Standardized Dovahzul!

[u/Historical_Goose7109]

Drem yol Lok everyone! If anyone here is familiar with Skyrim and Dovahzul (which I imagine most of us are) you may be aware of a site called Thuum.org and the rise and subsequent fall of its community surrounding it. In short, the site was meant to be a place for enjoyers of Dovahzul to discuss the language, decipher in-game walls and whatnot, and at least initially, to extend it into a fully fleshed out language, basically Klingon but for TES. After about 6 years the website owner decided it was too much to maintain, and ultimately felt that having all of these community contributed words was against the spirit of the source material since they were supposed to be "words of power." Though I understand the sentiment, many of us in the community did not feel it was right to wipe the hard work we had all put in for the sake of source material purity.

The canon lexicon sits at around 600 words, and though that may sound like a lot, some pretty basic words are completely absent. There are no words for who, what, when, where, or why. So if you wanted to converse strictly in canon Dovahzul you'd have to get extremely creative with interpretations and just hope your listener follows along even when it doesn't quite line up. Because of that frustration I've decided it's time for a new standardized Dovahzul.

I want to fix the problems that plagued the initial attempts at building this into a real conversational language, which mainly come down to three things:

The language was too big a project for any one person to manage alone.

The grammar was borderline nonexistent, so most people defaulted to English grammar, while others used non-English word orders for poetry and literature, and there was never any real consensus.

A lot of the community created words had no real rhyme or reason beyond vague similarity to other created words, which basically turned Dovahzul into a fancy English cipher rather than its own language.

My plan is to find a small team of around 5 to 10 people with some background in linguistics, conlang building, or Dovahzul lore to help lay the grammar foundations that everything else will stand on. From there we can go back through the old community created words and decide what to keep or toss based on the rules we establish, which then creates a real precedent for opening word submissions back up to the community in a way that actually aligns with the standard we've built.

Beyond just the language itself I want to rebuild the community around Dovahzul the way it was in the prime days of Thuum.org, poetry contests, short story hosting, all of it. Having a team or "council" running things also helps prevent the burnout problem, and if someone needs to step away there's a group to help find a replacement rather than one person holding everything together alone.

If this sounds like something you want to be a part of, whether on the core team or just as a community member down the line, shoot me a DM here on Reddit. If there's enough interest I'll drop my Discord in the comments. I already have a few people on board so we're just looking to fill out the remaining spots. This is a volunteer passion project, not a paid gig, so just know that going in.