Language: Lizardfolk

Depending on your edition preferences, you may be somewhat confused by the existence of this entry. In 3e and 5e (and, I'm forced to assume, 4e, but who cares about 4e), lizardfolk spoke Draconic. This is, I think, a result of efforts in 3e to simplify the number of languages floating around -- the 3e Players' Handbook lists exactly 20 “common languages" that a character can take, and those cover the vast majority of cases; then there are a few entries in the Monster Manual that give creatures their own languages.¹

The PHB languages are notably limited, though: seven are languages that a particular race or class starts with by default, like Dwarven; eight are languages spoken on other planes of existence, like Abyssal. The remaining five are Draconic, Giant, Gnoll, Goblin, and Undercommon. A lot of effort was made to ensure that players got their skill points' worth out of picking those languages, and creatures that formerly had their own language were pigeonholed into one of them for player convenience. This included the lizardfolk, who in AD&D had their own language, but now speak Draconic.

They also used to be called “lizard men", but we can leave that one behind.
Image from the AD&D Monstrous Manual.

In my campaign world, the “lizardfolk speak Draconic" thing is, in-universe, a common mistake. Their language is related to Draconic, but, importantly, the lizardfolk came first. It's just that the major civilizations have a healthy respect for dragons, and none for the primitives living out in the marsh, so they assume the lizardfolk borrowed the dragons' language rather than the other way around.

So, the language. As before, here is the completed PDF, and below this line, I will just ramble about the reasoning behind the decisions made in said PDF.

Phonology

So first off, we can see quite clearly that lizardfolk are dealing with some different facial anatomy.

Left to right, top to bottom: Pathfinder, 1e, 3e, four details from the 4e illustration, 2e, 5e

They have no lips and no cheeks. Their teeth are sharp, thin, and spaced out -- not ideal for articulating with, I would think. They do, however, have a long and flexible tongue -- especially that guy in the foreground in the 4e Monster Manual. Here's a better shot:

Though you have to really question that earring. Like, beyond the physical why-would-an-earless-species-have-earrings issue, I feel like there's some problematic racial coding involved.

As far as I know, there are very few sounds that require cheek involvement -- the lips-and-teeth thing will cut down the consonant chart much like with Gnoll, though.

I considered removing the dental fricatives as well, but look at that 1e lizardman:

Drawn by David A. Trampier.

You can just hear the guy articulating a /θ/, can't you? “There are many venomouthh thhnakethhhh in the thhwamp."

Actually, the more I think about it... that's not a standard /θ, ð/ configuration. That lizardman is clearly articulating the apico-dental /s/ of Andalusia -- one of the sounds that gives European Spanish a kind of lisping quality.

To me, this actually makes a lot of sense. A lizardfolk language should have a wide range of sibilant sounds, including ones that are only phonemic in a couple real-world languages. Not only should they have the interdental [s̺̪ z̺̪] of southern Spain, and the [θ, ð] of English “th" words, but the whistled [s͎, z͎] of Shona, and the pile of weird fricatives from Caucasian languages like Abkhaz and Ubykh. So they'll have the following fricatives:

Fricatives

θ ð s̺̪ z̺̪ s͎ z͎ s z s̻ z̻ ʃ ʒ ɕ ʑ ʆ ʓ ʂ ʐ

From left to right, that's the “th" sounds, the interdental lisp, the whistled sibilants, standard s/z, laminal s/z (which are difficult to do if you don't grow up with them), English <sh> and its voiced counterpart, palatalized sibilants, the Ubykh sibilants so weird they don't have standard IPA values, and the retroflex sibilants.

Now, fun as it would be, having the language be all sibilants would get old, so we need to bring some stops in. Luckily, if we're going with the assumption that the Lizardfolk language is related to Draconic, we actually have a helpful guide: the 3rd edition Draconomicon had a page on Pidgin Draconic.

Not to be confused with Pigeon, Draconic

I know this because, even though I never actually owned the book, I managed to get a PDF of that page and used it to name any dragons that showed up in any of my games for years. It's pretty basic, and is essentially three columns of this:

Claw? Gix? I see what they did there.

Also, right above the vocabulary list, it has the following:

The language of dragons is one of the oldest forms of communication. According to the dragons themselves, it is second in longevity only to the languages of the outsiders, and all mortal tongues are descended from it.

Yeah, the dragons would say that, wouldn't they.

Some scholars believe the written form of Draconic might have been influenced by dwarven runes, but the wise don’t express this opinion within hearing of a dragon.

There's no way the dragons would bullshit us on this, right guys?

