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A community for the dragon language of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Thuum.org

A community for the dragon language of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Dovahzul and Linguistics

 1 

Vahlokeyv
February 2, 2017

So, after we finished the lesson, I approached my english teacher, who is known to be a bit of a cult person, open to new ideas and proposals, and I showed her the alphabet and the letters each character corresponded, which I had drawin during the previous class cause I was bored.

I asked her if she had any interesting thing to say about it, and she simply said, "I am amazed how the Letters S and Z are similar in this language, just as they are similar in ours" (roughly).

Is there any other interesting fact about this language linguistically that  people may not know? I aim to ask other professors too, if I ever find the free and interested.

by Vahlokeyv
February 2, 2017

So, after we finished the lesson, I approached my english teacher, who is known to be a bit of a cult person, open to new ideas and proposals, and I showed her the alphabet and the letters each character corresponded, which I had drawin during the previous class cause I was bored.

I asked her if she had any interesting thing to say about it, and she simply said, "I am amazed how the Letters S and Z are similar in this language, just as they are similar in ours" (roughly).

Is there any other interesting fact about this language linguistically that  people may not know? I aim to ask other professors too, if I ever find the free and interested.


Frinmulaar
February 2, 2017
Well... since we're on the topic of the alphabet:

Of all the Latin letter pairs that correspond to a single dragon rune, not one marks a sound that is a single unique phoneme in the dragon language.

In other words, AA sounds the same as two A's put together, EY sounds the same as E plus I, EI sounds the same as A plus I, yet all of these are single dragon runes. Meanwhile SH, TH and NG are acoustically single sounds, yet these have no runes of their own. And don't get me started on X.
by Frinmulaar
February 2, 2017
Well... since we're on the topic of the alphabet:



Of all the Latin letter pairs that correspond to a single dragon rune, not one marks a sound that is a single unique phoneme in the dragon language.



In other words, AA sounds the same as two A's put together, EY sounds the same as E plus I, EI sounds the same as A plus I, yet all of these are single dragon runes. Meanwhile SH, TH and NG are acoustically single sounds, yet these have no runes of their own. And don't get me started on X.

paarthurnax
Administrator
February 2, 2017
Frinmulaar
Well... since we're on the topic of the alphabet: Of all the Latin letter pairs that correspond to a single dragon rune, not one marks a sound that is a single unique phoneme in the dragon language. In other words, AA sounds the same as two A's put together, EY sounds the same as E plus I, EI sounds the same as A plus I, yet all of these are single dragon runes. Meanwhile SH, TH and NG are acoustically single sounds, yet these have no runes of their own. And don't get me started on X.

From an internal perspective, those sounds are generally common in the language, so it makes sense they would have dedicated runes. In contrast, sh only appears in two words, and ng only appears in one. (I don't include words like hungaar or krongrah in that number because the and belong to separate syllables.) The runes aa and ii shouldn't be thought of as useless either even though they carry the same pronunciation as ah and i. They help indicate stress.

From a meta viewpoint, Bethesda only had 36 keys to work with (letters A-Z and numbers 0-9), so they couldn't make a rune for every single phoneme in the language. They had to pick and choose, and they chose the runes that we currently have. I agree that it's not perfect (th ought to have a dedicated rune), but the above is probably why the alphabet is the way it is.

by paarthurnax
February 2, 2017
Frinmulaar
Well... since we're on the topic of the alphabet: Of all the Latin letter pairs that correspond to a single dragon rune, not one marks a sound that is a single unique phoneme in the dragon language. In other words, AA sounds the same as two A's put together, EY sounds the same as E plus I, EI sounds the same as A plus I, yet all of these are single dragon runes. Meanwhile SH, TH and NG are acoustically single sounds, yet these have no runes of their own. And don't get me started on X.

From an internal perspective, those sounds are generally common in the language, so it makes sense they would have dedicated runes. In contrast, sh only appears in two words, and ng only appears in one. (I don't include words like hungaar or krongrah in that number because the and belong to separate syllables.) The runes aa and ii shouldn't be thought of as useless either even though they carry the same pronunciation as ah and i. They help indicate stress.

From a meta viewpoint, Bethesda only had 36 keys to work with (letters A-Z and numbers 0-9), so they couldn't make a rune for every single phoneme in the language. They had to pick and choose, and they chose the runes that we currently have. I agree that it's not perfect (th ought to have a dedicated rune), but the above is probably why the alphabet is the way it is.

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