About furbish

Discussion of natural languages, or language in general.
Post Reply
legolasean
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 70
Joined: Fri May 04, 2012 4:27 am
Location: Caernarfon, Gwynedd, Wales

About furbish

Post by legolasean »

About ten years ago, when I was 3 years old, my mother bought me a furby. I've never played with him and few days ago I found him in my house. I've noticed that he spoke in a strange language so I searched about this in the net. Furbies speak a conlang named furbish...
languages I speak Hebrew, English, Welsh, Russian
languages I learn Latin, Arabic

User avatar
Aurora Rossa
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 1138
Joined: Mon Aug 11, 2003 11:46 am
Location: The vendée of America
Contact:

Re: About furbish

Post by Aurora Rossa »

Whoa, it's been ages since I heard anyone mention furbies. And yes, they do have a simple conlang, although I thought everyone already knew about that.
Image
"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

User avatar
Gulliver
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 433
Joined: Mon May 05, 2003 2:58 pm
Location: The West Country
Contact:

Re: About furbish

Post by Gulliver »

Haha, yes, I remember... Mine was called Cloud (but in Furbish).

When mine "died" it burped for about a minute then stopped still, with its eyes half-open. Low-running batteries are a funny thing.

User avatar
Ghostfishe
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 35
Joined: Sat Feb 19, 2011 1:09 pm

Re: About furbish

Post by Ghostfishe »

Let me guess... Oontai? ;)

I remember Furbish seemed like a pretty novel concept to implement in a kid's toy. Although I do think it would've been made a bit more interesting if Furbies responded to human speech in a more interactive way--I was able to teach one to parrot a couple D'ni words, but in general they seemed pretty oblivious. It would've been a great touch if you could "chat" with a Furby in its own language.
When I'm not dabbling in speculative science, creating game mods or writing fanfiction, I work as a web designer for www.mommatown.net.
Sites my team has made: www.vincentmartella.com, www.ipoglobalresearch.com, www.ipoboutique.com

cromulant
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 402
Joined: Tue Jul 25, 2006 10:12 pm

Re: About furbish

Post by cromulant »

Does Furbish have any interesting morphosyntactic properties? What are they?

User avatar
Aurora Rossa
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 1138
Joined: Mon Aug 11, 2003 11:46 am
Location: The vendée of America
Contact:

Re: About furbish

Post by Aurora Rossa »

cromulant wrote:Does Furbish have any interesting morphosyntactic properties? What are they?
I don't remember much about it, but I recall that it had an isolating pidgin-like grammar that mostly emulated English so probably not.
Image
"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

User avatar
Gulliver
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 433
Joined: Mon May 05, 2003 2:58 pm
Location: The West Country
Contact:

Re: About furbish

Post by Gulliver »

Wikipedia gives use the following:
wee-tah-kah-loo-loo: Tell me a joke.
wee-tah-kah-wee-loo: Tell me a story.
wee-tee-kah-wah-tee: Sing me a song.
u-nye-loo-lay-doo?: Do you want to play?
u-nye-ay-tay-doo?: Are you hungry?
u-nye-boh-doo?: How are you?
u-nye-way-loh-nee-way: Go to sleep now.
u-nye-noh-lah: Show me a dance.

Furbies may say these Furbish words:

doo?: What? (Furbies say this when called)
doo-dah: Yes. (Furbies say this in response to a command before doing it.)
boo: No. (Furbies say this when they do not want to carry out a command.)
yoo?: Why will you not play with me today? (This usually means the Furby is upset.)
So, we can build a corpus (also, my one was called Way-loh, which means sleep, not what I thought it meant).
From the Wikipedia Furbish corpus, we can work out the following:


wee-tah-kah = tell me (a?)
wee-tee-kah = sing me (a?)
doo? = question tag (the given translation of "what?" would appear innacurate. I'd suggest "hmm?" as a better English single-word translation)
loo-loo = (a?) joke
wee-loo = (a?) story
u-nye = you
loo-lay = (want to?) play
ay-tay = (be) hungry
boh = how (how are you - could be "good" like Chinese ni hao ma?)
way-loh-nee-way = sleep now
way-loh = sleep (from interview with native speaker)
nee-way (now)
noh-lah = to show a dance to someone?
doo-dah = yes
boo = no (from Mandarin bù?)
you = general expression of unhappiness

Additionally, The Furby Funhouse lists several phrases. Looking around other secondary sources, it would appear that it's a broadly SVO language with use of question marker words (doo?) and exclamatory words (wah!).

Ah, "kah" means me. The wordlist gives "tah" the meaning of give, so "tell me a story" is literally "give me story". Interesting.

User avatar
Legion
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 522
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2005 9:56 pm

Re: About furbish

Post by Legion »

This belongs to the Conlang subforum.

Thry
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 2085
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2011 12:15 pm
Location: Spain

Re: About furbish

Post by Thry »

Legion wrote:This belongs to the Conlang subforum.
No, it developed naturally among the furby population.

