Nostraman

This project is to decipher the language Nostraman from Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s Night Lords books from the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Nostraman is the third language used by the Eighth Legion, aside from High and Low Gothic, and is also their native tongue. Culturally it is set as an extremely poetic, “flowery” language that doesn’t translate well into English or any other language. Its customs are ruled by deceit, violence, base human nature and gang/mafia themes.

The analysis of this language will come from the examples pulled from the trilogy’s three books, Soul Hunter, Blood Reaver and Void Stalker. Not all examples have adequate context to translate them.

The method of analysis will be a comparative sequence to English sentences and patterns, which most likely are reflected in the text, “Kosh, kosh’eth tay…” He’s saying thank you. Thank you, thank you very much. There are numerous places where the English pattern seems to surface in reflection to the gloss but within the Nostraman text.

The following are excerpts from the books which have, at least, some kind of context from which to draw translation:

CORPUS

Soul Hunter

Viris colratha dath sethicara tesh dasovallian. Solruthis veh za jass.

Sons of our father, stand in midnight clad. We bring the night. 

(When they are speaking about Septimus' eye:)

Athasavis te corunai tol shathen sha'shian? – (?)

Kosh, kosh'eth tay... Ama sho'shalnath mirsa tota. Ithis jasha. Ithis jasha nereoss. 

Thank you, thank you very much… Good color, very good color.
 

Jasca – Yes

Blood Reaver

Ashilla sorsollun, Ashilla uthullun – I am blind, I am cold

Vaya vey... ne’sha – I don’t… understand

Shrilla la lerril – whore that mates with dogs

Vellith sar’darithas, volvallasha sor sul – (-asha might mean “I” in some way)

Tosha amthilla van veshi laliss – This vessel is cursed.

Forfallian dal sur shissis lalil na sha dareel - We must be cautious, watch yourself

Sil vasha nuray – He has no arms

Void Stalker

Sinthallia shar vor vall’velias – That woman will be the death of us.

Corshia Sey – Breath now

Nishallitha – poisonous (p 165), since –llia is often a noun ending, -llitha is an adjective ending.

Athrillay, Vylas – greetings, brother

Vulusha, vulusha sethrishan? – How, how much? 

Valmisai, shul’celadaan… Flishatha sey shol voroshica – Variel’s call to arms for Nostraman crew (p 344), perhaps with the phrase "Be ready now or die"

Vishi tha? – (p 347)

Ivalastitha – peace

Yrosia se naur tay helshival – smiling to mock me

Vel jaesha lai – I love you (?)
Juthai'lah – Preysight
Valas Morovai – First Claw (First Squad)

LEXICON

Amthilla – vessel

Ashilla – I, or I am

Athasavis – eye, lens (?)

Athrillay – greetings

Dasovallia – being midnight clad, Dasovallitha – midnight clad (adjectival form)

Flisatha – ready, Flisa – prepared (?)

Forfallia – being cautious, Forfallitha – cautious

Ithis – color

Ivalastitha – peaceful, Ivalastia – peace

Nishallia – poison, Nishallitha – poisonous

Ruthis – absence (?)

Sinthallia – woman

Solruthis – night, “being wanting of sun” maybe, or “absence of sun” (sol – sun)

Sorsollia – sun that illuminates, Sorsollun – blind (lit. sunless)

Uthullia – sun that warms, Uthullun – cold (lit. sunless)

Valas – claw
Vallia – armor, cover, clad

Viris – sons

Vor – death

Vylas – brother (being addressed), possibly Vyla – brother

Corshia – to breathe (second person singular)

Vasha – to have (third person singular), veshi – third person singular inanimate

Vaya vey ne’sha – to not understand (first person singular)

Voroshica – to die (second person plural)

Yrosia – to smile (second person singular)

Jasha – good

Morovai – first
Nereoss – very

Kosh – thanks, Kosh’eth tay – thank you very much

Sey – now

Shol – or

MORPHOLOGY

Since both the Ashilla sorsollun and Sinthallia excerpts has the “to be” verb in their translation, perhaps the ending –illa itself means “is”, since it’s seen that not all nouns have the ending –illa but when the word “is” specifically occurs in translation.

-ll- if not the verb “to be”, it probably denotes the nominative declension case

-asha is contained in all first-person nouns, therefore “I”

-as is the only example we have of a singular second-person address, therefore “you”

-ia is contained in all third-person references, therefore “it”

-ay is contained in the only plural third-person reference, thus “they”

-is is contained once in a plural second-person reference, therefore possible “you all”, or an adjectival ending (ithis – color, solruthis – without sun)

-ian probably means “we”

-un means without

Possible Personal Declension, e.g. Vallia – armor

Vallasha – “I, armored”

Vallas – “you, armored”

Vallia – “it, armored”, “it, armor”

Vallian – “we, armored”

Kinship terms, from the two stated here (Vyla – brother, Vira – son) center around the v and l/r continuum, which is common in Latin (High Gothic) and Indo-European in general to denote the word “man” or “person”.

Nostraman is rife with apostrophes, being either a multiplicity of contractions as is common in degenerate languages, or a simple aesthetic motif which is common of scifi (I’m inclined to believe the former). Whether or not A.D.B. actually has a language – if he actually constructed the language of Nostraman and used it for the books – or has only made up the sentences as he’s gone on is unknown.

You can find links to the two earlier articles about Nostraman here:

Deciphering Nostraman I

Deciphering Nostraman II

The data from both of these works has been compiled into the present page. This is one of the most popular pages and hopefully it continues to be of use to you. 

Disclaimer: Soul Hunter and all other books, and their contents, released by Black Library are their property. I'm not stealing.

