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Dwarven language

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Revision as of 20:18, 28 October 2015 by Brightgalrs (talk | contribs) (→‎Notes)
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Not to be confused with Khuzdul.

The Dwarven language is one of the four languages the player will come across, besides Elvish, Human and Goblin. This language is used in-game for the names of the universe, continents, rivers, dwarven governments and settlements, dwarves, artifacts and engravings. However, as of yet, it lacks everything necessary for proper conversation, like grammar or personal pronouns.

Alphabet

The letters of the Dwarven alphabet are:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters)
A À Á Â Ä Å B C D E È É Ê Ë F G H I Ì Í Î Ï K L M N O Ò Ó Ô Ö R S T U Ù Ú Û V Z
Minuscule forms (also called lowercase or small letters)
a à á â ä å b c d e è é ê ë f g h i ì í î ï k l m n o ò ó ô ö r s t u ù ú û v z

Of these 40 letters, 25 are vowels (A, À, Á, Â, Ä, Å, E, È, É, Ê, Ë, I, Ì, Í, Î, Ï, O, Ò, Ó, Ô, Ö, U, Ù, Ú, Û); the 15 others are consonants.

The letters J, P, Q, W, X, and Y of the ISO basic Latin alphabet do not occur in the Dwarven alphabet.

Letter frequency

N Letter Frequency
1 A 7.91%
2 À 0.13%
3 Á 0.16%
4 Â 0.31%
5 Ä 0.30%
6 Å 0.28%
7 B 2.75%
8 C 0.48%
9 D 3.81%
10 E 6.29%
11 È 0.14%
12 É 0.13%
13 Ê 0.26%
14 Ë 0.27%
15 F 0.45%
16 G 3.95%
17 H 5.49%
18 I 6.21%
19 Ì 0.14%
20 Í 0.15%
21 Î 0.33%
22 Ï 0.28%
23 K 4.39%
24 L 5.84%
25 M 4.69%
26 N 5.67%
27 O 6.53%
28 Ò 0.16%
29 Ó 0.17%
30 Ô 0.24%
31 Ö 0.29%
32 R 5.95%
33 S 8.57%
34 T 8.39%
35 U 5.51%
36 Ù 0.14%
37 Ú 0.12%
38 Û 0.27%
39 V 0.78%
40 Z 2.06%

Phonology

Vocabulary

Main article: Template:Language table

The average word in the Dwarven language is 5.084 letters long. The longest known word is ngathsesh, meaning "puke".

Notes

Interestingly, the language lacks words like dwarf (possibly bistök-udos, "hairy man"), human (technically they have udos ("man")), goblin or elf (though one could use dák-enur ("tree-hug") for that). However, it is not lacking words for "pearl" (kovest) or "pumpkin" (fongbez) which do not even exist in-universe. It might be assumed that "Dwarf" is simply the dwarven word for dwarf, and that they call other races by their chosen moniker - but this would be the only word with "w" in it, which would be strange.


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Divine · Dwarven · Elvish · Goblin · Human · Kobold
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