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[CaptainMcClellan]

It seems "genders yea or nay" is always the major hang-up for these threads, what with people mixing biology and sociology and linguistics in ways they aren't meant to be combined. I think, personally, that it's jumping the gun to say "dwarves don't care about gender" - or "dwarves think X, Y, and Z" about anything - when the game isn't even half finished: just last year dwarves had maybe five emotions, and now they've upwards of 190. Besides, the game is all about playing however you see fit: oughtn't the language and other metagame elements to be the same way? If it can be done, shouldn't the language be made malleable enough to make sense for as many different player conceptions of dwarven society and culture as possible (since currently about 80% of dwarven culture is nonexistent, and in the future it's likely to be procedural anyway)?
I personally like genders as a concept but I've left them out, largely for the reason someone mentioned earlier about not having an obvious pattern. Perhaps a consensus to table the issue, in the interest of making some headway, is in order?
(Although really, there's going to be debate over every aspect of the language; there's only so much you can "prove" when, as I said, the game is half finished. That's one reason I decided to work solo)

This thread sounds very interesting, but in my opinion the dwarven language (Is it called Dwarven?) lacks on naturality. There is no (visible) relationship between words with similiar meaning, like e.g.
Control:    egul
Controller: tesum

I believe the language was created with a program, so that accounts for the rather shaky relationships between words. I approach them, mostly, as "approximate translations": tesum is not linguistically related to egul, but semantically a tesum is the same as an egul-er.
Although there are some juicy similarities. My favorite is between nil "hammer" and ùnil "hammerer." I used this to derive an ù- agentive prefix (in this case, "one who hammers").

I guess? Well, right now we're looking at deriving a language from what exists and what we can work with and use in and in conjunction with the game. So it would make sense that it would evolve as the game does. "It is inevitable." Currently gender is only functionally sex, so a better thing to do would be design our language as "gender not yet". That is what I've wanted is to use gender only in terms of biological sex for breeding purposes, as in the raws and the most common ( from what I can tell out of this thread ) speculation. If someone else wants to tag everything with gender identifiers as-is, that's their business and it could be settled in argument as " This set of dwarves has a different culture". As per cultural differences being procedurally generated, there are certain core ethics that are nigh-universal. Arguably in irl humans too, but especially in most fantasy interpretations of dwarves. That said, you're right. Everything's up for debate. I started this to have a reasonable extension of the dwarven language sufficient to use in the in-game menus and Dwarven-language "histories" and "myths" based on the game. Can we at least get to that point before the thread devolves into a quasi-philosophical, psuedo-sociological debate flame war about controversial irl topics that simply don't/shouldn't apply to a fantasy game. ( Gender theory is a topic that has been a continual pain in my ass, and usually I play Dwarf Fortress to get away from it! :p )

[Dirst]

It helps knowing the words were generated randomly.  Personally I chose the four gender thing to address real problems in English (like the dreaded he/she, or uncontroversially revealing the gender of a professional) without going all-in with a Romance-style with o's and a's at the end of most words.

I imagine dwarves don't memorize linguistic genders for every word, and would speak in the indeterminate gender most of the time unless there was a specific point to be made.  So, to abuse some English suffixes, a seamstress would be a seamstrer in casual conversation, and only a seamstror, seamstress or seamstroid when pertinent.

Edit: fixed a typo in a made-up word.  Thanks for trying, autocorrect.

[CaptainMcClellan]

It helps knowing the words were generated randomly.  Personally I chose the four gender thing to address real problems in English (like the dreaded he/she, or uncontroversially revealing the gender of a professional) without going all-in with a Romance-style with o's and a's at the end of most words.

I imagine dwarves don't memorize linguistic genders for every word, and would speak in the indeterminate gender most of the time unless there was a specific point to be made.  So, to abuse some English suffixes, a seamstress would be a seamstrer in casual conversation, and only a seamstrer, seamstress or seamstroid when pertinent.

