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[Supermikhail]

It seems to me more that this phonology tends to softer sounds, no rolling "rr", "k" turned almost into "h", and generally has a lot of breath and hissing. Which, I imagine, would cause difficulty in understanding. I can see how it can be linked to masculinity - "I'm so hardcore, why should I care for comprehension." Opinions may differ, but unless you're Chinese, the pitch depends entirely on the person that's speaking and isn't tied formally to phonetics. Also, I predict that if you go by such (not calling it "strange") subjective criterion, you may find it hard receiving help of other people and collaborating. I'd go by something more palpable, and ask myself why dwarves would go into infra-sound in their speech. What purpose would it serve, for example, for the survival of the species? And I'd answer - "Because they live in caves, and with such phonetics they can hear each other through walls, and maybe even through the soles of their feet."

^Contains irony.

[Dwarf]

Actually, you're right - but then again, I can't see how people could actively collaborate to create a phonology. But of course, I'd be happy to receive any input you might think of, to make it truly original.
The 'k' is pronunced as X and quite different from h. h is voiceless, but X has got a clear rasp. Maybe it got lost in recording quality.
But I do agree that I'm not really happy with the ð, and Dwarven might in overall sound more like a booming voice than something... lizardy?

Also, since I (I, atleast ) don't intend to include tonality, so that doesn't even matter. And I might stick to other phones. It's all a draft for now.

[Heron TSG]

I always thought of the dwarven language as being hard and blocky, myself.

[atomicwinter]

I always thought of the dwarven language as being hard and blocky, myself.

Seconded.

Turn it into something sounding romance, and we will have to get some rope.

[Supermikhail]

I've got thoughts:
From my notebook: "Language is formed, grammar and lexicon, according to what the people find important and useful, and the early rulers promote by example".
Today I had my first lesson in theoretical grammar, and being inspired by it, learned from a fellow student that Chinese language doesn't have tenses, and realized that English nouns really don't have gender.
So, basically, I propose that this project requires us to get into the heads of early dwarves and think what grammatical categoriesthey needed in their lives, and what words they would like to use on the daily basis. I even started compiling a list of things that I think dwarves would need words for: hard-rock, medium-rock, soft-rock, sand, clay, cave, cave-in, wet-rock... Well, it's kind of silly, looking back at it but this idea reminded me of a manuscript from the game "Divine Divinity" that spoke of the broad vocabulary dwarves there had for the colours of rock.

[Supermikhail]

So, food for speculation:
Crazy noun classes of Swahili
Theory of the ancestor of all languages
It's hard to equal the Proto-Indo-European language in weirdness
of (constructed) spelling, but possible
to best it in pronunciation
San Bushmen People on video
What's the hardest language to learn?
Anyway, I'm against simplicity. Also, I'd like Dwarven to have the weird sound that you make when you try to say "get" with mouth closed. I just don't like the words that start with "A", and I think it could use some improvement.

[Dwarf]

Ah, so a hard-ass language is what you want
Maybe we should consider dropping the language file. I think it restricts our possibilities quite too heavily.

Atomicwinter, if it should sound harsh and blocky, romance wouldn't be the way to go, would it?

[Supermikhail]

No. I'm opposed to dismissing the language file on the reasons that, well, Toady worked on it, not let the RNG compile it. So it must mean something, the words probably feel dwarven to Toady. It's another thing that he didn't choose the best words to start a vocabulary with.

Edit: a topic to consider while working on phonetics - url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmyC5vpNFAw - what do you think a song in Dwarven would sound like?

[Supermikhail]

Bump. Is this dead?

Anyway, another thought. I think what dwarves would need with their language is it being echo-proof, because caves give a lot of echo, and it's harder to understand each other if it's all bouncing. But I don't know how you achieve it, or if designing a language some way can give this effect. Just an idea.

[Supermikhail]

Huh? Bump again.

