Syldavian is a fictional

Fictional language

Fictional languages are by far the largest group of artistic languages. Fictional languages are intended to be the languages of a fictional world and are often designed with the intent of giving more depth and an appearance of plausibility to the fictional worlds with which they are associated, and...

 West Germanic language created by Hergé

Hergé

Georges Prosper Remi , better known by the pen name Hergé, was a Belgian comics writer and artist. His best known and most substantial work is the 23 completed comic books in The Adventures of Tintin series, which he wrote and illustrated from 1929 until his death in 1983, although he was also...

 as the national language of Syldavia

Syldavia

Syldavia is a fictional Balkan kingdom featured in The Adventures of Tintin by Hergé. The name was derived from TranSYLvania and MolDAVIA.-Overview:...

, a small fictional Balkan kingdom

Monarchy

A monarchy is a form of government in which the office of head of state is usually held until death or abdication and is often hereditary and includes a royal house. In some cases, the monarch is elected...

 that serves as a major setting in some Tintin

The Adventures of Tintin

The Adventures of Tintin is a series of classic comic books created by Belgian artist , who wrote under the pen name of Hergé...

 stories. Hergé modeled the language on Marols

Marols

Marols or Marollien was a dialect spoken in Brussels. Essentially it is a Dutch dialect incorporating many words of French origin as well as a sprinkling of Spanish dating back to the rule of the Low Countries by the Habsburgs...

, a dialect of Dutch

Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

 spoken in and around Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

. The entire corpus of the language has been analyzed by Mark Rosenfelder, and his work forms the basis of this article. (See References below.)

Characteristics

As presented in the Tintin books, Syldavian resembles a Slavic

Slavic languages

The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...

 language due to its orthography

Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

. It is most commonly written in the Cyrillic alphabet, albeit with the Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 alphabet by the royal court. It shares numerous orthographic features found in various Eastern European languages, most notably the "sz" and "cz" of Polish

Polish language

Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

. However, the language is clearly a Germanic

Germanic languages

The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...

 language. Its vocabulary and grammar resembles that of Dutch

Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

 and German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 and has little in common with any Slavic languages. The language also appears to have been influenced by Bordurian

Bordurian

Bordurian is a fictional language, the national language of Borduria, a fictional Balkan dictatorship created by Hergé for the Tintin comics series. Little is known about Bordurian, as it is not extensively presented in the Tintin stories...

, Slavic languages

Slavic languages

The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...

 and Turkish

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

. The Syldavians often bear names of Slavic origin, such as Wladimir; the dish szlaszeck that Tintin encountered also appears to be a borrowing (szaszłyk is the Polish word for "shish kebab", borrowed in turn from Turkish). Many words are based on common French slangs. For examples, "clebcz" is constructed on the French parisian slang "clebs" meaning "dog".

This language, which is Germanic but bears a great resemblance to Polish

Polish language

Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

, may be likened to the artificial Romance language Wenedyk

Wenedyk

Wenedyk is a naturalistic constructed language, created by the Dutch translator Jan van Steenbergen . It is used in the fictional Republic of the Two Crowns , in the alternate timeline of Ill Bethisad...

, or to the endangered Vilamovian language.

Vowels

In addition to the diacritical marks shown in the chart below, there are acute and grave accents that may indicate stress.

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the...	i, i y, ü	u, u
Near-close Near-close vowel A near-close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-close vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to a close vowel, but slightly less constricted. Near-close vowels are sometimes described as lax variants of the fully close vowels...	ɪ, y	ʊ, û
Close-mid Close-mid vowel A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel...	e, e ø, ö	o, o
Open-mid Open-mid vowel An open-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel...	[æ~ɛ], ä	ɔ, ô
Near-open Near-open vowel A near-open vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-open vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to an open vowel, but slightly more constricted. Near-open vowels are sometimes described as lax variants of the fully open vowels...
Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...	a, a

