DRAKONA: a glorious WIP

Grammar of Standard Drakona (Adborthosi)

Approximate Phonotactics of Standard Drakona
1. Drakonic words may begin with either a consonant or a vowel.
2. This may be followed by several two and three letter combinations:
o Single letter combinations depend on whether the first letter is a consonant or vowel. For consonants, only a V (ta) is possible afterwards; for vowels, both a V (ia) and a C (ib) is possible afterwards.
o All two letter combinations are possible for both words beginning in a vowel, CC is not possible for words beginning in consonants: VC (yom, rel), CV (Ely, qhi), CC (oth), and VV (eye, koo)
o Three letter combinations: VCV (Aara), CVC (Edazoya), CCC (Adbhos), VVC (Eyet), CCV (Agda), and CVV (Aryeles). VVV is not possible.
3. After this, VCV (Eyetotoneje), CVC (Literajala), VVV (Edazoya), CCV (ophophel), VCC (Drakonsi), CVV (Omginyo) and VVC (Homaite) are possible. CCC is not possible.
4. [step 4 and beyond in the works because jesus christ how horrifying]
5. Generally, Drakonic words can have no more than three consonants in a row. There are only a few examples of these, such as /nph/, /dbh/, and /rth/. However, these do not occur as single syllables; Enphoraneka is broken into two syllables, /n.ph/, Adbhos into /d.bh/, and Adborthos into /r.th/.


Standard Drakona has eight vowel sounds, seven of which are native and one of which is an introduced sound. The seven natives are /ɑ/ as in father, /æ/ as in trap, /ɒ/ as in pod, /ɪ/ as in lid, /i/ as in see, /ɛ/ as in bet, /u/ as in food, and the introduced sound is /ʌ/ as in mud. This distinction is unique to Standard Drakona; the /ʌ/ sound is found natively in Edazoran Drakona.

Drakonic dipthongs

Standard Drakona has five diphthongs, /aɪ̯/, /eɪ̯/, /ɔɪ̯/, /oʊ̯/, and /juː/ (or /i̯uː/). The final of these five diphthongs is uncommon, and is only found in the trigraph yoo. These five diphthongs are as in Kaila, Veila, Edazoya, Nenathosin, and Lyoonos. Their equivalents in English are pie, pay, boy, go, and you.

Drakonic Consonants


Although Drakona has 22 consonants, only 18 of these can be represented with unaltered or single letters.  /m/ only occurs with a saalbokasi Om, /ŋ/ only occurs in the combination ng, /f/ only occurs in the combination ph, and /w/ only occurs in the combination oe. The two post-alveolar fricatives /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ are represented by the same letters as the two alveolar fricatives /s/ and /z/.  All of Drakona’s consonants are found in English, and are pronounced the same way as they are in English.

Syllabification

Drakonic syllables traditionally occur in four positions: after a prefix, as in syogetaya (si.yoh.ge.tai.ah), after a vowel, as in eyetotoneje (e.yeh.toh.toh.ne.yeh), after the first letter in a sequence of three consonants, as in adbhos (ad.bohs), and failing any of the above three conditions, three letters or sounds after the previous syllable, as in Edazoya (ee.dah.zoy.ah) and ophophel (oh.foh.fel or off.oh.fel). Syllabification can very occasionally occur irregularly in certain words, such as lynd and words which include it such as Drakonsilynd because of the sounds which make it up. However, cases such as this are isolated and generally only affect singular forms. The plural form of lynd – lyndi – for example, is not irregular.

Stress

Although stress in Drakona is unpredictable and may fall on any syllable, in many short words it will fall on either the first syllable (such as in Radina) or last syllable (such as in Kaila). For longer words it may fall on truly any syllable – for example, Ratinethos, Adborthos, Yogetapa, Yatenthoa, Anetaralain and Anetaralasi, etc.

Alphabet

The Standard Drakona alphabet consists of 19 letters.

Their current arrangement is known as the “adb” arrangement; the letters have been arranged in this style since the inception of the script. (This arrangement is often considered a “sacred” part of Drakonic society, as it forms the basis for the name of the Adborthosi Drakona, from which all other dragon bands are descendants.) As such, they are not arranged in Latin style, even when transliterated. Letter names are constant, so the plural of Al is ‘Al’; the plural of Dal is ‘Dal,’ etc.

Letters in the alphabet do not have capitals, as these were eliminated early on in the alphabet’s history – assuming they ever existed in the first place. Punctuation is the same as in Latin alphabets, although as late as the mid 1750s there were separate punctuation marks which accompanied the script.

Diacritics

The Drakona alphabet is supplemented by two diacritics, the saalboka (˘), and the zayalgat (˚), which were introduced to the alphabet around the time that Ra and Ne were added to the Drakona alphabet (about 940 years ago). The former is used in a similar fashion to shorthand: when a series of letters occurs that is the same as the name of a letter, the saalboka is placed above it. Thus, Adborthos is rendered ɔɒʋ̆ɾ̆ɛ, instead of ɔɒʋɷʊɾʌɷɛ. The latter is used to indicate a held vowel, and theoretically can be used to represent aa, ee, ii, oo, and yy. However, in Standard Drakona, the only three which occur for the most part are aa, ee, and oo, with the latter two also being rather uncommon.

