Conlang General Sketch: Dwarven

There are three main problems with using languages in role-playing games:

1. While a different writing system can convert the player's language into something obscure enough for written items, you simply can't do the same for spoken words, which are by far the most common part of such games.
2. There's not remotely enough available to use for anything beyond a phrase or two outside of Tolkien's various Elven languages, and even then the corpus is pretty small without doing some serious research and extrapolation.
3. Learning a different language even to a basic conversational level is not exactly reasonable for the usual gamer.

Designed for gamers to actually use, my Dwarven language is based only in part on the sounds of Tolkien’s Dwarven, as a tribute to the linguist who inspired so much. But contrary to Tolkien’s proverbial “hard language” of Middle Earth, this is merely foreign. To make it easy for English-speakers to learn and use, it’s supposedly an ancestor or contributor to Common Tongue (which English stands in for, in my games, naturally). This means that some similarities in sound or structure can be justified. The sounds are in fact mostly the same as in English, with some German to augment them. The writing system is also set up in a very logical and regular manner, the better to remember what sound goes with what letter. Speaking of which, the orthography of Dwarven is emphatically not like those found in most natural languages: it is simple, predictable, and consistent.

The grammar uses a simplified ergative case system, pretty unusual in the real world (Basque is an example), but very easy to learn in the form I have. This makes it foreign without being difficult. The noun phrases are constructed like those in German or Italian, which is much like English but with the noun first instead of last. Obviously there's more to it than that, but that's it in essence.

There is a Berlitz-style phrasebook I've already written, and once I have some recording equipment purchased I'll be readying it for publication. A grammar will follow, and something along the lines of Pimsleur's courses might happen as well. We'll see. This is probably the conlang I'll write the most about.