Dictionary

Contents

1. Draconic
   1. Sounds
   2. Romanisation
   3. Spelling
   4. Alphabet
   5. Yan Characters
2. REKHARHAKR Eastern Draconic
   1. Pitch Accent
   2. Grammar
      1. Word Order
      2. Adjectives and Adverbs
      3. Articles
      4. Pronouns
      5. Conjugation
      6. Verbs
      7. Modal Verbs
      8. Irregular Verbs
      9. The Copula
      10. Relative Pronouns
      11. Honorifics
   3. Sample Text
3. RKAARIK Western Draconic
   1. Sound Changes
   2. Grammar
      1. Word order and Articles
      2. Conjugation and Tenses
      3. Irregular Verbs
4. HKR Classical Draconic
   1. History and Writing
   2. Grammar and Sounds

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Draconic

Version 4.0

Draconic is the language of the dragons in the Material Plane, originating around the Spring of the Earth. It comes in two main dialects: eastern and western, rékharhákr and rkaarik, with limited intelligibility between them. There is also the ancient literary form of the language “hakr”, which is only preserved for highly formal and religious occasions, and is generally not known by outsiders.

This is the fourth major iteration of draconic which contains breaking changes with previous versions and previous documents.

Sounds

Draconic did not originally have a native writing system of its own; in the east users generally wrote in logographic Yan seal script characters, whilst in the west it remained a spoken-only language until the first age of dragonkind, when a simple alphabet—abjad script was created in the Empire of Sun and Twisted Flax, formed of simple letters easily written or carved by claw. This later spread eastwards, and is in informal use both to write draconic and also to represent the sounds of the Yan languages.

Romanisation

Rom	IPA	Description	Rom	IPA	Description
a	/a/	arrow	kh	/χh/	a growl
e	/æ/	fell	v2	/v/ or /f/	vale or elf
i	/ɪ/ or /i/	is or flee	t	/t/	talon
o	/ↄ/	rot	x	/ç/	(german) ich
u	/u/ or /ʊ/	fool or pleasure	z	/t͡s/	tsunami
ae	/e/	fray	th3	/s/ or /θ/	saw or thorn
ii	/i:/	flee	m	/m/	man
ai	/aɪ/	fly	s	/s/	essence
k	/k/ or /kh/	king	l	/l/	live
r	/ɹ/ or /ɾ/	reign	p	/p/	blame or play
n	/n/	name	g	/g/	great
d	/d/	dream	y	/j/	young
h1	/χh/	a growl	‘ 4	/ /	null

Footnotes:

• 【1】h and kh are pronounced the same, but the former is high pitch, and the latter is low pitch.
• 【2】In eastern draconic, this is only pronounced /f/ in final place, and /v/ everywhere else. Some accents do not separate the sounds. In western draconic, /f/ and /v/ are distinct but written the same.
• 【3】Usually /s/ with a low pitch, very rarely /θ/ and only then generally western dialects. Contrasts with s which is high pitch.
• 【4】Apostrophes indicate omitted letters and syllable demarcations where ambiguous

Long vowels are written using reduplicated vowel letters aa, ee, ii, oo, uu, however of these only aa, ii are common. This elongates the vowel sound but does not change its quality significantly. Vowel diphthongs include ai /aɪ/ and ie /ie/,

Draconic generally has a (CC)V(CC) structure, with ancient draconic having more of a (CCC)(V)(CCC) with some words (e.g. “thr”, water) having no (or rather very unstressed) vowels.

Also in ancient draconic, the merged sounds h, kh, s, and th are different in quality, being softer and harsher respectively, but this is generally difficult to hear, and modern readers will usually obey pitch accent rules.

Spelling

Draconic spelling was never fossilised and is therefore very regular. All letters are pronounced except for final s. Romanisation reflects spelling, with the digraphs th and kh representing single letters. (The separate t’h and k’h are shown with apostrophes)

Stress is always placed on long vowels if they exist. Otherwise, stress patterns are generally irregular, and accent marks can be used to indicate which syllables are stressed, which are useful in cases for disambiguation:

Pitch accent (explained later) is not shown, but is regular, and a result of merged sounds.

All varieties of draconic exhibit “s-dropping”, where a grammatical final-s is replaced with a glottal stop. Final s however is always written.

Alphabet

The draconic alphabet is called the akron, after its first five letters. Each letter is given a name of a word beginning with it. Traditionally, only majuscule script existed, though minuscule “scribe-hand” developed in Dacrame, leading to Rkaarik using minuscule letters.

