Etymologie, Etimología, Étymologie, Etimologia, Etymology
BE Belgien, Bélgica, Belgique, Belgio, Belgium
Comic, Cómic, Bande dessinée (B.D.), Fumetto, Comic strip

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zompist
Hergé's Syldavian: A grammar

Introduction

The adventures of Tintin, by the great Belgian artist Hergé, are enjoyed the world over; for the linguist, they offer the added attraction of providing tantalizing glimpses of a previously undocumented language, Syldavian.

Hergé never, to my knowledge, provided any grammatical sketch of this language, and other sources on Syldavian are precious few. I have taken the liberty of laying out the known facts on this fascinating language.

There are several ways to read this document:

• Simply to find out what the scraps of Syldavian mean. For this, simply read the Annotated Corpus, ignoring the sections in this color type.
• To grasp Syldavian as a system— phonology, orthography, morphology, syntax. For this, see the Grammar and Lexicon, again ignoring this color type.
• As a linguistic detective story: following how the scraps were deciphered, what the cognates are, how the results were assembled into a plausible, coherent whole. For this, read the sections in this color type.

Not all of my interpretations and interpolations may be correct; I don't know Dutch, which as will be seen is a requisite for this work, and I've had to rely on the help of Dutch and Belgian correspondents on the Net. Corrections are welcome (but please don't tell me about Marols; I know about it already).

—Mark Rosenfelder

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