drah

Drah is a fictional language created for world-building in fantasy and science fiction settings. It is commonly presented as the ancestral tongue of the Drah people, a confederation inhabiting the eastern highlands of a fictional continent. In many works, Drah is described as an agglutinative, SOV (subject–object–verb) language with a rich system of noun cases and verbal aspect.

Phonology and morphology are typically depicted as phonemic but with a modest inventory. Consonants may include p, b, t, d, k, g, f, s, sh, h, m, n, l, r, and sometimes y or w. Vowels usually consist of a, e, i, o, u. Drah is commonly described as having stress on the penultimate syllable and no lexical tone. Nouns inflect for number and a set of cases (such as nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative); placing and meaning are marked with postpositions rather than prepositions. Verbs encode aspect and mood through suffixes or clitic particles, with relatively flexible word order in discourse; the basic grammar remains SOV, though poets and ritual speakers may reorder elements for emphasis.

Writing systems attributed to Drah range from a traditional syllabary or logographic script to modern transliteration in the Latin alphabet. In-world use includes ceremonial discourse, legal texts, oral epic Poetry, and everyday trade language, with a body of idioms and proverbs that reflect Drah culture and values.

Drah has become a common example in discussions of constructed languages, illustrating how phonology, morphology, and writing systems can be integrated to convey a cohesive fictional culture. See also: conlang, constructed language, world-building.