My understanding is that the Dragon language is largely a relex of English
-- and intentionally so in order to allow players to easily decipher it.

On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 12:51 AM, Patrick Dunn <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I've been playing, oh, a bit of Skyrim lately, since I got my new computer.
>  If you don't know, Skyrim is a game in which you play a fantasy hero who
> fights dragons.  The dragons have a language, and part of the game is
> learning some of that language so you can control nature.
>
> As conlangs for video games go, it's better than most, in that it consists
> of more than just an alphabet.  It *does*, of course, have an alphabet,
> which dodges the common problem of having an equivalent of {C}.  (It does,
> however, have an {X}, and a {Q} but that might represent a uvular stop -- I
> can't quite tell)  It also has a phonology that does not seem absolutely
> Englishy -- it has a few sounds English doesn't, at least in some of the
> voice actors' pronunciation.
>
> The alphabet can be found here:
>
> http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Dragon_Alphabet
>
> Some notes on grammar, which are mostly skeletal, can be found here:
>
> http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Dragon_Language
>
> To summarize, it's a mostly isolating language.  Verbs are marked
> optionally for past tense only, not person.  Nouns mark singular, plural,
> singular possessive, and plural possessive.  The plural is interesting in
> that it geminates the final consonant and adds an -e.  It seems to have two
> definite articles; they might be in free variation, I'm not sure.  It has
> an indefinite article as well.  I notice that articles are often optional.
>
> Derivational morphology:  A few affixes seem to be regular.  -us makes
> adjectives from verbs and nouns.  Motmah: slip.  Motmahus:  slippery.  -iik
> may be a suffix indicating an agent, like -er.
>
> Some stupidity:  "NOK" is both "to lie" as in to become horizontal, and
> "lie" as in falsehood.  Infinitives are marked with Wah, which is also the
> preposition "to."
>
> The entire corpus of written Dragon can be found here:
>
> http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Word_Wall
>
> Overall, it's a pretty simplistic conlang, but better than most efforts in
> video games.  I suspect it is so Englishy mostly to be easy to learn for
> its target audience.  Bethesda should have just hired one of us, probably.
>
> --Patrick
>