Dritok

Dritok is a constructed language (conlang) created by Donald Boozer in 2007.

[1] Boozer was Secretary (2012–2015) and Librarian (2009–2013) of the Language Creation Society.

It is spoken by the Drushek, a species residing in the mountains of the fictional continent of Kryslan.

The Drushek are large-eared, long-tailed leaping sciurine sapients with no vocal cords, who value solitude and quietness.

[3] The Drushek are culturally and linguistically homogeneous, but there are other languages spoken on Kryslan, including Umod and Elasin, by two other sentient species,.

⟨-⟩ indicates that a sign accompanies an oral word – that is, that two morphemes are simultaneous.

For instance, in ⟨Q1-zp.th⟩ 'my foot/leg' and ⟨D2-zp.th⟩ 'your foot/leg', the pronouns (fist touching chest for 'my', flat palm facing interlocutor for 'your') are signed while the oral word ⟨zp.th⟩ is uttered.

(For clarity, the sign is sometimes transcribed after the oral component, e.g. when both a prefixed and a simultaneous pronoun occur, as in ⟨Q1=pln.t'-P4&⟩ 'I shelter them'.)

[4] The loudest phoneme in the language is a porcine snort,[6] transcribed with a "double-dot wide O" (Ꙫ) at Speculative Grammarian.

[7] It tends to be found in words with a negative connotation, as the Drushek value stillness in their philosophy of /ʂq.qs.txːm̥͋/ (Shekstan).

The dental click is a sharp [ǃ̪] rather than the affricated [ǀ] of tsk!

However, when Dritok words are adopted into Umod, vowels are inserted to break up the consonants.

The hand is held in one of five basic orientations: ⟨1⟩ palm in (typically against the chest), ⟨2⟩ out (facing the speaker), ⟨3⟩ up, ⟨4⟩ down or ⟨5⟩ to the side.

For any of these, the fingers may ⟨@⟩ be inverted (point in the opposite of their usual direction for the basic orientation).

There are also motion elements: For two-handed gestures, the two hands may have various relative positions: Thus I1@!/D3 is a downward-pointing index finger brought down to (and generally touching) a palm-up flat hand.

Oral nouns and verbs do not inflect for number or tense.

Word order is Subject-Verb-Object, though one signed pronoun may be simultaneous with the verb.

The North Wind and the Sun in Dritok, along with a fairly literal translation, and using a version of the Latin transcription a few years older than that described in the previous section (for example, it joins signs to oral words with ⟨>>⟩ and ⟨((⟩, one of them perhaps in place of hyphens):[8] 1.

Those two, the Great Wind and the Sun, with respect to their strength were arguing.

The Great Wind said, "Sun, your strength is superior to mine."

Boozer first entered the world of conlanging as a child, when he read Dr. Seuss' On Beyond Zebra and traced the Seussian alphabetical extensions in this author's constructed script (conscript).

While in high school, he created the constructed world (conworld) of Kryslan for an illustrated book as part of an art class project.

Then, a few years before the date of the Elvish, Esperanto and Beyond exhibit at Cleveland Public Library, Boozer took it up again.

"[3] Arika Okrent described the audience's reaction to Dritok as the samples sending "waves of glee through the audience – they sounded so strange, so inhuman, but there was a detectable structure or system that gave Dritok a sense of 'languageness'.