High Draconic

High Draconic
Users	Dragons Other magic-users
Locations	Etheros
Script	Draconic runes
Related languages	Common Draconic

High Draconic was the Draconic proto-language and the prime language used by dragons. It was the first language spoken and used by dragons, and all other languages considered forms of Draconic originated from High Draconic. High Draconic was an intrinsically magical language. Though understanding the language did not necessarily allow one to use magic, to fully understand High Draconic speakers needed to have an understanding of magic.

Linguistic properties

Phonology

Syllables in High Draconic adhered to a very strict quality of openness, all beginning with a single consonant and ending with a vowel. Syllable stress was not generally present in High Draconic, however it was sometimes added to add particular emphasis to a word or part of a word. This was usually restricted to single-syllable words, and was especially rare among dragons themselves.

Consonants

The 12 consonants were:

	Dental		Alveolar		Velar		Glottal
Nasal			n
Stop			t	d	k	g
Sibilant fricative			s	z
Non-sibilant fricative	θ (th)	ð̼ (dd)			ɣ (gy)		h
Lateral fricative			ɮ (ll)

Because High Draconic was made by and for dragons, non-dragon species often found some consonant sounds difficult to pronounce consistently. For this reason, a number of the consonants had acceptable replacements, the most common being the replacement of the /ɮ/ sound with the lateral approximant equivalent /l/.

Vowels

The 4 vowels were:

	Front
Close	i, iː (ii)
Open-mid	ɛ (e), ɛː (eh)
Open	a, aː (aa)	ɶ (o)

Due to the nature of dragon oral biology, High Draconic contained only front vowels, thus vowel length became very important in distinguishing the many different words in the High Draconic dictionary. For the same reason, many non-dragon speakers of High Draconic found the open /ɶ/ sound difficult to pronounce correctly, so the close-mid back rounded vowel /o/ was a common replacement.

Syntax

Sentences in High Draconic followed the verb-subject-object syntax strictly.

Adjectives

All non-quantitative adjectives in High Dragon were fixed to the beginning of the noun they were describing, effectively combining the two into a new word (quantitative adjectives were placed in front of the quantifying noun separately). Adjectives could be distinguished from their attached nouns by the presence of the /i/ or /iː/ vowel, which always and exclusively ended adjectives. For example, the phrase "large rock" would use the word for rock, "hathona", and add to the front of it the word for large, "zi-", to make the full word "zihathona".

If multiple non-quantitative adjectives were to be used to describe a single noun, they would be successively appended to the front of the word in any order. Notably, however, the order in which the adjectives were appended did have some cultural and social importance, and could change the subtext of the word or phrase.

Postpositions

All High Draconic adpositions were placed after the word they were describing the relation of, and therefore were exclusively postpositions. In this way, the two nouns that were being related by the postposition would be put first, followed by the postposition. For example, the phrase "person on rock" would have been properly translated as "lla hithona neh", which literally translated to "person rock on". All postpositions ended with the long /ɛː/ vowel, though the short equivalent /ɛ/ was used elsewhere.

Possessiveness

High Draconic possessive nouns were always kept in order of the possessor followed by the possessed. A possessor was defined in a sentence by the presence of the suffix "-thaa". For example, the phrase "person's animal" would be properly translated to "llaathaa dosa". While the long /aː/ vowel was present in other words, its attachment to the /θ/ consonant was used exclusively for this purpose.

Grammar

Plurality

There was technically no plurality in High Draconic, rather an expression of higher quantities necessitated a definite number, though a lack of quantifier implied a quantity of one. Additionally, the word "gii-", meaning "all", could have been used to indicate the entirety of something. Should a speaker have needed to describe a higher quantity, but not an entirety, a number would have had to be supplied. If no exact quantity was known, the speaker would have had to either provide no quantity (and perhaps explain further) or use the suffix "-ka" to indicate uncertainty. The suffix could have been appended to a quantitative adjective any number of times, with each additional indicating further uncertainty. Properly, however, no more than two were necessary and one was often sufficient. For example, the phrase "two people" would have been translated as "tii llaa", more literally meaning "exactly two people". If, however, the value of two was uncertain, the phrase may have been translated as "tiika llaa" or "tiikaka llaa", meaning "close to two people" and "generally two people" respectively.

Tense

Tense in High Draconic was not a modification of the sentence's verb, rather it was based upon a word appended (or not appended) to the end of the sentence. To indicate present tense, nothing was appended to the end of the sentence. To indicate future tense, the word "taa" ("to explore") was appended to the end of the sentence. Past tense was slightly more complicated due to the differentiation of perfective (e.g. "the dog ran") and imperfective (e.g. "the dog was running") tense. Perfective past tense used the word "gaa" ("to finish"), while imperfective used the word "daa" ("to be").

Valency

Valency-changing was done by adding a word after the verb of a sentence. There were two valency-changing operations in High Draconic, passive and causative. Passive valency-changing was done by placing the verb "ddaa" ("to take") after the verb. For example, the sentence "Kaa llaa hithona." ("Person sees rock.") becomes "Kaa ddaa llaa hithona." ("Rock is seen by person."). Causative valency-changing is the opposite process, and is done with the word "haa" ("to cause").