Helge wrote:

Our one-and-only Tolkienian Khuzdul pronoun is mênu, accusative “you”, from the battle-cry meaning “the Dwarves are upon you”. Your 2nd person inflections contain nothing readily similar. Then again, the Hebrew 2nd person inflections (like -ta in the 2nd person sg. perfect) are not similar to the independent pronoun for accusative “you” (ending -kha added to an accusative particle).

This is true, and it was never my intention to have the verb forms exactly mirror the independent pronouns or pronominal affixes (about which more will be explained it is place). However, you bring up something else interesting and problematic for neo-Khuzdul.

The phrase Khazâd ai-mênu “The Dwarves are upon you” has been well-known for nearly sixty years. Yet for most of that time one could only conjecture how ai-mênu meant “upon you.” It was quite possible, for instance, that ai was “you” and mênu was a postposition. Or perhaps ai was “they are” and mênu was an inflected form of “you”. This state of ignorance still prevailed when I started creating neo-Khuzdul. Therefore I simply disregarded these words, fearing more to mischaracterize them than to create a system which omitted them.

By the time we found out that ai was a clipping or combining form of aya “upon” and that mênu was the accusative of a plural “you” (Parma Eldalamberon #17, p. 85), I had already established a detailed pronominal morphology for neo-Khuzdul in which the independent form of “you plural” is astun (feminine astin). In all likelihood (I do not remember the details) -st- was a strengthening of 2nd person -s-, while -u- and -i- were masculine and feminine elements, and -n was obviously a plural element — the 2nd person singulars are astu/asti.

I don’t apologize for making forms inconsistent with ai-mênu – for the reasons I mentioned, it seemed more prudent at the time. My mistake was that when I learned about the meaning of mênu, I did not at once go back and try to find a way to fit it in with the morphology. At the time, however, the three Lord of the Rings films had been produced, there was no prospect of any more films, and I shelved neo-Khuzdul without expecting to do any more work on it ever. By the time I had to start work on neo-Khuzdul again, I was concentrating on making it consistent (insofar as possible) with the earlier work, and I neglected to note that there had been an inconsistency which I could have fixed. As a result, I created several phrases containing neo-Khuzdul 2nd person pronoun forms which are consistent with my earlier pronominal morphology, but not with mênu.

This was unquestionably an error on my part, a serious oversight — the more so because it concerns the most famous phrase in the Dwarf-language! It is not, however, an irreparable error. In fact, it creates an opportunity to expand and enrich neo-Khuzdul’s pronoun system.

Tolkien in multiple places indicates that both Elvish and Mannish languages possessed a distinction between two types of 2nd person pronoun: one formal/respectful/courteous/polite/deferential, the other familiar/imperious/endearing. I do not recall Tolkien saying anything about Khuzdul having such a distinction, but he also never says that Khuzdul doesn’t; and it provides a neat way of getting out of my self-inflicted 2nd person trap. The distinction need not have been an original Khuzdul one; it might, perhaps, been imitated from other languages, using an appropriate noun or title to fill out one of the 2nd person slots, much like Spanish usted and Portuguese você (< vuestra merced/vossa mercê), or the Quenya use of the ending -tar “high one, lord” (in some paradigms) to create honorific verbal forms.

Coincidentally helpful is the fact that mênu fits with certain established facts about neo-Khuzdul. The -u ending can be taken as the same as that seen in Khazad-dûmu — an accusative ending following verbs and verblike forms. In fact, it is quite possible that aya is really a verbal root “go over, be above, be superior to.” That leaves mên, of which the -n ending is the same as the existing pronominal plural ending in neo-Khuzdul.

The question now is to which category to assign mên — formal or familiar? There are valid arguments for both. The you-pronoun in Khazâd ai-mênu refers to hated enemies such as Orcs. If the familiar form is one exclusively used for endearments or for close personal friends, then presumably the formal would have to used for Orcs, whom one presumes the Dwarves would not tutoyer, as they say in French: to treat someone as such an intimate that one uses familiar pronouns with them. On the other hand, if the distinction is not one of familiarity vs. unfamiliarity, but of respect vs. the absence of respect (if not disrespect), then presumably the Orcs would get hailed with the less respectful pronoun.

Something very like this has happened in the history of English. The Old English pronouns þū (>thou) and gē (>ye) simply distinguished singular (one “you”) from plural (many “yous”). In the later Middle Ages, however — probably through imitation of French — thou was used for intimates, ye (accusative you) in formal situations for singulars as well as plurals. One used thou to speak to sweethearts, children, animals — and to God. But thou was also used for enemies, as a sort of insult, as if to suggest that one’s foe was no better than a child. In Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, in the Tale of Sir Gareth (which I use because it is probably not a translation from French) Gareth always respectfully addresses the damnsel Lyonet who accompanies him as ye, whereas she (assuming him to be a kitchen boy) calls him thou; when Gareth fights with other knights, they address each other as thou; but when Gareth’s enemies yield and offer him homage, their relationship is changed, and they now call each other ye. By the 17th century in standard English thou had fallen out of ordinary use, and the accusative you was replacing ye in all situations; thou only remained in archaic, especially religious language, and in some non-standard dialects (both geographic and class-based), where the actual form in use was a little different, e.g. tha or thee.