Many reptilian races (including kobolds, lizardfolk, and troglodytes) speak crude versions of Draconic, and present this as proof of their kinship with dragons. It is equally likely that these races were once taught or enslaved by dragons, and it is even possible that they took Draconic for their own simply to make a claim to common ancestors.

I feel like there are some unexamined assumptions here.

Anyway, the point is that we can mine this list for phonemes. It gives us the following, going by orthography:

a, ae, au, b, c, ch, d, e, ea, ei, f, g, gh, h, i, ie, ii, j, k,
l, n, o, oa, r, rh, s, sh, ss, sv, t, th, u, v, vh, w, x, y, z.

First, we can note that clearly vowel length and fricative length are relevant here, then take out the doublings. Second, let's strike anything we already got in our list above. That leaves us with:

a, ae, au, b, ch, d, e, ea, ei, f, g, gh, h, i, ie,
k, l, n, o, oa, r, rh, t, u, v, vh, w, x, y.

Now we cut everything that requires lips:

a, ae, au, ch, d, e, ea, ei, g, gh, h, i, ie,
k, l, n, o, oa, r, rh, t, u, x, y.

Separate out the vowels; we'll come back to those later:

ch, d, g, gh, h, k, l, n, r, rh, t, x, y.

And let's assign some standard IPA values:

/tʃ, d, g, ɣ, h, k, l, n, r, ɽ, t, ks, j/

I'm sure the <x> in the Draconic Pidgin entry was meant to represent its familiar-to-English-speakers /ks/ value, which means it really isn't a phoneme in its own right, so it doesn't enter into this. I'm also going to simplify the affricate situation: a /t/ or /d/ before a sibilant is always pronounced as an affricate, not two separate sounds. 

Consonants

Stops: n t d k g

Fricatives: θ ð s̺̪ z̺̪ s͎ z͎ s z s̻ z̻ ʃ ʒ ɕ ʑ ʆ ʓ ʂ ʐ ɣ h

Other: l, r, ɽ, j

Now, back to the vowels. We have /a, e, i, o, u/, which should be familiar enough. Note, however, that just like with Gnoll, we can't have rounded vowels, so /o, u/ are actually their unrounded counterparts /ɤ, ɯ/. Otherwise, we'll give the letters their standard IPA values (not the same as English pronunciation, though, for any English speakers unfamiliar with the vowel trapezoid). We also have six attested diphthongs -- /ae, aɯ, ea, ei, ie, ɤa/ -- and the knowledge that vowels can be double-length. So:

Vowels

Monophthongs: a e i ɤ ɯ aː eː iː ɤː ɯː

Diphthongs: ae aɯ ea ei ie ɤa

Now we need to deal with orthography, or this will be a mess. I'm happy to keep the vowel orthography from the Pidgin Draconic page: standard <a, e, i, o, u>, two different vowels next to each other are a diphthong, two identical vowels next to each other are a long vowel.

Stops are also fine -- /n, t, d, k, g/ written <n, t, d, k, g>. What could be easier? In the “other" category, /l, r/ are also fine as <l, r>. That retroflex tap can be <rh> still, and we're all used to seeing /j/ written as <y>.

IPA Value	Orthography
a	a
s̻	c
ʆ	ch
ʂ	cj
z̻	cz
ʓ	czh
ʐ	czj
d	d
ð	dh
e	e
g	g
ɣ	gh
h	h
i	i
k	k
l	l
n	n
ɤ	o
r	r
ɽ	rh
s	s
s̺̪	sf
ʃ	sh
ɕ	sj
s͎	sv
t	t
ɯ	u
ks	x
j	y
z	z
z̺̪	zf
ʒ	zh
ʑ	zj
z͎	zv

Now the tough part: the fricatives. /s, z, h/ are fine as <s, z, h>. English speakers are already familiar with /θ, ʃ/ as  <th, sh> -- both, however, come with voiced companions, which would logically be written slightly-less-familiarly as <dh, zh>. Let's see... <gh> is what I assumed represented /ɣ/ in the Pidgin Draconic, so let's keep that. That pretty much depletes our “consonant + h" options.

In Shona orthography, the whistled sibilants are spelled <sv, zv>. Since we're not using <v> for anything else, we'll keep that. For that matter, we're not using <f> either, so <sf, zf> can represent our interdental Andalusian lisps. Some more digraphs we can use -- a superscript <j> means “palatalized", so we'll use <sj, zj> for our palatal sibilants /ɕ,  ʑ/. 

