As Paarthurnax told me I'm going to open a thread for my Bachelor Thesis in Skyrim's dragon language I'm going to do this semestre in Communication Design. So you can see what my ideas and plans are and what I want to do exactly. I hope you can also help me with that! :3

well…
as I already told: I'm currently doing research about the language and everything that has to do with it. So here are the first thoughts I wrote down before I met up with my prof:
(I guess this is going to be pretty looooong now)
 

I. WHY DRAGON LANGUAGE AS BACHELOR THESIS?

• I bought the game in Dezember 2011 because I got interested in it (note: I haven’t played the other Elder Scrolls games)
• the game has (wonderful looking) dragons so that was the main point why I decided to buy it
• as soon as you come to the greybeards (and later meeting Paarthurnax) to learn about the dragon shouts my interest for the dragon language has grown
  -> decisive point to inform more about it

• I looked up some fan sites and forums to see if there are others who wanted to learn it (at the beginning there weren't many words) and later I found Thu’um.org :D
• Ithe idea came to my mind to make books about the language itself with grammar, dictionary, all informations about it ect.
   

II. FIRST THOUGHTS

Note:
My main idea since it came to my mind to do something with the language was to make a book (or more) that tells about the dragon language, how you can learn to speak and write + a dictionary. The main source for it would be Thu'um.org because it has already so much material!
But all what follows now is not set yet – these are just some possible points for the books – if I'm really going to do them at the end of my research. I also have already some titles in my mind for them and how the books could look like. But layout and design is the last thing I want to concentrate on so I left it out.

CONTENT:

determination if everything will be in English or German (since I’m german but I'm still undecided)

Book I (in no specific order yet)

• introduction of the language
• appearance and purpose in the game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
  for example: learning the dragon shouts and their meaning, name of the dragons and their meaning
• the dragon alphabet
• explanations of how to learn the language (grammar, pronounciation, numbers ect. + examples – maybe english grammar too, if it's going to be in german)
• comparing the language to other real languages (other writing systems, constructed languages, linguistics, acoustic sound)?
• ingame-texts & books about dragon language (e.g. word walls)
• ? mention of other fictional languages in Skyrim/Elder Scrolls; e.g. Falmer, Dwarven or Daedra?
• ? attachment: game dialogues with dragon language?
• ? attachment: standart sentences, questions/answers for a quick overview (I mean the ’Dragon Language 101 - Basic Conversation & Common Phrases’ lesson) ?
   

Book II (workbook)

• exercises to write the language (with pictures from the game like word walls)
• various grammatical exercises (like here Thu'um.org)
• practise how to write the single characters (since we are no dragons) <- like how you learn to write katakana characters (maybe using a calligraphy pen? ect.)
• attachment: solutions
   

Book III (bi-lingual dictionary)

• all (insofar as existing) words in dragon language and their translation (as it is on the site’s dictionary)
  - dragonfont & normal writing, translation, other informations (noun, verb, adjective, male or female ect.)
  - information if primary, secondary, tertiary or quarternary words
   

FONT:

• already exists, so no need to create one for it
• but how would it look like in handwritten? -> create a new font in handwritten style?
   

TARGET GROUP:

• mainly people interested in Skyrim/(RPG-)Gamer in general
• people interested in (constructed) languages
• people interested in dragons and their mythology?

_____________________________________________________________

 

So these were my first thoughts and last monday I had the first meeting with my prof and told him about it (he must think of me that I'm a super nerd + he did not know Skyrim so it was pretty hard to explain him everything) and he gave me some points I should go/look after. He also told me to make a mind map aka 'field of research' so I can have a better overview of everything that has to do with it. With that I can narrow it down to the points I want to do later (but I think I already have done that and will tell after listing the points and the map).
 

A) ON THE VIEW OF THE DESIGN:

Which real writing systems are similar?

• (personal) some of them remind of some katakana (japanese) characters
• cuneiform (horizontal, vertical and slanting cotters)
• Runes (carved in stone)
• …
   

B) SYSTEM SIMILARITIES:

Other constructed languages:

• Quenya und Sindarin, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Ring’s
• Klingon, Star Trek
• Mando’a/Mandalorian, Star Wars
• Dothraki, Game of Thrones
• Al Bhed,Final Fantasy X/X-2
   
• braille alphabet?
   