As per the four genders, I don't even think it should be called gender. I know I'm banging the same old drum, but still. I think it would be more of an aspect thing. As per gendered words with vowel changes, I'm pretty much voting against that. With the clear and distinct, albeit randomly generated, words for male and female, I'm pretty much thinking that it would be an adjective-like modifier. That way it can only be called when necessary rather than enforced. Besides, with Dwarven vowel systems being the complex and randomly generated mess they are, I highly doubt there's anyway to do it with vowel changes.

Right. Which would be pretty much in the case of breeding. ( Which reminds me of an amusing anecdote pointing out one flaw of having all professionals be refered to what was formerly the masculine gender... In a biography written about an actress, in which she was called an actor, there was a small bit about her romantic relationships with other actors, without any clarification that she was a she. Taken out of context, it tells a pretty different story about the person in question. ) Also, if seamstroid isn't the actual gender-neutral word for one who does such textile labor, I nominate it for inception into the English language.

Also! I never brought it up when I should have, but the genders being assigned to inanimate objects is a legacy artifact from the days of earlier mythology, tied in with the concept of deities and spirits that inhabited various things. At the time, much more was symbolic than we think of today and associations with spirits, concepts, or traits considered "male" or "female" was more common. I speculate, though I have no degrees to back me up, that to have a gender-neutral name was the weird thing and denoted either a creation of man or a totally lifeless ( possible even desolate ) thing/place. For example the sun and moon having genders was the result of the sun and moon gods having genders and folklore associated with both their creation and continued existence in the state they were observed in by those who created the myth. ( Personally, I find that very interesting, because there's a North-South split on which was which gender. The northern European cultures, the Germanic/Nordic peoples typically referred to the moon as male and the sun as female. The southern European cultures tended to do the opposite. In pure, ungrounded speculation I would guess that this had to do with which celestial object was of more importance to each culture, or at least, in what way they were important. That's another point entirely, m point was: The system persisted long after the myths and culture elements did, and if you'll notice it's being slowly phased out.

[Dirst]

As per the four genders, I don't even think it should be called gender.

Note that I fixed a typo in the post you quoted.  The linguistic term is gender, but the dwarves would probably refer to it as sex (there are a couple long threads around here about the difference).  Most of the time, the sex is unimportant and would be using the "indeterminate" or basic form.  English's analytic treatment of the seamstress (with the male "tailor" being a completely different word than the female "seamstress") probably stems from very long ago when trades were incredibly narrow.  Back then, tin-miner was a completely different profession from copper-miner, so it makes sense that men's-clothes-maker would be a completely different profession than a women's-clothes-maker.  We linguistically aggregated the miners, but not the tailors.

The decision of sex-vs-gender comes up in a specific context that probably isn't important to most players, but is to some.  How do you refer to a feminine man or a masculine woman?  If we go by gender, a masculine woman has a masculine modifier on the word for woman (literally, "manly woman").  If we go by sex, a masculine woman has the female modifier on the word for man (literally "female man").  It will make sense after you read it a couple times.  Every indication from Toady and most indications from mythology is that dwarves don't care a lick about gender... but they do have a practical appreciation of categorizing things by sex.  This also leads to the lazy use of modifiers unless it's important to the point being made.

So, the "seamstroid" construct would only come up if the speaker was being specific that this was a golem (or other genderless thing) performing the clothes-making role.

[CaptainMcClellan]

As per the four genders, I don't even think it should be called gender.

Note that I fixed a typo in the post you quoted.  The linguistic term is gender, but the dwarves would probably refer to it as sex (there are a couple long threads around here about the difference).  Most of the time, the sex is unimportant and would be using the "indeterminate" or basic form.  English's analytic treatment of the seamstress (with the male "tailor" being a completely different word than the female "seamstress") probably stems from very long ago when trades were incredibly narrow.  Back then, tin-miner was a completely different profession from copper-miner, so it makes sense that men's-clothes-maker would be a completely different profession than a women's-clothes-maker.  We linguistically aggregated the miners, but not the tailors.

