When I was first interested in learning the dragon language, the Elder Scrolls Wiki was my go-to guide. A chance post on tumblr was what led me to thu'um.org (hallelujah!), and if not for that I might never have found it. There's probably tons of others in the same situation as I was, and I feel, as people who've dedicated ourselves to the study of the language, that we're almost obligated to fix it and make it accurate.

The only problem I foresee with this is that a lot of people here might have trouble distinguishing canon from non-canon. I have found multiple edits on the Elder Scrolls Wiki where people have translated using non-canon words, and even one case where someone said that the canon word was incorrectly used and replaced it with a non-canon word.

We would have to be very careful and make sure that we do not include any speculation or assumptions about the language that we have come up with on our own. We would also have to make sure that we ourselves are correct and following the general rules of the language.

I've tried fixing some things on my own, but it's too big a job for one person and I think it should be a team effort anyway. What do you guys think?

The wiki page definitely has its issues, especially the pronunciation section. Ironically, the wiki page was where I got the initial list for the site.

Should we make a list of all the innaccuracies?

• Inaccurate IPA pronunciations for the digraphs.
• The statement that Dovahzul doesn't have an equivalent to English's apostrophes should be removed. On the other hand, even though we have speculated that the "-dro" in "zindro" is equivalent to English's possessive apostrophe, I don't think this belongs on the wiki page since it is still speculation.
• The term "construction" in the grammar section should be replaced with "compound word".
• "Se" should be explained, it means "of".
• "Jersejun" would not mean "East King".
• Everything about "KrienVulon" should be removed.
• The left column of the word list should preferably say "Dragon Language" instead of "Dovahzul". "Dovahzul" is only a fanmade term.
• For "Grah-Zeymahzin", it'd be better to describe it as "battle-companion".
• "Kel" only means "Elder Scroll", not "Scroll".
• "Kos" only means "be", not "are".
• "Laan" means "want/request", not "slowly".
• "Lahvraan" means "muster/gather".
• The speculation on "Maar" should be removed.
• "Orin" should have the full definition: "Even (adverb, meaning 'fully' or 'quite')"
• "Thur" only means "overlord".
• "Ufiik" means "troll", it's confusing to list the plural only.
• "Ziil los dii du" means "your spirit is mine to devour", not "spirit undead devoured".

Extending this to other pages as well:

• The supposed "Dovahzul" translations in the trivia here should be removed. It is rather pointless, but more objectively it uses non-canon words and isn't complete.
• On the alphabet page, "Sometimes referred to as Dragonish, Dragon Tongue, Draconian or simply Dovah". Referred by whom? It is only ever referred to as the "dragon language" or "language of dragons" in-game.
• "The main character of Skyrim, the Dragonborn (or Dovahkiin) will be able to learn parts of the language, using them to cast powerful spells known as dragon shouts." This part was probably written before Skyrim's release and never edited.
• "Interestingly, speakers of dragon language can calm Dragonlings with it." There is no known connection between the Dragonish that calms Dragonlings and the dragon language. This should be removed.
• It is redundant to have a word list on this page and one on the main language page. Then there's this page as well. It seems someone started doing this, then stopped. I don't mind the format but it should all be consolidated in one place, not spread across three different articles/pages.
• In the dialogue section, the "proper sentence" comment should be removed.

Awesome! Thanks for all that. For others' future reference, I'm going to copy-paste everything from paarthurnax's post that I have NOT fixed (notes that I make will be in parentheses):

Dragon Language page:

• Inaccurate IPA pronunciations for the digraphs.
• The statement that Dovahzul doesn't have an equivalent to English's apostrophes should be removed. On the other hand, even though we have speculated that the "-dro" in "zindro" is equivalent to English's possessive apostrophe, I don't think this belongs on the wiki page since it is still speculation.
• The term "construction" in the grammar section should be replaced with "compound word".
• "Se" should be explained, it means "of".
• "Jersejun" would not mean "East King".
• Everything about "KrienVulon" should be removed.

