Syldavian


Syldavian is a fictional West Germanic language created by Hergé as the national language of Syldavia, a small fictional Balkan kingdom that serves as a major setting in many of The Adventures of Tintin stories. Hergé modeled the language on Marols, a dialect of Dutch spoken in and around Brussels. The entire corpus of the language has been analyzed by Mark Rosenfelder.

Characteristics

As presented in the Tintin books, Syldavian has a superficial resemblance to certain Central European languages, particularly Polish and Hungarian, due to its orthography. Like Serbian, it uses both Cyrillic and Latin script, although apparently in somewhat different contexts; it is most commonly written in the Cyrillic alphabet, albeit with the Latin alphabet by the royal court. It shares numerous orthographic features found in various Eastern European languages, most notably the "sz" and "cz" of Polish.
However, the language is clearly a Germanic language. Its vocabulary and grammar resembles that of Dutch and German and has little in common with any Slavic languages. But while Marols, Hergé's native dialect, was used as a basis for the language, Syldavian has a much more complicated grammar, with other Central European influences added.
The language also appears to have been influenced by Bordurian, Slavic languages and Turkish. The Syldavians often bear names of Slavic origin, such as Wladimir; the dish szlaszeck that Tintin encountered also appears to be a borrowing.. Many words are based on common French slangs. For examples, "klebcz" is constructed on the French Parisian slang "clebs" meaning "dog".
This language, which is Germanic but bears a great resemblance to Polish, may be likened to the artificial Romance language Wenedyk, or to the endangered Wymysorys language.

Phonology

Syldavian boasts a rich range of sounds.

Vowels

In addition to the diacritical marks shown in the chart below, there are acute and grave accents that may indicate stress.
Roman letters are on the left, Cyrillic letters on the right.
In addition to these letters, Syldavian also contains several digraphs and letters for which the pronunciation is uncertain:
Roman letters are on the left, Cyrillic letters on the right.
BilabialLabiodentalAlveolarPostalveolarPalatalVelarGlottal
Nasal
Plosive


Fricative



Affricate

Trill
Approximant

Note: As in Czech, the letter can be syllabic, as seen in names such as Staszrvitch and Dbrnouk.
There are some additional digraphs and trigraphs, including , , and . These demonstrate that the Latin-based orthography has a number of irregularities, or else these are old inconsistent spellings that have been preserved in family names but are no longer used in the standard orthography.
Note that Syldavian Cyrillic diverges in some important respects from Cyrillic as used in real-world languages, most notably by porting over Latin digraphs into the Cyrillic alphabet, and to use a few Cyrillic letters for sounds for which they are never used in the real world. This, together with the use of Latin script in old medieval manuscripts, may suggest that the Syldavians adopted the Latin alphabet first, and the Cyrillic later, which is the reverse of several real-world languages which switched from Cyrillic to Latin.

Grammar

Plurals

Unlike Marols, but like German, Syldavian definite articles are extensively inflected.
Masc./Fem.Neut.Plural
Nom.dze
der/die		dascz
das		dzoe
die
Acc.dzem
den/die		dascz
das		dzoe
die
Dat.dze
dem/der		dza
dem		dzem
den
Gen.doscz
des/der		doscz
des		doscz
der

Indefinite articles

Adjectives precede nouns:
There is no sufficient evidence to tell whether adjectives change form. The rules of Dutch, a control language of Syldavian, are very complex.
Note: the derivation Klow > Klowaswa is merely one of many adjectivizations, however, compare Zyldav 'Syldavian'
Adjectives can be used to modify verbs like adverbs:

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

3rd person singular neuter objective and possessive and 2nd person plural pronouns are reconstructed based on Dutch and German.

Demonstrative pronouns

czei - this
tot - that

Verbs

Verbs are either weak or strong. This decides how they are conjugated.

Conjugation

Strong Verb: blavn 'to stay'
Pres. Ind.Past Ind.Subj.Imp.Pres. Part.Past Part.
1 sing.blavblevblavetz-blavendzbleven
2 sing.*blavszt*blevszt*blavetztblavehblavendzbleven
3 sing.blavetblevblavetz-blavendzbleven
1 plur.blavenblevenblavendz-blavendzbleven
2 plur.*blavet*blevet*blavetzblavetblavendzbleven
3 plur.blavenblevenblavendzblavendzbleven

Weak Verb: löwn 'to love'
Pres. Ind.Past Ind.Subj.Imp.Pres. Part.Past Part.
1 sing.löwlöwdalöwetz-löwendzlöwen
2 sing.*löwszt*löwdaszt*löwetztlöwehlöwendzlöwen
3 sing.löwtlöwdalöwetz-löwendzlöwen
1 plur.löwenlöwendalöwendz-löwendzlöwen
2 plur.*löwet*löwdet*löwetzlöwetlöwendzlöwen
3 plur.löwenlöwendalöwendzlöwendzlöwen

To negate a sentence, the particle nietz is placed after the subject, in auxiliary position.
In copulative sentences, nietz is placed after the verb :

Adverbs

Most adverbs tend to be identical to adjectives in form. Adverbs can be used to modify verbs:

Interjections

szplug - a curse word, perhaps equivalent to "damn".
szplitz on szplug- a more extreme form of szplug
hamaïh!- praising or surprise, could be something like "hail!" or "wow!"
hält!- a command, probably meaning "stop!" or "halt!"
szcht!- another command, sounds almost like "shh!" and perhaps means "silence!"
zsálu- a greeting, probably "salute" or "hello".

Syntax

Verbs

The verb normally follows the object:
Where there's an auxiliary and a main verb, the main verb remains at the end, and the auxiliary verb moves just after the subject:

Pronouns

In earlier Syldavian the pronoun may follow the verb, and this form may still be used for emphasis:
You can say either Eihn ben ek, Eihn bennek or Ek ben eihn, but never *Eihn ek ben. In general "X is Y" can be inverted to "Y is X". When X is a pronoun, the inversion adds some emphasis:
In the kzommet sentences in the corpus, prepositional phrases follow the verb. The comma, however, is a signal that the prepositional phrase has been moved for emphasis, or because it is an afterthought:
Forms of 'be' directly follow the subject :
The merged form czesztot 'it is, that is' begins a sentence: Czesztot Tintin. "That's Tintin."

Historical changes

Samples of Syldavian from only two periods - the 14th century and the 20th century - are available to us. But even with such a small sample, some changes can be seen in the language over a 600-year period:
From a 14th-century manuscript, Noble Deeds of Ottokar IV:
Medieval Spelling
Modern Spelling
Cyrillic Spelling
English translation:
More Examples