Proto-Draco

'''I, the author of this language, am a complete beginner in conlanging. I'd appreciate any input and help doing this.'''

'''In particular, I'm a native Brazilian Portuguese speaker, fluent in English, and most of my obvious grammar choices will be based on that. If anyone can then point me where it's "too Romance" or "too Germanic", that would be golden advice :)'''

Introduction
Proto-Draco is the reconstructed language spoken by the earliest of the dragons and great serpents. From it derive Ancient Draconic (later evolved into High and Low forms of Draconic, and later into Modern Draconic from the High one) and the languages of the naga, troglodytes and snake/lizard-folk in general.

Motivations
This is a proto-language sketch to serve as a base for a draconic language family to use sparingly in a D&D adventure.

I borrow from the "official draconic" (that was published on the Dragon Magazine in 2001) the fact that it has interesting possessive relationships, which feels dragon-like (but not the possessive relations themselves), and completely eschew its totally-not-dragon-sounding phonology and lexicon, and its letter-by-english-letter dyslexia-prone script.

Here are the goals and rationalizations behind it so far:

Watsonian

 * The speakers are non-humans (i.e., dragons). I'd rather remove than add sounds, so I'll have them not use any bilabial or labio-dental sounds. On the other hand, I figure longer mouths mean more room to articulate, so I'll aim to use one long series of fricatives with many different articulations (I felt like giving them a wide range of nasal/ized consonants too, but didn't because of reasons below).
 * Borrowing from the 2001 Dragon Magazine article, they should have interesting genitives and possessives. Say, differentiating possessions that were conquered, stolen, gifted, created, by birthright, intrinsic (body parts and characteristics), etc. Dragons are greedy and possessive.
 * The language is born from imperatives, which might affect word order and conjugation.
 * There should also be a rich kinship terminology, differentiating elder/younger siblings, mother/father side relatives, firstborns, etc. I figure they could be proud of those sorts of things, and possibly matriarchal (given Tiamat).
 * Genders would be based on animacy. Dragons are the very top of the food chain except for deities. Homids (humans, elves, goblinoids, etc.) exert greater control on the world than beasts, but they're still puny things, and genders reflect that.
 * For the rest, it should be simple, reflecting the minds of earlier, beastlier drakes. For one thing, I figure there is no tense; they're not so good at such abstractions and rely on explicit and simple time references ('before', 'later', 'now', 'while doing that other thing', and the basic 'day', 'moon' and 'season' cycles). There is also no declension of nouns per se, but rather through (mandatory) articles and demonstratives.

Doylist

 * I am human. The sounds shouldn't be too alien for me to pronounce if I am to use this myself from time to time, and I must be able to differentiate them, so the long series of fricatives can't be that long.
 * This is my first conlang! It's both a learning ground for me, and a protolang for more developed conlangs I'm actually interested in (Classic/Modern Draconic, Arcane). Therefore it shouldn't have a very large consonant inventory, and should tend to a simple grammar.
 * I specifically want to experiment with: ergativity, non sex-based genders and case declension (mostly inexistent in my native language except for oblique personal pronouns), just because they are fun (why else would I be doing this?).

Vowels
The schwa and upsilon appear in pronunciation of some unstressed vowels, but aren't phonemic. In addition to single vowels, Proto-draco features double (long) vowels (pronounced with a slight dip in between, rather than a single long phoneme), and the falling diphthongs /ɯɤ/, /ɯɑ/, /ɪe/, /ɪɤ/, /ɪɑ/, /eɑ/, /eɤ/, /ɤɑ/.

Adjacent vowels that are not part of a diphthong become separated by /h/ (as onset on the second one), so very rarely will syllables be purely vocalic.

Phonotactics
Syllables are (C(L))V(V)(C). Onset can be any consonant; L must be a glide or liquid (/j/,/l/,/r/), and can only occur after a plosive, or the frontal fricatives; codas can be any consonant.

Consecutive rhotics (/r/, /ʀ/, /ħ/, /h/) are merged into a single /ʀ/. The fricative /h/ followed by a consonant merges with it, geminating stops and nasals and adding and /s/ before sibilants. Consecutive sibilants interact the same way, the first one becoming an /s/.

Stress falls on the last syllable if it has a coda (except for /n/, /l/, or /j/) a long (double) vowel or diphthong; otherwise, it falls on the second last. A double vowel or diphthong that is stressed on the last syllable has its first component stressed; otherwise it has its second component stressed. Vowels in the last unstressed syllable tend to central positions ([ə] and [ʊ]).

Writing System
I'm having doubts here :(

On one hand, I can make a Slavic-like romanization with š, ž, etc. It looks nice, and is completely unambiguous, but uses diacritics I don't have easily accessible for typing.

On the other hand, using digraphs I can type it on my keyboard, it still looks in-character, but h-clusters look the same as digraphs.

I can try also and play with the unused letters (f, v, j, c, x, plus ç and ñ easily available for a Romance-like one), but it doesn't look as draconic, and I already associate the letters with completely different phonemes, so more experimentation is required.

Help welcome :)

Romance-like
The single 'rh' digraph is unambiguous, since rhotics can't follow one another. A double 'rr' is more Romance-like, but it looks strange word-initially, whereas 'rh' is perfectly natural anywhere.

Nouns
Nouns are invariant, but preceding articles are mandatory, and these inflect by genre and case.

There is no grammatical number, but explicit quantity determiners (including "no", "few", "many", "all", "any", "some/unknown", etc.) can be prefixed to articles.

The genders are:
 * Dragons (and deities, fire, storms, volcanoes)
 * Large beasts (and young dragons)
 * Homids ('those pesky things')
 * Small critters
 * Animate (trees and such, and also water, tools, weapons and other 'live-ish' things)
 * Inanimate

Pronouns
Individual pronouns exist for the first and second persons (not differentiating number), and a first plural inclusive (not differentiating whether third parties are also included). There are no dedicated third person personal pronouns, and demonstrative pronouns (actually demonstrative prefixes + articles) are used for that role. Pronouns, both personal and demonstrative, inflect by case; demonstratives also inflect by genre.

Articles
Articles decline by gender and case, and are mandatory. There are no definite/indefinite and singular/plural distinctions, but a determiner prefix (either for quantity or indefiniteness) may be agglutinated into the article.

Verbs
Verbs have a bare infinitive, a verbal and a predical form. Verbal forms are used for indicative and imperative moods, and verbal phrases. The predical form is akin to a participle, and doubles as Proto-draco's adjective. Bare infinitives work in the role of nouns, or when used in conjunction with auxiliary verbs.

Neither form has subject or object agreement. The role of participants, as well as some aspects, are determined by case markings on the obligatory articles or pronouns.

Syntax
Mostly VSO, but the word order is flexible given obligatory case markings.