The decision of sex-vs-gender comes up in a specific context that probably isn't important to most players, but is to some.  How do you refer to a feminine man or a masculine woman?  If we go by gender, a masculine woman has a masculine modifier on the word for woman (literally, "manly woman").  If we go by sex, a masculine woman has the female modifier on the word for man (literally "female man").  It will make sense after you read it a couple times.  Every indication from Toady and most indications from mythology is that dwarves don't care a lick about gender... but they do have a practical appreciation of categorizing things by sex.  This also leads to the lazy use of modifiers unless it's important to the point being made.

So, the "seamstroid" construct would only come up if the speaker was being specific that this was a golem (or other genderless thing) performing the clothes-making role.

I feel like we're all making the same point but for whatever reason we feel the need to make it in long posts citing a lot of apocrypha when noone's actually in disagreement.

As per the few players who do care about the sex-vs-gender thing, there's nothing stopping them from slapping a simple mod patch that rectifies this. Just so long as we don't take things to the level of bullshit arguing that other sites have received over this and other things. The designers of a game aren't really there to tailor a game to a specific player and all, but there's a handful of others who seem to think that... seriously try looking up "Tomodachi Life" and reading the IGN review. One sentence at the end of the review sparked a flame war, and I'm paranoid as hell about it happening here. We're doing the best we can to be accurate to in-game canon, inasmuch as it exists, and be most facilitating to the purposes stated. As per the whole "masculine/feminine" thing, can you honestly picture a feminine dwarf in the way humans think of femininity? Dwarven femininity probably does exist, but it'd just be considered part of the dwarf's personality rather than necessitating a separate signifier, especially in the light of homosexual relations being accommodated by the game's code now. Same thing with dwarven masculinity. And really, is it even masculinity/femininity? Wouldn't it be more like aggressive/slightly-less-aggressive? XD I might be misunderstanding what you're saying though, so if you're talking about appearence, I'm firmly convinced Dwarves don't give two shits about that in any sort of way that would cause them to put such a gender-context label on somebody. I base that on the fact that there is no stigma for physical race so long as you're dwarven, of the same or allied society, and not an active threat. They don't even think of it in terms of that. A dwarf is far less likely to put a generalized label on something if there's any room at all to describe and analyze it to the nth degree. Now, if we were talking about humans, or elves you could expect that sort of thing all over the place. I don't care about them though, because this is the Dwarven Linguistics Core Project.

[Dirst]

I feel like we're all making the same point but for whatever reason we feel the need to make it in long posts citing a lot of apocrypha when noone's actually in disagreement.

Right, was just trying to make the point that "gender" is a technical term in linguistics, but dwarven scribes probably wouldn't think of "gender" when penning the rules of their language.  They'd likely have something to say about the sexes of animals, but not ascribe the sexes of mythical beings to common objects.

The base form of a word (found in the raws) would be the indeterminate sex, and thus far the evidence is that Dwarven does not differentiate between singular and plural.  They are, however, willing to smack words together into compounds to make whimsical concepts for naming things.  My intuition is that any grammar particles needed for specificity would be "less firmly attached" to differentiate them from actual names.  Thus

ïkor ("warrior") for general usage
ïkor-udos ("warrior-man") when there is a need to specify that it's a male
ïkor-aral ("warrior-woman") when there is a need to specify that it's a female
ïkor-enam ("warrior-pure") when there is a need to specify that it has no sex
ïkor-ator ("warrior-perfect") when there is a need to specify that it is of both sexes

All of these suffixes have the same spelling pattern, and also don't conflict with the ending-sound stuff I posted earlier (not that I think we should stick to that system).

By the way, I like using the prefix ù to designate "one who performs" or "one who uses" but it needs a rule for when the root starts with a vowel such as miner: ùavuz doesn't look right.