I think I've discovered a holy grail of Dwarven. Basically, a new grammatical category - whether the event takes place above or under the ground. A verb modifier that I called surfacion, a verb can be surfal or subsurfal. I don't know how much sense it makes in English, although I guess in most cases it wouldn't be translated. Then there's an idea of different races of dwarves, and I though it would be cool if one race preserved surfacion, one race retained only surfal, another - only subsurfal verbs.

Also I've though on the matter of echo and realized that some of the most distinct sounds would be hissing - s, sh, th, h. And I though, yeah, get rid of them.

But then I thought what if it didn't work like that? What if Dwarves didn't strive to conceal their talk during the development of the language - the more distinct, hissing sounds became dominating because they were easy to make out in the speech.

Also, on the word structure - reverberation brings about the effect of different sounds being indistinct. I propose that Dwarven words should follow the pattern cvc(vc), that is alternate between vowels and consonants, because any double vowels and consonants would dissolve into each other with time and make new, but single sounds. And words should not be longer than two syllables, because they'd be harder to make out. Or on the contrary, the grammar should be such that a word makes a sentence, like in Indian languages, because early words fused together.

[Dwarf]

I would not consider this dead, it's just that I don't like the language files - not following them makes the language not legit at all, whilst following them complicates stuff. Not that I'd be against complexity, but seriously, nouns and their respective adjectives should atleast be similar.

I don't suppose that any lanugage ever evolved with secrecy in mind, but rather with a subconscious "what works best works best" mentality.

Of course, having a phonology that works with echoes is the only sensible thing to do, and also why θ and ð are actually bad consonants, since they simply cannot be pronunced clearly and loudly.

[Supermikhail]

I wouldn't be so desperate about the language files. To me they seem to be just a legitimate place to draw inspiration from... Now, if I had a cave nearby, I'd print out a part of the language file for dwarves and go there to test out the words. Just with simple English pronunciation. Maybe a computer recording with a lot of reverb would work, though. I'm gonna wait if someone else takes up this noble task, at least until the weekend.

[Supermikhail]

I think I've got a couple of pretty amazing ideas.
First, about the language files. I don't think anyone associated with Dwarf Fortress would even consider a language as dwarven if it didn't contain the word "Urist".

Having thought of that, I did some manipulations to the word and decided that due to high reverberation the ending "st" would fuse into a single sound, that is, a diphthong. Then I looked at the language file and found that there's a good number of words in "st", but also, words ending in "st"-like sounds - "s", "th", "z". I think it may be an interesting idea to introduce some assimilation, by which, as "st" is, I think, the strongest of these sounds, the rest would in speech be replaced by it, and later maybe even in writing.

Then, my attention was attracted by "ur" in "urist". At first I tried to do something to phonology, but then, I remembered my other favourite word (after your fascinating performance) - "bobrur" which means "mother". I saw that there's that letter combination again. From my acquaintance with the studies of Proto-Indo-European language, I thought that it might have some meaning. I needed to look at more words to verify if it's significant, but that was at the University. Now I've returned home and indeed, we've got "urem" - "father". There's a significant number of words where "ur" occurs in the ending position. Wait... there's even such word - "ur" and it means "hearth". It occurs to me that it may be too early to discount Toady's and Threetoe's linguistic efforts, because if these words were random, it would be just uncanny. Of course, against this immediately stands the fact that one out of ten words ends in "ur", at least in later section. But if we agree that at least "urist" is important, then we've got a direction to work in.

Also for consideration, a male word "father" begins with "ur", and a, what I've always considered, male word "urist" begins with "ur", but a female word "mother" ends with "ur", and a word "hearth" that doesn't have an apparent gender in any sense of the word, but has an obvious connotation, is "ur" itself.

[Dwarf]

Man, Mikhail, you're really up to something. I added you on ICQ, so that a closer partnership is possible

[Ampersand]

http://www.ithkuil.net/ilaksh/Ilaksh_Intro.html Look here if you want to see an example of a difficult language.