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Some helpful fluff to know for anyone who is a matron....

Ilharess (title): Matron Mother of a noble house
Example of usage: "Yes Ilharess, I will do that right away." or "Yes Ilharess Malice."

Ilharn (title): Patron of a noble house and consort of it's Matron Mother
Example of usage: "Yes Ilharn, I will do that right away." or "Yes Ilharn Zacknafein."

Jabbress (title): Mistress, Lady, or Madame
Example of usage: "Yes Jabbress, I will do that right away." or "Jabbress Triel, your wish is my command."

Jabbuk (title): Master or Sir
Example of usage: "Yes Jabbuk, I will do that right away." or "Jabbuk Jarlaxle, you will obey me and do this now."

Jalil (title): Female, gal, "Miss" or "chick"
Example of usage: "Yes jalil, I will be happy to assist you." or "Have you seen Jalil Halisstra around?"

Jaluk (title): Male, guy, "Mister" or "dude"
Example of usage: "Hey jaluk, come here." or "Jaluk Draevir is coming, quick, hide before he lectures us on drow language!"

Couple of other things:

Ulathtallar (title): Arch High Priestess of Lolth (usually only one per city)
Yathtallar (title): High Priestess of Lolth (some Yathtallaren are higher than others)
Yathrin (title): Priestess of Lolth
Yathwanre (title): Priestess of Lolth in training, temple servant

Ep'hss (title): High Priestess/Priest of Ghaunadaur

Originally, males were permitted to become priests of Lolth but could never advance past a very basic level of ability in that role and could never be high priests. Current material has it that males cannot be priests of Lolth at all (but that doesn't mean we have to follow current material razz ).

Finally, if any of you were wondering, in "Deep Drow," (which the above words are from), to pluralize any word, instead of ending it in an "S," you instead end the word in "EN" (or just "N" if the word ends in a vowel).

For example... singular english word chicken, pluralized would be "chickenen." In drow, there is ONE Ilharess, and there are MANY Ilharessen. There is one jabbuk and there are many jabbuken. There is one velve (blade) and there are many velven (notice how this last example only adds an "N" to pluralize because the word already ends in a vowel in it's singular form).

I wish more drow people would learn it, lol.

I knowed it!

Thanks for your input Neko. I posted the words in the above list as a bare minimum so as not to overload people with a new language, but we may want to expand our knowledge to some new words over time.

Use of the translators is great and some of them even have "new" words to refer to things, however, I stick to the original material developed by the Temple of Lolth (from NWN on AOL servers back in '97 which in turn was based on "Drow of the Underdark" material published in '91). The reason is, because I've disected the language with a fine toothed comb over a period of ten years and have an intimate knowledge of consistent word root elements (which were obviously intentionally crafted by ToL).

The best way to refer to a matron is still to use the term Ilharess (and not to include any other words such as the phrase "Ilharess Ilhar" as that is redundant even though the latest (Eilistraee NWN Group's) translator spits it out that way when you type matron mother).

While I admire the internet drow fan-base at large for their excitement and desire to cover more words for the drow language, many of them have lost sight of the language base (through lack of analysis) and have somewhat muddied the language with inconsistant constructions.

If we build a strong foundation in the basics, we won't fall into the same trap that so many others across the web have.

Reminds me a lot of when I was learning German.. sweatdrop

Lots of language rules dabbled between the two, I think.. but our German group would know that more than me..

selvatargtlin=clergy of Selvetarm

drow translator
http://www.eilistraee.com/chosen/language.php

it the best i have found. grey company had a better one but it was shut down

Unfortunately, even with the Grey Company Translator, there were new words that were just wrong. They weren't based on existing word elements (roots, prefixes and suffixes) at all.

I caught a few words which were simply english words spelled backwards to make the drow word. That's just sloppy, lol.

Unfortunately, the Eilistraee translator actually took some of those words, incorporated them into it's database, and made even more absurd new words.

I'd just as soon develop "UnderGaia Drow" using the original material extrapolated intelligently.

I was with a group called Sinharl drow; an RP PK (PK = we killed other players' characters while typing "Oloth plynn doss rivvil iblith!" alot, lol) dark elf guild on Ultima Online's Siege Perilous server back in 1999-2001) where we used the Neverwinter Nights: Temple of Lolth's "Deep Drow" extrapolated into our own dialect. It worked very well and was consistent. All of us became practically fluent and stayed in character and "in language" the majority of the time.

EDIT: if we ever wanted Gaia to incorporate our ideas, we would have to cease entirely from using copyrighted material. We wouldn't even be able to use the word drow (which is why Gaia is calling them dark elves). Individual god names like Lolth and Kiaransalee wouldn't be able to be mentioned by Gaia and would need to be changed... any drow language words published by TSR and/or WotC would be off limits as well, lol. So, Gaia will never be able to incorporate some of the core elements we hold dear for our race. crying