[Dirst]

It's unlikely that we'll find a single set of conjugation rules that will work well for every (randomly generated) verb in the game, so ultimately we'll end up with two or three or four sets of rules.

The ground rules for rules:
1. The conjugated forms should be unambiguous, not forming a different word nor colliding with a potential conjugation from one of the other verb types.  It is okay if more than one type uses the base word, so long as they all agree on its tense/meaning.
2. Avoid differentiating two forms simply the by diacritical marks on a vowel.  It makes it difficult for people who might want to post something in this thread using a phone, and ultimately players using graphics packs would never see them in the game.
3. All conjugation rules must be straightforward add/replace/delete-style operations that can be carried out by a computer without specifying all the forms.  That is, no irregular verbs.

So, here is my first set of rules to throw in the ring.

The udiz-nikot ("present-action") tense is the word as it appears in the raws.  In translations I'll use the present progressive to differentiate it from the next case.
To specify that the action is a (relatively) permanent trait of the subject, use nulral-nikot ("unchanging-action") tense.  This is formed by repeating the final vowel after the final letter, which happens to always be a consonant.
The geth-nikot ("past-action") tense is formed as nulral-nikot, but the vowel is "rotated" counterclockwise 4 steps on Loam's chart (one "star point" away).
Zalud-nikot ("future-action") tense is formed as nulral-nikot, but the vowel is "rotated" clockwise 4 steps on Loam's chart (one "star point" away).

Urist maton -> Urist is joking.
Urist matono -> Urist is a joker.
Urist matonu -> Urist joked.
Urist matona -> Urist will joke.

Lanlar ikûl -> The bird is nesting.
Lanlar ikûlû -> Birds nest.  That's just a thing they do.
Lanlar ikûlî -> The bird nested.
Lanlar ikûlô -> The bird will nest.

Rîthol gumùr -> The noble is idling.
Rîthol gumùrù -> $&#@ nobles!
Rîthol gumùrì -> The noble idled.
Rîthol gumùrò -> The noble will idle.

Edit: Autocorrect decided to change Loam into Loan.  I changed it back.

[CaptainMcClellan]

Okay, so based on what you're saying, it is very imperative that there comes forth a number system, right? If plural is implied or found in a modifying word, then numbers would play heavily into nearly everything that isn't a singular object/entity. ( Of note, there are already words for one, two and three. Lod, nob, mez. )

As per your verb conjugation, it seems like a good system. Though it does ignore the possibility of vowel ending verbs. It also doesn't take into account the imperative form of a verb. ( Which is very important for delivering commands and I think should be grammatically differentiated as the inem-nikot ( "required action") with its own conjugation rules. ) I think also that there still need to be noun-modifying conjugates. At very least one to create an adjective&/adverbal form and one to create a plural. Possibly all three. As a totally arbitrary example set that I don't much like nor am I suggesting,

nilr - "Hammer essence", sort of a super-noun version. The metaphysical property/existence of the hammer. It's quite possible, given the lengths that are used to describe objects in game, it's not beyond belief that they could have religious, philosophical, or metaphysical connotations/meanings. Especially the hammer, due to its factoring in Dwarven capital punishment. With dwarves becoming more complex, I feel like this should at least be tossed in for consideration.
nilar - "Hammerly", adverb form. For example Urist imike shèrel nila rîthol. "Urist threw [the/a] rabbit [at the/a] noble hammerly." ( Literally rendered "Urist chucked bunny hammerly noble."** )
enil - "Hammer-like", adjective form. For example, Såkzul sanrebe* enil emen. "Såkzul [has; lit. "owns"*] hammer-like strength."
danil - "the hammer" - For when a specific hammer is being talked about and the article cannot be inferred from context.

And, I'm still advocating the same plural system as before, so:
nila - "hammers" - Urist ulengetha*** nila nina. - "Urist dropped hammers [on his****] toes.