Letter	Name	Meaning	Letter	Name	Meaning
A A	asiir	sun, Asyr	U U	uhara	bird
K K	kanai	world	X X	xiron	diamond, Xiron
R R	rekhar	dragon	Z Z	zaakos	animal scale
O O	othalon	wealth	Th TH	thurav	river
N N	nazar	tithe	M M	mara	winter
D D	drakhan	elder	I I	idiks	species
E E	esxin	hearth	S S	serin	shining
H H	hakr	language	L L	lovii	animal crest
Kh KH	kharik	nation	P P	polor	crystal
V V	vathas	depths	G G	genisin	birth
T T	tonis	copper	Y Y	yira	fire

Yan Characters

Speakers of eastern draconic exhibit an extreme case of diglossia, where draconic is spoken between speakers informally, but the literary Yan language (== classical chinese) is used for almost all formal documentation. Characters can also be used to write draconic, especially ancient draconic, in a mostly 1:1 semantic correspondence.

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Rekharhakr

High Draconic

High Draconic or Eastern Draconic is the dialect of draconic spoken in Eastern Aseron and sparsely in the eastern reaches of Parsor. Draconic grammar and speech will be primarily described using this dialect, with differences highlighted for other dialects spoken.

Pitch Accent

Draconic has a pitch accent, due the general merger of the h,kh and s,th sounds. In general, syllables can have two accents: high (or flat) and low. These can also be marked by the Chinese characters 平 and 去.

h and s are high accent letters, and are read with the default high accent, contoured (33). However, due to final -s dropping a final -s does not affect the accent of a syllable.

kh and th are low accent, contoured (21) or (11).

All other syllables can be called non-accented, and have a high tone by default, but can be affected by the syllables around them. Some accents have different quality depending on the preceding syllable accent.

Note that since minimal accent pairs are relatively few, mis-accenting a word tends not to cause communication issues.

Full details of pitch transformations is shown below:

Previous syllable	This syllable	Accent rules	Contours
High	High	-	A˧ B˧
Low	High	Accent previous as (11) even if it begins a word	A˩ B˦
None	High	-	A˧ B˧
High	Low	Pronounce this with higher falling contour (31)	A˧ B˧˩
Low	Low	Pronounce this with flat low contour (21) or (11)	A˨˩ B˩
None	Low	If previous is stressed, treat as high. If previous is unstressed, treat as low.	A˧ B˧˩ or A˩ B˨˩
High	None	-	A˧ B˧
Low	None	Pronounce this as low	A˧˩ B˩
None	None	(Optional) often pronounced as falling (32), can also be high.	A˧ B˧ or A˧ B˧˨

Grammar

Word Order

General word order is Subject-Verb-Object or Topic-Comment as in Chinese. Passive voice is very similar to topic-comment structure, but any subject is replaced with the copula BE verb.

Rekharhakr is generally head-initial, and adjectives are placed after nouns. The formal order is: qualifier; proper adjective; colour; shape; age; size; quality. The same follows for adverbs as adverbs and adjectives are not differentiated.

However, in compound words — where two separate words are joined to make a new meaning — the main noun generally goes at the end.

Adjectives and Adverbs

There is no difference seen between adjectives and adverbs, other than that one goes after nouns and the other after verbs. Adjectives have no special word forms, and do not conjugate (apart from specific modifiers which are detailed in Conjugation).

For the most part nouns can be used as adjectives to describe things that are like the noun, or of the noun. However, in some cases this may not make sense and the reverse is not true — adjectives generally cannot be used as nouns. Especially for literary reasons, “word unpacking”, where a compound word is broken and the order put into head initial order is common.

Articles

There are no articles in rekharhakr draconic. Pluralisation is also implied. Number and quantity are generally placed before the noun, but can also be placed after as an adjective (this is rare).

Pronouns

Rekharhakr has the following pronouns for first and second person:

Pronoun	English
zar, za	first person
zii	second person (informal)
záhar	second person (formal)

For third person pronouns, rekharhakr uses both gendered and non-gendered-generic pronouns, as well as a fourth pronoun for non-people (“lower-class”), much like the English “it”. However, this pronoun can be used for sentient beings such as other non-dragon races in an informal or disrespectful capacity.

Pronoun	English (third person)
aa	generic singular pronoun
aak	male pronoun
khaa	female pronoun
thaa	lower-class singular pronoun
saa	generic plural pronoun
thiaa	lower-class plural pronoun

Conjugation and Particles

Rekharhakr is very isolating with limited conjugation for tense and other modifiers, which generally do not change for case or person.

Rekharhakr has a system of particles that can be pre- and appended to words to change their meaning or class.

The possessive particle -on is placed on the possessor with no modification to the word. The exception is for the first person pronoun zar and the second person informal pronoun zii, where zaron and zii’on is usually contracted to ron and zin respectively.

Adding a possessive may shift syllable stress in certain cases, such as xíron “Xiron” becoming xirónon “of Xiron”.

The attributor particule -is is placed after a noun to signify the next phrase belongs to it in an abstract way, which is not a strict possession. It describes the location or context of an action or noun phrase. This is a very broad particle, and for concrete terms prepositions like ith or zon are preferred.

