Pain. Fury. Rage. I'm not really seeing those as being interjections. If you take an ice spike to the chest I don't think you'd shout "faaz!" Maybe another word that begins with F but... :)

Vokun Raaviir

Pain. Fury. Rage. I'm not really seeing those as being interjections. If you take an ice spike to the chest I don't think you'd shout "faaz!" Maybe another word that begins with F but... :)

It's important not to interpret words solely on the English translations that are given. The dragon language is a different language from English, and its words are used in different ways.

Here are examples of in-game dialogue and official translation notes from the dialogue files:

Faaz! Nah!
"Pain, fury!" = "damn you!"
(Odahviing, 000D2D72)

So this is how you defeated Alduin. Ruth... zu'u ni Alduin.
Zu'u ni Alduin = “I (am) not Alduin.”
(Odahviing, 000D2D73)

Ruth wah nivahriin joor!
Rage/curses to (you) cowardly mortal!
(Alduin, 000C64F1)

Faaz, nah, and ruth can all be used to express anger or frustration.

Indeed "swearwords" already exist in Dovahzul - fitting ones. I do appreciate your will to contribute and your effort, but lets try to think like dragons too - after all it is their language and their mindset to which we have to adapt we cant just translate english words and phrases as they represent the english mindset.

To give you an example what i mean. If i translate the german phrase "auf dem Holzweg sein" into english: beeing on the wooden path you would likely have no idea the hell i am saying. You gotta be in the german mindset of fast forrests where the path the woodcutters take end in dead ends and can be a real pain if you are travelling as you can get lost easily if you follow the wrong paths - and thus the saying is created, if you are on the wood path you are wrong, following the wrong way. 

Another short example would be the german word for vacuum cleaner - dust sucker, cause it sucks dust. In english this may get quite offensive in german it aint.

And here keep in mind that english and german share the very same language origins, are two very very closely related languages and influenced each other since the dark ages. Dovahzul is not only a different language that has no roots whatsoever in english, not only doesnt it belong to any similiar culture it belongs to an entirely different race with entirely different needs and thoughts. I am pretty sure dov dont have issues like aging, mortality, getting sick or having hair loss, their mind doesnt circle around sex and procreation, they dont bump their toe on tables, they dont fear the woods in the dark, they dont have to deal with disobedient children or the death of their parents, they neither get dead drunk nor step on lego - and we have to take that into account when creating their language. Dovahzul aint just another human language from another human culture, it is entirely different from what we know and we are lucky that it at least uses sounds that human mouths can reproduce

Thus inventing more swearwords is not the yellow of the egg (another german phrase for something thats not the best) as i dont think dov have a need for more swearing that they already have. Swearing is, from my perspective, more a human thing.

I mean imagine if Alduin was a human - the dialogues would likely be much more focused on insulting the dragonborn, wouldnt they?

It is the language of dragons, I agree, and it has become very humanized. The first time I came to this site the first words I saw when I was flipping through the dictionary were "airplane" and "iPhone" and other words I felt never really belonged. I am sure many others would agree. 

But I also believe that humans do have a role in the language of dragons. The Dragon Cult worshipped them, was taught by them and obeyed their will. Then man rose when our friend Paarthy revealed the secrets of the Thu'um to Jorgen Windcaller. Through the history of Skyrim we learned that man is indeed capable of learning, using, and even creating thier own Shouts. If they can understand the language, why shouldn't they play a role in expanding it in their own forms? I speak of the non-canon words the community spews out at times. We are representing the human's ability in The Elder Scrolls, are we not?

I see why you want to do some major Spring Cleaning, it is the right choice. But is there no way to still keep non-canon words? Maybe not by the community but by your little Sunday study group? 

Yolos Vith

You are absolutely right that humans have an influence on the dragon language. Sometimes it can be hard to tell where that influence begins and ends! It's safe to assume that many words in the dragon language may be loanwords from an ancient Nordic language, or vice versa.

Starting anew, we want to bring the focus back to the dragon language as it was intended to be used - an ancient language seeped in history and meaning, fit for songs, poetry, and tales. That doesn't mean there can't be any invented words, but that they will need to be carefully considered.

The current dictionary will be available in a "legacy dictionary", so you will still be able to use the old vocabulary if you so choose.

Excellent. I'll get to work on a new thread about Ancient Nord History soon. 

Perhaps the community can yet be distracted from all this. Not that they shouldn't know, but might need some easing in.

That actually brings me again to old Norse / icelandic an "ancient language seeped in history and meaning fit for songs, poetry and tales" as one of the biggest story collections of mankind was written in Old Norse and the icelanders wrote the most literature of all countries in the last 1000 years mainly in form of Sagas.

And the icelanders dont want foreign words in their language thus they have an annual meeting where a council decides how to describe a necessary word like computer or car, for which there is no old norse origin, in a way that it is a new icelandic word. You should really look into this as it is a source of great inspiration how a language can adapt to the new world without creating completly new words, just using the ones they already have

i can offer an example from a similiar german movement - in german the word "kino" which has no german meaning whatsoever was created to describe a cinema. However the actual german (original and not used any more) version was "Lichtspielhaus" which translates as light play house - cause it is a house where light plays theatre. 

And i guess we could invent many words for modern things in dovahzul in a similiar way

Orkar Isber

And i guess we could invent many words for modern things in dovahzul in a similiar way

This is how we create modern words nowadays (modern words can only be formed from existing vocabulary). After the dictionary update there will be no modern words because we want to keep it rooted in The Elder Scrolls, but people could still form words this way on their own.

I really like the idea. To go from 6000 words to about 600 will make learning so much easyer. But you must be careful about how you do it. 600 words in a vocabulary is not much, and with few words, it can end up sound funny...

Doraak

I really like the idea. To go from 6000 words to about 600 will make learning so much easyer. But you must be careful about how you do it. 600 words in a vocabulary is not much, and with few words, it can end up sound funny...

Yup, it will sound funny to us as English speakers. Our goal with this is to really start treating the language as its own entity, independent of whatever English sensibilites we might bring with us. As people who are already using canon-only vocabulary may attest, limiting ourselves to those 600 words helps enforce the language's archaic and colorful style, which is really hard to teach when word-for-word translations of English exist.

In the other direction, the new "strong adjective" / "weak adjective" system coming with the dictionary update will allow for a lot of flexibility that doesn't currently exist. For example, sahlo "weak" can also be used to mean "weakly," "weakness," or "to weaken." So there'll be fewer words, but much more that we can do with them.

Doraak

I really like the idea. To go from 6000 words to about 600 will make learning so much easyer. But you must be careful about how you do it. 600 words in a vocabulary is not much, and with few words, it can end up sound funny...

If you think 600 is too few, have a look at Toki Pona which has just 120.