*modified with Dirst's conjugation system for the persistive state.
**Yay! New issues! How do we note that something is being directed at something else? ( I guess, I'm asking: how do we render prepositions and prepositional phrases. )
*** Ulengeth: Place holder for "drop" that compounds "uleng" - lost, with "kegeth" - hold. Another alternative: ozkakungèg, or a contracted ozkunèg, which is "carry-fail"
**** Possessives will need to be standardized in some way or another.

Also! We need a way to denote proper nouns and common nouns. Especially considering most dwarven names are common nouns. Is there anything beyond capitalization? Is anything beyond capitalization necessary? Do we want a way to note that a noun is a name given to a particular dwarf?

EDIT: Here are the above example phrases rendered in VOS sentence structure instead of SVO. Mostly for the hell of it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

imike nila shèrel Urist a rîthol. ( Lit. "Threw hammerly [the]rabbit Urist at [the] noble." )
sanrebe enil emen Såkzul ( Lit. "Owns hammer-like strength Sakzul." )

EDIT EDIT: Also, before anyone else notices it and corrects it, shèrel is "bunny" and lestus is "rabbit." I'm guessing that's to differentiate age? It's a small slip, but still.

[Dirst]

Okay, so based on what you're saying, it is very imperative that there comes forth a number system, right? If plural is implied or found in a modifying word, then numbers would play heavily into nearly everything that isn't a singular object/entity. ( Of note, there are already words for one, two and three. Lod, nob, mez. )

I agree, but for now we can just use numerals until everyone has a better "feel" for the language.  Dwarves have 10 fingers and 10 toes, and the game presents everything in decimal, so there's no need to go crazy about number systems.

Of the numbers we have, "one" can be a stand-alone word lod or a prefix nir.  "Two" and "three" are only prefixes.  I think the prefixes are like mono-, bi- and tri-.

As per your verb conjugation, it seems like a good system. Though it does ignore the possibility of vowel ending verbs. It also doesn't take into account the imperative form of a verb. ( Which is very important for delivering commands and I think should be grammatically differentiated as the inem-nikot ( "required action") with its own conjugation rules. )

I noted above somewhere that no Dwarven word has a base form that ends in a vowel, which dramatically simplifies the creation of rules.

My initial thought was to have an implied subject for imperatives, but that's a bit too English-like.  An inem-nikot conjugation could be the vowel directly opposite on Loam's chart.  Opposite seems appropriate since it is not happening.

Urist matonë -> Joke, Urist!
Lanlar ikûlä -> Nest, bird!
Rîthol gumùré -> Just keep on doing what you're doing, noble. *sigh*

I think also that there still need to be noun-modifying conjugates. At very least one to create an adjective&/adverbal form and one to create a plural. Possibly all three. As a totally arbitrary example set that I don't much like nor am I suggesting,

nilr - "Hammer essence", sort of a super-noun version. The metaphysical property/existence of the hammer. It's quite possible, given the lengths that are used to describe objects in game, it's not beyond belief that they could have religious, philosophical, or metaphysical connotations/meanings. Especially the hammer, due to its factoring in Dwarven capital punishment. With dwarves becoming more complex, I feel like this should at least be tossed in for consideration.
nilar - "Hammerly", adverb form. For example Urist imike shèrel nila rîthol. "Urist threw [the/a] rabbit [at the/a] noble hammerly." ( Literally rendered "Urist chucked bunny hammerly noble."** )
enil - "Hammer-like", adjective form. For example, Såkzul sanrebe* enil emen. "Såkzul [has; lit. "owns"*] hammer-like strength."
danil - "the hammer" - For when a specific hammer is being talked about and the article cannot be inferred from context.

And, I'm still advocating the same plural system as before, so:
nila - "hammers" - Urist ulengetha*** nila nina. - "Urist dropped hammers [on his****] toes.

