The Draconic Languages

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Chagen
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The Draconic Languages

Post by Chagen »

This idea came to me yesterday and I quickly worked on it in an insomnia-induced daze. This is an overview of the unique peculiarities of the Drakania, a race in one of my conworlds named Altacia.

This is not a detailed description of any one language, though I have been working on one particular Draconic language. My goal for this is to provide some fun conworlding and conlanging, and avert some common fantasy tropes, such as languages that are very obviously Indo-European, or having a fantasy race invariably speak one and only one language. Likewise, I want to dip my toes into the world of using non-human sounds, though I haven't gotten too crazy.

But first, a little conworlding. Who are the Drakania? Basic knowledge of their history and physiology will explain something about their languages, and it's good to know about them in general.

Like usual paragraphs in this color are footnotes (sometimes directly connected to the text with an asterisk). I highly suggest you don't skip them.

The Drakania

Before we begin, a primer on terminology: the three words referring to the Drakania are "Drakania" itself, "Drake", "Drakanian" and "Draconic". "Drake" is used for one of them, while 2 or more are "Drakania" (e.g "This Drake is Snake-Eyed Sapphire"; "Those Drakania are so smug!". The word "Drakes" is only used when talking about their tribes: "The Drakes of Ash have brown, smoky gray, or black skin". "Drakanian" is the general adjective, unless you are talking about languages, which use "Draconic": you say "Drakanian society", but "Draconic Languages". I will sometimes use the shortened form "Dralang(s)" to refer to their languages.

These are purely human terms: the Drakania, much like us, have thousands of way to refer to themselves in their own native languages.


None of the Fallen Races of Altacia exemplify their undesirable appellation than the Drakania, and none bristle at the term as much as they do. Regardless of their feelings, the extent of their devolution is astounding. They were once a proud race of serpentine warriors, regents, philosophers, engineers, sorcerers, poets, artists, and more, but now they are pale imitations of their ancestors. They still maintain a decent population of nearly a billion, and their cities and nations can compare with those of humanity's, but their society is falling apart. Why? They ask that question often, desperate to blame it on some external factor. Only something outside of the Drakania could ever harm them. The concept that their society is failing because its fundamental structure is extremely oppressive, because it is fundamentally broken at the core, is unthinkable.

And yet that is the exact reason.

The Drakania were once proud because they were the kings of the world. Like all the Fallen Races, they had once reigned over all of Altacia. They were an egalitarian society, free of strife and want. Their nations dotted the landscape with cities that were works of art in and of themselves. Every Drakania was equal before the law. There were no castes, no rigid systems of oppression.

But like all of the races, they were doomed to fail. Once their ten thousand years had passed, they found themselves torn apart through a festering greed that wedged itself in the hearts of their leaders--a curse laid upon them by their very maker, the Dreaming Maker. He was dissatisfied with them, as he was with every single race he had created. And so, in order to save themselves from absolute extinction, they threw aside their principles and split themselves into the Five Castes, and thus they have remained for the past several millennia. Perhaps they will never regain that glory they once had.

Drakanian Physiology and The Five Castes

Drakanians, like humans, have hundreds or even thousands of distinct cultures. As such, I am mostly concerned with describing the basic physical traits that all of them share, and how this has shaped all of their cultures.

Like all of the races of Altacia, the Drakania are built off of the Sacred Anthropic Model, and thus highly resemble humans--they have two arms, two legs, one head with a mouth, a nose, two eyes, two ears, and full heads of hair. They have two sexes, with males possessing penises and testicles and females possessing vaginas and full breasts. They are the same size as humans.

Traits they have that humans do not are slit pupils--their eyes resemble a snake or cat's eyes with thin verticle pupils. In addition, their irises tend to have multi-faceted, shimmering features as if they were cut gems. In addition to this, all Drakania can breath fire from their mouths. This ability is heavily atrophied--most cannot sustain more than a weak flame for very long, and in reality the only indication that they are spitting fire is smoke erupting from their noses or mouths. They all, however, incorporate this into their languages, which will be described later.

The Drakania have four distinct Tribes. These are somewhat our human concept of race--a purely social construct they use to divide themselves. The Tribes are defined by skin color. The Drakes of Flame have roughly European or Caucasian "white" skin, as well as literally white skin the color of snow. The Drakes of Ash have brown skin (akin to Middle Easterners, Indians, or Africans), but also smoky gray skin and even literally black skin the color of coal, and sometimes have red sclera (especially if they have gray or onyx skin). The Drakes of Blood have red skin, ranging from the "natural" red skin akin to Native Americans to literally crimson skin. Finally, the Drakes of Steam have pale blue to dark azure skin. They also usually have black sclera. Inter-tribe racism is rare, as prejudice is usually found amongst caste or national lines. Most Drakanian nations are multi-tribal without much issue, those isolated backwater ones may adhere to tribalist zeitgeists.

Further description must be detailed concurrently with the Five Castes. Every Drakania belongs to one of the castes. His or her caste is set at birth (or rather, hatching, as they hatch from eggs), and nothing can change it, as caste is defined through physical features that are impossible to change, even through sorcerous means. Besides these physical traits, almost all Drakanian nations require citizens to brand themselves in some way to indicate their caste--the most common methods are facial tattoos or jewelry driven (painfully) into the chest or forehead soon after hatching, and ritually replaced (very painfully) every year until adulthood.

The lowest caste is the Vulgar. They are, simply put, slaves. From the moment they can walk and talk, they are forcibly conscripted into hard labor by the other castes and sent to work on the most menial of jobs. They have almost zero rights, outside of the "grace" that they cannot be wrongfully killed by their masters without good reason (not that this prevents higher castes from functioning up charges or viewing such minor offenses as dropping a glass of water as worthy of execution). Raping a Vulgar is considered not rape in the eyes of almost all Drakanian nations but as public vandalism (if they are not enlisted in work) or damaging private property (if they are enrolled), with not much more than a fee and perhaps some community service. Likewise, murdering them will rarely raise much more than an eyebrow. Wanton serial murder or rape is definitely frowned upon, but it is rare for even a heinous murderer or rapist to actually be prosecuted with threat of incarceration, especially if they are an Aristocrat. In general, Vulgar are not abused not from the goodness of their masters hearts, but from the cynical belief that raping and beating your property makes them work poorly. Vulgar Drakania look almost identical to humans, except they have scales running up and down their arms (no other caste has scales, outside of, ironically enough, the Blessed).

All nations consider Vulgar Drakania to be owned by the state. Any non-Vulgar can rent them as slaves, and the wealthier can buy them. The life of a Vulgar is a endless dance of misery, constant labor, zero freedom, extreme prejudice, suffering, and pain. Given that the other castes view them as sub-Drakanian, however, their suffering has mostly fallen on deaf ears.

The extremely callous and heinous attitude of the Drakania towards the Vulgar tends to disgust most of the other races, even those with their own caste systems and heavy use of slavery.

Moving on from them, the next three castes defined by thee Drakanian traits: horns, tails (always thick and reptilian, like a snake's), and wings (usually scaly without feathers or fur). The Mono-Gifted Peasants have just one of these traits (they never have tails, for the matter). The Bi-Gifted Citizens have two of them. The Tri-Gifted Aristocrats have all three. All three of these castes have full equal rights before the law though the peasantry obviously is subservient to the other two, and often are practically slaves themselves through indentured servitude and serfdom. Still, the peasantry often can scrounge up the money to rent one or two Vulgar slaves for themselves, even when they are servants. They often treat the Vulgar much more nicely, having a limited understanding of their pain, but they still view them as sub-Drakanian and meant only for servitude. These three castes are the Central Castes.

The final caste are the Blessed. They do no work themselves, being catered to and treated as royalty from the day they are born. Only they can sustain their ancestral dragon forms for any decent period of time. They also have unusual forms: they have human-esque upper bodies, but their lower bodies are long and lithe serpentine bodies like those of snakes. Because of this, they aren't exactly capable of doing much work in the first place, and thus mostly spend their time lounging around and entertaining themselves with the misery of their lower caste brethren.

Despite the extremely rigid caste system, there is no actual difference between the castes; a Vulgar is not inherently stupider than an aristocrat. Those few Vulgar who have escaped their native society and live amongst the other races such as humanity, the Garad, the Wrought Angels, or Glass-Weavers have found themselves able to accomplish far greater feats than they ever could as slaves.

A member of a Central Caste can be demoted if they commit particularly heinous crimes. The demotion occurs through forceful dismemberment/mutilation.

Relationships between the castes are extremely limited. Even mere friendship between, say, a peasant and a citizen is scandalous, and romance is considered absolutely heinous. If such a romance is found out, both parties are punished extremely severely: the lower-class member is executed without a second thought, and the upper-class one is demoted and castrated (pregnant females are forcibly aborted as well; if the child has already been born, they are instantly demoted into a Vulgar.

Because of this extremely rigid caste system, every single Draconic language has grammaticized ways of expressing politeness and deference. Usually, there is a humble form used when speaking with castes above one's own, a servile form used by Vulgar towards all the other castes, and a reverent form used by all of the castes towards the Blessed.

Now that that's done I can move onto Draconic Languages:

Peculiarities of the Draconic Languages:

Since they have pretty much the same mouths as we humans do, Drakania have all the same sounds as we do. They can use all the sounds of the IPA. However, they have special sounds that do not correspond to anything in human language. For consonants, these are called snorts, while for vowels they have a special secondary articulation called burning or igniting. Together, these sounds are called ignited phonemes.

Snorts

Snorts are consonants produced by ejecting a small blast of fire during pronunciation (this is called ignition). The blast can either exit the mouth, or leave through the nose. Snorts can be thought of as a sort of MOA. All Draconic languages have at least two Nasal Snorts. They will always have a dental, labial, or velar one, and most have all three. Nasal snorts always have nasal ignition.

Next are the Ejective Snorts or Glottalized Snorts. These are the snort equivalents to other consonants, and are produced by ejecting a blast of flame during release. This blast can either be nasal or oral; some languages even distinguish both kinds. Note that the term "ejective" here is used solely because the release resembles that of an ejective; Ejective Snorts are not as restricted as Ejectives in human languages are. Ejective Snort Fricatives and Affricates are common, as are Ejective Snort Approximants (Ejective Approximants being utterly impossible in human languages). Note that snorts almost always pattern as a secondary articulation, so things such as a labialized snort are extremely rare. Also note that most snorts are pronounced with lip-rounding (much like how most back vowels are pronounced with rounding), but this is rarely distinguished from non-rounded snorts.

Of course, here comes the tricky question of how to gloss these. The IPA obviously does not have anything for this kind of sound since it is nonhuman. I think I will use breathy-voice diacritics, but who knows.

The vowel parallels are called burnt vowels (non-burnt vowels are called doused vowels). They are simply vowels accompanied with a blast of flame. Often, the glottis is constricted and the lips are rounded (even for front vowels). Most Draconic languages distinguish less burnt vowel qualities than doused ones.

Even though I use the term "blast of flame", the actual flame is extremely weak. In regular speech, a snort or burnt vowel will cause nothing more than slightly hot smoke to come from the nose or mouth

Draconic languages exhibit several unusual traits and tendencies compared to human languages:

-Most Draconic Languages feature gigantic consonant sets bursting with series of secondary articulation, as well as an extreme paucity of vowels. Many of them have but one or two vowels, which have 10-20+ allophones depending on the consonants around them. At first, Altacian human linguists mistakenly recorded these languages with huge vowel sets, only to realize that most of the qualities were allophones.

-Draconic languages rarely have voiced stops, but very commonly have ejectives. The proto-typical stop distinctions would be voiceless-ejective-aspirated-ejec.snort. They also usually have much less fricatives (many lacking them entirely as Australian languages do), but, strangely enough, they usually have voice distinctions in fricatives.

-Grammar-wise, most Draconic languages are Active-Stative, with our familiar Nom-Acc comprising less than 20% of the known languages. However, their version of Active-Stative alignment is...a little quirky.

//////////////////
My next post is going to be over ʔækū raθ, one of the more commonly spoken Draconic languages. Note that it's name over there is underlyingly /ʕaw.kʷə ratʲ/, so you can see just how extensive the allophony goes. Anglicized, it is Ḥaaku Rath. It has a mere three vowels in a vertical height system: /ɨ ə a/, though /ɨ/ is pretty marginal, /ə/ tends to delete or merge with surrounding consonants, and /a/ has like 15+ allophones. Here's an example sentence:

/kʰapʰəw a mʲa qʷʼatʷ.kʲə ɨkʰ mɨtʲ.kʰa jawn
[kapʰu ame qʼytɕiːkʰ miːθkʰejõ]
kapu a-me q'ütc-īk mīθke-yǫ
love.AORIST NON.PST=EMOTION man=EXP.AGENT human.girl=EXP.PAT.
The (Drake) man is in love with the human girl.

Note all the large difference between the underlying phonemes and the actual pronunciation of the sentence. This allophony is so extensive that while Ḥaaku Rath has phonemic labialized and palatalized consoanants, they are rarely if ever actually pronounced with secondary articulation. Far more commonly, they transfer their articulations onto the surrounding vowels. The rules are not fully fleshed out yet however.

You can also see the basic form of the sentence here: an initial verb followed by a clitic chain of particles which provide grammatical meaning (the actual verb itself is inflected for a paucity of meanings as well: kape ma "doesn't love", kapo! "love!").
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

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Re: The Draconic Languages

Post by mèþru »

The thing is that the human concepts of race and racism are interrelated and probably inseparable in ancient times. I believe that the concept of races is just xenophobia + extreme generalization, as people barely cared to separate similar (to them at least) foreigners from each other, so racism and raace wre a single package deal. Over time, racism declined. The concept of race, however, stayed strong (possibly due to vestiges of racist thinking across society and very small and loud groups of racists). Also, a caste system endemic to every culture of an entire species sounds implausible, unless if there are actual biological/behavoiral differences like in the animals of Animal Lives (link may be NSFW).
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Re: The Draconic Languages

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mèþru wrote:.Also, a caste system endemic to every culture of an entire species sounds implausible, unless if there are actual biological/behavoiral differences like in the animals of Animal Lives (link may be NSFW).
...Did you read the post fully? The Five Castes are split amongst biological and physical differences, which is why they exist in every Drakanian culture. The Vulgar have scales on their arms and legs; Peasants have either wings or horns; Citizens have two of wings, horns, or tails; Aristocrats have all three; the Blessed have snake-like lower bodies.

There are no true differences amongst the castes, yes; they have the same intelligence, behavior, and capability. However the Drakania nonetheless enforce the castes rigidly because they truly believe their race will die if they do not. To flout the Five Castes is to incite the genocide of the Drakania. They did not use to be so extreme--the Vulgar were once just lower-class, not heinously abused slaves--but they have fallen further and further into extremism precisely because they have no real justification for upholding the castes. The Vulgar must be abused endlessly because if they were not, they might realize that they are not inferior beings meant for servitude; that they are just as capable as the higher castes. The fact that such extremism is the precisely the reason the Drakania are sliding into civil war and revolution falls on deaf ears usually.