Deciphering Nostraman II

See: 
Nostraman Grammar  (new)
Deciphering Nostraman I

The second Night Lords book by Dembski-Bowden, Blood Reaver, expands much upon the initial pretext of Nostraman and provides ample examples throughout of the Nostraman language. We are given even more clues as to the nature of Nostraman… Below I have the collected examples from the book, and their approximate meanings.

Ashilla sorsollun, ashilla uthullun

I am blind, I am cold

Since the words meaning “blind” and “cold” are both described as literally meaning “sunless”, we can derive that sorsollun and uthullun are the terms for blind and cold, with the suffix –llun or –un meaning “-less” or “without”. Therefore, ashilla would mean I, or perhaps “I am”.

Asa fothala su’surushan

(A term of dismissal)

Vaya vey… ne’sha.

I don’t… understand.

Since I described the use of the apostrophe in the previous post as being a possible contraction of a pronoun, ne’sha could retain the meaning “I” or maybe a negation like “not”. Therefore, Vaya vey ne’sha – I don’t understand.

Shrilla la lerril

(jibe, “whore that mates with dogs”)

Vellith sar’darithas, volvallasha sor sul

(From this I postulate the ending –asha might mean “I”)

Tosha amthilla van veshi laliss

This vessel is cursed

We see tosh and tesh in Nostraman – I think this might be the demonstrative pronoun “this”, similar to the English variation of “this” and “that”. Since “vasha” might correspond with the verb “to have” as conjectured below, veshi could be another conjugation of the Nostraman term “to have”, as if to say more literally, “This vessel has a curse”.

Forfallian dal sur shissis lalil na sha dareel

We must be cautious, watch yourself

Sil vasha nuray

He has no arms

Vasha could be the third-person singular conjugation for the Nostraman word “to have”.

Sinthallia shar vor vall’velias

That woman will be the death of us

The suffix –thallia might mean “that”. If that is true, then “amthilla” from earlier means “this ship”. In that case, we don’t know what tosha/tesh means.

Corshia sey

Breathe now (a deadly greeting)

Alternatively, breathe while you still can. I believe sey here means “now” and corshia is some conjugation of the verb “to breathe”.

Nishallitha

Poisonous

Athrillay, Vylas

Greetings, brother

This is pretty self-explanatory. The –ill suffix could possibly be a pluralization, and kinship terms seem to have many v’s and l’s (e.g. Viris colratha).

Vulusha, vulusha sethrishan?

How much?

Alternatively, How, how much?

Hopefully, since this is a trilogy, the Dembski-Bowden’s third book in this series will come out soon and perhaps shed some real light on this language.

Deciphering Nostraman I

See:
Nostraman (main article)
Deciphering Nostraman II

In the dark future, there is only conlanging. Aaron Dembski-Bowden's novel Soul Hunter embarks on the presentation of the constructed language Nostraman, which is the obscure and native language of the Night Lords legion in the Warhammer 40k universe. Since the language seems to have some semblance of consistency, I think Dembski-Bowden has a certain formula for this language that he's only revealed to us in little snippets so far. We are only given sparse phrases in Nostraman, with only rudimentary translations part of the time since Nostraman is "hard to translate" into any other tongue. 

Currently there are two books that have samples of Dembski-Bowden's Nostraman; Soul Hunter and Blood Reaver. This post will be going over the language as presented in the first book; I'll do an analysis on the text presented in Blood Reaver at a later date. 


In the book's universe, Nostraman is a grandiose and wordy language, "flowery", "The tongue had its
roots in High Gothic, but much had changed through generations of unique phrasing by faithless, truthless, peaceless people." There are obvious examples of where Nostraman words come from High Gothic (Latin), for example, what other word would mean "night" in the phrase, "Solruthis ve za jass" ? Here I postulate "Solruthis" to be a flowery word meaning "Without Sun", meaning "Night". From this we can see that "Sol" means Sun as in Latin, and that -ruthis is some kind of suffix akin to English "-less", as if to say "Sunlessness". 


Another expression come across in the book is, "Kosh, Kosh'eth tay." This is translated as an expression of thanking someone. Notice the use of the apostrophe when a word seems to be "added" to another word; in our history, languages descending from Latin often contracted forms using the apostrophe (look at French; le Amerique -> l'Amerique). Therefore, the " 'eth " might function in a similar way, for a word probably expressing an integral part of a sentence like a pronoun. Since people sometimes lengthen their graces by expanding "Thanks" into "Thank you very much", this phrase could perhaps mean something along these lines: "Thank you, thank you very much". You can see here the same pattern of repetition. So then, if Kosh is expressive of a simple "thanks", 'eth could mean "you" and tay could mean "very much" or an expression of great quantity, an intensifier. Supposing these things are true, we now have three words for which we know the meanings: kosh, 'eth and tay. We should experiment with these if found anywhere else in the sample texts in order to figure out if they indeed mean these things. 


The corpus: 


Viris colratha dath sethicara tesh dasovallian. Solruthis veh za jass. 
Sons of our father, stand in midnight clad. We bring the night. 


Athasavis te corunai tol shathen sha'shian?


Kosh, kosh'eth tay... Ama sho'shalnath mirsa tota. Ithis jasha. Ithis jasha nereoss. 


Jasca
Yes


Possible words:


Corunai      eye
Ithis            color
Jasca          yes
Jasha          nice
Kosh          thanks
Nereoss     very, an intensifier
Tay            very, an intensifier
Te              your 
Solruthis    night
Viris          sons (or father, ?)


Like I said, I am not sure about any of this, most of this is pure speculation. Please stick around for part II. 


(P.S. - I really hope that Dembski-Bowden actually made a conlang for this, and didn't just make up random words ;^;)