KAIL is almost certainly “hiss.” Smoke is often described as hissing, a dragon (or serpent?) could also hiss, and dialogue can also be hissed.
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Just to check we’re all of an accord on this:
The CORSET is …
- a dragon
- a serpent
- a demon
- a balrog
- a huge green angry snake
- something else
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voters
I think Dragon is fine, but it doesn’t really matter that much. Dragon is the most generic answer, and I think everything so far is pretty generic in order to give the translator a fighting chance, but if it turns out to be some other magic beast there’s no real harm in calling it a dragon for now.
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Perfect; I like “hiss.”
My working theory is that ALL is “water”, TAKE is a container, and FENCE is “empty.” The FENCE TAKE passage I think describes fire guttering out and turning into smoke.
I’m not sure what’s going on with the door, though. You’re putting the container into a slot labeled with a water symbol maybe?
And then there’s more ALL after you kill the dragon—water flooding into the cave/tunnel/mine?
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Smoke is generally described as hissing when it’s passed through a narrow opening, not just when it’s blowing around. Could it be being sucked into something?
Also, I had EPLEV for “away”; there’s a couple of sentences that I’d be lost on again if NEROM is “away” instead.
My current working theory of the TAKE ALL is that it’s a container (bottle? canister?) of some substance (water or gasoline?)
When we FENCE TAKE, we get:
Frezy all dargil out of the take.
water/gasoline droplets?? flow?? out of the bottle
This appears to be the catalyst for the smoke.
Then the door has a SLEEP ALL (receptacle for ALL?) that we TOY (fill?) with the TAKE. Although the verb that the TAKE does is LOOK, which is interesting because LOOK is also a noun that constitutes some of the other controls (the LOOK UP and LOOK PACKAGE). (possibilities I’ve considered for LOOK are “screw” or “slot” but neither is that great).
Also, I’m convinced that TLAC is a sound, but I’m not sure whether I should actually be imagining it as sounding similar to “tlac,” or whether something like “glug” would be plausible. Maybe “beep,” with TLOC being “boop”?
I was thinking LOOK could be both “to press” and “button.” But that isn’t a great fit either.
We already have “press,” it’s DRESS. And BOOK is probably “button” on that basis.
I think TLAC has to be onomatopoeia. But GLENC could very well be the sound of water pouring into or out of something?
“Fill” for TOY makes sense in that it would be plausible for the parser to infer “(with the TAKE ALL)” if the SLEEP ALL is some sort of receptacle. But LOOK is confusing, as you say: if it weren’t for the appearance of LOOK in that line, I’d have assumed LOOK was “lever”, and READ and SHIP are “push” and “pull” in some order. Alternatively, LOOK could be “lock”, which works as both a verb and as a noun that one might find on a door, but then I can’t think of plausible translations for READ and SHIP.
Edit: also, if TOY is “fill” then MEFAL has to be something else…
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LOOK = “stick” maybe?
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A little off the topic of what we’ve been discussing lately, but I’m wondering if man might be “paper”? We know, of course, that it has to be a word describing a document that you read, and then what the document says (we think) is that it entitles the holder to “6000 jepy” of “man Daimar Up.” So when I think about something that (1) is valuable, (2) is likely to be quantified that way, and (3) can be referred to by the same term that the document itself is, my first thought is paper money. Of course, the tough thing to explain then is that it’s not in an adjectival form or positioned after what would in that case presumably be the name of the currency, but maybe Lionese speakers think of paper money as paper that is dollar-y rather than dollars that are paper-y, I don’t know.
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My thought was that the MAN is a stock certificate maybe? With JEP = share?
VAS TOBII MAN DAIMAR UP BIEN in the GARSTY KUDORII.
If VAS is bad/evil (inferred from the knife) then I might translate this as
“Too bad the Blue?/Red? Daimar Mine?/Company? was in the caves flooded?/destroyed?”
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Yeah, it could be stock!
I wonder if up could be silver? It’s both a color and something you can mine (and “gold” is taken, of course).
I’m pretty sure SILM is “gem,” and we loot a UPUSILM. One of the contraptions is also UP. So I’m guessing UP is a color rather than silver.
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Part of the reason for thinking UP is a colour is because of the theory that UPUSILM is something like “ruby” or “sapphire” that’s a compound of “red gem” or “blue gem” though. “Silver gem” doesn’t really make sense in that context.
Edit: @evouga was faster!
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Yeah, sorry, that was a dumb suggestion on my part, I just didn’t love [Insert-Color-Here] Mine Company, but it may be a reference to something I’m not familiar with/have forgotten (I played Adventure only a little bit a very long time ago).
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I’m on board with SUDNOGIL MAN being “stock certificate” but in that case the grammar doesn’t seem quite right. “Stock” should appear in this sentence (unless we translate it as “company certificate”, but does anyone ever call it that?) and KUDORII has what we think is the form of an adverb. But it could be something like “too bad DAIMAR UP stock is in the pits lately”?
While we’re at it, if we’re trying to figure out the nature of the endgame treasures, there’s something extremely specific about the phrasing of:
a PACSILM WOREL FIRPSA to CRELN your FIRF on
(“A ruby/emerald/sapphire big(?) enough to hang/drop(?) your FIRF on.”)
Is this another reference to something?
Regarding ITH and NITH: weirdly, ITHI is a verb and ITH is an adjective; I can’t reconcile this with what we already know about Lionese grammar. But since dragon lairs are not usually tight and cozy, I would guess:
- ITH = “wide”
- NITH = “narrow”
- ITHI = “widen”
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