While Storm Emma shut down the county (because Galway doesn’t know how to handle a little bit of snow) for the weekend, I decided to pull a Tolkien and get to work on some proto-languages for the dragon races of my fantasy world.  Because why not.  So after several days of scribbling and much wasted paper, I managed to come up with the consonants of some of the early draconic languages.  Before you get too impressed, there’s not much inventing here.  For these proto-languages, they’re copies of real-world ancient languages.  Hey, I need to start off somewhere, right?  I’m not nearly at Tolkien-levels of language creation yet, but even he got inspiration from ancient, real-world languages!  So I’m in the clear, is what I’m saying.

note:  notation of sounds is in the style of the International Phonemic Alphabet

Old Draconic (Proto-Germanic)




bilabial
dental
alveolar
palatal
velar
labiovelar


nasal
m

n

ŋ
ŋʷ


plosive
p         b
t         d


k         g
kʷ         ɡʷ


fricative
ɸ         β
θ         ð
s         z

x         ɣ
xʷ


approxi-mate



j

w


lateral


l





trill


r

Old Draconic was the language spoken by the first dragons, up until Svanhildr took her people to the northern mountains, shortly after the end of the Dark Age.  The language of the dragons would then split into two branches, known as North Draconic (spoken by the Svanhilding) and East Draconic (spoken by the Lugii and the Donarii).

North Draconic (Old Norse)




bi-labial
dental
alveo.
post-alveo
palatal
velar
labio-velar
glottal


nasal
m
 n



 ŋ




plosive
p         b
t         d


k         g





fric.
f         v
θ         ð
s

ɣ


 h


approx



ʀ
 j

 w



lateral


l







trill


r

The language spoken by Svanhildr and her people following their departure from the other two dragon tribes.  North Draconic would eventually develop and split into more languages as different groups of the Svanhilding spread and grew apart.

East Draconic (Old High German)




bilabial
labio-dental
dental
alveolar
palatal
velar
glottal


nasal
m


n

ŋ



plosive
p         b


t         d

k         g



fric.

f         v
θ
s̠         s

x
h


approx
w



j




aff-ricate
pf


ʦ





liquid



r         l

The language spoken by the Lugii and the Donarii, up until the great schism between the two groups drove both the tribes, and their languages, apart.  The language of the Donarii would then develop several daughter languages as the descendants of the Donarii split into different tribes.  The language of the Lugii would, for the most part, remain a single language.

The tables are taken from Wikipedia, because absolute accuracy isn’t my main concern for fictional proto-languages.  I just need a basis to start from.  The vowel profiles of these languages will be added later.  When I get to it.  Then I’ll put up the phonological profiles of the draconic languages actually being spoken in my novels.

Scully out.