Since I also have to keep consistency (if possible) with my established usage, I have just checked to see where I used astun and related forms (e.g. the pronominal suffix -zun). It looks like it was primarily in situations that can be described as military, where one dwarf is ordering or encouraging another to perform some action. These cases would seem to fit the “respectful” profile. Therefore I conclude that astun is the respectful 2nd person plural, and mên is the familiar (if not disrespectful!) 2nd person plural, probably with mê as a singular form. I did, unfortunately already have a word mê “we” already in the pronominal paradigm, but since it doesn’t appear to have been used anywhere, that doesn’t create any particular problem; I’ll just have to create a new pronoun in its place, perhaps ammâ.

This is all new — I hadn’t really thought about the issue until last week, when Helge’s question forced me to consider the discrepancy. But the error has serendipitously enriched neo-Khuzdul, making it both more complex (and therefore more natural) and more consistent with Tolkien’s Khuzdul.

The first major text which I had to translate into neo-Khuzdul, and the last really significant work I did on the language prior to The Hobbit was Durin’s Song/The Balrog, the lyric which plays in the the background of the Moria scene in The Fellowship of the Ring. I received the request for this on February 27, 2001 (although, due to time zone issues, it was dated February 28), and returned a reply on March 4 — an unusually long delay of a little over 4 days, of which doubtless not all was spent working on this text.

The original English text, written by Philippa Boyens, was as follows:

Durin who is Deathless / Eldest of all Fathers. / Who awoke / To darkness / Beneath the mountain / Who walked alone / Through halls of stone

Durin who is Deathless / Lord of Khazad-dum / Who cleaved / The Dark / And broke / The silence/  This is your light! / This is your word!/ This is your glory! /  The Dwarrowdelf of Khazad-dum!

A crown of stars in the cold, black water of Kheled-zaram. Durin sleeps.

Deeper into the earth/ The dark grows heavy/ Cold snaps our bones/  Deeper into the earth. / There, the glint of Mithrail / sharp and far away/  Deeper into the earth/ That sound again / Dread surrounds us. /  Can no one hear us?A great shadow / Moves in the dark/ The earth shakes! / Cracks! Splits! / Will no one save us?! / Fire! / Fire in the deep! / Flames lick our skin! / Fear rips our heart! / No! No! No! /  The demon comes!

My translation was:

Durin ku bin-amrad / Ugmal sullu addad / Ku bakana / Ana aznân / Undu abad / Ku ganaga / Tur ganâd abanul

Durin ku bin-amrad / Uzbad Khazaddûmu / Ku baraka / Aznân / ra karaka / atkât / ala lukhudizu! / ala galabizu! / ala ukratizu! / Khazad-dûm!

Kilmîn thatur ni zâram kalil ra narag, Kheled-zâram. Durin tazlifi.

Ubzar ni kâmin / Aznân taburrudi / Iklal tanzifi bashukimâ / Ubzar ni kâmin / gilim Sanzigil / shakar ra udlag / Ubzar ni kâmin / tada aklat gagin / Ugrûd tashurrukimâ / Maku kataklutimâ? / Askad gabil / Tashfati ni aznân / Kâmin takalladi / Tabriki! Takarraki! / Maku zatansasimâ? / Urus! / Urus ni buzra! / Arrâs talbabi fillumâ! / Ugrûd tashniki kurdumâ! / Lu! Lu! Lu! / Urkhas tanakhi!

This was a pretty literal translation, with a few necessary reductions of redundancies, e.g. “the Dwarrowdelf of Khazad-dûm.”

Analysing the features of this text will take some space, yet as it was foundational for the later versions of neo-Khuzdul, it deserves to be treated in depth.

Let’s first look at the verbs, since we have already covered their forms to some degree. They are:
bakana “awoke”
ganaga “walked”
baraka “cleaved”
karaka “broke”
tazlifi “sleeps”
taburrudi “grows heavy”
tanzifi “snaps”
tashurrukimâ “surrounds us”
kataklutimâ “can hear us”
tashfati “moves”
takalladi “shakes”
tabriki “cracks”
takarraki “splits”
zatansasimâ “will save us”
talbabi “lick”
tashniki “rips”
tanakhi “comes”

All of these are 3rd persons, mostly singular. They fall into two obvious classes: “perfects” like bakana, ganaga, baraka, karaka, mostly translating preterites, but only because these refer to historical facts. The others, “imperfects” containing the prefix ta- refer to present experiences or present or future possibilities. It will be observed that three of the forms contain the 1st person plural suffix -mâ, which doubles as a possessive marker “our” with nouns and as an object suffix “us” with verbs.

The verb roots are heavily laden with “jests,” most of which should be obvious to those familiar with the history of Germanic languages, or even just with English. However, I had better go over them, since the puns may be somewhat less obvious in the present constructions. For the most part I can remember the sources easily.

