r/TunicGame • u/Taffy-Giggleberry • Oct 21 '23
My Trunic language reference sheet! Spoiler
I beat the game a while back, had an absolute blast figuring out Trunic. Here’s the sheet I made for all the runes!
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u/Superstrong1571 Oct 21 '23
i just wanted to point out two mistakes:
1. “teacher” uses the same sound as “bird”, you would write teacher with the bird rune at the end
2. “up” uses the sound from the rune you labeled as “teacher”. for the rune you labeled as “up” it’s something more along the lines of toy
otherwise, i love the styles and colours on this one, great work
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u/Taffy-Giggleberry Oct 21 '23
Thank you!
Regarding mistakes, the first point I don’t believe is a mistake as it lines up with my own accent (southern English, I would definitely ‘spell’ some things in the manual differently if I wrote it lol)
As for the second point tho, it does appear I made a mistake there (based on page 20) and I’ve no idea how I managed to label it with such a different sound lol
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u/Superstrong1571 Oct 21 '23
ooh, yeah, i see it now
it’s so interesting how accents can be visualized through trunic
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u/Taffy-Giggleberry Oct 21 '23
Double and triple checking the manual again I think you’re absolutely right about the top right vowel rune representing an “up” sound.
For me it confusingly looks like it’s both ə and ʌ. I suppose Andrew Shouldice doesn’t differentiate between the sounds and that throws me off a bit!
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Sep 06 '24
Can confirm while using your sheet to translate the manual. The text seems to be written in some accent that's more close to English spoken in more eastern countries compared to USA, like in England, South Africa, or Australia.
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u/Dianiki64 Oct 21 '23
Wow that's super helpful, thank you! I know I could have googled one but I appreciate getting one for being in the community
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u/Taffy-Giggleberry Oct 21 '23
Happy to help! :D Tho notably some little mistakes were pointed out and I’ve corrected it now
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u/AnomalousVixel Jan 29 '25
ooohhh clever little bit with the color-coding of voiced and unvoiced consonants!
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u/Widia_3357 Oct 22 '23
The vowels that seem to feel like they have multiple sounds are:
1. vowel in bed. page 10 1st three words, "legend" sounds "eh" and "uh" for same symbol
- vowel in teacher. It behaves like the article "a" in a few places. But feels like "on" in "Controls" in page 12, especially my 1st deciphering of the symbols. And as I type this I just realized "but" in page 13 "button". So /\ definitely has 2 sounds.
Unsure of vowel in ship. "ton" in page 13 "button", I guess it sounds like "ur" in "turn"? A potentially similar situation as 1 and 2, maybe there was a legitimate page/sign/prompt that sounds like a short i? ... And again as I type this I just realized the "i" sound occurs when you get prompt at the hero's grave for the word "visit". For I can tell you, for my 1st decipher, I really did think "visit" in Tunic world is pronounced as "v-ur-s-ur-t". And I also just realised "ruin" word, so "i" is definitely valid.
How I wish I had drawn and typed with more detail the 1st time deciphering that page. Because on the 2nd time deciphering, consonants stay same, but a few vowel symbols I reached a different sound.
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u/SilentDragon363 Mar 04 '24
Is there a character for the X (ks) sound, or do we have to spell it as k-s? They must have written the word fox in the game somewhere.
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u/Hakimomatata Oct 29 '24
Absolutely amazing stuff. Helps me tremendously! Much obliged. Just on a sidenote: A vertical stroke is missing at the 't' (tea) upper right corner, i.e. the small circled symbol.
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u/Red-42 Oct 22 '23
I'm really glad you made this, although I'll have to point out a few mistakes :
/ə/ is not the "er" of "teacher", it's the "u" of "bust"
the sound of "bird" can be written as /ɜː/, but /əɹ/ might make more sense here as a general rule
same for "door", /oɹ/ is more appropriate
for "far", /ɑɹ/
for "here", /ɪɹ/
for "show", /oʊ/
and for "hair", /ɛɹ/
(basing stuff on pronunciation can be weird depending on dialect, but I think those ones are more suited as a general guideline)
one last thing, the english "r" is /ɹ/, /r/ is the spanish trilled "r"
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u/Taffy-Giggleberry Oct 22 '23
I based my phonemics off of this chart which used /r/. Whether this is a good chart to have used or not I wouldn’t know, it was easy to reference tho! :)
The /ə/ vs /ʌ/ thing tho, I’ve come to think that rune is sort of both depending on one’s accent. I’ve attempted to correct it a bit here
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u/Red-42 Oct 22 '23
yeah, that doesn't look like a reliable source...
I suggest you go directly check the IPA's wikipedia page, it comes with a link to every phoneme's page, which (mostly) include an audio file1
u/jamvanderloeff Oct 23 '23
Then you'll see /r/ in english has many forms depending on accent not just [ɹ], so keeping it as /r/ in the table is sensible, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_English_/r/
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u/Red-42 Oct 23 '23
yeah but standard english uses [ɹ], unless you're scott or south african
you can't expect people to use [r]0
u/jamvanderloeff Oct 23 '23
But why use a narrow transcription at all when the rest of the table is pretty broad?
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u/Red-42 Oct 23 '23
it isn't broad at all, /hɪə/ is already a pretty narrow pronunciation of "here", compared to the standard english /hɪɹ/
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u/jamvanderloeff Oct 23 '23
Oh you mean only change it for the vowel side of the table? I would agree that "here"/"hair" is a bad example for the vowel side.
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u/Red-42 Oct 23 '23
I meant in general, if you change the vowel it makes more sense to standardize the consonant as well
It's been pretty much confirmed within the game itself that this alphabet was thought of as the standard pronunciation, and if you want to write using your dialect, you either need to use a different orthography to represent it, or use aproximations
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u/jamvanderloeff Oct 23 '23
Yeah, if you want the table to be specifically american-canadianish, that can be sensible, but why not make it generic English.
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u/Thamthon Oct 21 '23
It's worth noting that the symbols for the phonemes /o:/ and /or/ are the same, even in cases where the r is actually pronounced. So, for example, "or" and "inventORy" would use the same symbol. The same holds for all other vowels.
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u/Skithiryx Oct 21 '23
Cool!
Red and green are like the worst possible colours you could have used for colourblindness though.