When this comes after -i (but not -ai) it lengthens the sound into -iis. When this comes after -ii it becomes -iris.

The actor particle -ak is placed after a verb to subjectify it into an actor of that verb. It is similar to -er in English. The -a- is never stressed and usually reduced to a schwa.

The group particle -ad can be placed on a pronoun or a noun to show a group of something, similar to 们 in modern standard chinese. This is not used to show plurals and for standard nouns often appears only in subject place. Hence zar “I” can be made zarad “we (exclusive)”, aak “he” can be made aakad “they (masculine)”. This is not the case for saa and thiaa which are inherently plural.

Where the given word ends in a single a, the effect of adding a group elongates this into a double aa. If the word ends in a double aa, then only a d is suffixed. Hence aa “they (singl)” can be made aad “they (plur)”.

The negation particle da “not” can be put before a verb to negate it. This is often shortened to the prefix d-. Before certain consonants (and vowels), the d- prefix changes the quality of the consonant afterwards:

original	transformed	original	transformed
da (not daa)	dia	dx	zx
dk	dkh	dm	dv
dn	dan	dl	dr
dd	vd	dp	dv
dt	dz	dg	dig

Verbs

All verbs have a root and an infinitive ending of in, except some irregular verbs (though some irregular verbs do end with in). Nouns ending in in should not be confused for verbs.

Verbs conjugate to represent tense by changing the suffix, and generally do not conjugate based on person. The below shows conjugation for regular verbs.

Tense	Guide and Example	‘in
Inf/Present	Present tense keeps the infinitive ending. Aak paziin / He plays	in
Past	Add an s on the end. This past is the generic ‘past tense’ Aak paxiins / He played	ins
Past imperfect / pluperfect	Add ir on the end. This is generally used for pluperfect only. Aak paziinir / He had played	inir
Future	Replace in with ix. Aak paziix / He will play	ix
Condl/past future	Replace in with ixa. Aak paziixa / He would play	ixa
Imperative	Replace in with ii. If the verb ends in iin, remove the n. Pazii nal za / Play with me. (informal) Remove in completely: Paz nal za.	ii / -

Note: Some regular verbs on an irregular basis end with another vowel and n — these conjugate the same unless explicitly mentioned.

Modal Verbs

Modal verbs, like “can”, “may”, etc. generally are single syllable words that do not conjugate. These include

• kat — can / to be able to
• iir — may / to be permitted to
• os — must / to be obligated to
• has — shall
• sis — will / to be willing to (not used for generic future)

Irregular Verbs

Many verbs are irregular and have irregular conjugation. Some of these include siin (to be), yaar (to have), komán (to come), and asrai’ín (to fly).

Their full conjugations can be found in the Dictionary. Pr. = Present; Ps. = Past; Pp. = Pluperfect; Fu. = Future; Co. = Conditional; Im. = Imperative

The Copula

The copula “to be” is siin in the present tense, however the copula is almost never used in draconic, usually only for auxillary functions. To say that A is B, the two nouns are put next to each other. siin can also be used for affirmations in colloquial speech.

siin is also optional at the end of comments in topic-comment sentences as a comment marker, where it is usually in the reduced form as sn (pronounced /sən/), the only word to be written as two consonants.

Finally, siin is used for the meaning “there exists”, “there is”, “we have” (similar to 有 in classical chinese). In this case the -ii- part is usually said lighter than usual.

Relative Pronouns

An example of a relative pronoun is the “who” in “he who lights a fire”. Relative pronouns in rekharhakr can be constructed in two forms, either by repeating the pronoun in question, or by using a topic comment sentence with mandatory comment marker.

Honorifics

Proper nouns are given no significance in writing, however an underline on the bottom (horizontal text) or right (vertical text) side can be used to indicate names. Honorifics are placed after a person’s name:

Sample Text

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R’kaarik

Western Draconic

Rkaarik is the western dialect of draconic, spoken in Dacrame and most of western and southern Parsor. It is generally similar to eastern draconic, with some changes in vocabulary and more verb forms, as well as some more differentiated sounds. This section will detail differences with rekharhakr.

Certain words carry influences from Rivenian, Elyrian and other western languages.

Sound Changes

Rkaarik has a new sound: xh /ʃ/, which is represented by the digraph XH [XH]. The sounds /f/ and /v/ are different in speech, although still written by the same letter.

Rkaarik generally lacks a pitch accent, instead the two merged pairs h, kh and s, th are somewhat differentiated.

• h is a slightly gentler growl than kh, although the two are starting to merge, resulting in some tonogenesis in native speakers (dragons) and a pure merger in literary users (non-dragons who require knowledge for history, administration, or other reasons)
• s is a slightly sharper hiss than th, although literary users are starting to use thorn /θ/ to pronounce the letter th.