Dragon Alphabet page:

• "The main character of Skyrim, the Dragonborn (or Dovahkiin) will be able to learn parts of the language, using them to cast powerful spells known as dragon shouts." This part was probably written before Skyrim's release and never edited. (I did not fix this because I didn't want to leave the section completely empty and I wasn't sure what I would write in its place.)
• Then there's this page as well. It seems someone started doing this, then stopped. I don't mind the format but it should all be consolidated in one place, not spread across three different articles/pages. (I wasn't sure whether to delete this or go through it and see if it was worth keeping or working with for any reason.)

I also have a couple of thoughts.

• The most obvious thing to do after correcting the mistakes would be to add all the canon words that we have. But doing this would make the page pretty darn long; I don't know how streamlined that would be. The only thing I can think of to fix that would be to categorize them somehow (maybe by part of speech?), but we can always worry about that after the words are added.
• Maybe we could also create some new sections. I'm thinking prefixes and suffixes that we know for certain are canon, possession, and tense.

Something about the possessive suffixes in the grammar section would be good, same with the verb suffix -aan. The only other prefix/suffix that is outright stated is "Vo-" which I think they have on their list.

Awesome. Okay, I'll get on that. 

I'd like to cite my sources so it doesn't all sound made up, but I'm not sure exactly what I would cite. Maybe the dialogue file? I don't think citing thu'um.org would be a good idea because we have so much non-canon stuff.

I agree, you can maybe do it like UESP has it, most of the citations are "Paarthurnax's dialogue" or "Alduin's dialogue". The dialogue file is a good one too. This list might be handy too.

While we're at it, fixing the phonetics on said page wouldn't be bad either, it's terribly confusing and in some cases misleading.

also:

For "Grah-Zeymahzin", it'd be better to describe it as "battle-companion".

As far as literal translation goes, that is true. But Durnehviir himself translates the phrase as "ally," and so it would be wrong not to state that as the primary meaning, with "battle-companion" being secondary.

On the alphabet page, "Sometimes referred to as Dragonish, Dragon Tongue, Draconian or simply Dovah". Referred by whom? It is only ever referred to as the "dragon language" or "language of dragons" in-game.

It is actually referred to as "the dragon tongue" by the Greybeards, more specifically Arngeir. "Ah, I sometimes forget you are not versed in the dragon tongue as we are."

The statement that Dovahzul doesn't have an equivalent to English's apostrophes should be removed. On the other hand, even though we have speculated that the "-dro" in "zindro" is equivalent to English's possessive apostrophe, I don't think this belongs on the wiki page since it is still speculation.

Not only is it speculation, the fact they're trying to compare anything to the English apostrophe is a shot in a completely wrong direction. The English apostrophe is a lingusitic nightmare and also relatively new. It did not exist in historic English up to fairly recently, and considering the dragon language is an ancient language (which would technically also be a dead language if not for Alduin's return, since there was only one living native speaker, which is insufficient for the evolution of language), it should be compared to older variants of English as opposed to modern. The apostrophe preceeding "s" in English possessives exists for the sole reason of making it diverse from the plural "-s" ending. This is evident with the pronoun "it" - the possessive is "its," without an apostrophe (despite almost every other possessive having one), so as not to be confused with the contraction of "it is." Draconic uses noncontracted forms and is fully inflected, so comparisons between grammatical forms are best made with inflected languages, such as older versions of English.

Other than what I've stated here, I completely agree with the arguments presented up to this point :)

Exactly what are you thinking in regards to phonetics? How do you think we should we fix them? Do you mean the IPA pronunciations? I would fix that, but I'm not at all familiar with that kind of thing and I don't want to make it worse than it is.

Also, a friendly side note: in the article, grah-zeymahzin is translated as "ally" and then in parentheses it is translated literally as "battle-brother-honor". I believe what paarthurnax meant was that we should replace this literal translation, not "ally". :)

Thank you for the correction Aaliizah, it seems I misunderstood that part.