In English orthography -- and others -- <c> can be used to represent a sibilant. Let's get some mileage out of that. So <c> can be /s̻/. Then we'll just pull out some of our previously-established digraphs and make /ʆ, ʂ/ into <ch, cj>. Sadly, there is no “voiced c" we could use to show the voiced counterparts of those three. I thought about using diacritics, but we've gotten this far without them, so let's instead have some trigraphs: /z̻, ʓ, ʐ/ written as <cz, czh, czj>. That'll give Lizardfolk some strange-looking consonant clusters, which I'm inclined to read as a positive.

Now, one more thing. The Draconic Pidgin page had some doubled-up consonants, which I took to mean that the Lizardfolk family of language has long consonants. Which... yes. Of course they do. We want our lizardfolk to hiss when they talk, don't we? Hell yes we do -- they should hiss a lot, actually, so let's give them short sibilants, long sibilants, and extra-long sibilants. These will, of course, be written by just doubling or tripling the letters: <s, ss, sss>. In cases where the phonemes are written with digraphs or trigraphs, just double or triple the last consonant in the cluster: <czj, czjj, czjjj>. 

What with all these consonant clusters, there is a slight problem. How can we distinguish /czh/ from /cz/+/h/, for instance? The answer is: we don't. Lizardfolk phonotactics will bar fricatives from being next to each other. The accepted syllable structures will be as follows. (Note: “F" stands for “fricative", “S" for “stop", “C" for other consonants, and “V" for “vowel" [short, long, or diphthong].)

VF

CV

SV

VSF

SFV

SCV

CVF

Naturally, the syllables containing fricatives will be weighted to be much more frequent, so that our Lizardfolk vocabulary can be as hissy as possible. And, as previously noted, “SF" clusters are pronounced as affricates.

Now, this language would be a bitch and a half to pronounce without a flexible tongue and years of practice, so if you're GMing a game and want to make things extra-difficult for the players, feel free to have the lizardfolk really play up how your LSL² -speaking players are just mangling the language with their incomprehensible accents and clumsy primate tongues. Maybe I'll even make an extra effort to add some amazingly-unfortunate minimal pairs...

“No, no, tzoesjj means ‘respect'. What you said was tzoeshh, which doesn't translate, but I assure you it's extremely rude."
“Those sound exactly the same!"
“Just keep running, they're catching up... tzoeshh primates."

Grammar

As I mentioned at the beginning of my Gnoll post, I used Hittite as the basis for my fallen reptilian civilization. (Because I wanted the dead language of a formerly-powerful civilization that most people had forgotten about.) That civilization included the ancestors of the lizardfolk, so their language was also Hittite-inspired.  Since I don't have any firmer basis for Lizardfolk grammar -- they don't have any clear real-world basis³, so I can't do the same thing I did with the gnolls -- I'll just take Hittite grammar and adjust it as needed.

The Hittite nominal system consists of the following cases: nominative, accusative, dative-locative, genitive, allative, ablative, and instrumental, and distinguishes between two numbers (singular and plural) and two genders, common (animate) and neuter (inanimate). The distinction between genders is fairly rudimentary, with a distinction generally being made only in the nominative case, and the same noun is sometimes attested in both genders. -- Wikipedia

Okay, I'm sold on the case and number system, but let's toss the gender distinction. If it's already rudimentary, let's just forget about it as an unnecessary complication. Also, looks like most of the declension and conjugation is done with the sort of suffix array we know from current Indo-European languages. More from Wikipedia:

When compared with other early-attested Indo-European languages, such as Ancient Greek and Sanskrit, the verb system in Hittite is morphologically relatively uncomplicated.

Okay, good.

There are two general verbal classes according to which verbs are inflected, the mi-conjugation and the hi-conjugation.

Not sure about that.

There are two voices (active and medio-passive), two moods (indicative and imperative), and two tenses (present and preterite).

Probably going to add some tenses.

Additionally, the verbal system displays two infinitive forms, one verbal substantive, a supine, and a participle.

Definitely changing that.

Rose (2006) lists 132 hi-verbs and interprets the hi/mi oppositions as vestiges of a system of grammatical voice “centripetal voice" vs. “centrifugal voice").

Okay, now I really want to know what this is about. Stand by while I go find a better source.

Ḫattušili the troglodyte will keep you company while I'm gone.
(from the 3e Monster Manual)

Right, so it turns out that every source mentioning that centrifugal/centripetal thing is referring to the same 2006 book, which I can't get access to through the university library... but I did get access to the doctoral dissertation on which the book was based. According to Dr. Sarah Rose⁴, these are grammatical voices used to signify who benefits from the action, comparable to Sanskrit ātmanepada & parasmaipada. I'd try and give a more comprehensive summary, but it's over 800 pages, which is more than I want to read for this side project, and we're already on a bit of a tangent.

