Śia! A na [Miar] <Mér> sýn-da Ý nó ó [Sor-ló-ge] ios-guón-dar A-n ge śó-nor-daró uom-ŕór-da-rýuó huer-en-dión.
[tʃa. a na miɹ ‘sun.da. u no o sɚ.’lo.ge jʌs.’gwon.daɹ. An ge ‘ʃo.nɚ.da.ɾo. wʌm‘ɹoɹ.da.ɾu.wo hweɹ.’en.djon
Greeting! TOP 1p NAME=Miar PRON=Mér name-be. BEN 2p INS NAME=less.than-dragon-word thing.here-write-be.SIMP.PST. TOP.emphasis language nature-ADJ-be.NEG very-easy-be-however.NEG effective-become-be.ASUM.ABIL.FUT
Hello! My name’s Miar. I wrote this for you in Sorlóge. This particular language is neither natural nor too easy, [but] I’m confident It can become something workable.
(First lesson: <this> is comparable to Furigana, normally written above the word. Don’t read it aloud twice.)
Truth told, I’ve done baby-step projects over the last decade, and this is something of a culmination of them. Also, this is the first anything I’ve ever made this big and with enough confidence to put online (ambitious first steps) for whomever actually cares enough to read it. Thank you for that.
Updates’ll be a slow trickle, and questions may take a while to answer, since life pulls me away from internet for long periods, as has been demonstrated.
So without further delay, um... this thingy. Copyright nobody since 2018. Eighth edition + 39 edits as of 1/25/20.
The concept
Piece-for-piece: it’s pronounced “sir-LOW-geh”
Sor: Adj. “less; inferior”
Ló: N. “a dragon”
Ge: N. “words; language”
A good translation may be “Lesser Dragonese” This could be interpreted two ways: It’s both a “lesser” or false branch of Dragonese and the language meant for the animals “less than” dragon (the rest of creation).
This is also why it’s, at least to me, a bit “softer” than how Dragons would speak. I imagined a “True” Dragon language as being extra harsh, with lots of tones, guttural sounds, teeth gnashing and light firebreathing. Then I did the opposite when I made the accompanying story NOT about giant godlike reptiles, whilst still connecting the language back to them. In that world, this also a conlang (an auxlang at that), so it needed to be easier to speak. No tones, metal growling, or firebreathing. (Rodents can’t breathe fire, and everything else needs a special kind of soul to develop that power.)
From here on “Dragonese” refers to the “Lesser” language. I may also occasionally just use Sorló.
General Grammar Notes
- Topic-prominent Nominative-Accusative
- Synthetic mix of agglutination and fusion. This language loves compression and compounding, allowing for some run-on words.
- SOV. Articles determine the part of speech, allowing for SOME variation, but the final OV is absolute.
- Pro-drop through context
- No specific words for “yes”, “no”, “it”, or “and”
- As the first sentence shows, names are boxed and sometimes accompanied by pronunciation guides.
- Head final, I think, except with prepositions. A phrase might be like: Prep. (Number[+Counter] Adj. Rel.)+Noun
** The + means the word is affixed. The final word of the description is actually directly attached to the root noun unless it’s a name. - Stress is on the first (frequently only) syllable of the nouns. For verbs, stress should fall on the root word of the verb.
- No differentiation between adjectives and verbs. They’re all “[Noun] that is/does X”-type relative clauses.
The importance in picking sounds was to be unambiguous, at least by my interpretation.
This language uses our oh-so-familiar alphabet because I couldn’t be bothered drawing the old runes. Reinventing the Chinese wheel ain’t practical at all! It’s not typeable, nor easy to read. I figured in a story the general reader's mindset would be, “Garble something—That's cool. Moving on."
If it were put in a comic or cartoon format or something, THEN you’d get your script.
m n < m n >
p b t d k g < p b t d k g >
f θ ɬ s ʃ χ h < f c ć s ś q h >
ɹ ɾ l < ŕ/-r r l >
semivowels j w < i u >
vowels a e i ɪ ʌ ɚ o ɯ~u < a e é i o or ó ý >
affricatives and diphthongs: tʃ au aɪ < śi- á y >
There is no natural aspiration or vowel lengthening.
Romanized alphabetical order: Aa Áá Ee Éé Oo Óó Yy Ýý Bb Cc Ćć Dd Ff Gg Hh Kk Ll Mm Nn Pp Qq Rr Ŕŕ Ss Śś Tt Uu Ii (This will matter later)
I DO have an idea of how the other in-universe languages’ scripts could be used to write the language, but… nah. “Keep it simple and typeable for now,” said the jerk who uses Ý for U and U for W
Phonotactics: (C)(S)V(F)
C: Consonant
S: Semivowel < i u >
V: Vowel
F: < m n c s ś r l >
Allophony
Vowels may at least theoretically be unrounded (Trying to be considerate to the bird people. In theory as long as they’re unambiguous it MIGHT be fine. In theory!)
<O> devolves into /ə/ when it’s the vowel of an unstressed suffix, but that too may be speaker-dependent.
<I> is only /ɪ/ when alone, which only natively appears in the spelled-out names of letters and numbers.
Final <R> is also [ɹ], basically General American rhotic.
* <or> devolves into /ɚ/ (as in “per”). <ir> never appears.
Labialization (w/ʷ): < ua uá ue ué uo uó uy uý >
* R and Ŕ can’t labialize.
Palatalization(j/ʲ): < ia iá ie ié io ió iy iý >
- However, Ś changes to /tʃ/ (e.g. “śeé” sounds like “chi/qi”)
- U /w/ COULD palatalize, but doesn’t.
- No other consonant can be followed by <ié> without splitting the syllable. Speaking of…