Drow script

[Zarae Zyne Kilanatlar]

i dont know how official, but i saw this:
http://zaraezyne.deviantart.com/#/d1ms0gg

a drow script.

[url=http://www.angelfire.com/pq/Urhixidur/F ... l:35vr0t75]heres the link to get the font[/url:35vr0t75]. have to scroll down to it. the first time it went to it then went to something else. i hit back then forward and it stayed on page.

anyway, just if someone wanted it.

[Rainbow Prism]

*shrug* You can use Espuar alphabet, which is actually basis of many elven languages, including drow and undercommon.

[Zarae Zyne Kilanatlar]

what is that?

[magus_taliesin]

Heya, sort of new here but I'm the loremaster over at Gray Isles, and my curse is I don't forget things I read, kinda why I'm the loremonkey. In the case of Faerunian drow, they speak undercommon in most cases, which is a pidgin language comprised of elven, dwarven, orcish, and even common. It's derived from the mixture of races that usually make up the lower wards and market areas of a drow city. The actual language of drow, or High Drow, is a slight hybrid of elven, but usually only high ranking nobles, wizards, and priestesses even know it. In both cases they use their ancestral alphabet, Espruar.

Which looks like this: [url=http://zenith76.deviantart.com/art/Espr ... 0:1zb16df0]Espruar Image[/url:1zb16df0]

You can even get a font to use in your art and text programs. Just compare it to the image above, there are some that are not correct.

[Shir'le E. Illios]

Thanks Zarae for the fonts and thank to magus for the explanation on drow and Undercommon.

The whole language thing is a bit of a mess. The drow language people use in the community (based on the drow languages publicized in Drow of the Underdark) is probably actually the "High Drow" magus refers to. But since people enjoy using it it's being used a lot, used as a common drow language. To the point that I've seen people use a different language for High Drow, meaning that the drow as in the translator on the site has really become a new 'low' drow language separate from Undercommon and High Drow. Which makes things a bit confusing.

Another explanation I've seen is that the drow's rule of the Underdark has basically made their language the main ingredient in Undercommon. But of course having separate explanations only muddies the waters more.

Personally, I'd be happy to use Zarae's fonts for common drow use, and reserve Espruar for those cases where I'd need something particularly noble, divine or arcane. Might not make things clearer, but makes things more fun. And in a way with the massive community input in building the drow language I think it helps to make the language our own.


Love -x-x-x-

Shir'le

[Rainbow Prism]

A little late, but here how Espruar looks in comparison to alphabet of Common, Thorass, in 'Guide to Faerun'.

[img:242qkzv1]http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/7417 ... common.png[/img:242qkzv1]

[Alaric Darkrose]

*excited "Ooooooooh!"* While I may not use this exactly, I think I found the inspiration for my Otherworld project.

[Zarae Zyne Kilanatlar]

i knew there was a regular every day speech (or i guess low drowic) and language used in ceromonies, rituals, texts (or high drowic). and undercommon the language of trade. i pictured drowic a branch off of elven, that took on its own and changed to suit the new developments, and such. also, i would assume cities have regional things only found among them (dialects) and of course accents.

anyway, cool.

[Rizzen]

I'd have to say that the Espruar font appears much more well thought out than the font linked to in Marziba's profile there. That one (which doesn't appear to have a proper name of its own other than "Drow Script") appears little more like someone came up with 6 different glyphs and just rotated them 90 degrees to make a one to one relation to the English alphabet. A common mistake is to assume that every language has the same sounds as English (or whatever your primary language is), which it doesn't. For example, there is no English equivalent for the Spanish [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%91:4iteggh8]ñ[/url:4iteggh8]. And in Japanese the "l" and "r" consonants are blended together (sorta, the actual rules are more complex than this).

The Espruar font appears like someone thought of this, hence why you see the Th; vs. Th" Presumably one is a hard Th like in the English words, This, That, and Those. And the other is a soft Th like in the English words Think, Thought, and Thorn. English used to actually have separate letters for those two sounds at one point, designated by [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth:4iteggh8]Eth[/url:4iteggh8] for hard Th, and [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_%28l ... 9:4iteggh8]Thorn[/url:4iteggh8] for the soft Th.

I could go on. Been biting my tongue on this for a bit, but decided to finally comment on it. Language design and evolution (specifically for D&D purposes) is a fascinating subject to me.

[Zarae Zyne Kilanatlar]

i am rather ignorant to alot of the D&D stuff... or all around too i guess. anyway, i saw it, thought it was cool, posted it. there if anyone likes it...or not.