Gnommish is the " fairy language" used in the ''Artemis Fowl'' series by

Eoin Colfer Eoin Colfer (; born 14 May 1965) is an Irish author of children's books. He worked as a primary school teacher before he became a full-time writer. He is best known for being the author of the ''Artemis Fowl'' series. In September 2008, Col ...

. It is not actually a language at all, but the English language encoded into a

letter-substitution cipher In cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encrypting in which units of plaintext are replaced with the ciphertext, in a defined manner, with the help of a key; the "units" may be single letters (the most common), pairs of letters, tri ...

where each symbol represents a letter. Lines of translatable Gnommish run along the bottoms of all the books in the series. However, in book one of the series, it is mentioned that one of the symbols was comparable to the Egyptian

Anubis Anubis (; grc, Ἄνουβις), also known as Inpu, Inpw, Jnpw, or Anpu in Ancient Egyptian () is the god of death, mummification, embalming, the afterlife, cemeteries, tombs, and the Underworld, in ancient Egyptian religion, usually depict ...

symbol. It is also mentioned that Gnommish is a mix of symbolic and alphabetic letters, running in spirals (but since reading in spirals gives most fairies migraines, most modern fairy script is arranged in horizontal lines).

Code

A string of Gnommish symbols appears at the bottom of each page of ''

Artemis Fowl ''The Fowl Adventures'' is a series of eleven fantasy novels written by Irish author Eoin Colfer revolving around various members of the Fowl family. The first cycle, ''Artemis Fowl'', follows elf LEP recon officer Holly Short as she faces t ...

''. It comprises a

substitution cipher In cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encrypting in which units of plaintext are replaced with the ciphertext, in a defined manner, with the help of a key; the "units" may be single letters (the most common), pairs of letters, tri ...

which can be deciphered using sections of the book's text displayed in Gnommish, together with their English translations. A complete Gnommish cipher key can be found in '' The Artemis Fowl Files''.

Unique words

There are only five Gnommish words mentioned in the ''Artemis Fowl'' series. P'shóg is the Gnommish word for sprite, used in Book 1 by

Artemis Fowl II Dr. Artemis Fowl II is the eponymous character of the '' Artemis Fowl'' series by Eoin Colfer. Fictional character biography Origins Colfer has said that he based Artemis on his younger brother Donal, who as a child was "a mischievous master ...

while talking to the sprite in Ho Chi Minh City. He also uses the word ka-dalun, meaning fairy. D'Arvit is a Gnommish curse word. Book 1 declares after the first appearance of the word "D'Arvit" that, "There is no point translating that word as it would have to be censored." It is often used in the series to replace real

profanity Profanity, also known as cursing, cussing, swearing, bad language, foul language, obscenities, expletives or vulgarism, is a socially offensive use of language. Accordingly, profanity is language use that is sometimes deemed impolite, rud ...

, likely to be in the place of a swearword. In the books it is often used by

Commander Root Commander (commonly abbreviated as Cmdr.) is a common naval officer rank. Commander is also used as a rank or title in other formal organizations, including several police forces. In several countries this naval rank is termed frigate captain. ...

, but also by other characters. In Book 6, Holly Short and Mulch Diggums share a quick conversation in Gnommish about Artemis, which included the Gnommish word "cowpóg" which translates as 'moron'. Commander Root tends to use these words often in the book. In Book 7, the Gnommish name for the ship in the Atlantic Ocean is ffurforfer, pronounced 'fourfourfour'. It means 'plunderer'. Also it is revealed that in Gnommish, for a conversion from a verb (for example, plunder- ffurfor) to a noun (plunderer- ffuforfer), the suffix -fer is added. It is noted that this is similar to the English way of adding the suffix -er, hence implying that one was derived from the other.

Notes

External links

Gnommish
from Omniglot
Gnommish
from ''The Dictionary of Made-Up Languages''
''Artemis Fowl''
from ''Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages''
Eoin Colfer's Magical Fairies

A Study on the ''Artemis Fowl'' Series in the Context of Publishing SuccessCrossover Fiction: Global and Historical Perspectives
{{Artemis Fowl Artemis Fowl Fictional languages Constructed scripts in fiction