In addition to these letter, Syldavian also comprises several digraphs and letters for which the pronunciation is uncertain:

• â - uncertain
• ï - uncertain, but likely a diaeresis indicating to pronounce as syllabic i rather than j
• oe - ø
• ou - /ou/
• eu - uncertain: perhaps the vowel œ or ø, perhaps a diphthong /eu/ or /ɛu/. It is only seen in one word: teuïh ("door").
• ei - /ei/

Consonants

	Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Labiodental Labiodental consonant In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate...	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	m, m		n, n
Plosive	p, p b, b		t, t d, d			k, k ɡ, g
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...	β, v	f, f v, w	s, s z, z	ʃ, sz ʒ, zs		x, kh ɣ, gh	h, h
Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...			t͡s, tz d͡z, dz	t͡ʃ, cz d͡ʒ, dj
Trill Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular....			r, r r̝, rz
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...			l, l		j, j

Note: As in Czech

Czech language

Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...

, the letter r can be syllabic, as seen in names such as Staszrvitch and Dbrnouk.

There are some additional digraphs and trigraphs, including tch (used in names and pronounced with t͡ʃ), chz (uncertain, but may be an alternative form of cz t͡ʃ), and th t. These demonstrate that the Latin-based orthography has a number of irregularities.

Plurals

• Native words are pluralized with -en: klebczen - "dogs"; fläszen - "bottles"

• Loanwords are pluralized with -es: zigarettes - "cigarettes"

Definite articles

	Masc./Fem.	Neut.	Plural
Nom.	dze	dascz	dzoe
Acc.	dzem	dascz	dzoe
Dat.	dze	dza	dzem
Gen.	doscz	doscz	doscz

Personal pronouns

	Sub.	Obj.	Poss.
1 sing.	ek	ma	mejn
2 sing.	dûs	da	dejn
3 sing.	eih	itd	yhzer
3 sing.	zsoe	irz	yhzer
1 plur.	vei	ohmz	ohmz
2 plur.
3 plur.	zsoe	khon	khon

Note: "yhzer" may be an inflected form, with the base form being "yhz". The second person plural forms are unknown, and the sound correspondences with Dutch and German are irregular enough to make reconstructing them impossible, although one possibility would be "jei", "jou", "öhz".

Interjections

szplug - a curse word, perhaps equivalent to "damn". (Not found in original French edition, only English translation.)
szplitz on szplug- a more extreme form of szplug

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:

• pho became vüh ("for")

Sample text

From a 14th century manuscript, Noble Deeds of Ottokar IV:

Pir Ottokar, dûs pollsz ez könikstz, dan tronn eszt pho mâ. Czeillâ czäídâ ön eltcâr alpû, kzommetz pakkeho lapzâda. Könikstz itd o alpû klöppz Staszrvitchz erom szûbel ö. Dâzsbíck fällta öpp o cârrö.

English translation:

"Father Ottokar, thou falsely art king; the throne is for me." This one said thus to the other, "Come seize the sceptre." The king thus hit him, Staszrvitch, on his head. The villain fell onto the floor."

More examples

Czesztot on klebcz. - "That's a dog."

"Hamaïh!" - "Wow!"

Kzommet micz omhz, noh dascz gendarmaskaïa. - "Come with us to the Police Station." ("politzski" in the English translation.)

On fläsz Klowaswa vüh dzapeih... Eih döszt! - "A bottle of Klow water for this guy... He's thirsty!" (cf. Swedish törst, "thirst". Note: It's unclear why it isn't something like *eih dösztigh, which is what one might expect from the other Germanic languages.)

Czesztot wzryzkar nietz on waghabontz! Czesztot bätczer yhzer kzömmetz noh dascz gendarmaskaïa? - "That's surely not a tramp! Isn't it better for him to come to the police station?" (Lit. probably "Is it better [that] he comes to the police station?")

Rapp! Noh dzem buthsz!-"Quick! Into the boat!"