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, or Rheahar (working title :) ), is was a language spoken by the earliest of the dragons and great serpents of Faerûn (or, at least, it is for my game, ignoring published language mentioned later :) ). It later evolved into High and Low forms of Draconic (and later into Modern Draconic from the High one) and shaped the language of the sarrukh, progenitors of naga, troglodytes and snake-people in general.

Motivations
Rheahar is a (totally WIP) proto-language sketch I'm working on (my first, in fact) to serve as a base for a draconic language family to use sparingly in a D&D adventure.

I intent to borrow some grammar cues from the "official draconic" that was published on the Dragon Magazine a in 2001 (so far, only the fact that it has interesting possessive relationships, which feels dragon-like, but not the possessive relations themselves), but completely eschewing its totally-not-dragon-sounding phonology and lexicon (what's up with all those high vowels? -trix, really??), and its god-awful letter-by-english-letter dyslexia-prone script (it looks cool, but it just doesn't cut it).

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.
 * 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 (which is why I dropped some distinction in voicing of fricatives and rhotics), and should tend to a simple grammar. The languages to follow (or a further iteration of this one) might have a fricative series spanning the whole position and voicing spectrum, but not today :(
 * 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?).

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.

The uvular and glottal sounds only occur at word boundaries or intervocalically.

Diphthongs are either double vowels (pronounced with a slight dip in between, rather than a single long one) or the lowering /əa/, and exclude the rising /aə/. 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.

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 two forms: verbal and predical. Verbal forms are used for indicative and imperative moods, and verbal phrases. The predical form is akin to a participle, and doubles as Rheahar's adjective.

Neither forms inflect. The role of participants is determined by case markings on the obligatory articles or pronouns.

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