Utility Cthuvian Dictionary: Transcribed 3rd Edition

The best-known Cthuvian fragment comes from HPL's story, "The Call of Cthulhu":

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

HPL translates this as,

In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu lies dreaming.

Using this dictionary, however, a more literal translation is,

Dead, yet dreaming, Cthulhu waits in his palace in R'lyeh.

Today's offering is a pair of fragments from Bloch's "The Unspeakable Betrothal", and some intriguing implications of these. Both start in English and finish in Cthuvian. You'd think, with an English lead-in, such fragments would be easier to translate, but noooo.

They would carry her ulnagr Yuggoth Farnomi ilyaa...

We already know Yuggoth is the planet Pluto. Ulnagr might be a preposition, except that Cthuvian doesn't seem to have any free-standing prepositions--they're mostly implied. Suppose, then, that agr sounds a lot like agl, a suffix which denotes a location. The girl is being summoned, so uln is a verb for "call" or "summon".
Farnomi might be a location, or an entity, or a group of entities, on Yuggoth. Assuming it's the entity to whom the girl will be taken, we can guess that ilyaa means "expecting" or "awaiting".
So, this phrase might be translated:

They would carry her [from] the summoning place [to] Yuggoth [where] Farnomi awaits [her].

And the other fragment:

Only perception is limited ch'yar ul'nyar shaggornyth

Here's uln again (sort of), but now it's not a place, but a time. That means ch' is also a verb, and the other action involved is traveling to Yuggoth, so ch' means "travel".
Shaggor sounds like a cross between lloigor and shoggoth, so let's run with this. Shagg is different from shogg. The girl is attacked through her dreams, so let's say shagg refers to the Dreamlands. A shaggor is not an inhabitant of the Dreamlands (that would be shaggoth), so it's more like an aspect of some force, or a manifestation. Finally, the suffix \-nyth could mean "servitor of". So a shaggornyth is a servant of a dream force--I nominate the Nightgaunts.
And the translation:

Only perception is limited [at] the moment of departure, [at] the moment of summoning, [the] Nightgaunt [...(incomplete)]

We've already defined shoggoth as "inhabitant of the Pit". The suffix \-oth indicates a native of some place or realm. We can extend this to Azathoth, and define Azath as the realm of nuclear chaos. At the moment, though, I can't define Yog-Sothoth. The suffix -or tells us that lloig means "mind" or "psyche", since the lloigor are mental constructs. These names give us some insight into the cosmology of the Great Old Ones. There are separate words for the world below (shogg), the world of dreams (shagg), and the world of the mind (lloig), and no doubt others will appear. They can operate in any of these worlds at will. Even though their physical bodies are imprisoned, they can influence their servants (and psychically sensitive people) through mental sendings and dreams.

Usenet, or my news server, has an interesting "feature". When I tried to start a new thread called "Cthuvian 102", the new message appeared in the old "Cthuvian 101" thread. Same for "Cthuvian 201" .
Anyway, here at the Cthuvian Language Labs, we're committed to deciphering the language of the Great Old Ones. Please watch your step.
To review, here are the words we have tentatively defined:

(A minor note: plurals in Cthuvian are usually formed by repeating the final letter. Hence, *gof'n* means "child", while *gof'nn* means "children". It makes a twisted sort of sense...so it's probably wrong.)
To get caught up, we need a new definition of mglw'nafh to decipher the famous phrase in "The Call of Cthulhu". We propose keeping the original assumption that mg- is a prefix denoting a juxtaposition of opposites, like "sino" in Spanish. Suppose we call lw'nafh a verb meaning "lives" or "acts". The revised translation is then:

Dead (beyond the threshold) yet alive (working), Cthulhu [in its] palace at R'lyeh sleeps/waits/dreams.

We are now ready to tackle a phrase from Derleth's "The Return of Hastur":

Iä Hastur cf'ayak'vulgtmm, vugtlagln vulgtmm

In this case, we need to guess at the meaning of this phrase before tackling individual words. Suppose it means something like this: "Hosanna, Hastur, we offer up our prayers to thee, we beseech thee with prayer."
Iä doesn't really require translation, but it seems to have the same function as "hosanna" (Aramaic for "glory", right?)
We've already seen a pronoun represented as a prefix (y-, see above), so we'll say that the prefix c- denotes the first person plural, i.e. "we" or "our". For reasons which will shortly become apparent, this prefix softens a following consonant, so the root verb is fhayak, meaning "send" or "offer up" or "place before".
Vulgtm thus means "prayer" (plural here, denoted by the second m). We've guessed that vugtlagln means "beseech" or "respond to".
So, a more literal translation is:

Glory [to] Hastur! [We] send prayers [to thee], answer [our] prayers.

The final fragment from "The Return of Hastur" is "Hastur cf'tagn". Here again we see the prefix c-, which reverses the normal sense of this verb: "Hastur, we wait [for thee], we dream [of thee]."

We can now turn to other fragments with some confidence. From Price's "Beneath the Tombstone", we have:

Mglw'nafh fhthagn-ngah cf'ayak 'vulgtmm vugtlag'n

We can handily translate it as:

...yet living, [it] sleeps/waits and then acts, we send [our] prayers [to thee], answer [us]!

Or this, from Carter's "Dead of Night":

*Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthugha Fomalhaut n'gha-ghaa naf'lthagn*

Glossing over some typos, we have:

Gone but not forgotten, Cthugha sleeps/waits at Fomalhaut, [promising] death to one and all.

Comments, as always, are welcome.

To begin with, here are some relevant quotes from HPL himself, from "The Call of Cthulhu":

...from some undetermined point below had come a voice that was not a voice; a chaotic sensation which only fancy could transmute into sound, but which he attempted to render by the almost unpronounceable jumble of letters, Cthulhu fhtagn.

...a subterrene voice or intelligence shouting monotonously in enigmatical sense-impacts uninscribable save as gibberish...

[The Great Old Ones'] mode of speech was transmitted thought.

And from "The Dunwich Horror":

It is almost erroneous to call them "sounds" at all, since so much of their ghastly, infra-bass timbre spoke to dim seats of consciousness and terror far subtler than the ear; yet one must do so, since their form was indisputably though vaguely that of half-articulate "words".

From the Old Gentleman's own pen, then, we know that written Cthuvian is only a rough approximation of the spoken form; that this is part of a telepathic message, which can include images, sensations, emotions, impressions, or anything else the human brain can process; and this may represent only a fraction of what a Great Old One can comprehend.
To a lesser extent, the same abstraction occurs in any written language. Written English loses the nuances of emphasis, tone, and context. We can reconstruct much of the spoken form because we generate speech ourselves every day, but with Cthuvian this gets problematic.

We have to start somewhere--as Lewis said to Clark--so we'll go to the source. We get a single phrase in "The Call of Cthulhu":

Ph'nglui mhlw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

HPL even provides a translation: "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming". Obviously "Cthulhu" and "R'lyeh" correspond. We also know that fhtagn means "waits". That leaves three words which should correspond to "house", "dead", and "dreaming".
Applying Occam's Razor to keep things simple, let's assign the words nearest to what they modify. Wgah'nagl follows R'lyeh, so it means "(its) home". Ph'nglui and mglw'nafh precede Cthulhu, so they mean "dead" and "dreaming".
Thus, a more literal translation of this phrase is:

Dead, yet dreaming, Cthulhu waits in his palace in R'lyeh.

We have two more fragments from "The Dunwich Horror". Wilbur's brother (Orville? [sorry]) utters these words:

Ygnaiih...ygnaiih...thflthkh'ngha...Yog-Sothoth...y'bthnk...h'ehye-n'grkdl'lh

Considering his next and final words ("Help! Father!"), we might assume that ygnaiih means "father", possibly "my father". By the same reasoning, thflthkh'ngha might be a cry for help. Yog-Sothoth, of course, is his father's name.
If we assume that an initial y denotes possession, as with ygnaiih, we could guess that y'bthnk means "my body" or "my spirit", since "Orville" is in the middle of an exorcism; then h'ehye-n'grkdl'lh might mean "begins to fade away".
Thus, we can translate Whateley's cry for help:

Father, father, help me! Yog-Sothoth, my body! It's fading away!