User avatar
Thomas Winwood
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 105
Joined: Sat Dec 14, 2002 7:47 am
Contact:

Re: About furbish

Post by Thomas Winwood »

Doo hmm? and doo-dah yes look like they might be related somehow. Perhaps boo was originally a negative question marker, with doo/boo forming a pair akin to Latin num/nonne, and then supplanted *boo-dah because yes and no sounded too similar.

User avatar
Gulliver
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 433
Joined: Mon May 05, 2003 2:58 pm
Location: The West Country
Contact:

Re: About furbish

Post by Gulliver »

Thomas Winwood wrote:Doo hmm? and doo-dah yes look like they might be related somehow. Perhaps boo was originally a negative question marker, with doo/boo forming a pair akin to Latin num/nonne, and then supplanted *boo-dah because yes and no sounded too similar.
Alternatively, it could be unrelated, like how a catastrophe has little to do with cats or trophies outside of very specific circumstances. Maybe if we had access to proto-Furbish corpora we could look into sound changes and historical forms.

User avatar
Qwynegold
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 1606
Joined: Thu May 24, 2007 11:34 pm
Location: Stockholm

Re: About furbish

Post by Qwynegold »

Gulliver wrote:boo = no (from Mandarin bù?)
Or just English boo.
Image
My most recent quiz:
Eurovision Song Contest 2018

User avatar
Ghostfishe
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 35
Joined: Sat Feb 19, 2011 1:09 pm

Re: About furbish

Post by Ghostfishe »

I do remember that "Kah way-lah coco" meant "me sleep again". Mine enjoyed saying that a lot. :roll:
When I'm not dabbling in speculative science, creating game mods or writing fanfiction, I work as a web designer for www.mommatown.net.
Sites my team has made: www.vincentmartella.com, www.ipoglobalresearch.com, www.ipoboutique.com

tezcatlip0ca
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 385
Joined: Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:30 pm

Re: About furbish

Post by tezcatlip0ca »

I think it's time to give a more sensible orthography to Furbish. As of now, we have:
/n b t d k l w j ɑ i o u ai ei/ or something like that. I propose <a i o u ai e> for the vowels. Also, get rid of those hyphens!
The Conlanger Formerly Known As Aiďos

User avatar
Melteor
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 229
Joined: Sat Dec 27, 2008 3:26 pm

Re: About furbish

Post by Melteor »

Was it really possible to teach them to swear or was that an urban legend? (I would guess the latter because YouTube only has vids of burning furbies.)

User avatar
Pinetree
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 204
Joined: Sun Apr 22, 2012 1:55 pm

Re: About furbish

Post by Pinetree »

meltman wrote:Was it really possible to teach them to swear or was that an urban legend? (I would guess the latter because YouTube only has vids of burning furbies.)
I think not. My personal theory is that they came with English preprogrammed, and that the firmware gradually replaced the furbish with it as it picked up human speech frequencies. That seems the most likely thing for the technology of the time.

User avatar
Ghostfishe
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 35
Joined: Sat Feb 19, 2011 1:09 pm

Re: About furbish

Post by Ghostfishe »

I agree with the preprogramming... I didn't even talk to my Furbies very much, and they still picked up English at lightning speeds. In addition to using cutesy words which weren't used in my family... so their basic language "skills" were certainly preprogrammed.

They could also "parrot" words that were not in their vocabulary, though, which I believe is where the whole swearing rumor came from. If you said a specific word enough times the Furby would repeat it back to you. What I tought my first one was definitely not in their standard vocabulary, but he got the pronunciation spot-on... I guess there was some kind of system to parse out the sounds in a word so the Furby could pronounce it in his own voice. They didn't use these words in sentences or anything like that, though.
When I'm not dabbling in speculative science, creating game mods or writing fanfiction, I work as a web designer for www.mommatown.net.
Sites my team has made: www.vincentmartella.com, www.ipoglobalresearch.com, www.ipoboutique.com

legolasean
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 70
Joined: Fri May 04, 2012 4:27 am
Location: Caernarfon, Gwynedd, Wales

Re: About furbish

Post by legolasean »

Ahh... Amazing robots!!!! One feature is the furbish language don't have /k/!
Also it lacks fricatives!!! Amazing!!! How furbish parrot words? Mine said "shit" to me...
languages I speak Hebrew, English, Welsh, Russian
languages I learn Latin, Arabic

legolasean
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 70
Joined: Fri May 04, 2012 4:27 am
Location: Caernarfon, Gwynedd, Wales

Re: About furbish

Post by legolasean »

Ahh... Amazing robots!!!! One feature is the furbish language don't have /k/!
Also it lacks fricatives!!! Amazing!!! How furbish parrot words? Mine said "shit" to me...
languages I speak Hebrew, English, Welsh, Russian
languages I learn Latin, Arabic

legolasean
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 70
Joined: Fri May 04, 2012 4:27 am
Location: Caernarfon, Gwynedd, Wales

Re: About furbish

Post by legolasean »

Ahh... Amazing robots!!!! One feature is the furbish language don't have /k/!
Also it lacks fricatives!!! Amazing!!! How furbish parrot words? Mine said "shit" to me...
languages I speak Hebrew, English, Welsh, Russian
languages I learn Latin, Arabic

Post Reply