C) LINGUISTIC VIEW:

How would you classify the semiotic system as a linguist? (don't have anyting for it yet)

• …
•  

What is a transcription? (don't have anyting for it yet)

• …
   

Who has created the writing system?

• once they created a language for the game (mainly for the shouts and the theme song) they wanted to have a writing system as well to get the shouts visible (word walls) in the game
• Adam Adamowicz, Concept Artist, Bethesda, created the dragon font fort he language (sadly died in 2012 so I can't ask him aabout it anymore D:)
  -> should look like dragons had carved it into stone with their claws
   

D) ACOUSTIC:

Sound examples:

• in the game: dragons do speak words and sometimes whole sentences
• own character can shout in dragon language after learing them
• enemies like draugrs and dragon priests say some words in dragon language and use dragon shouts, too
• some npc’s (e.g. greybeards) have knowledge of how to speak the language
   

Rules for pronounciation:

• the website already has some rules I’d use
• I found out some words sound a bit different in my language (german) for example the pronounciation of "Th"
• 'the vocal pronunciation is very earthy, heavy, and sharp by focusing on the hard sounds of letters like D, R, K, & V' (http://www.giantbomb.com/thuum/3015-6677/)
   

Does it sound similar to other languages? (I'd need help here from people with knowledge of these and other languages)

• maybe old nordic languages (nord germanic)?
• Keltic?
• russian?
• …
   

Who created to pronounciation?

• as far as I found out: Emil Pagliarulo, (Senior) Video Game Designer, works for Bethesda since 2002
• The language was created to have the same words rhyme in both English and Dragon language
   

Are there fans who do speak among each other?

• well there’s this wonderful website :D (Thu’um.org),
• self created poems, short texts, translations
• facebook pages/forums
• I've seen that some internet users do write every now and them some sentences just for fun (with grammer maybe totally wrong)
• on Youtube people try to explain how you can learn the language
   

E) SOCIAL:

Which community uses the game?

• fans of the Elder Scrolls series, (Action)-Role-Play interested people
• PC-, PS3-, Xbox-gamer
• both men and women (tho I think the majority are men) | age: ca. 12 – 50 years?
• mainly internet: forums, fansites, facebook ect.
• cosplayers/(game-)convention-visitors
  and other questions like if the game was released worldwide or not? is it well known or not? ect. I thought I could let that out because theses are more statistics

and >>here<< is the mind map as a link because it's to big for the thread window
 

I think I’ll still stick to:

• appearance/purpose in the game
• linguistics
• social
• and maybe dragons in the game

… since my intention was to make books about learning the language (the rest would be background knowlegde for questions or for my documentation then).

Everything on the mind map is really interesting to me – for example I'm interested, too in the other alphabets and languages used in The Elder Scrolls. But there aren’t many words or the complete transcription is missing. Only the dragon language does have it and it seems there are more fans concentrating on learing the dragon language than the others – tho it seems it’s only a small group of it. So I thought it wouldn't make much sense to concentrate on the other languages, too. Maybe just mention one or two of them?

About other constructed languages:
I don’t feel like doing a book about all the fictional languages for games/movies/series ect. at all. It would be way too much and I’m not a linguist. I flipped through a bit Sindarin and Quenya and didn’t understand a single word (maybe because I’m not into lotr… lol). Only thing I would do: to find out if there are similarities of usage among the fans and maybe in grammar of both languages (but I doubt that). And for this I definitely need to speak/write with fans of created languages and lotr (same would go for Klingon and other languages too). But somehow I don't want to pick this point as a main part of my work…

Comparing the language to other similar real scripts and real languages is also pretty much a pain in the ass.
Sure there are some scripts like the Cuneiform that may have been an inspiration for the dragon alphabet but that’s it – or did I miss something? I can't see similarties when comparing single characters of them. Just how they look like (I mean the wedges – if that's the right word for it) is similar. And I some katakana characters do look similar to some dragon alphabet characters (e.g. the "a" in dragon language looks similar to the japanese katakana character "so" -> ソ). And about the old nordic runes: well they were carved into stone.