Finally, we have Wilbur Whateley's last words:

N'gai, n'gha'ghaa, bugg-shoggog, y'hah, Yog-Sothoth!

Given the circumstances, we might call this a curse instead of a supplication. The root shogg helps, since we can guess that shoggoth means "creature from the Pit (Underworld)". Perhaps these words mean:

Death, death to you all, go to hell! Amen, by Yog-Sothoth!

HERE ENDETH THE FIRST LESSON
Other phrases we'll look at in Cthuvian 102:

• "The Return of Hastur" (Derleth): Cthulhu naflfhtagn
• "The Moon-Lens" (Campbell): Gof'nn hupadgh Shub-Niggurath
• "Concerning the Forthcoming...Translation of the Necronomicon..." (Brunner): llllll-nglui, nnnn-lagl, fhtagn-ngah, ai Yog-Sothoth!

And many more.
Not that I need to ask, but any comments, amplifications, complaints, or remarks would be welcome. I see this project as a group effort.

Another interesting fragment comes from "Concerning the Forthcoming Inexpensive Paperback Translation of the Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred", by John Brunner:

Llllll-nglui, nnnn-lagl, fhtagn-ngah, ai Yog-Sothoth!

The translation provided is, "Yog-Sothoth is the Lurker at the Threshold". We also see some parallels with the fragment from "The Call of Cthulhu", giving us some clues.
First, nglui. We have established that ph'nglui means "dead". If we equate llllll-nglui with "at the Threshold", we can guess that nglui means "Threshold", so that in both cases it has prefixes acting as prepositions: llllll- means "at", and ph'- means "beyond". Note that ph'nglui is only a metaphor for what we know as death--Cthuvians don't die, they shift into other realities "across the border" or "beyond the Threshold". (Note also that Cthuvian has no articles.)
Second, agl. We know that wgah'nagl means "house (of)". Suppose that nnnn-lagl matches "Lurker". We now have a suffix, -agl, meaning "place"; that is, it modfies a verb to indicate that that action occurs in a specific place. Wgah'n then means "live or "reside", and nnnn-l means "watch" or "protect".
Third, fhtagn-ngah. The string ngah amplifies fhtagn somehow, in keeping with Yog-Sothoth's role as Lurker. I'd like to put off a derivation of ng for a later time, but propose it as a conjunction linking two actions which normally occur in sequence--an English equivalent is "and then". The other component, ah, should then follow the fhtagn (wait) action. As a guardian, Yog-Sothoth has a variety of options for dealing with those crossing the Threshold, so ah might cover a variety of actions, with a visual component for specific cases (remember, this is only the written form of a telepathic language). On the other hand, ah may stand for a generic action, as "do" does.
Last, ai. Lacking any solid clues, this might be a sort of conjunction, linking several characteristics with one subject. We can now translate the phrase more literally:

At [the] Threshold, [It] watches, [It] waits and greets us, [It] is Yog-Sothoth!

Okay, campers, time to start on Phase II of the Cthuvian Language Project. When it's completed and every human has learned Our Master's tongue, the aeon of Its Ascendancy can begin. Iä!
First of all, we need to answer the question: "What is a Great Old One?"
Like all the rest of our topics, I'm not going to try to present a deinitive answer; most will bemultiple choice or one-from-column-A. I'm also going to confine the discussion to Cthulhu, expecting that most points will apply to the other Great Old Ones as well.

