Ten Thousand Words For Green

A Truth About the Tongue of Dragons

Dragons have keener senses than lesser creatures, and their vision and hearing are particularly precise.  Because of this, the draconic language is full of subtleties of pronunciation unequalled even by the long-lived elven folk.  No humanoid can truly speak draconic well, and even with magical assistance their accents are atrocious.  Dragons do not take kindly to hearing their native tongue mangled by others, although their reactions vary from veiled contempt to immediate violence.  

When a dragon does deign to communicate with a humanoid, they do so in the latter's tongue, not their own.  If the dragon happens to use an archaic form of, say, Gnomish that they learned two thousand years ago, that's the listener's problem.  Criticizing a dragon's language skills is an excellent way to commit suicide, nor do they appreciate being asked to repeat themselves.

Ten Thousand Words For Green

Draconic vision is particularly good at differentiating between fine gradations of color.  Because of this, they ascribe a great deal of importance to precisely describing shades and hues, especially as they relate to their own coloration and that of other dragons.  This is further complicated by each dragon's (justifiable) conviction that their are unique and special individuals.  Certainly no two share the exact same color patterns, which (to dragons) is an obvious truth at a glance.  

Hatchling dragons choose their own names.  Part of the process is to coin a word that perfectly describes their own hue, which becomes part of their personal title.  These words are built on common roots for basic colors (eg "green") but add layer upon layer of subtle detail and nuance to make them truly unique.  As they age and their scales change in color, a dragon will retain their original hue-name but its meaning changes with its owner, always defined by their current appearance.

Because each new name is unique, draconic languages include thousands upon thousands of color words.  Each precisely (to a dragon, anyway) identifies a single dragon, live or dead, but they share many common elements with other dragons of the same breed.  To a non-native speaker, the subtleties of personal hue-names are largely a mystery, and many give up trying and just use the root color as though it were a simple title.  Anyone fool enough to do so while attempting to speak draconic will discover that dragons find this about as insulting as humans do the most vile racial epithets.  When speaking humanoid languages addressing a dragon with something as crude as "the Red" or "the Green" still rankles, but a dragon will generally choose to let it pass.  

The tongues of humanoids are far too limited to properly reflect the glory of dragonkind, after all.