I also can’t find similar sounding words or some that mean the same in other languages, tho I heard some icelandic words sounding similiar to some words in dragon but this must be a coincidence. I also would need help here from people who have knowledge about languages that may sound similar to the dragon language and know about linguistics, too if I want that point to be a main part of my work. But If they are just some inspirations and there is no big similarity to other languages (what I guess) I can leave that out as well.
Side note: I also thought about writing an email to Bethesda about what inspirations they had on the dragon language - still not sure if I should do it or not.

and the whole history of Tamriel is also waaaaay too much ha ha ha.
Only thing I’d like to mention is about the history, culture and legends of the dragons in Tamriel since it’s their language I’m concentrating on.
But not too much of it since learing the language should be the focus!

the greyish part in the bottom left corner is also an interesting point but would be a complete new own theme to me, that's why I made it grey and not that important
but I wrote it down nonetheless since it's also very interesting which existing content was an inspiration for the game.

_______________________________


Well I hope you can all understand what I wrote down since English is not my native language and I suck pretty much when it comes to correct grammar.
If there's something what is not really clear for you: feel free to ask me again and I'll try to explain it better!

So I'm nearly at the end of creating this massive post now but I still have some questions left to the users here:

• Does someone of you know other writing scripts (or single characters) that look alike the dragon alphabet characters?
• Which other languages could be an inspiration for the pronounciation of the dragon language? (In a german forum I'm registered someone said Bretonic would be one but I doubt that)
• Why did you choose to learn the dragon language? Was ist for understanding the dragons in the game or other reasons (e.g. just for fun, interested in languages, roleplay)?
• Do you know other websites where users write/post their own written texts/stories/poems in dragon language?

man I don't know why but it logged me out when I hit the send button so it's posted anonymous now and I can't edit it anymore D:

anyways I wanted to add:
thank you for reading and thank you in advance for any help I can hopefully get here!

Greetings,
Chevvy

Sorry about that!  If it's idle for a while it'll automaically log people out - it's an issue I'm working on fixing.

aah okay I thought it would be that. well I'm glad it still has been posted then!

On topic: sehr schön!  We have lessons that might be able to help you out.  A lot of the content you'll find here is user-created.  There is not much information about the Dragon Language in the game apart from the limited vocabulary they provide.

I've handwriten some of the language here, and plan on doing a lesson on writing as well as maybe making a font out of it too!

Once you begin writing I'd be glad to feature it on the front page!  This all sounds very interesting!

Eine Frage, wirst du dein Buch auf Deutsch öder auf Englisch schreiben?  Glaubst du dass wir ein Drache-Deutsch Wörterbuch auch haben sollten?  Deutsch und die Drachensprache sind mehr gleich als Englisch und die Drachensprach.  Entschuldige für mein Deutsch, lol!

Yeah, I think I might use a lot of the content here that's on the website and sure I need to mention that a big part of it is user-created. can you tell me what of all the grammar is self-created and what is exactly from Bethesda? They kept it pretty similar, so I doubt there was much grammar existing?

ah yeah I've seen that handwritten diary picture on tumblr! your writing looks really nice. what kind of pen did you use for it?

haha no your German is pretty damn good! Wie kommt es, dass du Deutsch so gut kannst?

Well, I mentioned it somewhere above that I haven't decided about yet if I'll do it in English or German (or maybe both)… there are pros and cons for both…

English would be better since I've read the dragon language is based on English grammar but I'm not 100% fluent with English so I'd need somebody to look over it before printing the whole thing at the end (and of course people all over the world could buy and understand it if I find a publisher who would print it (and Bethesda has nothing against that)).

and German grammar is a bit different, so it would probably be a bit harder to explain the grammar of the dragon language because I need to explain English grammar first? Idk…
But it would be easier for me to write everything in German D:

I'm also not sure how much I'll write on my own because I'm not a linguist.
I'm going to be a bachelor of arts at the end so I want and need to concentrate on layout, design, maybe advertising to draw other people's interest for the language ect. also (well a bit more).

And I really hope some users here who read my points can help me out since I've a bunch of questions left. Well I'd be glad about some help.
I only have time until June or July and I want to begin as soon as possible with creating everything in Indesign. Next Tuesday I'll meet again with my prof to see how far I've come until then.

So hopefully I get some new information/content about it and some people here might answer my questions or have some other interesting facts about the language I haven't listed yet.

I've also posted the same questions on a german forum but it seems no one's really interested in it…

oh and almost forgot: I don't think you'll need a german/dragon here since it's based on english

Everything here is canon, which isn't very much apart from the vocabulary.  A short list:

• Repeating the last letter and adding "e" makes a plural noun.
• "-i", "-ii", and "-u" are used for possessive suffixes ("bormahu" = "our father")
• "-aan" is used to make present perfect tense ("wahlaan" = "has built").

