For use in Dungeons and Dragons games. Pronunciation Guide, Grammar Rules, and Translating Tips below.
*NOTE: For dungeon masters and druid players only! This language is meant to be kept secret from other classes.
*This is a work in progress, but you're welcome to use what is available.
PRONUNCIATION GUIDE:
-Uppercase vowels make their long sounds (Ate, Ear, Ice, Opal, JUne)
-Lowercase vowels make their short sounds (apple, elephant, interesting, octopus, umbrella)
-"r" makes the "er" sound, and "R" makes a normal "R" sound
-"Q" makes the vowel sound found in "book" (there's a different letter for it that isn't found in a standard keyboard)
-"C" makes the "ch" sound
-"RR" makes a rolling R sound (front of mouth)
-"G" makes a growling sound in the back of the throat (this may be difficult to begin with because hardly any languages use this sound and your tongue will be unused to it)
-Vowels in parentheses are accented. If no parenthesis, then the accent falls on the first vowel
-Repeated vowels will repeat their sound instead of being longer or making a different sound ("uu" will be pronounced "uh-uh" and "oo" will be pronounced "ah-ah")
-Uncertainties rise in pitch like a question, and are otherwise formed as statements, without words such as "maybe"
-Emphasized words in sentence and exclamatory sentences are to be underlined instead of italicizing or using exclamation marks
GRAMMAR RULES:
*Plural-suffix Q
*Possessive-suffix Z/eZ on the possession, NOT the possessor (oM ENZ=my light)
*To change a noun to verb-prefix a/aN
*To change a noun to adjective-suffix a/aN
*To change a verb to adjective-suffix aZ/Za
*To change noun to doer of noun/verb-prefix Z/Ze (Cult=URuCEN, Cultist=ZURuCEN)
*Derogative form-suffix G
*Nouns go in front of adjectives
*Instead of periods and commas, dashes are used. The length of the dash shows how long the pause is (short dash=comma, long dash=period, longer dash=ellipsis or something similar)
*Quotes should be indicated by bracketing the speaker's name before the quote, and ending with a period ([John] Why is druidic so confusing.)
TRANSLATING TIPS ENGLISH TO DRUIDIC:
*In English, there are many words for the same thing. In druidic, there is one word for many things. You may need to approximate a synonym if there is not an exact word for what you're looking for.
*Also, many words are made up of other words. Dragon is "air lizard". Bird is "air creature". If you don't find the word you're looking for, you can probably smash some words together to get your meaning across.
TRANSLATING TIPS DRUIDIC TO ENGLISH:
*If you're using the translator, be on the lookout for words that start or end with Z, Ze, eZ, aZ, Za, a, aN, Na, Q (end only), or G (end only). Those are prefixes/suffixes (see GRAMMAR RULES) and should be taken off before put into the translator, but keep in mind their meaning when you look at the translation.
*If something seems worded oddly, then keep in mind that a synonym may have been approximated for the word they were meaning to use.
*Uppercase and lowercase letters matter! (I recommend having caps lock on when typing things into the translator, as most letters are capitalized, and using shift to shift down to lowercase as needed)
*When written, a backwards R is typed in the translator as RR, a strange "o" with antennae-like lines is typed as 0 (a zero), an "o" with a dot in the middle is a lowercase o and a regular o is a capital O.
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