*modified with Dirst's conjugation system for the persistive state.
**Yay! New issues! How do we note that something is being directed at something else? ( I guess, I'm asking: how do we render prepositions and prepositional phrases. )
*** Ulengeth: Place holder for "drop" that compounds "uleng" - lost, with "kegeth" - hold. Another alternative: ozkakungèg, or a contracted ozkunèg, which is "carry-fail"
**** Possessives will need to be standardized in some way or another.

How is nilr to be pronounced?  The randomly generated words seem to be built from every-letter-is-pronounced-separately with a few additional diphthongs like /th/ and /st/.  It could be possible to differentiate simply with stress of one kind or another.  So nil is hammer is nil' is hammer essence.  The stressing could be volume as in most languages, an inflection as is tonal languages, a lengthened pronunciation ("nniill"), a circumfix pause, or some kind of distinct body language (widened eyes, etc.).

Also, although no roots end with a vowel, quite a few start with one.  Prefixes are fine, they just need to account for every type of word beginning.

Also! We need a way to denote proper nouns and common nouns. Especially considering most dwarven names are common nouns. Is there anything beyond capitalization? Is anything beyond capitalization necessary? Do we want a way to note that a noun is a name given to a particular dwarf?

Capitalization would be completely sufficient if we don't capitalize the beginning of a sentence.  Most fictional Dwarven looks like runes which don't have proper capitalization anyway, so it wouldn't even look strange.  A "capitalized" letter for a proper noun would be a somewhat enlarged rune.

If the language truly is runic, transliteration would bring across all letters as capitals, and we'd distinguish proper names with a doubled first sound or a specific lead punctuation mark like ^.  In that case, URIST is a dagger and ^URIST is a hermit-dwarf.

Edit: I think the capitalization method is more readable.

[CaptainMcClellan]

I agree, but for now we can just use numerals until everyone has a better "feel" for the language.  Dwarves have 10 fingers and 10 toes, and the game presents everything in decimal, so there's no need to go crazy about number systems.

Of the numbers we have, "one" can be a stand-alone word lod or a prefix nir.  "Two" and "three" are only prefixes.  I think the prefixes are like mono-, bi- and tri-.

Mmmm... That's true, but it's also too bad. We've been studying number systems in class and I thought if could be fun, but even on Bay12 that's not always justification! :p Base 10 then? Look into the Mayan numeral system though, it's a contender.

Oooo... I didn't catch that distinction! Very nice!

I noted above somewhere that no Dwarven word has a base form that ends in a vowel, which dramatically simplifies the creation of rules.

My initial thought was to have an implied subject for imperatives, but that's a bit too English-like.  An inem-nikot conjugation could be the vowel directly opposite on Loam's chart.  Opposite seems appropriate since it is not happening.

Urist matonë -> Joke, Urist!
Lanlar ikûlä -> Nest, bird!
Rîthol gumùré -> Just keep on doing what you're doing, noble. *sigh*

I could swear I'd found one... * shrugs *

Agreed. I like it.

How is nilr to be pronounced?  The randomly generated words seem to be built from every-letter-is-pronounced-separately with a few additional diphthongs like /th/ and /st/.  It could be possible to differentiate simply with stress of one kind or another.  So nil is hammer is nil' is hammer essence.  The stressing could be volume as in most languages, an inflection as is tonal languages, a lengthened pronunciation ("nniill"), a circumfix pause, or some kind of distinct body language (widened eyes, etc.).

A quick unvoiced consonant shift that's merely approximated with an r? It's an augmentation of the last consonant, which might actually be better approximated by an h. But to be honest I'm well in favor of ditching it.

If the language truly is runic, transliteration would bring across all letters as capitals, and we'd distinguish proper names with a doubled first sound or a specific lead punctuation mark like ^.  In that case, URIST is a dagger and ^URIST is a hermit-dwarf.

