I liked it when there were actual sentences around the map written in dark tongue. It was fun discovering and translating the runes and finding sentences such as
"F-O-R⠀T-H-E⠀Dh-Aa-Rh-Kw⠀Gh-O-Dh-S
⠀For ⠀⠀ The ⠀⠀⠀ Dark ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Gods
Did you get a dyslexic intern to headbutt the keyboard to create these sentences?
Please revert these specific changes so they can be actually read again.
You’re able to google “Warhammer 40k dark tongue” and you will find a sheet with the alphabet for those who want to try for themselves.
There is no “alphabet” for the Warhammer 40k Dark tongue. You are referencing, at best, the Warhammer Fantasy Dark Tongue.
The Dark Tongue for 40k is only referenced once… and that would be in the entry in Warzone Fenris from 7th edition. An entry that reads in it’s entirety:
“The Dark Tongue is a ritual language, and its phonetic runes are only manner in which the mysteries of Chaos can be truly expressed. It is the language of Daemons and Chaos creatures with the power of speech. The Thousand Sons strive to learn this arcane language for the conjuration of Chaos entities and to bargain with Daemons when they are summoned.”
Whatever you found on the Web is probably some fan interpretation or some half-lore someone made up from other things like Warhammer Fantasy or some real world “mysticism”.
There is no Alphabet, it is just a small text blurb added to the Prisms of Fate Coloring Scheme for the Thousand sons. Matter of fact, based on the pictures next to it and because it is a Thousand Sons Coloring Guide the symbols are more akin to hieroglyphs than actual letters that can be read.
And in addition…
… if that is an example of what you want, then i rather have gibberish than this nonsense. That there is super lame.
A Galaxy with a million million worlds…
even imperial Gothic has its dialects …
and you expect all the traitor worlds and cults to speak the same language?
Well, after all the beating the heretics got over the years it’s no wonder they can’t build full sentences anymore.
Jokes aside, while I personally don’t look after this stuff, it can’t be too hard to have one dev put some sentences together that make lore hunters happy and could be an additional way to tell the story of Tertium.
I mean, most of the story of Left 4 Dead was told by writing on walls, they could at least give some insight of the cult by this.
The symbol on the loincloth is the symbol for Nurgle.
So there is actually almost two separate languages. One is a phonetic spelling, which is where we get the various “nurgle loves you”
The other is what I would call True Dark Tongue, or True Beast Tongue. It is based upon root words that are changed with prefixes and suffixes. It seems to follow some loose rules. We know a very few root words, some prefixes, and suffixes. The words can mean drastically different things based upon a few letter changes.
Examples:
Akh - kill/slay or battle
Aksho - To search for
Aksha - battleaxe
and they are based upon older texts. I am actually trying to find more.
One idea was to use TWWH3 Beastman dialogue to figure it out, but I believe its going to be the phonetics only, or be incredibly difficult to figure out. Still working at it though.
