI lore actually that was carried over to XIV. That and this description of Brayflox's Longstop:

Brayflox Longstop Wrote:After a tiring journey across Eorzea, it is deep within the quiet jungles of Raincatcher Gully where the charismatic and enterprising young goblin, Brayflox Alltalks, choose to build her tiny empire.

Also original lore on Materia/Mutamix refers to him as a male. So, several examples of gender identification were given in game. Just some mis-placed gender pronouns when 2.0 first came out caused some confusion. But yes, OX = female, IX = male.

As per the first link I posted, that gender pronoun was changed back in 2.2. That said, it's good to know that Mutamix also had similar troubles. I distinctly recall the changes for Mutamix and Sweetnix being mentioned in patch notes at one point, but I can't find them now.

Also good to know that there's a 1.0 lore source on this. Smile

Sounsyy · **07-07-2015, 02:06 PM**

I MOTHA-EFFIN FOUND IT! Jeeeeeeez, I knew I had heard it buried in the Lore Train somewhere.

Gobbiespeak (@6:00m)

Fernehalwes on Pronunciations

Fernehalwes Wrote:With Goblin Speak, and how it's kind of English but Quasi-English. The reason that they use this kind of broken English is that they'll say something like "busydeal" when they talk about "business." But yeah, they have this English but it's like this broken type of English with these weird combo words. And the reasoning behind that is because the goblin language has a bunch of complex words in their language, but because the goblins are merchants, they learned English so they could speak with the people of Eorzea. Because those people who don't have the Echo cannot communicate with these people.

So the goblins want to communicate with everyone because they want to sell their things. So they're translating their language into English (Eorzean), but because they have all of these words, these really complex words, that Eorzean doesn't have that fits that term perfectly in the goblin language, they basically take two words they know, stick them together, to make this term. So you have terms like "quicktongue" which is "quickly speaking" but in their language it's one word so they just force the two English words together and speak like that.

/collapse

Marisa · **07-07-2015, 03:11 PM**

(07-07-2015, 01:31 PM)Sounsyy Wrote: There's also a lot of "pshhhh shkohhhh" -ing in gobbiespeak, which may either be from their masks or just how they communicate with little clicks and such.Â

As someone who's had to wear a gas mask on several occasions, I'm like 90% certain that the "pshhh shkohhhh" noise is some sort of respirator they're using.Â

On the subject of the Koji post, I had completely forgotten that Goblins do, in fact, have a native language. I don't think this language is ever shown in-game, though. What I'll be doing over the next couple days is finding every speaking goblin in the game, and recording all goblin-specific words they use. Hopefully I can get a reasonable vocabulary table going.

Any resources talking about the goblin dialect?

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes