zompist bboard

Posted: **Wed Apr 26, 2017 8:55 pm**

I'm making a world with a working title of [One Ring] (all my working titles are put in square brackets). It's called that because it's for a high fantasy setting and it looks like this. I wanna come up with an actual name that the inhabitants (or at least, a good chunk of 'em) would use though, and that means I need to create a language for that name to derive from. That language is called [Slave Imperial Draconic], which you've most likely already guessed was created and is spoken by dragons, but is used for communicating with their slaves (most of which are humans, though the other races are capable of human-like speech).

Their actual language [True Imperial Draconic] consists mostly of phonemes that humans simply can't pronounce (or at least, not that well), thus rendering ineffective for communication. So they've come up with a broken and simplified version with phonemes that humans can comfortably use. Though their natural form is very Smaug-like, being creatures of near-pure magic, they can easily shift their forms, so when talking to slaves they can give themselves broad tongues and a human larynxes.

I'll be updating this post as I develop the language more and more, feel free to give your thoughts and criticism on it.

Phonemes
Consonants
Fricatives: Unvoiced dental, alveolar, postalveolar, retroflex; voiced palatal, velar, uvular, glottal
Plosives: unvoiced dental, voiced alveolar, unvoiced palatal, velar, uvular
Approximates: voiced alveolar, palatal, velar
Other: voiced alveolar nasal, alveolar lateral approximate, palatal nasal

Vowels
All unrounded
Front: Close, close-mid
Central: Close-mid, mid, open-mid
Back: Open-mid, open

Syllables
For ease of reference, voiced fricative consonants are labeled as VFC, unvoiced labeled UFC. Frontal, closed vowels are labelled FV, central, mid ones MV, and back, open ones BV. Keep in mind C means any consonant, including voiced and unvoiced fricatives, vowels are the same.

There are three distinct syllable patterns: Beginning, centered, and ending

Beginning: VFC(C(C))BV(V)(C)
Centered: VFC(C)MV(V)(C)UFC
Ending: (C)(V)FV(C)(C)UFC

A word can start with a beginning or centered syllable, but not an ending syllable. A word can end with either a centered or ending syllable, but not a beginning syllable. This means single syllable words are always made of centered syllables.

Stress Rule
The first beginning syllable is always stressed. If the word doesn't have a beginning syllable, there is no stress.

Posted: **Wed Apr 26, 2017 10:34 pm**

epicarp wrote:They had other sapient races (such as humans) as slaves, and so they developed a language that would have a large vocabulary with specific meanings and magically-generated phones (such as ghostly hums and clicks that sound like fire crackles) used for grammar. This ensures slaves would be able to speak the language in a functional manner, but it would sound broken and unrefined, making them look stupid to the dragons ("These mortals can't even talk properly, they must be such dullards.").

This is a really cool idea, but you don't even need to use magical phonemes or the dragons' purposeful conlanging to do this. You mentioned their long snouts and wondered what that would do to sounds. The simple answer is, there might be more of them. The dragonic mouth would have more possible points of articulation (for consonants), and a larger space in which to form different vowels. Then maybe they have tonal or phonation distinctions unique to their (large) larynxes. So you could construct a language impossible for humans to pronounce. Just like humans speaking other human languages with accents, they will be able to get by, but they won't be able to really get it or even hear certain distinctions that the dragon ear can pick up.

Posted: **Thu Apr 27, 2017 1:21 am**

sam wrote:This is a really cool idea, but you don't even need to use magical phonemes or the dragons' purposeful conlanging to do this. You mentioned their long snouts and wondered what that would do to sounds. The simple answer is, there might be more of them. The dragonic mouth would have more possible points of articulation (for consonants), and a larger space in which to form different vowels. Then maybe they have tonal or phonation distinctions unique to their (large) larynxes. So you could construct a language impossible for humans to pronounce. Just like humans speaking other human languages with accents, they will be able to get by, but they won't be able to really get it or even hear certain distinctions that the dragon ear can pick up.

That's a very good point, so then it just comes down to having magical phonemes because I want them, rather than it being a purely practical imperative. One of my goals for [One Ring] is to make dragons special again. Dragons have become rather ho-hum of late, a stark contrast to what people saw of them in older eras. The main reason dragon's have fire breath is because fire was a really big thing back in the day. It provided light and warmth, it could be used as a very effective weapon (particularly if it was Greek fire aka napalm), it could cook your meals, it could clear land space, it could allow you to soften both metal and wood (yes, wood, it's how they made straight staves and such), and a whole bunch of other things. In short, fire was a symbol of power and knowledge throughout pretty much every human culture, so to have a creature which could literally breathe fire? That was incredible!

That's what I wanna do with dragons. In a high fantasy world where magic is the equivalent of fire, to have a creature that is made from magic, that breathes it all its life, it would have a similar effect on both the fictional and real populaces. So the dragon languages (yes, I'm eventually going to develop an entire range of languages for the entire dragon race, I'm just focusing on one right now) will have magical phonemes to give them a distinct presence in the world and also cementing the fact that they're magical beings.

That said, the fact that they naturally have more space to work with is definitely something to think about. I am by no means a linguist so I'd have no idea how this would fit in (hence why I'm asking help here, I figure there's at least a few linguists here, or at least experienced conlangers), but perhaps there's extra dimensions for phones coming from the shallow end and the deep end of the mouth. So maybe you'd have points of articulation like deep palato-alveolar or shallow palatal, though I have no idea what they would sound like.

Thinking on it, perhaps I don't need to really focus on it, for now anyways. After all, if I'm using the conlang as a means of making names and key words (at first, but then developing the language further), I could instead develop [Slave Imperial Draconic] which is basically a non-dragonic form of [True Imperial Draconic]. Still, it's good to think about on the side for consistency reasons.

Posted: **Thu Apr 27, 2017 7:14 am**

Another idea for non-human phonemes. You may have heard of creaky voice, which is how you sound when you speak with your vocal cords partially open, as opposed to fully open, during a vowel. In the Zapotec languages, among others, there is a phonemic distinction between creaky voice, breathy voice, and normal voice, with long vowels having phonation patterns, e.g. from normal to creaky and back all during the same vowel. This is a human language and it's hard even for other humans to learn to hear these sounds (speaking from personal experience).

What if Dragons had "hot voice", made by partially igniting the fire-breathing mechanism, and even a distinct "fiery voice"—some words would require you to breathe fire during them to pronounce them properly. Add that to the longer mouth equals more consonants idea, and from a human perspective the Dragonic languages would have a huge amount of homophones and would pronounce many words the same way, but dragons would actually be able to hear and produce more subtle distinctions.

Posted: **Thu Apr 27, 2017 7:54 am**

mèþru wrote:Welcome to the ZBB! Have some pickles and tea! (It's a board tradition for welcoming new members)

Posted: **Thu Apr 27, 2017 8:13 am**

I'm sure it's a detail that doesn't actually impact you, but in D&D at least, the language dragons speak is known as "Draconic", going back to the Latin a bit more.

One thing about the "more places of articulation" is that dragons are sometimes given snake-like tongues, which wouldn't be able to block airflow like our broad tongues can.

What sorts of sounds can alligators/crocodiles make? They are reptiles with big snouts, and might be a place to start, though obviously they're quite limited compared to your dragons

Posted: **Thu Apr 27, 2017 8:24 am**

Axiem wrote:One thing about the "more places of articulation" is that dragons are sometimes given snake-like tongues, which wouldn't be able to block airflow like our broad tongues can.

What sorts of sounds can alligators/crocodiles make? They are reptiles with big snouts, and might be a place to start, though obviously they're quite limited compared to your dragons

This is a good point. I amend my statement to say vowels might be more numerous, but there actually might be fewer consonants, which will still result in the language sounding "non-human" or exotic

Posted: **Thu Apr 27, 2017 10:06 am**

Describe the shape of the dragon. Does it have a squamate internal organ system, or is it mammalian (minus the whole no milk, scales instead of fur and hatching from eggs)? Squamates breathe pretty differently. I suggest you read this thread. Are your dragons Western, Eastern, combination or neither?

Posted: **Thu Apr 27, 2017 11:23 am**

Firstly, and most importantly: the adjective of 'dragon' is "draconic", with a 'c'. Or "dragonish". "Dragonic" makes it look like you're continually typoing.

Regarding sounds: well, you're a long way into fantasy, so I'm not sure how to apply plausibility as a criterion. At the basic level, not only is the human larynx unique to humans - there were even long arguments about whether Neanderthals would have been able to speak - having anything remotely like it is almost unique to mammals. Vocal folds, for instance, are almost exclusively mammalian, which is why reptiles generally don't make any vocal noise at all. [Axiem: Crocodiles make hardly any noises. They can hiss aggressively, or bellow loudly (at least, alligators can, don't know about crocs), and baby one apparently squeek, which I'm guessing is bellowing when you're really small.]

On the other hand, they could have independently evolved some sound organs - like the syrinx of birds, which is able to replicate human sounds at least impressionistically, despite the birds lacking almost all of the human speech organs.

Or they could have magic, in which case they can make any sound they want.

Posted: **Thu Apr 27, 2017 10:57 pm**

mèþru wrote:Welcome to the ZBB! Have some pickles and tea! (It's a board tradition for welcoming new members)

Mmmm, pickles and tea. Thank you!

sam wrote:Another idea for non-human phonemes. You may have heard of creaky voice, which is how you sound when you speak with your vocal cords partially open, as opposed to fully open, during a vowel. In the Zapotec languages, among others, there is a phonemic distinction between creaky voice, breathy voice, and normal voice, with long vowels having phonation patterns, e.g. from normal to creaky and back all during the same vowel. This is a human language and it's hard even for other humans to learn to hear these sounds (speaking from personal experience).

What if Dragons had "hot voice", made by partially igniting the fire-breathing mechanism, and even a distinct "fiery voice"—some words would require you to breathe fire during them to pronounce them properly. Add that to the longer mouth equals more consonants idea, and from a human perspective the Dragonic languages would have a huge amount of homophones and would pronounce many words the same way, but dragons would actually be able to hear and produce more subtle distinctions.

That is a really neat idea! You could have unvoiced (possibly referred to as "frozen voice"), voiced ("cold voice"), "hot voice", and finally "fire voice".

Salmoneus wrote:Firstly, and most importantly: the adjective of 'dragon' is "draconic", with a 'c'. Or "dragonish". "Dragonic" makes it look like you're continually typoing.

Good to know, thanks for that. I'll be correcting my posts (not sure if I can edit the thread title, though).

Salmoneus wrote:Regarding sounds: well, you're a long way into fantasy, so I'm not sure how to apply plausibility as a criterion.

Well, just because you can do anything in fantasy, doesn't mean you should. While it is true that fantasy was made for escapism, the thing is, people wanna escape in a world that feels real to them. So, at least on some level, one should think about plausibility to a degree when worldbuilding. 'Course, I'm probably taking it much further than I really need to, but I'm anal like that.

Salmoneus wrote:At the basic level, not only is the human larynx unique to humans - there were even long arguments about whether Neanderthals would have been able to speak - having anything remotely like it is almost unique to mammals. Vocal folds, for instance, are almost exclusively mammalian, which is why reptiles generally don't make any vocal noise at all. [Axiem: Crocodiles make hardly any noises. They can hiss aggressively, or bellow loudly (at least, alligators can, don't know about crocs), and baby one apparently squeek, which I'm guessing is bellowing when you're really small.]

Good point, so I suppose [True Imperial Draconic] would have hisses, bellows, clicks, and barks with some magical phonemes thrown in. But they do need an easy and effective way of communicating to their slaves. One way would be to telepathically communicate with them a la [Psychbend] magic (there's 7 other types of magic), but that requires teaching slaves some magic that could be used against them, as well as opening the door for them to discover how they think. Another way is to shift their forms so that they're capable of such speech. This would be much more favorable for them as such a shift would take barely any effort due to their magical nature, and there's no risk of slaves getting a leg up on you.

Besides humans, there are two other sapient species, the [dryads] and the [dwarves]. [Dryads] were, in the time of the dragons, basically walking bushes that could communicate with each other through contact, so they never developed a spoken language (they did develop written and signal languages, though), but they did effectively "evolve" human-like speech as a means of collaborating in a revolution against the dragons. [Dwarves] were originally earth spirits that were magically transmuted into physical forms by dragons specifically for the purpose of enslaving them, and were given a means of human-like speech out of efficiency, since the two other races had it.

What does this mean for [Slave Imperial Draconic]? Well, it won't have any labial or labiodental consonants nor rounded vowels (the dragons certainly could give themselves flexible lips, but why do that if a broad tongue, significant separation of nostrils and mouth, and a human larynx provides more than enough possible phonemes to work with? Lack of lip-derived phones would also give a bit of an alien feel to it, which is nice for flavor).

For consonants it would have, I'm looking at fricatives as the "spine" for a reptilian feel (all dat hissing), some plosives because they sound pretty strong, a few approximates, and an oddball or two for complexity. The fricatives will be grouped into two categories: voiced and unvoiced, the former being produced in the back of the mouth (velar to glottal), the latter in the front (dental to palatal). The general rule being voiced fricatives come at the start of syllables and unvoiced bringing up the rear (thereby generating a strong guttural start and a hissing frontal ending).

The vowel system will be based on this setup. Syllables that start with a voiced fricative (but don't end with an unvoiced one) will have low vowels in the back, whereas syllables ending with unvoiced fricatives (but don't start with a voiced one) will have high vowels in the front. For syllables that start with a voiced fricative and end with an unvoiced one will have central vowels. All of these vowels will be unrounded, by the way.

Because the goal of my thread is now a bit different, I'm gonna edit the OP to reflect that, as well as update it regularly as I come up with some new stuff.

Posted: **Sat Apr 29, 2017 8:03 am**

I like "Dragonic"; it's a bit different and that's good.

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