As for the phonetics on the ES wiki page, a quick comparison between their table of IPA pronunciation transcriptions and subsequent examples (http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Dragon_Language) to our learn page (as well as any occurence of Dovahzul in the game I can remember; http://thuum.org/learn/grammar/alphabet.php) should be evident. If not, here is the rundown:

• On the wiki's table, there is no differentiation between "a" and "aa" - they should be represented with the IPA "pretzel" /æ/ for "a" and "long open a-vowel" /a:/ for "aa"
• "ah" is, to my knowledge, never pronounced as /É”/ (the "o" in the British standard pronunciation of "thought", a reduced version of the /É”:/ in "lord"), but always as /ax/, as in "Zeymah" (/x/ is IPA for the "ch" in "loch"), or possibly as an aspirated /a/, as in "Odahviing" (but this aspirated version could be merely allophonic, not phonetic).
• "ei" and "ey" are not only diverse phonemic diphtongs, but also neither of them is pronounced as a long "i"-vowel or /i:/. Dovahzul has "i" or "ii" for /i:/, and "ey" should be pronounced closer to /eɪ/, or even /ej/, as in "Suleyk", while "ei" should be pronounced as /aɪ/ (or possibly in certain contexts as /aj/), as in "Morokei" (/j/ is IPA for the "y" in "yes")
• "ii" is never the short /ɪ/, but always long /i:/ - if any Dovahzul vowel even comes close to the short centralized /ɪ/, it would sooner be "i" - and even then, I believe the Dovahzul "i" to be closer to the clearer /i/, so merely a shorter version of the longer "ii" than the /ɪ/ in "think". Compare how "Nahkriin," "Dovahkiin" and "Zahkriisos" are pronounced in-game as opposed to "Ahzidal," "Dilon" and "Alduin." Then try comparing the "i"-s in there with the English short /ɪ/ in "think" and long "i" in "see".
• "ir" and "ur" are again diverse from one another, as well as neither being pronounced as /É›r/. Considering in-game pronunciation, they are likely not even phonemes of themselves, but simply combinations of /i/, /i:/, /u/ or /u:/ with /r/. The "ir" is simply /ir/ (as in "Egvir") or /i:r/ (as in the final syllable of "Durnehviir"), and "ur" is simply /ur/ (first syllable in "Durnehviir") or /u:r/ (as in "Gravuun"). This can often be difficult for English native speakers to grasp due to the nature of most English "r"-s and the way they affect the word they appear in, but it comes naturally to speakers of germanic or slavic languages - and considering Dovahzul was made as an ancient language with a very "nordic" sound, I believe the way "r" behaves in Swedish, Norwegian or even Old English should be closer to it than modern English. By extension, the /ɪəʳ/ and /ʊəʳ/ presented on the Thuum.org learn page (link above) are anglicisations of the /r/ that appears in Dovahzul, which is at least a tap, if not trill, as opposed to the English approximant. The schwa /É™/ in /ɪəʳ/ and /ʊəʳ/ is entirely redundant and to my knowledge spoken in-game only by characters unfamiliar with the language istelf - the only example I can recall is when the souls in the Soul Cairn tell the Dragonborn to "beware the dragon Durnehviir," in which case at least on one occasion they pronounce the name as /dÉ›:nevɪəʳ/ instead of the correct (judged correct based on it being pronounced such by Durnehviir himself and Dovahkiin when summoning him) would be /durneÊ°vi:r/.
• "oo" is confusing, as it sometimes appears as a long vowel something between /o:/ and /u:/ as in "Joor" and "Yol-Toor-Shul", and at other times as a clear long /o:/, as seen is "Enook" and "Pook". Personally, I believe it was intended as the latter, since Dovahzul already has a long /u:/ in the form of "uu", and sometimes also "u", so having a third way to write the same phoneme is redundant.

That's it for the table, I'll review the rest when I have the time. If you have any questions, comments etc. let me know. :)

paarthurnax

• On the alphabet page, "Sometimes referred to as Dragonish, Dragon Tongue, Draconian or simply Dovah". Referred by whom? It is only ever referred to as the "dragon language" or "language of dragons" in-game.

The skill of speaking to Dragonlings was called Dragonish in TES II: Daggerfall. The term "Dragon Tongue" is used frequently in Skyrim to describe the language, although a specific example escapes me at the moment. Dovah should be changed to "Dovah speech" (said by Odahviing during his imprisonment) or removed, and someone PLEASE remove "Draconian!" It burns my eyes!