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.

My Planned Languages

Designing languages is fun, and it's easy to get carried away with it.  I realize that it's unlikely I will get all of my ideas into a functional form, but the plan is to get some real development done on each. Even if they never get done they can be handed off to someone else, and failing that I'll at least amuse and educate myself.

The following list is a very brief description of each. I'll sketch out fuller plans in later posts.

• Dwarven:  Designed for gamers to actually use, this is made to be easy for English-speakers to learn. This is the only one with any real work done on it so far, and in fact I'm likely to publish something on it in the not-too-distant future.
• Parseltongue:  It was partly created for the Chamber of Secrets movie but no information seems to be on it anywhere.  So I'll do it.  It would be spectacular to talk Ms. Rowling into publishing or at least signing off on it. For one thing, it'd ensure development of probably the entire list.
• Draconic:  This is conceived as the head of a language family, and sort of a sister language to Parseltongue.
• Black Speech:  That's what Tolkien called Sauron’s created tongue for his minions, so I'll need a different name, though mine is for the same purpose exactly:  created by a big baddie to unite his disparate underlings.  Unlike Tolkien's, though, it's based not on Elvish but Draconic.
• Orcish:  Again like Tolkien’s, a simplified Black Speech, worn down by dumb underlings (orcs) who have no love or knowledge of language and little brainpower for using it.  Certainly easy to use by gamers, and possibly publishable.
• Arboreal:  I have a great idea for a language which is built of radicals and infixes, like the Semitic languages, and which uses a symbolic writing system that reflects it. The fictional speakers are a race of deeply philosophical tree-dwellers.
• Magic:  It would be very helpful to have a writing system for magic which is as regular and functional as the writing system for mathematics. It's been tried without much success for centuries. However, it seems there is a system which allows one to chart logic like a sentence diagram, and that makes it very promising.

I suspect I've left something off the list. Not that the above isn't more than enough.