Dwarven Koiné

Dwarven Koiné is the closest equivalent to a standard variant of the Dwarven language, created by an amalgamation of the most influential dialects, with influence from the conservative Temple Dwarven.

Evolution from Classical Koiné

 * The voiceless bilabial fricatives become labiodental.
 * The voiced bilabial fricatives and the labio-dorsal approximants  merge into labiodental approximants.
 * The light dorsal is debuccalized to, while  is fully merged into . The dark dorsal  remained unchanged.
 * Vowel shift:
 * First stage: The short vowels were lowered to, while the long vowels  were respectively raised to .  were either unaffected, or possibly raised . This happened in all variants.
 * This meant that the vowels - originating from the merger of the historical light  and the dark  - could now appear after both slender and broad consonants, making them neutral vowels.
 * Second stage: The long vowels were diphthongized . This happened in the koiné language, and the majority of dialects (both innovative and conservative) - however, a minority of conservative dialects did not partake in this shift, and thus retained the long vowels.
 * Modern Dwarven Koiné also developed terminal devoicing.

Consonants

 * With the exception of the postalveolar, dorsal, rhotic and lateral consonants, the main difference between slender and broad consonants is not in the articulation of the consonant itself - meaning that both and  are typically  - (most speakers don't even pronounce a palatal and velar offglide after slender and broad consonants respectively, especially not in fast, casual speech), but in the colouring of the historical vowels that came after it, setting constraints upon what kind of vowels can appear after said consonant. This allows speakers to easily analyze words for the roots.
 * At this point, many linguists consider the slender and broad consonants to be allophones rather than truly separate phonemes, with broad consonants and slender consonants being conditioned by light and dark vowels respectively, contrasting only before neutral consonants (which originated from the mergers of previously distinct dark and light vowels anyhow). This contrast may also be reintroduced before unstressed vowels.
 * can appear before any kind of vowel due to the simplification of a lot of historical clusters and combinations.
 * Dwarven Koiné - as well as the majority of dialects - have terminal devoicing, which means that voiced stops, fricatives and affricates devoice word-finally.
 * The voiceless slender dorsal fricative is glottal when followed by a vowel, dorso-palatal  otherwise. The other dorsal consonants are more of in free variation:
 * The slender have a free variation between pre-velar  and post-palatal.
 * The broad have a free variation between post-velar  and pre-uvular.

Vowels

 * The distribution of vowels is limited by these constraints:
 * The vowels in bright yellow are classified as "light vowels" and thus can only appear after slender consonants
 * The vowels in grey are classified as "dark vowels" and thus can only appear after broad consonants
 * The vowels in greyish-yellow are classified as "neutral vowels" and thus can appear after both broad and slender consonants. This is due to the fact that  originate from the mergers of the previously distinct pairs  and  - the earlier pair were light vowels, the latter pair were dark vowels.
 * The vowels in blue are classified as "foreign vowels" and thus can only appear in loanwords. Whether they are constrained to appear after broad or slender consonants is not set in stone, as it depends on how does the individual dwarf precisely pronounce them, if they aren't merged with the closest native vowel -  - to begin with. If they are merged into, both are analyzed as light vowels and force preceeding consonants to be slender. Otherwise,  is considered a light vowel and  is considered a dark vowel.
 * Unstressed short vowels are reduced to a schwa, but keep their palatalizing/lightening or velarizing/darkening effect on the preceding consonant. This results in dark and light consonants also contrasting before the schwa.
 * Lots of speakers front to  and retract  to, which avoids making the allophonic feature contrastive.
 * In the prestige dialect, this unstressed short vowel is always pronounced. In colloquial varieties, this vowel however is removed word-finally, as well as before nasals and liquids (creating syllabic consonants).
 * In Temple Dwarven, this vowel reduction never happens - all vowels are intended to be pronounced clearly, as if they were stressed.

Stress
Primary stress always falls on the first syllable. Secondary stress falls on odd-numbered syllables, with the one extra rule that the final syllable in a multi-syllable word can never be stressed. Stress is never indicated in the orthography.