Here's the deal, I enjoy learning Dovahzul and using it in writing, thinking, and speaking/listening, but there just isn't enough content out there for me or anyone else out there who might want to learn and be exposed more to Dovahzul. Who knows? Maybe there's an audience for it?

To that effect, I want to start a Dovahzul Youtube channel. I have the following goals so far for this:

1. Be informative about Dovahzul, providing examples of Dovahzul in various contexts (writing, runes, grammar, misc. usage)

2. Provide spoken Dovahzul for people to actually hear the language being used.

3. Showcase Dovahzul works (songs, reading, etc.)  from Thuum.org primarily, but maybe also around the web

4. Not be cringy....

5. Anything else?

Note: Although I'll own the channel, I'd like to open it up for other people to contribute content.

Thoughts, anyone?

I quite like this idea and I would certainly subscribe but I think it would fit in better if you also discuss other related topics such as general lore or Skyrim (maybe not just a playthrough though).

I would love to see this. And the idea of people being able to contribute is also very cool. If this ever happens, I would love too! 

Like you could explain things about the language and all that, while other people could maybe send in videos of them reading something in Dovahzul etc. for you to upload. Idk, those are just examples, but either way I think it could be very cool.

I have a couple simple ideas to contribute.

• Provide titles that differentiate between the videos that are solely about canonical Dovahzul and the videos that include noncanon or semicanon words/phrases/etc.
• Create separate playlists for lessons, speech examples, canon/noncanon videos, and other fun stuff like songs. An organized channel is more welcoming to newcomers.
• Link to thuum.org in every video description, or during the video's end card.
• Create video equivalents of every lesson in the Lessons section of the site, since a video format may help some people learn better than a text format.
• Ask for fan contributions to be shared via thuum.org (which may increase site traffic) as well as the videos' comments sections.
• Encourage new speakers to create their own proper dragon names. Creating your own name in a new language will make newcomers become more invested in learning the language.
• Utilize as much of thuum.org's Library as you can. I'd love to cover Paarth's translation of "Let It Go" some time, and it would be fun to put that on the channel.

Like I've said before, I'd be more than happy to write some songs for you to put on the channel. I'm far from experienced with sound recording in general, but I'd like to try my hand at it again. I might be able to cash in a favor or two to use a friend's recording equipment (and expertise) to record a few songs in both Legacy and canon Dovahzul. I've been slowly working on a canon-only power ballad about the three Nord heroes who banished Alduin during the Dragon War, and that song, when finished, ought to be enough to draw some attention to the channel.

Hahdremro

• Utilize as much of thuum.org's Library as you can. I'd love to cover Paarth's translation of "Let It Go" some time, and it would be fun to put that on the channel.

Nah, my translation is better.

Besides that, I really like the idea of a YouTube channel to represent the site. One thing you could do is have a few different hosts, who would make different kinds of videos for the channel.

For example, if I were a host, my videos would be about using canon words to represent ideas that don't have canon translations, such as names, modern words, or just normal words that Bethesda never made official translations for.

Zinrahzul
@Loniizrath oh yes, that is definitely needed. People get tripped up over the lack of word for word translation, and the channel could definitely be used to help with that. We just need the right format for that.

I could definitely help with that. Compound words, strong verbs, metaphorical phrasing. Realistically, there should be a way to represent any idea using the canon vocabulary.

Loniizrath

I could definitely help with that. Compound words, strong verbs, metaphorical phrasing. Realistically, there should be a way to represent any idea using the canon vocabulary.

Agreed.

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For the next couple of days, I want to come up with how the content might be presented:

- As I stated in the Community Wall earlier, I don't necessarily want an IRL face associated with the channel, but I do want the voice of a Narrator/Host.

- I am developing a persona for the Narrator. This is what I have so far:

"I am the ghost of a son of a family born in the days of the Dragon Cult. When I came of age, I found out I was to be sacrificed, I fled and found myself as a follower of the Way of the Voice, my thur being Paarthurnax."

- This gives me a way to introduce Dovahzul from the Word Walls as well as from Dragons/Paarthurnax. My idea is to present the information as one who was living at those times.

- The nature of the videos won't be like a school lesson. I'm trying to avoid that as much as possible. I want learning the language to be more engaging, as well as coming from a different angle.

* I also need to discuss Legacy VS Canon. Legacy still has the issue that kept it from being used in Thuum.org as it is, so I want to avoid its use in the channel as much as possible. 

@Loniizrath I could help with that as well. Having translated a few English songs into Dovahzul, I'm accustomed to dealing with this issue, so I could certainly put that experience to good use. It takes a certain kind of creativity to create approximate translations like Dovahzul often requires, and I'd like to help teach people how to deal with it.

@Zinrahzul Any idea of how to properly create an engaging tutorial on writing runes? I feel like that would be something of a prerequisite to the translation of Word Walls, at least in my experience. A step-by-step process on each individual rune would likely lose the viewer's attention, so we may need to get creative about how the information is presented. It's fairly essential for translating a fair portion of the in-game examples of Dovahzul, but learning it could easily become a somewhat dull experience. How can we make it more interesting for the viewer to learn the Dragon Alphabet?

As for the Legacy issue, I feel like that shouldn't really be a concern until we've covered a decent amount of the canon stuff. I'm in favor of starting the channel off as a way to translate the stuff found in the game, and then branching off from there over time as we cover more of the source material.

Hahdremro

@Loniizrath I could help with that as well. Having translated a few English songs into Dovahzul, I'm accustomed to dealing with this issue, so I could certainly put that experience to good use. It takes a certain kind of creativity to create approximate translations like Dovahzul often requires, and I'd like to help teach people how to deal with it.

Yeah, I've translated songs too, mostly Disney stuff. We talked about this before on the wall, but it would be really cool to do some collab stuff on the channel once it's up and running.

Loniizrath

Yeah, I've translated songs too, mostly Disney stuff. We talked about this before on the wall, but it would be really cool to do some collab stuff on the channel once it's up and running.

Definitely. Like I said on there, I'm inexperienced when it comes to recording, since I'm most familiar with playing live instead. I mostly improvise when playing instruments, but I've written a couple songs in the past that I can play on my mandolin and other instruments. I have some friends who are much more familiar with the recording process, and as I've mentioned before, I can cash in a few favors to get them to help me out with this. It's something I've wanted to learn more about for a while anyway, and this is a great opportunity to do so!

I have a wide variety of strange and exotic instruments at my disposal for this endeavor, but we'll figure out instrumentation during the songwriting process. That said, the electronic portion of the instrumentation will likely be heavy at first while I get my feet under me. (Hint: "What's a MIDI file? I'll show you!" -Vargskelethor)

Should we make a new thread for songwriting for the channel, in case anyone else is interested in collaborating?

As funny as it sounds, I got this general idea after thinking about how Sesame Street might teach children. I want to have some type of loose narrative that accompanies everything that is taught. I don't necessarily think that letter-by-letter teaching could really -be- taught without a "boring" school feel to it, so I want to try to find a way to teach the runes indirectly. I don't know how exactly right now, though. Maybe such a video might not even need to be made -- dunno.

So, about video types -- I have the following general areas in mind:

* Highlight a WORD or ROTMULAAG

* Highlight a BARD (songs)

* Highlight a SKALD (poems, lyrics, haikus ;) )

* Highlight a HERO (and other notable characters)

What I'm trying to do is to mix learning with narrative in order to avoid a school-teaching tone to the video. I will probably try to come up with samples of the video types I listed and see if I can make it meet the goals of learning Dovahzul...

Finally, you should definitely have another thread for the channel-specific content and keep this thread for planning.