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 /f/
 * 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) are pronounced higher than normal; e.g. 'A' is /æ˧/ while 'Á' is /æ˥/. Grave accents (À, È, Ì, Ò, Ù) are pronounced lower than normal; e.g. 'À' is /æ˩/. 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
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:
 * Ch - th /θ/
 * Ll - h (throaty) /χ/
 * G = f /f/
 * Ph = kh /kʰ/
 * J/Jj = y /j/

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.

Adjectives
Adjectives are easily noticeable as they always end in Fer. However, they are unusual in the way that opposites are very similar; to one who is not fluent in Dréàn Ãü they may mistake one for another. For example 'Small' is Zhifer yet 'Big' is Zhenfer. Non-colour adjectives are put before the noun but after the Shò, yet colours are displayed after the noun.

Colours
The only 'true' colours are as follows:
 * Black - Phollïfer.
 * Red - Tjenfer.
 * Green - Llavbrefer.
 * Blue - Llofer.
 * Orange - Ñrofer.
 * Yellow - Praqofer.
 * Brown - Wrifer.
 * White - Khenafer.

The rest of the colours are indicated by a mix between different colours. For example, purple is Phollï'tjenfer (Black-red). If a colour is said to be 'dark', the suffix -ïfer is added and if it is a 'light' colour the suffix -afer is added.

Extreme agglutination
Due to the grammar rules on adjectives being more relaxed than normal, when lots of adjectives are required Dréàn Ãü effectively becomes an agglutinative language. Adjectives can be mashed together by replacing the -fer with an apostrophe and joining up the words. For example, 'small, thin and smooth table' can be said as Shò zhi'trake'jjonefer brotten.

An even extremer form of agglutination is when adjectives and colours are joined onto the end of the noun. This would mean that 'small, thin, smooth and green table' can be translated as Shò brottenzhi'trake'jjonefer-llavbrefer. Note that the colour adjective has a separate -fer, is joined by a hyphen and the preceding adjective is not shortened.

Dialects
There are 3 main types of dialect, as well as several minor dialects. The first one, used in the north islands and the most common, is the pronunciations that I have put onto this page.

The second most common is used in the east side islands. It is rather similar, but there are differences in single letter pronunciations and the addition one extra phoneme:
 * S is /ʃ/
 * R is /ɹ/ (I.e. not trilled)
 * Ñ is /ŋ/
 * Br makes /ɸ/

The third most common is rather different to the two more common dialects. It is spoken on the south islands. Someone with little knowledge in this dialect who speaks one of the more common variants will have trouble understanding words spoken in this dialect:
 * S is /θ/
 * Ch and Th are /s/
 * C and K are /q/
 * Q is /g/
 * J is /dʒ/

Vocabulary
Note: numbers are stated as 'Ten and one', 'One hundred, ten and one' and so on. Hundreds/thousands are indicated by 'One and hundred/thousand', 'Two and hundred/thousand' and so on.

Example text
Try out this tongue twister!

Original: U shò shofer shö eir shópru bretfer bét u shò shöfer shö eir shópru brënfer.

IPA: /ɒ ʃʌ˩ ʃʌfɛr ɛɨr ʃʌ˥prɒ brɛtfɛr bɛ˥t ɒ ʃʌ˩ ʃəʊfɛr ʃəʊ ɛɨr ʃʌ˥prɒ bri:nfɛr/

Translation: 'A clean cupboard looks good but a dirty cupboard looks bad.'