What this boils down to is that I'm replacing “active vs. mediopassive" with “centripetal vs. centrifugal", because that's much cooler.

Also, since the lizardfolk -- at least in my campaign worlds -- have a kind of sense of deep time about them, we're going to expand that tense system.

The Lizardfolk language recognizes the following tenses:

• Mythic: Stuff that happened in prehistory.
• Historic: Stuff that happened in what the lizardfolk consider “recorded history", and what everyone else refers to as the lizardfolk's “quaint oral traditions". 
• Past: Stuff that happened within living memory.
• Recent: Stuff that happened within the past few days.
• Present: Stuff that's currently happening, like, right this second.
• Immediate: Stuff that's going to happen within the next few days.
• Future: Stuff that's going to happen within the next few decades.
• Distant: Stuff that's going to happen within the next few millennia.
• Prophetic: What it says on the tin.

They also recognize the following aspects, which are technically optional but usually in heavy use. They can stack up as much as they need to.

• Aspects of Probability
• Certain: Definitely happened / will happen. Alternately, depending on context, definitely didn't happen.
• Probable: It probably happened that way, or will happen that way. (Or, depending on context, probably won't.)
• Uncertain: It might, it might not. Who knows / cares?
• Aspects of Evidentiality
• Direct: It happened to me, so I know.
• Indirect: I saw it happen.
• Direct Reportative: I heard about it from someone who was there.
• Indirect Reportative: I heard about it from someone who heard about it, &c.
• Inferential: It must have happened based on other evidence.
• Traditional: I learned about it in great-great-grandma's stories, or other oral tradition. (Implication: so there's even more evidence than if it happened to me personally.)
• Aspects of Counterfactuality
• Hypothetical: If it happened / happens / will happen, then...
• Potential: It could happen. Alternately, it could have happened but it didn't. This can also be used to express "to be able to".
• Deontic: It should happen. Alternately, it should have happened but it didn't. This can also be used to express truisms and ethical values.
• Requisite: It must happen. (Rarely used in past tenses, as that meaning is covered by Inferential.)
• Alternative: It happened in another timeline, but not this one.

It should also be noted that the Lizardfolk language can use their tense endings as independent modals if needed. So they could say [future tense] [verb-past tense], and mean “it will have happened", for instance.

Also, the other change to the verbal system I was talking about. One infinitive is fine, and we'll replace the supine - substantive - participle setup with three all-purpose prefixes that mean “this is a noun", “this is a verb", and “this is an adjective/adverb" that we can use whenever we need to change the part of speech of a word.

Oh, and pronouns. The Pidgin Draconic page only has words for “we" and “you" for some reason... let's run with that. Lizardfolk has two personal pronouns: first person and second person. For third person, they just use the noun in question. In fact, they don't even make a singular/plural distinction with their pronouns; you're expected to understand from context.

One more thing. This is something that varies with the artist and which reptilian species they're supposed to depict, but:

Detail: 5e Troglodyte

This troglodyte has four fingers to a hand, not five. Same with the 3e version up above. Some illustrations of troglodytes / lizardfolk / other reptilian sapients give them five fingers, but it's more interesting to go with a non-human finger configuration -- so that the Lizardfolk language counts in base eight instead of base ten.

So that should cover things: here's the PDF. I'd also note that, in composing the vocabulary, I based some words on the vocabulary of “Pidgin Draconic", though altered to various degrees to fit this language's phonology.

---

1 Some of these choices make sense: of course aboleths have their own language, they're psychic agnathic fish from the dawn of time, and it would be weird if they just spoke Elven or something. Others, less so: why are treants all trilingual, instead of just speaking Sylvan? why do grimlocks, of all people, get their own language instead of Undercommon? has anyone ever played a character who spoke Blink Dog? ^↩

2 Lizard as a Second Language.^↩

3 Okay, you could argue that they're crocodilians, but those are really widespread, so it doesn't help a whole bunch.^↩

4 Or, at least, according to PhD candidate Sarah Rose, who has since become Dr. Sarah Rose and has an interesting list of publications that I might have to check out. Also, citation: Rose, S. R. (2004). The hittite -hi /-mi conjugations: An early voice opposition (Order No. NR02405). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (305096821). Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.purdue.edu/docview/305096821?accountid=13360 ^↩