Community

I recently started playing and have found myself sucked in quite deeply. I love it.

My character is a Tiefling (obviously) and  I am curious to know where I could find the Infernal alphabet, and I'm also interested to know if anyone has gone so far as to actually create the Abyssal language. I want to learn it if there is, or at least select phrases, the idea of knowing a fantasy language is awesome to me.
On a side note, my character speaks Elvish as well, so I'd be interested in any information people have on that too.

 

Check around with Google on this one. There will be many hits for Elven and a few attempts at the other two.

Hello and welcome to the game glad to have some new blood around, it's great to have people so pumped to play the game, if I may ask why did  you chose the Tiefling ?

Where you can find the infernal alphabet?

In game I assume you will eventually stumble into some diabolist trying to summon something or with some infernal artifacts, in the RL I believe you may find something in the art books but I'm not 100% sure.

Sadly I don't think it's a actual language at best maybe a cypher where in you just replace our latin letters for the infernal ones.

About a elvish language, you're in luck Tolkien created a true elven language or maybe languages depends on what you classify as a dialect, I don't know I'm not a linguist, just google for Tolkine/Lotr elven language and you'll find a ton of resources.

Hope this helps.

Oct 19, 2012 -- 12:16AM, KallistaTheTiefling wrote:

I recently started playing and have found myself sucked in quite deeply. I love it.

My character is a Tiefling (obviously) and  I am curious to know where I could find the Infernal alphabet, and I'm also interested to know if anyone has gone so far as to actually create the Abyssal language. I want to learn it if there is, or at least select phrases, the idea of knowing a fantasy language is awesome to me.
On a side note, my character speaks Elvish as well, so I'd be interested in any information people have on that too.

 

I'm not sure about Infernal and Abyssal. But Bronze_Hero is right, there is a Elven language, and even a small bit of the Dwarven Language. I also know that the Draconic language as actual script and in the 3.5 Draconomicon it had script and common phrases. 

Since the races in question are imaginary, so is the language.  You can, quite literally, make anything you want up and declare it 'a common Tiefling phrase' or create the alphabet yourself from wholecloth if you really feel like it.

Oct 19, 2012 -- 11:15AM, Salla wrote:

Since the races in question are imaginary, so is the language.  You can, quite literally, make anything you want up and declare it 'a common Tiefling phrase' or create the alphabet yourself from wholecloth if you really feel like it.

And if you really, really, want to go all out, google the term "constructed language" or "conlang".  There's lots of resources for building your own, functional, fully fleshed out languages from scratch.

Using the examples of the alphabets from the 4e books, fans have created fonts for the Dwarven, Elven, Draconic and Abyssal alphabets. If you want the Abyssal font, google Barazhad font.
Dwarven is Davek, Elven is Rellanic, and Draconic is Iokharic.  

Since you asked about Elvish also, here's a link to my favorite Sindarin translator:

www.jrrvf.com/cgi-bin/hisweloke/sindarin...

Examples of tiefling phrases from Players Handbook Races: Tieflings:
"By the Nine Gates!" - an oath or curse used much like we say "Holy s***!"
"Never trust a tiefling's promise." - self-explanatory
"A vizer's career" - a short span of time.  Much like an Admiral under Darth Vader's command.
"Every house stood alone, and all fell together." - equivalent to "United we stand, divided we fall." 

None of these have infernal translations, as tieflings speak Common, for the most part, and the tiefling culture, at least the majority of it, looks poorly upon Bael Turath, and their deal with the devils.   I have both books in this series, and I was very upset when they canceled them.  I thought they were great, though I would have liked to see bigger books grouped by PHB.

Oct 19, 2012 -- 1:22PM, Kelvor_Ravenstar wrote:

Using the examples of the alphabets from the 4e books, fans have created fonts for the Dwarven, Elven, Draconic and Abyssal alphabets. If you want the Abyssal font, google Barazhad font.
Dwarven is Davek, Elven is Rellanic, and Draconic is Iokharic.  

Yeah, WotC actually commissioned several alphabets, and there is also a bunch of pre-4e stuff as well that was carried over to some degree. I recall a couple years back there was a pretty good thread here on the subject and someone knowledgeable posted a number of links.

Even so none of the languages used in D&D lore has ever existed as even a moderately complete conlang. You can use material from Middle Earth, which is pretty complete (there are 3 alphabets and several languages were at least touched on). WotC hasn't ever done anything in terms of actual languages AFAIK, just some decent alphabets. Those are fun though.

 Klingon actually makes a good stand-in for several in-game languages, particularly goblin or draconic, depending on the flavor of your campaign. It should work for Tiefling if you wanted it to - Ba'el Tur-rath sounds kind of like Klingon, doesn't it?

Oct 20, 2012 -- 3:52PM, Mad_Jack wrote:

 Klingon actually makes a good stand-in for several in-game languages, particularly goblin or draconic, depending on the flavor of your campaign. It should work for Tiefling if you wanted it to - Ba'el Tur-rath sounds kind of like Klingon, doesn't it?

Well, the ONLY language in 4e that is fleshed out much IS draconic, but you could use Klingon for Orcish, though honestly klingons are a lot more civilized and sophisticated than orcs...

you could also use a real world lenguage that isn't english (in case you live on USA), i have used italian for dwarven.