Edit: I think the capitalization method is more readable.

Yeah. Maybe an underline? I think there are non-English languages that use something like that to a similar purpose? But that can't really be rendered in-game.

[Dirst]

I could swear I'd found one... * shrugs *

I'll double-check when I get a chance.

Yeah. Maybe an underline? I think there are non-English languages that use something like that to a similar purpose? But that can't really be rendered in-game.

The letter might be circumscribed with a box or something.  And transliterated with a capital letter

[Fieari]

The thing that always bothered me about the RAW language, is that there are no words for any creatures.  Creatures defined in the raws get no specific word in the language, so there is no word for "Elephant" or "Carp" in the language.  This just seems wrong to me.

[CaptainMcClellan]

The thing that always bothered me about the RAW language, is that there are no words for any creatures.  Creatures defined in the raws get no specific word in the language, so there is no word for "Elephant" or "Carp" in the language.  This just seems wrong to me.

Yeah, I understand that... It might be a bit of an issue to make words for them though. You're welcome to give it a shot, I guess.

[Urist_McDagger]

More sophisticated pronunciation guides, ones that take into account stressed syllables, intonation, and how exactly the sounds are grouped in each syllable of the existing words. ( For example, the Dwarven word for abbey is "kulet" is that "ku-let" or "kul-et" and is which syllable is more prominent. Yadda-yadda-yadda. )

There's a system in swedish which deals with just this:
A vowel followed by a single consonant is considered a 'long' vowel, and is pronounced differently from a vowel followed by a double consonant which is considered a 'short' vowel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_phonology#Vowels
Finnish has a similar system, but is a lot more straight-forward:
A single vowel is a 'short' vowel and a double vowel is a 'long' vowel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_phonology#Vowels

Dwarven standard vowels(aeiou(åäö)) could be considered short(meaning kulet is pronounced ku-let), whereas the supplementary vowels(âáà, êéè, îíì, ôóò, ûúù) are 'long' vowels (meaning k/û/ú/ù/let is pronounced kul-et(â ê ô could even be used as the long vowels of å ä ö).

[Dirst]

More sophisticated pronunciation guides, ones that take into account stressed syllables, intonation, and how exactly the sounds are grouped in each syllable of the existing words. ( For example, the Dwarven word for abbey is "kulet" is that "ku-let" or "kul-et" and is which syllable is more prominent. Yadda-yadda-yadda. )

There's a system in swedish which deals with just this:
A vowel followed by a single consonant is considered a 'long' vowel, and is pronounced differently from a vowel followed by a double consonant which is considered a 'short' vowel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_phonology#Vowels
Finnish has a similar system, but is a lot more straight-forward:
A single vowel is a 'short' vowel and a double vowel is a 'long' vowel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_phonology#Vowels

Dwarven standard vowels(aeiou(åäö)) could be considered short(meaning kulet is pronounced ku-let), whereas the supplementary vowels(âáà, êéè, îíì, ôóò, ûúù) are 'long' vowels (meaning k/û/ú/ù/let is pronounced kul-et(â ê ô could even be used as the long vowels of å ä ö).

Sorry to have been inactive for a while.  My real-life embark decided to turn into a terrifying glacier 

I couldn't find any doubled vowels in Dwarven, but there are occasional double consonants.  In at least one case the doubling differentiates a word (azin "watch" versus azzin "livid"), but that is not a general pattern.

My preference for phonetics would be a what-you-see-is-what-you-say system that minimizes the combinations that could change pronunciation, which seems justified given the huge number of vowel symbols in use.  For example, this means that an "i" is pronounced the same no matter what letters are around it.  I'm not sure that ku-let and kul-et are detectably different if the vowel sounds are identical.

Dwarven would probably have its own glyphs for what we translate as digraphs (ng, sh, th), so whatever rules we come up with should consider those as if they were single letters.  This isn't how English works ("singer" has a short i sound as if ng was two letters).