A Language of Dragons (A Language of Dragons, #1)

by S.F. Williamson

Every act of translation requires sacrifice – it is this harsh truth that made me fall in love. There exists no direct correlation between the words of one language and another, and no translation can be entirely faithful to its original. So, while a person can more or less bridge the gap between languages using words, there is always some deeper meaning left unsaid, a secret invisible to those who only have one language with which to navigate the world. A translator, on the other hand, is a creature that flies with several pairs of wings.

I am a bright, ripe fruit: shiny on the surface, but rotten at the core.

‘Swallows were originally dragons who could speak every language in the world. But it weighed on them, being able to empathise with the stories of so many, so they asked God to relieve their burden and make them light and carefree. He turned them into birds, and gave them tails forked like a dragon’s tongue, to remind them of what they once were.’

when you oppress a community for centuries you can’t exactly be surprised when it rises up against you.’

‘To control languages, to control words, is to control what people know.’

And the truth, the missing piece of the puzzle, is suddenly there before my eyes. I know what Mama was trying to say before Hollingsworth cut her off. She wanted to prove that each dragon family speaks its own dialect. And the same is true for echolocation. The Koinamens isn’t a war weapon and it’s certainly not a dragon-made code.