Toasterbot959

What about semi-canon?

Semi-canon words will belong to the legacy dictionary along with the rest of the invented vocabulary.

I'm going to start off by saying that I'm sorry. I'm tired as I write this, but I'll forget when I'm better-rested. There's going to be silly errors everywhere (grammar, disagreeing sentences, etc), and for that I am sorry.  Hopefully I'll be called out for any major errors, at least.

I personally support the decision to move away from the non-canon vocabulary. Being new to the language, I've had a mess of a time trying to learn the non-canon words on Memrise (which I would imagine are outdated). Plenty of the non-canon words are a jumble of letters or appear too similar to me, and it makes distinguishing them difficult, let alone retaining the words long-term. Granted, this is likely partially my fault for not looking for root words, but I digress.

As for the evolution of natural language, that seems to be keyed to societal evolution. A language's vocabulary changes with its society to accomodate shifting technologies, industries, mindsets, and so forth. A society itself changes for a number of reasons, but the biggest seems to be the cycling of its population. With the superb lifespans of dragons I don't think such a cycle would occur to warrant a cultural or societal change within the dragon population, and thus the language itself would be pretty static. Rather, I think at most the non-canon words would be a sort of slang created by the mortal races for some reason or another. I'm no lexiconagrapher nor a linguist, but it seems like slang is only added to a dictionary when it becomes culturally significant — which, to the dragons would likely be never.

The omission from an official dictionary never stopped slang from being used, it just means the word is not officially recognized. Just look at the English language and the establishment of Urban Dictionary. Even though the non-canon words are being removed, I doubt it's intended to stop their use entirely (else why archive them) and instead the focus is simple maintenance. Imagine if we tried adding all of the Urban Dictionary words to a dictionary, it'd be utter chaos. Instead, Urban Dictionary gave a method of saying "here's a word, here's my definition." A similar system could potentially be put in place, even if it's just a forum thread for people to add words for compilation into a master post.

While I would love to see this language develop and thrive, it needs to be done with some level of monitoring and guidance, otherwise the non-canon vocabulary is liable to become a nightmare. I'd love to see many words translated over but a question remains: would such words even make sense in Skyrim's dragon culture? A language needs to be robust so as to give freedom and meaning, but the intent needs to stay intact — this is meant as a language for a very specific, fictional culture.

And I think that's where the slang comes in; there's going to be words that some people want added, even if there's little justification to include it in the language itself. Canon words need to be monitored to make sure they obey whatever linguistical guidelines there my be, but non-canon 'slang 'words don't necessarily need such restrictions. Ultimately, though, the question arises on how to manage such non-canon words? Certainly slang adds much work in all current and future maintenance and development. Certainly such a burden shouldn't be placed on the site staff. Perhaps establishing some sort of community system for crowd-monitoring non-canon word development... but even developing such a system and ensuring its use is as intended is an effort in and of itself.

Honestly, I am just pleased to see that these words won't be thrown away and instead archived. Outside of that, anything else is uncessary in my opinion. Appreciated, for sure, but unecessary. If nothing else, start small and expand later, ja?

I look forward to Dovahzul and Thuum.org's future, whatever that may entail.

So is modern still a thing or no?

Khajiit Thief

So is modern still a thing or no?

No, modern vocabulary will not be included in the new dictionary. It's possible that modern vocabulary (pointing to closest canon equivalents) may enter the English-Dragon dictionary at some later point.

Ok

Toasterbot959

What about semi-canon?

Also, are the non-canon words invalid or just unsupported?

Dremserah

Toasterbot959

What about semi-canon?

Also, are the non-canon words invalid or just unsupported?

Just unsupported. You're free to use them as you see fit. Future lessons, contests, and other content will not make use of the legacy dictionary going forward.

Perfekto.