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.

Phonology

The phonology of Low Drow is not specified in the Drow Dictionary, but one probably does not err much if one pronounces the language as given for High Drow below.

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.

Syntax

Low Drow has a basic word order Subject Verb Object (SVO), and presumably follows the same syntactic patterns as English.

High Drow

Drow Ilythiiri
Spoken in:	The Underdark
Timeline/Universe:	Forgotten Realms
Total speakers:
Genealogical classification:	Tel'Quessir Drow
Basic word order:
Morphological type:	agglutinating/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 <b>	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.

Morphology

Nouns

High Drow distinguishes between inanimate and animate nouns, which are declined differently. The inanimate nouns form their plural in -a and are thus also called "A-class" nouns. Most animate nouns form their plural in -en, -in or -n and are thus called "N-class" nouns. A few animate nouns pluralize irregularly in the nominative-accusative; all of them refer to Drow or other Elven beings. In the other cases, they pluralize like N-class nouns. Besides the normal plural, there is a partitive plural, which expresses that the referents belong to a larger group.

There are nine noun cases: nominative, accusative (mostly the same form as the nominative), dative, genitive, possessive, allative, ablative, locative, instrumental. The difference in meaning between the genitive and the possessive is similar to that of their counterparts in Quenya, or the partitive and genitive in Old Albic: the possessive expresses possession or ownership, the genitive a more general notion of origin, composition or association.

	A-class che'el 'city'			N-class dalhar 'child'
	Singular	Plural	Partitive plural	Singular	Plural	Partitive plural
Nom./Acc.	che'el	che'ela	che'elau	dalhar	dalharin	sshadalhar
Dative	che'elesh	che'elesha	che'elsshau	dalharassh	sshasalhar	sshadalharassh
Genitive	che'eles	che'elesa	che'elesau	dalharass	ssadalhar	sshadalharass
Possessive	che'eles	che'elesa	che'elesau	dalharassre	ssradalhar	sshadalharassre

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)