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How it started: I was a dragon (as best as I can tell), and still have those memories rattling around. Clearly, it was some epic fantasy where I was mighty and all powerful!!
How it's going: I figured out some of the language we spoke, and discovered my name literally means dirt. Also I was brownish-green, not gold. Whoops.
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Okay so, to their credit, trying to name me "the color and complexion of the earth" is kind of charming, even if it means dirt.
It's funny that the more I learn about language, even ones not sourced from humanity, the more I discover words are generally phonetic mishearings one or two layers separate from an embarrassingly literal meaning. Sort of like how rhino in Norwegian is just "nose horn".
I think that's neat.
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(Also pedantic, color and complexion of soil, since that wasn't earth. But you get what I mean)
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Also it's frustrating to have to use the tools of conlang to have to piece together a language I half remember, with no verifiable sources other than others who may have spoken it, and the supreme lack of certainty I'm getting any of it right.
I already had respect for paleontologists and their attempts to reconstruct what qualified as culture, and that respect has only grown for me over time.
otherkin nonsense
Anyway, I rambled about this before, but to do so again:
We used spoken language somewhere between where a human and bird would speak. There's the phoneme (I guess "mouth sound" is easier to think about there), pitch (what you'd normally feel in your throat and windpipe), but also a third part: grackle or growl from the chest that humans do not use as part of speech. Though singing a word is a close-ish approximation.
Which is why dragon speech is difficult to romanize.
otherkin nonsense
The name:
* Keh (kind of a kyeh sound, from the throat, with a low chest rumble backing it)
* Dry (deh-rai, upper-middle chest inflection)
* See (see or sh-ee sound are interchangeable here, upper inflection with almost a purr or growl backing the sound)
Breaking down the word: the keh sound is "look, see, I see it, there, over there" contextually, dry is "feels like, seems like (to any or all senses), observed like", see (the ground, soil, dirt, towards the ground).
otherkin nonsense
I think if you look at how birds speak, particularly crows, you find a very similar pattern to their language. More grackle, less purr I suppose. Same principles behind it though.
Were they to get to speaking a formal language, I would not be surprised if they arrived at something very similar.
Anyway humans are absolutely embarrassingly not the only speaking animals, and it's neat to contrast with a language that had nothing to do with them.
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@Goldkin I do love me some rumbly language. ^.==.^
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@Goldkin I once again remain fascinated and jealous of your past life memory stuff, especially when it aligns with what some others have shared.
(putting aside questions of the brain filling in gaps with convenient evidence)
I wonder if there's something to be said about the perspective of "dirt" from a flying species though.
otherkin nonsense
So if you wanted to think about how that worked: the language itself is bound vaguely kinda sorts like English, but in run-on. With a developed throat rumble or purr as part of the words. And a set of sounds for things likely originally derived from how they felt to the original speaker.
And that's how my name is dirt.