• Answer A: Cthulhu is a god. Primitive people personify natural forces--like sun, wind, and lightning--and worship them. Before the Elder Gods banished It, Cthulhu also was worshipped for Its power. Able to communicate telepathically with Its followers, It has maintained that cult to prepare for Its return, when It will re-establish Its temple at R'lyeh.
• Answer B: Cthulhu is an awesomely powerful being from another realm. Once It ruled Earth, but the Elder Gods closed the gate between Its realm and ours. While Cthulhu dreams in Its prison, Its followers work to re-open the gate at R'lyeh.
• Answer C: Cthulhu is a space alien. Trapped on Earth by gravity, weakness,, or lack of transportation, It went into hibernation. Entombed in the sunken city of R'lyeh, It waits for a race to arise that can help "It phone home".
• Answer D: Cthulhu is a monstrous cell. Like some other Mythos creatures, it appears to be unicellular. We can only speculate about the significance (if any) of this correspondence. Did all these organisms once belong to some great creature, disassembled by the Elder Gods? Do they work together as disparate parts of an unseen and unknowable whole? Do they function as cosmic white blood cells, battling "infections" like mankind, or are they the disease?
• Answer E: Cthulhu is a force of nature. Unlike early anthropomorphic gods, It rules over quantum particles. The random nature of subatomic activity arises from the constant struggle among such forces. They did not become apparent to us until we began to understand the true nature of reality.
• Answer F: None of the above. What's your theory?

Return of the Cthuvian Fragment
Actually a couple of fragments. From "The Likeness" by Perez:

Iä! Vthyarilops! Ut ftaghu wk'hmr Vthyarilops! Iä! Iä!

A tattoo artist chants this phrase while applying a monstrous design to a young woman. The finished tattoo has some very nasty habits.
Ut, a short word, seems to serve as a key for channeling. Compare this with uaaah, which executes a spell.
Ftaghu means "skin" (or "boundary" in the case of less well-defined creatures). And wk'hmr denotes "transfer into" or "imbue with".
A translation:

Oyez! Vthyarilops! [I] call thee, [into this] skin imbue [the essence of] Vyarlithops! Oyez! Oyez!

And from "Return to Y'ha-nthlei" by Glasby:

Shtunggli grah'nn fhhui Y'ha-nthlei vra Dagon chtenff.

Context doesn't help much; a boy mutters it while delirious. Later he becomes a Deep One...but with Dagon involved, that's no stretch. Let's start with grah'nn, where the double ending signifies a plural. The boy is not a Deep One yet, but he's not an ordinary human either; this might refer to "lost ones" or "potential servants" or even "larvae".
Moving on to shtunggli, it could mean "notify" or "contact". This implies a very early stage of the transmogrification from human to Deep One, when the subject first displays a sensitivity to Cthuvian telepathy. It also implies that the Deep Ones routinely (if not continuously) broadcast such a message as a homing beacon.
Fhhui actually starts the message. It probably means "consider" or "prepare for".
Once at Y'ha-nthlei we can guess that one would vra ("enlist in", or "become one with") the chtenff ("brotherhood" or "society") of Dagon.
A translation:

[We] notify [our] lost brethren: prepare for [coming to] Y'ha-nthlei [and] joining [the] Children [of] Dagon.

And another:

Calling all larvae! Visit Y'ha-nthlei! Dagon wants to assimilate you!

(Editor's note: I'm out of fragments again. If you have any Cthuvian passages you'd like to see "translated", please post the text and the source. Otherwise I'll press on to Phase Two, which would have been a Cthuvian grammar primer, but has become a Cthuvian culture primer. The grammar primer will have to wait for Phase Three.)

Sorry for the delay, there's more chaos than usual here at the Cthuvian Language Labs. This week's fragment comes from Kuttner's "The Salem Horror":

Ya na kadishtu nilgh'ri
stell'bsna kn'aa Nyogtha
k'yarnak phlegethor

We've established that there are no pronouns in Cthuvian. Now it turns out that they're only assumed, as they are in Spanish, but you can use them for emphasis, to avoid ambiguity, or even to preserve meter. Here we have a prayer of sorts, and the speaker refers to himself out of humility. Remember that the prefix y- is the first person possessive; ya is therefore the pronoun I.
Na I take to be a diminution of nafl, or possibly a different dialect; it means "not".
Kadishtu, from the context, is "know" or "understand" (all right, I pulled this out of my ass).
Nilgh'ri can mean "anything" or "everything". The first line seems ambiguous, but that's always a danger when you don't have the telepathic context of the message. It could say, "I don't know anything," or "I don't know everything," or "I understand nothing".
Stell'bsna means "ask" or "petition". Ntoe that this differs from vultlagln (beseech) which implies a boon or favor is expected, in return for some kind of sacrifice.
Kn'aa obviously means "questions", and we all know Nyogtha. The second line says, "[I] ask questions [of] Nyogtha."
Following up on this theme, k'yarnak means "share" or "exchange".
Phlegethor, according to the suffix, is an aspect of some other realm, which in this case is information. We can only postulate that phlegeth refers to the dimension of pure data which we have come to call cyberspace. So next time you're out surfing the Net, don't be surprised to come across a whirlpool or a writhing mass of tentacles.
Here's a translation, with some attempt at a consistent meter:

I knew nothing at all
I petitioned Nyogtha
Together we shared our thoughts

Next time we'll look at Lumley's version of this same prayer.

We've finally put out the fires here at the Cthuvian Language Labs and hired some new scribes. You've got to be careful working with Cthuvian, one wrong word and poof! Those Outer Gods can't take a joke...
Anyway, here's a fragment from Lumley's "The Burrowers Beneath":

Ya na kadishtu nilgh'ri stell'bsna Nyogtha,
K'yarnak phlegethor l'ebumna syha'h n'ghft,
Ya hai kadishtu ep r'luh-eeh Nyogtha eeh,
S'uhn-ngh atgh li'hee orr'e syha'h.

The first line and a half we already did, since they're straight from Kuttner's "Salem Horror":

I knew nothing at all
I petitioned Nyogtha
We shared our thoughts

As for the rest...
The prefix l- means "beside", and, knowing Nyogtha, ebumna is "pit". What kind of pit? Syha'h means "eternity"; n'ghft is related to n'gha (death), probably "darkness".
We've already translated ya as "I" and kadishtu as "know" or "understand". After "sharing thoughts" with Nyogtha, we can assume that the writer means "I now understand".
Ep is a curious word. It's possible that the transcriptionist, eager to catch every significant sound, actually caught a belch (write your own joke). In conjunction with hai, though, I'm guessing it means "only now", that is, that some time has passed since the previous event and the current event is a direct result.
Eeh, as noted in an earlier fragment, means "answers", although the final H may indicate some kind of voice change, or even an appositive marker. R'luh means "secret" or "hidden" (note the correspondence with R'lyeh, which might mean "Secret City" or "Hidden Palace"). R'luh-eeh thus means "secret lore" or "forbidden knowledge", but in the sense that it has been provided to one, not discovered or wrested from its source.
S'uhn-ngh has that same root ngh (darkness), so we'll say s'uhn means "agreement" or "pact". It follows that athg is "sign" or "pledge"; that li'hee is "on pain of" or "answer with"; and that orr'e is "soul" or "spirit" (contrast with 'bthnk (body) and lloig (psyche)).
The literal translation:

I know nothing, [I] petition Nyogtha,
[We] exchange data (lit. "force from cyberspace")
Beside [the] pit [of] eternal darkness,
Only now do I know the hidden lore [with which] Nyogtha responded,
[This] unholy pact [do I] sign [lest I] answer with my eternal spirit.

In some kind of regular meter, like the original:

I knew nothing at all, I petitioned Nyogtha,
We shared our thoughts beside the darkest pit,
I know now the dark wisdom Nyogtha imparts,
This dark pledge I seal with my immortal soul.

An aside: after studying Spencer's fragments, I'm inclined to classify them as non-Cthuvian. For one thing, there are an awful lot of Xs, and odd as it sounds, we havent' yet encountered this exotic letter in a true Cthuvian fragment. Another hint is the word barsoom, which Burroughs fans will recall from his John Carter stories as the Martian name for their planet; it's not relevant to the Mythos (as far as I know...) so it must be considered a "false cognate", that is, a word spelled the same in another language but with a different meaning.

A couple of fragments in some alien language. I'm afraid to give it a name now.
Since Mr. Russell asked so nicely, here's an invocation from his story "Faith":

Cthugha fm'latgh mnahn' hlirgh!
Cthugha ch'nw hafh'drn!
Cthugha fm'latgh uh'e wfaqa!

