Drow language
The Drow language is the language of the Drow, a people often imprecisely referred to as Dark Elves. The Drow live in the Underdark of the Forgotten Realms (a game world of the Dungeons & Dragons RPG; they also exist in several other Dungeons & Dragons settings) and are descendants of Elves who were cast out because they worshipped the evil spider goddess Lolth.
There are actually two Drow languages. Common Drow or Low Drow is the language described in TSR's Drow Dictionary and various web sites based thereon. It is a language with a simple grammatical structure not far removed from English, designed to be used easily by non-native speakers (extrafictionally, by roleplayers who play Drow characters). High Drow, designed by Jashan A'al, uses the same vocabulary, but has a much more elaborate grammar. It is an agglutinating language, typologically comparable (but not related) to Quenya, with nine noun cases and a set of formal personal pronouns used to address persons of higher rank.
Low Drow
Any closer look at the grammar of Low Drow will reveal that the language is actually a relex of English. The grammatical categories are exactly the same and are expressed in ways precisely parallel to the corresponding English categories, imitating even such English idiosyncrasies as the marking of the third person singular on verbs and the homophony of past tense and past participle.
Morphology
Low Drow is a mostly analytical language, inflecting words for the same categories as English.
Nouns
Nouns are marked for plural with the suffix -en (after consonant) or -n (after vowel). The only case besides the unmarked form is the possessive, which is formed by a suffix -s. If the noun already ends in /s/, the form is not changed, but an apostrophe is written.
Adjectives
The comparative is formed with -ur, the superlative with -url.
Verbs
The third person singular of the verb carries a suffix -e. The past tense is marked with a suffix -us; the same form is also the past participle. The future is expressed by the auxiliary verb orn and the uninflected form of the verb. A set of perfect tenses is formed with inbal 'to have' and past participle. The passive is expressed with 'to be' and past participle.
High Drow
| Drow Ilythiiri | |
| Spoken in: | The Underdark |
| Timeline/Universe: | Forgotten Realms |
| Total speakers: | |
| Genealogical classification: | Tel'Quessir
|
| Basic word order: | |
| Morphological type: | fusional |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | accusative |
| Created by: | |
| Jashan A'al | |
High Drow is a richly inflected language, and to be considered the true language the Drow use among themselves, while Low Drow is a sort of contact language.
The language shows an unmistakable similarity to Quenya in its grammatical typology, though no phyletic relationship to that language - that is spoken in a completely different world, anyway - can be discerned. It sounds much less mellifluously than Quenya, though.
Phonology
Consonants
The High Drow language has 24 consonant phonemes, tabulated below. The transcription conventions are given in angle brackets. The phoneme /ks/ is, of course, not really a velar affricate; it is placed in its cell for convenience.
| Labial | Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops | Unaspirated | p <> | t <d> | k <g> | ||||
| Aspirated | pʰ <p> | tʰ <t> | kʰ <k> | |||||
| Affricates | Voiceless | pf <ph> | ts <ss> | tʃ <ch> | ks <x> | |||
| Voiced | dʒ <j> | |||||||
| Fricatives | Voiceless | f <f> | s <s> | ʃ <sh> | h <h> | |||
| Voiced | v <v> | z <z> | ʒ <jh, zh> | |||||
| Nasals | m <m> | n <n> | ||||||
| Liquids | l <l> | ʀ <r> | ||||||
| Semivowels | w <w> | j <y> | ||||||
Vowels
The Drow language has seven monophthongs:
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i, ii | u, uu | |
| Mid | e | o | |
| Low | a |
The relationship of /ii/ and /uu/ to /i/ and /u/ varies from dialect to dialect. In some dialects, /ii/ is [wi] and /uu/ is [wu]; in others, the distinction is one between tense and lax.
The vowels transcribed <aa> and <ee> are long vowels. Diphthongs are /au/, /ui/, /ue/ and a rare /ou/, the latter not considered a diphthong by native grammarians.
External links
- Drow Dictionary ("Low" Drow)
- A grammar sketch and a small list of words and proverbs (seems to be the same as above)
- A translator
- A lesson set
- Talentha Ilythiiri ("High" Drow by Jashan A'al)
