Dréàn Ãü

General information
Dréàn Ãü (IPA /drɛ↑æ↓n æju:/) is the romanised version of the symbolic language spoken by ancient Dragons and Wyverns. It is still spoken today by a minority of Dragons on the Íenarís, the legendary islands of the pacific. It is unknown how this language came to be known by Humans, but myth says that a human warrior befriended a dragon and protected it. Some say this dragon taught the human this language, but it's uncertain how he notified other humans as the warrior was never seen again.

Alphabet
The ancient form of the language used runic script. So far no full examples of the runic alphabet used has been found, except the symbols for the letters A, T, L, I, Í, Q and Ë. The runes are the same in uppercase and lowercase, leading to confusion in whether or not a word is a name.

The romanisation/modern version uses the standard Latin alphabet. Vowels can have either an acute, a grave or an umlaut diacritic, or none at all. The letters A, N and O can have a tilde diacritic which are counted as different letters.

A-Ana /æ/

Ã-Aya /æj/

B-Blej /b/

C-Cren /k/

D-Dife /d/

E-Ien /ɛ/

F-Fen /f/

G-Gua /g/

H-Hineh /h/

I-Ein /ɨ/

J-Jota /j/

K-Kana /k/

L-Lao /l/

M-Mem /m/

N-Nem /n/

Ñ-Ney /ɲ/

O-Oue /ʌ/

Õ-Oy /ʌj/

P-Pres /p/

Q-Kenu /k/

R-Reta /r/

S-Sana /s/

T-Tre /t/

U-Uva /ɒ/

V-Vuna /v/

W-Vuwa /w/

X-Ks-et /eks/ or /ks/

Y-Yeni /j/

Z-Zri /ʒ/

Diacritics
Acute accents (Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú) make the pitch of the word rise as the letter is pronounced. Grave accents (À, È, Ì, Ò, Ù) make the pitch go down as the letter is pronounced. Umlauts(Ä, Ë, Ï, Ö, Ü) extend the vowel sound from their nomally short pronunciations (Ä is /eɪ/, Ë is /i:/, Ï is /aɪ/, Ö is /əʊ/, Ü is /u:/). Tildes (Ã, Ñ, Õ) depend on the letter (A and O have /j/ on the end of the pronunciation, N changes to /ɲ/).

Phonotactics
Every word must start with 2 consonants or 2 vowels (letter names and articles are exempt). When two vowels are next to each other, the sound produced by each vowel is pronounced individually, with a small gap between them that lasts a little shorter than a space between 2 words. There are also 5 consonant phonemes: Note that English phonemes do not count, such as 'Ph' making 'f' and so on. This is a common mistake when English speaking people try to pronounce Dréàn Ãü.
 * Ch - th
 * Ll - h (throaty)
 * G = f
 * Ph = kh
 * J/Jj = y

In order to prevent the pitch of the word end getting too high or low, the amount of pitch rise or falls is usually no more than 3 tones higher or lower than the start of the word. Stress always falls on the 2nd to last syllable.

Grammar
Nouns (Not names) must always have the word 'The' or Shò before it. This means you translate 'Boat' to The boat, 'Houses' to The houses. Plurals are indicated by Shòs.

Sentence structure is Object-Subject-Verb, while in English it is Subject-Verb-Object. In English you say "Sam (subject) ate (verb) oranges (object)", in Dréàn Ãü you literally say "Oranges Sam ate." This also accounts for adjectives: in English you say 'Ice cream is cold', while you translate that literally to Cold the ice cream he is (See below)

Verbs in Dréàn Ãü are split into 2 major sections and 3 endings. The first section is the regular section and is much larger. There are 3 endings, -en, -ir and -reg, that are attached onto the stem of the verb. These conjugated verbs consist of 3 parts: Person, Stem, Ending. Each person has a representative ending if they are doing the action, and a different ending if the action is being done to another, while the stem stays the same after conjugation.

Negatives are indicated by the addition of Zha before the person.

There is no actual conjugation for 'It' or 'One', both use 'He' instead.

-En endings                                        -En persons
The verb 'To be' is Eitálen, so using this knowledge 'I am' is Jje eitálé, 'She is' is Dre eitálela. If you want to say 'We are them', you would use the 'We' person and the 'They' ending, making Kren eitálelà.

-Ir endings                                           -Ir persons
The verb 'To walk' is Dlonir, so 'We walk' is Phin dlonesen, 'He walks' is Shi dlonil. If you want to say 'I walk him', you would use the 'I' person and the 'He' ending, making Lli dlonil.

-Reg endings                                           -Reg persons
The verb 'To have' is Trépreg, so 'They have' is Eirn trépün, 'You have' is Vro trépru. If you want to say 'You have us', you would use the 'You' person and the 'We' ending, making Vro trépruen.

The 2nd half of the verbs are the stem changing ones. The only difference is that these verbs also have a spelling change in the stem of the verb. There is no pattern between stem changing verbs; you have to learn what they are. The 3 types of stem change are as follows:


 * I to E. EG, 'To play' is Kriven, 'I play' is Jje krevé.
 * K to Kò. EG, 'To want' is Chökir, 'He wants' is Eir chökòpru.
 * É to A. EG, 'To do' is 'Jjéreg, 'We do' is Llro jjaruen''.

Contractions
Like the verbs, contractions are split into 2 types, mandatory and voluntary. Mandatory contractions are required to uphold proper grammar.

The 3 mandatory contractions are:
 * 'The' + noun starting with a vowel = Sh' + noun. EG, 'The bed' is Sh'ean. If the noun is plural, you move the s to the end of the noun, as in Sh'eans.
 * 'I' verb conjugation + 'My' (Éo) = Verb conjugation + O. EG, 'I have my...' is Gro trépréo.
 * 'At' (Pheto) + 'His/Hers' (Ou/Oue) = Phetu/Phetue. EG, 'At his cold beach...' is Phetu crónd shò brida....

Voluntary contractions are not required. They are usually used in an informal sense between family and friends, and as so, in formal speech they are frowned upon.


 * A word ending with a consonant can be joined with the following word if it starts with a vowel.
 * If you have U shò, the two words can be made into Shu.
 * If you have Dn shò, the two words can be made into Dhò.

Example text
Simple phrase: ''U shò prera llro trépruen. Dn shò brida phin dlonil io crónd shò brida che eitálel.''

Translation: ''We have a dog. We walk him to the beach but the beach is cold.''

Literally: ''A the dog we have. To the beach we walk him but cold the beach he is.''