Literary users will also tend to pronounce final-s sounds

Alphabet

Note that rkaarik uses minuscule script, especially in scribal records in western states like Rivian. The west also tends to use a greater range of puncuation, whilst rekharhakr traditions following Yan tend to not, or at most use the period (.)

There are several writing styles and there are no set conventions, however the general standard goes:

• majuscule is not used for the start of sentences. It may be used (often as a drop-capital) at the start of chapters or sections of text.
• all nouns and proper nouns (but not pronouns) are capitalised.
• names of deities, mythical figures, or nations (e.g. Asyr, Rivian and Ricarin, Helion) may be written in all-capitals for respect.
• there is no difference for title case, however title case can be all-capital.

The alphabet is shown below with minuscule glyphs.

Letter	Name	Meaning	Letter	Name	Meaning
A A a	axhiir	sun	U U u	uhiri	bird
K K k	kanai	world	X X x	xhiron	diamond
R R r	r’khar	dragon	Z Z z	zokaas	animal scale
O O o	okathan	wealth	Th TH th	thuraf	river
N N n	naden	see	M M m	mara	winter
D D d	drakaan	elder	I I i	idiks	species
E E e	exhin	hearth	S S s	serai	shining
H H h	h’kar	language	L L l	lovis	animal crest
Kh KH kh	kaarik	nation	P P p	polor	crystal
V V v	fathas/vos	depths/light	G G g	genisen	birth
T T t	tonin	copper	Y Y y	yira	fire

Grammar

Word order and Articles

Rkaarik is head-final: adjectives and adverbs come before the noun or verb in question. Head-initial form is still valid in literary contexts. Topic-comment sentences constructed the same.

Articles similarly do not exist, but are slowly appearing in speech, as prefix t’ for the definite article and k’ for the indefinite article become more prevalent and inconsistent consonant shifts due to it appear within sublects. These are however not written down.

Conjugation and Tenses

The actor particles -as, -ak, -ask are all valid in place of -ak in rekharhakr.

Verbs generally end in -in, -en, and -an, and irregular verbs also exist to a lesser extent. Generally, if a verb is irregular in rkaarik, it is irregular in rekharhakr, but some irregular verbs in rekharhakr has been regularised.

Tense	‘in	‘en	‘an
Inf/Present	in	en	an
Past imperfect	ins	ens	ans
Past perf/pluperfect	inir	enir	i
Future	ix	enk	ah
Condl/past future	ixa	enix	anix
Imperative	ii	er	ai

Irregular Verbs

Many, but fewer verbs in Rkaarik are also irregular. Some irregular verbs have been regularised into the other two verb endings.

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Hakr

Ancient / Classical Draconic

History and Writing

The ancient spoken form of draconic as it was during and before the first Age of Dragonkind. It had no writing system, as the dragon clans saw no need for writing.

Later, as ideas of state and kingdom permeated through the clans, along with the realisation that rule, taxation, and trade monopoly may be an easier way of amassing wealth than plunder, many of them coalesced into small nations, often deep within the mountains, ruling over other races. These nations generally took on the writing system of whatever culture group they merged into, with the Kingdom of Yan adopting a form of central plains seal script, and the clans of Parsor using the primitive Parsii alphabet.

The latter evolved into an alphabet (read: abjad) specifically for draconic, and as it was first written, only consonants, long vowels, and initial strong vowels were represented. All others were left to be inferred, and in some cases were so weak that modern classical draconic still lacks any definite vowel.

When writing in this way, vowel digraphs are represented using other letters:

Modern digraph	Ancient letter(s)
ai	F (V) F
ae	Y Y
ie	Y Y
ua	R R
i’a	I A IA

note: only the first two are proper vowel diphthongs, all other vowel pairs are generally pronounced separately and not as one sound.

However, modern writers of classical draconic using the draconic alphabetical script generally write it according to modern convention (only omitting the weak vowels)

Grammar and Sounds

Classical Draconic has the concept of “weak vowels”, which are written in romanisation in brackets — (a)srain (to fly) — weak vowels are never stressed and often not pronounced altogether, or barely enunciated. Weak vowels are not written even in modern alphabetical writing form.

Many words which have split or gained vowels in modern forms of draconic lack them in classical draconic, leading to a more terse language, but one with significantly more “difficult” consonant clusters.

Other words have branched into multiple modern words to disambiguate meaning.

Ancient grammar generally tracks that of eastern draconic, but word functions are much less clear. There are no explicit verbs — rather the verb ending is -n, which can generally be added to the end of any noun to “verb” it. The past tense verb ending is -s which comes after -n, and there is no explicit future or conditional marker, leading to time being required to differentiate.

Classical Draconic also closely tracks the grammar and writing style of Classical Chinese, being especially terse in nature.