This sort of worked until the other races of Altacia began to interact more and more with the Drakania, who had isolated themselves out of fear of foreign influence wreaking havoc with the caste system; they had only relented when they were at a breaking point and had to open their borders just to survive in the harsh world. Despite their best efforts of keeping the foreign influence at an absolute minimum, it still has pervaded their society and filled the minds of slave, peasant, citizen, and aristocrat alike--telling them that maybe this isn't the best method, that maybe the castes are hurting the Drakania more than they help them. Such heresies are at an all-time high--there are even nations which go as terrifyingly far as lessening the caste system, allowing members to move between them with more mobility.

Some even say that the far-flung Steam nation of Kʷotsa Mit'aqʷ has abolished the caste system entirely. Such a thought terrifies the conservatives and right-wingers of Drakanian society. Because of this, there has been a rise of what Haeku Rath calls Kas'okti (*kasʷ'aktɨ): a unique Drakanian brand of extremely nationalistic Fascism which advocates for a pan-Drakanian state where the castes are enshrined into law and immutable, never to be changed in a hundred thousand years. In addition, it would make the peasantry and citizens functionally equivalent to the Vulgar (the peasants and citizens who do suport Kas'okti are either unaware that they would lose their rights, or rather foolishly believe that they would be promoted into Aristocrats post-revolution). Despite its extreme hatred of foreigners, Kas'okti has hypocritically stolen from human Fascist movements and is abnormally racist: promoting that each nation should be mono-Tribal, though in reality this often devolves into hatred for all tribes not of one's own; of course it was those degenerates that caused the downfall of our glorious Drakanian societies! This means that Kas'okti hasn't gained much ground as adherents constantly fight amongst each other.
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

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Re: The Draconic Languages

Post by mèþru »

...Did you read the post fully? The Five Castes are split amongst biological and physical differences, which is why they exist in every Drakanian culture. The Vulgar have scales on their arms and legs; Peasants have either wings or horns; Citizens have two of wings, horns, or tails; Aristocrats have all three; the Blessed have snake-like lower bodies.

There are no true differences amongst the castes, yes; they have the same intelligence, behavior, and capability. However the Drakania nonetheless enforce the castes rigidly because they truly believe their race will die if they do not. To flout the Five Castes is to incite the genocide of the Drakania. They did not use to be so extreme--the Vulgar were once just lower-class, not heinously abused slaves--but they have fallen further and further into extremism precisely because they have no real justification for upholding the castes. The Vulgar must be abused endlessly because if they were not, they might realize that they are not inferior beings meant for servitude; that they are just as capable as the higher castes. The fact that such extremism is the precisely the reason the Drakania are sliding into civil war and revolution falls on deaf ears usually.
What I mean is that rigid caste systems throughout a species emerge because behavioral or biological differences give them a clear advantage for a specific role.
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: The Draconic Languages

Post by Qxentio »

Chagen wrote: Before we begin, a primer on terminology: the three words referring to the Drakania are "Drakania" itself, "Drake", "Drakanian" and "Draconic". "Drake" is used for one of them, while 2 or more are "Drakania" (e.g "This Drake is Snake-Eyed Sapphire"; "Those Drakania are so smug!". The word "Drakes" is only used when talking about their tribes: "The Drakes of Ash have brown, smoky gray, or black skin". "Drakanian" is the general adjective, unless you are talking about languages, which use "Draconic": you say "Drakanian society", but "Draconic Languages". I will sometimes use the shortened form "Dralang(s)" to refer to their languages.

This is madness
I see no good reason for it to be so convoluted. It's something you can do within your conlang, but when making up vocabulary about your conlang, wouldn't you want it to be easily understood so that more people can take an interest in it?
I suggest that you use Drake and Drakes for the people, Draconian as the ethnic or biological adjective, and Draconic for the language family. I could accept "Drakanian" as well.
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Re: The Draconic Languages

Post by DesEsseintes »

I disagree with Qxentio. I think having complicated terminology for your conpeople is a fun exercise.

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