Draconic was the language of dragons. Dragons called their language Glav (meaning "speech/converse"), and it used its own distinct alphabet, called Iokharic. Draconic is thought to be one of the oldest languages and is often used in the study of magic. Other native speakers included members of draconic-related races, such as kobolds and dragonborn, and members of reptilian races such as lizardfolk and troglodytes. The language was also used as a primary means of arcane notation throughout Duryad.
Writing System
The Draconic alphabet, Iokharic, has 27 letters. Because of this, a simple mapping between Iokharic and the Roman alphabet is possible (using an apostrophe for the extra letter). Many digraphs are used to express the diverse sounds in just 27 letters, and there is not a precise one-to-one mapping between letter sequences and sounds.
When writing in Roman letters, hyphens are often used to separate morphemes in compound words. There is no such equivalent in the native Iokharic script; compound words are simply written with nothing between the morphemes. Distinct words are usually separated by extra space, as with other languages. Draconic is usually written left to right, with one sentence per line. Very short sentences may be written on one line, separated by a large amount of space. If a sentence is too long to fit on one line, it will be wrapped and indented.
The Draconic language has a rich phonology, with more contrasting sounds than in English, though there are fewer vowels. The voiceless stops constrast aspirated and non-aspirated forms, and some consonants have contrasting labialized forms. Length is contrasting both in vowels and in some consonants.
Draconic follows a subject-object-verb structure and favours phrases with few component words and long paragraphs with many sentences. That said, it builds a lot of compound words, which means that each of the words in that sentence might be very long. For instance, adjectives are added as suffixes to its noun. And draconic is very fond of its adjectives.
The language sounds harsh to most other creatures and includes numerous hard consonants and sibilants.
