Dragorean
Dragorean (Dragorean: Dathzhad, "dragon-word") is the primary modern form of the ancient family of languages known as Dathzhad, used in the Pick-n-Mix Comix universe (and related writings) by Thomas Castle, aka Teacat. Dragorean is used primarily by human, elven, dwarven, and dragonborn inhabitants of the Hearthlands in the 2112th Rhapsody, and is a primarily-agglutinative language with typically-SVO word order. Related languages include its sister-language in the , Mirzhat, as well as the syllabic dialect ksinkertazhi, which arose amongst some dragon speakers following the rise in popularity of the dragon Toveia's Tovoshok syllabary.
Writing systems typically used for Dragorean are Regatrian, Latin, the Dragorean alphabet, Mezhon, Lesima Wejma, and Tovoshok ksingirima.
Geographic distribution and in-universe users
The Dathzhad family of languages, in their original form, are spoken everywhere dragons have existed across both faces of the Universal Coin, and have as such influenced and been influenced by most other languages in its wake as well. Its primary two members, Mirzhat and Dragorean, are more limited, with Mirzhat being spoken primarily by Rusidran Mirs across the Chasm of Stars in the Protocosm.
Dragorean, on the other hand, is the second of the two primary languages spoken across much of the Valehold in the Hearthlands. It was used primarily by the humans who became known as Inglish people before the Regatrian occupations of 40 to ? OE, as well as by the dragonborn Kholedzhuma of the Kholedzhar in the North Desert. After the creation of the World of Dragorea — a joint nation-creation effort between the Kingdom of Inglenook, the Commonwealth of the Hearth, and the Kholedzhar themselves — Dragorean became the primary language of the World of Dragorea, and of all humans and dragonborn living within that nation's borders, and remains to be the official secondary language of the Kingdom of Inglenook to this day, alongside Modern Inglish and Magetongue.
In the King's Reach of Fritherland, Dragorean is still considered a popular language and is spoken avidly by the Fritherlander dwarves alongside their native Frithanic and the original Rusidran language (before the Rusidran advent of Mirzhat) still spoken by the Rusidran imps left on the Isle of Volmanus where Fritherland is located.
Features
Word order
In almost every case, Dragorean is subject-verb-object order, meaning the subject is spoken first, then the verb, then the object. However, it has many grammatical and syntactic similarities with Inglish (and its real-world equivalent, English) to the point that its word order and active versus passive voice can occasionally be shifted in terms of different registers or preferred methods of speaking.
Clitics
Dragorean modifies its words with a wide variety of clitics, including honorifics, pluralizers, and possessive forms. In some cases, the usage of these clitics is considered a matter of folkloric and superstitious importance in regards to the way the form of its original speakers, the dragons themselves, can alter reality using the scale oil their bodies naturally produce; as they believe the words they speak can occasionally enable those alterations, they've developed a heavy amount of superstition surrounding their verbiage, and thus tend to couch the more crucial of their words in what they consider to be protective spoken cages to help cut down on potential alterations when not intended.
Part-of-speech marker clitics
One unique feature of Dragorean is that at least three of its primary parts of speech are couched in and marked with special clitic prefixes which are expected to be attached to those words in almost every case.
The Dragorean part-of-speech clitics are:
| Nouns | al- |
| Verbs | yo-, yodtai- yodta- |
| Adjectives | tzu- |
Usage notes
In informal contexts, if a word which would otherwise be couched with a part-of-speech marker is instead prefixes with other words, such as prepositional case prefixes, the part-of-speech marker can be dropped unless its other prefixes are other part-of-speech markers within a phase which includes multiple parts of speech as part of the same phrase.
When used for verbs, yo- is used for all present-tense verbs; yodtai- is used for all past-tense verbs; yodta- is used for all future-tense verbs. In some cases, a verb might be modified in such a way wherein it adopts a different marker instead; all infinitive forms inherently drop the markers altogether and behave more similar to Dragorean prepositions and conjunctions, while all participle forms are treated as adjectives and thus must be spoken using tzu- as their prefix rather than any of the verbal prefixes.
Vocabulary
Dragorean's vocabulary is primarily based around verbs, nouns, and adjectives, with a wide variety of prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, and adverbs. It is primarily a conversational and expressive language, meant for the purpose of expressing a wide variety of diverse meanings and applying to a large number of situations, wherein its vocabulary is larger and more unwieldy rather than smaller and more efficient.
[[Category:{{subst:Dragorean}} language]]