The last one isn't explicitly stated but it's derived from the Word Walls and dialogue.  Everything else in the lessons is expounding upon the canon language.  There's nothing we've come up with that outright contradicts canon, but we've had to invent some grammar rules to make the language usable and speakable.

Danke!  Ich habe Deutsch im Schule gelernt.  Lustig, dass ich bin aus ein Stadt dass heisst "Germantown". :P  Ich liebe Deutsch, wegen ich alle Sprachen sehr interessant finden.  Das ist warrum ich liebe die Drachensprache auch!

I just updated my research field. well there's nothing really new on it but I narrowed it down to the main part now and what's going to be in the documentation because of different colours now.

you can see it >>here<<

and my prof somehow thinks that the actual dragon font (or it's radicals) doesn't look really nice when you see the letters in big. I told him it looks like that because it is "carved into stone". But he pleased me nontheless to overwork it a bit to make it look more 'clean' (means i fixed some dents).

>>here<< is the before and after
and >>here<< is one that is more 'edged'
I just did this in Indesign, because I haven't a programm for editing fonts yet.

Well I didn't like the idea at the beginning but now I like the more edged look somehow.
And I thought it would indeed look better to have a more 'clean' one for witing on pc (or having in my books).

And I'm still thinking about how the font would look like in a handwritten font.
I tried out writing with a calligraphy fountain pen and it look's nice so far. I'll post a picture next time.

The "clean" font looks neat, would you be willing to share it for us to use as well?  We'd love to see your handwriting as well!

wanna say:

im portuguese and i dont think dragon language has ANYTHING to do with portuguese, because we dont have "th", we almost never use "h", and we usualy use it on the beginig of special words, but its not readed, it has absulutly nothing to do with english of dragon.

We also use diferent use "lh"(like spanish "ll" i think is not used in english), "nh((like spanish "ñ" i think is not used in english)""ch"(like english"sh")

We also use the letter "r" (exemple:"lar"="home") as you say it in "car", but we use "rr" (exemple:"carro"="car") sounding like a "scratched" "r", i cant explain it very well

also the "s" is used as "z"(in english) while "ss" is used as "s"(in english too) 

In the mean while i find the grammar a little bit different as we use

I love                     -as- eu amo

you love               -as- tu amas

he love                 -as- ele ama

we love                -as- nós amamos

you (plural) love -as- vós amais

they love              -as- eles amam

---------------------------------------

as you see, portuguese has a word for each prounoun there is in each time there is wich is nothing like english or dragon

Sorry for the long answer but this is a reason to exclude portuguese in the list of lenguages that have anything to do with dragon

thx for your post fowlron!
Yeah I could exlude a whole lot of languages from the beginning including all romance languages, too (I've learned French and Spanisch, to obut nearly have forgotten the most of it but I know the grammar is completely different to english and also to the dragon language).

Only ones that sounds similar to it may have been most of all germanic languages.
The one that inspired Emil Pagliarulo the most has been Old English (he said it in the making of Skyrim). I've found some videos on Youtube where someone reads Beowulf and The Wanderer in Old English and to me the pronounciation of some words sound similar with the ones in dragon language.

This is amazing. I can't believe (and am incredibly jealous) that your professor is letting you do this. Wow.

There's no need to be jealous! xD
It's an incredibly amount of work… I never thought it would be so much information all around the dragon language. every day I feel like I haven't come really far..

Well last sunday I teached myself Glyph's and tried to make the redesign of the dragon font (the edgy look without any round curves).
Here are some screenshots.

just did the capitals (lowercase will be the same as the capitals)
and the extra characters for AA, EI, UU ect (which you can't actualyl see in the screens, sry) but I don't know how to get that key combination working for them. I don't like it to give them the keys 1-9 for some reason and wanted to try out if it could work like when you write japanese kanas. but I haven't figured it out yet…
I thought also of using the letters ä, ö and ü but this is also not a good option. guess I need to stick with 1-9 then…

while creating every letter/character I just figured out the whole dragon font wasn't that good designed (ingluding all these dents). well hard to explain… every single line/radical was on a different position and there are def. some characters (like A and O) that share some same lines and they are on the same position. So I tried to fix that to make the font look better and cleaner. (see also picture 3 where you can see the original one in grey behind it. the lower horizontal line is more lower. I put it up so it lines up preseicly with the right line).

This looks very nice and clean!  Would you be able to share the font with us when you're finished?