Gnommish is the "fairy language" used in the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer. It is not actually a language at all, but the English language encoded into a letter-substitution cipher where each symbol represents a letter. Lines of translatable Gnommish run along the bottoms of all the books in the series. However, in book one of the series, it is mentioned that one of the symbols was comparable to the Egyptian Anubis symbol. It is also mentioned that Gnommish is a mix of symbolic and alphabetic letters, running in spirals.
Code
A string of Gnommish symbols appears at the bottom of each page of Artemis Fowl. It comprises a substitution cipher which can be deciphered using sections of the book's text displayed in Gnommish, together with their English translations. A complete Gnommish cipher key can be found in The Artemis Fowl Files.
There are only five Gnommish words mentioned in the Artemis Fowl series. P'shóg is the Gnommish word for sprite, used in Book 1 by Artemis Fowl II while talking to the sprite in Ho Chi Minh City. He also uses the word ka-dalun, meaning fairy. D'Arvit is a Gnommish curse word. Book 1 declares after the first appearance of the word "D'Arvit" that, "There is no point translating that word as it would have to be censored." It is often used in the series to replace real profanity, likely to be in the place of a swearword. In the books it is often used by Commander Root, but also by other characters. In Book 6, Holly Short and Mulch Diggumsshare a quick conversation, which included the Gnommish word "cowpóg" which translates as 'moron'. Commander Root tends to use these words often in the book. In Book 7, the Gnommish name for the ship in the Atlantic Ocean is ffurforfer, pronounced 'fourfourfour'. It means 'plunderer'. Also it is revealed that in Gnommish, for a conversion from a verb to a noun, the suffix -fer is added. It is noted that this is similar to the English way of adding the suffix -er, hence implying that one was derived from the other.