History of the Alphabet

The original Drakona alphabet consisted of only thirteen letters: a, d, s, t/th, y, e, k, j, l, o, m, i, z, and p. In these early days, as neither the diacritics or cheap writing materials existed, words were written out completely and were significantly more angular than their modern variants – in fact, early Drakonic’s shapes heavily resemble those of runes.

As time progressed, the development of better writing utensils and paper-like materials allowed for shapes that were curved in nature, eventually leading to the modern and extremely curvy script. Over the course of several hundred years, more and more letters were also tacked on, giving Standard Drakona its modern 19 letter alphabet and 2 diacritics.

Numbers

Drakona numbers are simply applied – the largest order of magnitude in the number comes first, followed by the second, third, etc. Numbers which are larger than the second magnitude (tens) are generally hyphenated after each magnitude to ease legibility. The first eleven numbers are:


All ordinals (first, second) are formed with the suffix –ne, while fractions are formed with the suffix –da. Numbers are not subject to declension, so ‘one dragon’ is “On Drakona,” ‘ten rulers’ is “Sor phintoz,” etc.


Tens are formed by the suffix –or. An example of a number here is the number 65, which in Drakona is ‘Soteor-non’ or ‘Soteornon.’


Hundreds are formed by the suffix –er. 165 in Drakona is ‘Sorer-soteor-non.’


From 1,000 to 1,000,000, suffixes are –ar, –arar, –arer, and –erer. From 10,000,000 to 10 billion, suffixes are –dar, –darar, –darer, and –derer. 100 billion to 100 trillion is –bar, -barar, -barer, and –berer, etc.

The current population of the Drakonsiluundes (66,321,200) can be expressed as soteordar-tehsooronarer-soorer – literally “sixty-six million, three-twenty-one thousand, two hundred.”

Conjugations

Drakona verbs are conjugated in six forms – “e” (I), “o” (you), “he/she” (he/she), “yi” (we), “o ath” (you all), and “teja” (they).

As an example, the verb yiz (literally ‘be;’ contextually the Drakona equivalent of ‘to be’) is conjugated in this way:

It should also be noted that, if asked as a question, each of these sentences’ word orders changes – ‘I am well.’ becomes ‘Am I well?’ and ‘You are well.’ becomes ‘Are you well?’ etc. As with most languages, personal pronouns are not necessary where verbs are conjugated; however, they can serve as emphasis. If you wanted to emphasize “I will,” you would say “E die,” and if you did not, you would just say “Die.”

hic est stultus maxime res legi

rt are you planning something with all this stuff or just worldbuilding on the most obscure subjects possible

drakona is a bit more than "obscure" considering most species in the OU are dragons and dragons are the most populous species by at least a few hundred billion

viubladan wrote:drakona is a bit more than "obscure" considering most species in the OU are dragons and dragons are the most populous species by at least a few hundred billion

what the fuck kind of fantasy realm are you imagining where 'a few hundred billion' dragons are running around

totally unrealistic your universe fucking blows brother

oaky wrote:

viubladan wrote:drakona is a bit more than "obscure" considering most species in the OU are dragons and dragons are the most populous species by at least a few hundred billion

what the fuck kind of fantasy realm are you imagining where 'a few hundred billion' dragons are running around

oaky wrote:totally unrealistic your universe fucking blows brother

there is an entire continent's worth of them which is roughly the size of asia

we're not talking big dragons either most of them stand no taller than four feet

how the fuck do you sustain hundreds of billions of dragons without modern agricultural techniques and fucking magic

my suspension of disbelief for your pony universe is RUINED

oaky wrote:how the fuck do you sustain hundreds of billions of dragons without modern agricultural techniques and fucking magic

oaky wrote:my suspension of disbelief for your pony universe is RUINED

dragons eat gems in the ponyverse, which i think is fucking retarded but is canonical

rt secretly buys gems on ebay with his moms credit card so he can eat them?

So you basically made a language for fake gay dragons? Like fd except you're making fun of his? Call me when you start stealing his notes directly

niggynor wrote:So you basically made a language for fake gay dragons? Like fd except you're making fun of his? Call me when you start stealing his notes directly

I like how you joined my forum just to bitch about RTCity and to defend FD

i like how he thinks that this is in any way similar to FD's shit when FD never got anywhere with his idea because it was shit like an abjad with vowels or some insane bullshit that literally cannot work

rt is pretty gay though if he was right about one thing

pimpbot wrote:rt is pretty gay though if he was right about one thing

nigga you're about the last person who should be calling people gay

what the fuck is up with this entire thread

tomoko-chan wrote:

what the fuck is up with this entire thread

QUALITY FUKKEN REACTION IMAGE XDDD UPBOAT

ebin

Le funne tf2 faic

what the fuck is ebin

Pokeleaks Hacker Beejuay wrote:what the fuck is ebin

it's basically "epic"

o

ebin is an epikkkall bastardization of epic courtesy of the chans' spurdo spadro