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Janisse Ray's avatar

This is a beautiful lexicon. I wish I spoke this language! Congrats on Book III already, Dallas Anne! You're amazing.

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Dallas Anne Duncan's avatar

Thank you SO much! Though a good portion of these words are kind of bastardized or “fantasized” takes on Old English, a lot of these words either are from other languages or are inspired by other languages, because the population of Heáhwolcen comes from everywhere on Earth. There’s a lot of Welsh, Scottish, Gaelic, Icelandic, and Spanish, as well as Cherokee and Quechua. I tried to be extremely sensitive with any non-English words and names, and did my best to ensure I could accurately describe how they sounded. If I couldn’t find a pronunciation I wouldn’t use the real word, but would create something that offered the same feel of that initial word find. There’s a LOT of time spent on Google Translate’s audio pronunciation tool as well as searching through native speakers’ YouTube channels!!

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Janisse Ray's avatar

fascinating.

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Annie's avatar

This is so thorough and had to have taken so much commitment!! I love it so much!!

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Dallas Anne Duncan's avatar

Thank you! I fully admit to taking a bit of a shortcut making the guide for "Triumvirate Rising". Most of the work went in on the "Bright Star" pronunciation guide. I then duplicated the post, went through and removed any words and audio that weren't in the book two guide, and finally added in the missing words and pronunciations that were in book two but not book one. :)

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