From the context, the speaker is attempting to summon Cthugha--or one of Its servitors--to turn an enemy into a crispy critter. I therefore assumed that it roughly means:

Cthugha burns the worthless heretics!
Cthugha passes over his priest!
Cthugha burns the people I hate!

From this, fm'latgh means "burns", mnahn' means "worthless" or "useless", and hlirgh means "heretic".
We've already defined the word ch as "travel" or "cross over" (in "The Unspeakable Betrothal"), so nw represents a person (or head) in a very impersonal sense, e.g. counting heads. And that leaves hafh'drn as "priest" or "summoner".
In the last line, uh'e is another word for person, but in a very personal sense; and wfaqa is "hatred".

The other fragment comes from Vester's "Innsmouth Gold". It occurs during an invocation of G'thugha, Dagon's daughter:

Cthulhu fhtagn--G'thugha w'gah!
Ng'goka y'gotha ooboshu R'lyeh!
Cthulhu fhtagn! Fhtagn!

We know from the classic quote in HPL's "The Call of Cthulhu" that fhtagn means "wait/sleep", although in an active way; and wgah'n means "reside" or "control". The first line translates as something like, "Cthulhu is coming--G'thugha is here!"
Ng is a conjunction indicating that the next action dpends on the previous action, i.e. it's a consequence. Goka means "grant" or "answer"; compare this with tharanak, which involves some kind of exchange, like a sacrifice, for the petitioner to benefit from the invocation; in this case it's something the invoked one was going to do anyway. Y is "my", so gotha is "wish" or "longing". Ooboshu* means "travel", like ch, but in the sense that one is drawn along, not making the trip under one's own steam. the second line translates as "Now grant my wish, carry me to R'lyeh!"
And the last line, for emphasis, says "Cthulhu waits [for us there]!"

Another item from the Old Gentleman. You'd think this stuff would get easier as you go along. Here's the fragment from "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", by HPL, natch:

Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth h'ee--l'geb f'ai throdog uaaah

Our first spell! We already know y- means "my". 'ai means "speak" or "call". We know ng is a conjunction, and then, repeated here for emphasis. We know ah is a generic action. H-, as a prefix, means "Its". It seems logical, then, that 'ee is a verb meaning "answers".
We know l- is a prepositional prefix, "beside". Geb means "here", so l'geb means "nearby". The prefix f- is "their". That leaves throd, which is "trembles". The suffix -og adds emphasis.

So here's the translation:

I call and then (emph) I perform [ritual? gesture?],
Yog-Sothoth answers: "All around me cry out and tremble (emph)".

The word uaaah seals the spell and executes it. Presumably it calls down a sound or psychic force which terrifies everyone around the caster. Since Cthuvian is mostly telepathic, there are many elements apart from the spoken words that make up this spell. You can't cast it just by speaking the words. You have to think certain thoughts and project them. An enterprising CoC Keeper might like to write up this spell in game terms, assuming it doesn't already exist.

The other fragment from this story is the counterspell:

Ogthrod ai'f geb'l--ee'h Yog-Sothoth 'ngah'ng ai'y zhro

Note that this phrase is almost exactly like the other, only backwards. That's a typical strategy for canceling magic--medieval witches allegedly spoke the Lord's Prayer backwards. The final word zhro seals the counterspell and executes it.

For Mr. Clore, a simple little fragment from his story "The Dying God":

Sll'ha-gn'wgn-ll'ah-sgn'wahl

He gives us a clue by saying it concludes a letter. The dashes make it look like an idiom, a common group of words.
We've already seen the prefix ll- (beside) and the verb ah (do, or generic action). It's a reach, but we can guess that wgn is another form of wgah'n (reside) with the active component removed, and gn is the same, only shorter and less formal; it would correspond to "home".
It makes sense that sll'ha, then, means "invite". Sgn'wahl refers to something a host and a guest do together, which could mean anything from sharing a meal to sharing a bed.
We can roughly translate this as,

[I] invite [you to my] home; nearby
[I will] greet [you and we shall] party(?)

Or, in the words of Mae West, "Come on up and see me sometime."