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Dwarven language

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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 articles: Noun dictionary, Verb dictionary, Adjective dictionary, and Prefix dictionary

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.

The letter W does not exist elsewhere in Dwarven language, so it is unlikely that the word "dwarf" is the native moniker of dwarves for themselves. However "dwarf" might be adopted from the original dwarven word for their own kind, and similarly they might call other races by their respective chosen monikers. "Dwarf" would then be some another language's approximation of the native Dwarven pronunciation, whose correct Dwarvish spelling could purely hypothetically resemble forms such as "dorf" or "dvôrfum".

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