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

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

More on the phonology of Dovahzul.

 1 

Rah los Duuli
July 1, 2018

Hello friends,

I have been trying to get a better understanding of the nuances of Dovahzul, both for better understanding and some other conlangs I am working on. Here are a few questions I have to anyone who knows the answer. What are the maximum sizes of the onsets/codas in Dovahzul's syllable structure? Does this idea of syllables even apply? Are there illegal consonant clusters? What are the rules surrounding syllable emphasis? Are there any cool, little, specific things like vocalic consonants? Is there a record of the phonological rules in the language?

I understand that, at least with the legacy dictionary, there were many community contributions so it may very well be the case that the irregular construction of this language means it doesn't really work in that classic way. I'm really just keen to know more about the phonological rules/systems in this language. I certainly know I could go through myself and collect the data and figure it out, but honestly, I would rather not do all that when someone else might know.

Thank you all very much,

Rah los Duuli

by Rah los Duuli
July 1, 2018

Hello friends,

I have been trying to get a better understanding of the nuances of Dovahzul, both for better understanding and some other conlangs I am working on. Here are a few questions I have to anyone who knows the answer. What are the maximum sizes of the onsets/codas in Dovahzul's syllable structure? Does this idea of syllables even apply? Are there illegal consonant clusters? What are the rules surrounding syllable emphasis? Are there any cool, little, specific things like vocalic consonants? Is there a record of the phonological rules in the language?

I understand that, at least with the legacy dictionary, there were many community contributions so it may very well be the case that the irregular construction of this language means it doesn't really work in that classic way. I'm really just keen to know more about the phonological rules/systems in this language. I certainly know I could go through myself and collect the data and figure it out, but honestly, I would rather not do all that when someone else might know.

Thank you all very much,

Rah los Duuli


Frinmulaar
July 2, 2018
The usual methods of phonological analysis mostly work with Dovah, but there are a few "Thing Is"es. The first "Thing Is" is that Dovah phonology was probably never explicitly marked down - designers just made up words by ear. This is the likely source of many seeming irregularities. For example, glottal stops are always between two /u/s, j /d??/ almost only precedes rounded back vowels, and ng /?/ appears as phonemic in just one lexeme viing "wing". Study is made difficult by the scarcity of vocabulary.

With that out of the way, it can be argued that Dovah contains just one phoneme that is not such in English: q /q/. As for syllable structure, the longest onsets consist of a sibilan4, a stop and a liquid: /str/. Contenders for the longest coda include /xst/ in certain renditions of ahst "at" and /xrk/ similarly in ahrk "and".

Some interesting consonant clusters are /dw-/ in dwiin "steel", /xvr/ in lahvraan "gather", and /kt/ in vahrukt "memory".
by Frinmulaar
July 2, 2018
The usual methods of phonological analysis mostly work with Dovah, but there are a few "Thing Is"es. The first "Thing Is" is that Dovah phonology was probably never explicitly marked down - designers just made up words by ear. This is the likely source of many seeming irregularities. For example, glottal stops are always between two /u/s, j /d??/ almost only precedes rounded back vowels, and ng /?/ appears as phonemic in just one lexeme viing "wing". Study is made difficult by the scarcity of vocabulary.



With that out of the way, it can be argued that Dovah contains just one phoneme that is not such in English: q /q/. As for syllable structure, the longest onsets consist of a sibilan4, a stop and a liquid: /str/. Contenders for the longest coda include /xst/ in certain renditions of ahst "at" and /xrk/ similarly in ahrk "and".



Some interesting consonant clusters are /dw-/ in dwiin "steel", /xvr/ in lahvraan "gather", and /kt/ in vahrukt "memory".

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