BKN “wake” is from Gothic gawaknan “awaken” and of course English waken, with substitution of B for W, which doesn’t exist in neo-Khuzdul.
BRK “cleave” from Gothic brikan, English break.
GNG “walk” from Gothic gangan “go.”
KLT “hear” from Indo-European *klutos “heard.”
KRK “break” from English crack.
NSS “save” from Gothic nasjan “save.”
ShFT “move” from English shift.
ZLF “sleep” from Gothic slêpan “sleep”, whose preterite is saizlêp.

Please note that these are not intended to suggest any historical or other relationship between Khuzdul and these languages — they were simply sound-sequences that seemed appropriate at the time.

Others are from Tolkien languages:
BRD “grow heavy” from Adunaic burôda “heavy.”
LBB “lick” from Eldarin LAB “lick” (though this is also an Indo-European root of the same meaning).
NKh “come” from Adûnaic unakkha “he came.”

Others appear to be pure inventions, or at least I cannot remember the source or association with certainty. Perhaps a perceptive reader can figure them out!
KLD “shake”
NZF “snap” — possibly simply the consonants of “snap” rearranged and altered.
ShNK “rip” — this might be onomatopœic, from a sound of tearing, shnik!
ShRK “surround” — possibly from a badly maltreated Latin circum “around.”

Four of the examples show a doubled medial consonant: taburrudi “grows heavy,” tashurrukimâ “surrounds us,” takalladi “shakes,” and takarraki “splits.” This was supposed to be an auxiliary stem indicating long-continued, repeating, or otherwise extreme action: e.g. takalladi “shakes over and over,” takarraki “splits into many small pieces, ‘shivers’.”

Also of interest are the prefixes ka- and za-. These mean, respectively, “can” and “will/shall”, and their forms were suggested by can and shall – or perhaps, in the latter case, German sollen. Their usage is very un-Semitic, and for that matter rather un-Indo-European. I may have imagined them as reduced auxiliary verbs that eventually got attached to verbs as clitics; as they refer to potential or future states, which are certainly non-factual, they are attached to the “imperfect” verbs.

As I mentioned in one of the comments on the previous blog post, one of the characteristics I invented for neo-Khuzdul is a prefix marking the definite accusative — that is, it comes before a noun which is the direct object of a verb, if that noun is not being newly introduced into the universe of discourse — that is, it has been previously mentioned or implied, or can be assumed to be well-known to the person or persons spoken to. Discussing this is moving a bit ahead and outside of chronological sequence, but as this is a detail which doesn’t have major effects on the rest of the language, it seems to do no harm to treat it out of order.

I have received a couple of questions about this prefix. The Dwarrow Scholar asks:

 What is the neo-Khuzdul prefix in question please (or is it indeed “al” just as in Arabic) ?

The prefix is (in theory) id-, and appears as such before a word beginning with a vowel (e.g. id-urus “the fire”) but it appears assimilated to following stops, e.g. ib-bekâr “the weapons.” Whether it assimilates to other types of consonants I’m not yet sure; probably it does assimilate to nasals (m, n) but not to liquids or glides (l, r, y).

This prefix certainly resembles the Hebrew prefix ʔeṯ- and I can hardly doubt that it was inspired by it, as Mad Latinist suggests; yet what I actually remember from the time when I invented it was thinking of the Persian definite accusative suffix -rā. Most likely the fresher memory of the one and a somewhat dimmer memory of the other combined to influence this choice.

Helge asks:

Is the variation in form of the definite article/prefix meant to reflect actual phonological changes (like say, assimilation) taking place over time? If I had been developing Khuzdul, I would be careful not to presuppose any really substantial “developments”, since Tolkien insists that this was a language that largely resisted change. (The only attested “sound-change” is that the preposition aya can be reduced to ai!) I like the idea that F may represent original P (a nod to Arabic), but to suggest that there was an older stage where consonantal roots were connected with a distinct “characteristic vowel” (as in Adunaic) hints at a pretty substantial structural change taking place over the course of history. Isn’t this more dramatic change than what Tolkien seems to presuppose? Do you have an vision of what the originial “Pure Aulean” Proto-Khuzdul was like as well as your suggestion for the “historical” version?

I have not explored the internal history of neo-Khuzdul to any great extent, and I’ve assumed that its current form is not unlike that of its original form. Accordingly, I used Arabic rather than Hebrew or Aramaic as an inspiration, because Arabic, at least in its classical form, is very archaic and conservative in structure. But there are two reasons to suppose that Khuzdul ought not to be constructed as if it had never undergone any change. The first is that Aulë, as a language-creator was completely capable of building in elements that resemble the processes of language change, even if they had never taken place in history, and that, if he was anything like Tolkien, he probably did! The second is that although change in Khuzdul was slow and slight, it was not nonexistent: “After their awakening this language (as all languages and all other things in Arda) changed in time, and divergently in the mansions that were far sundered… the change in Khuzdul… was ‘like the weathering of hard rock compared with the melting of snow.’”

Accordingly, an assimilation here or there hardly seems like an outrageous development to postulate. In Arabic, although for the most part root-consonants remain intact without assimilation, some affixes do assimilate; notably the definite prefix al-, which assimilates to following coronal consonants, and also the infixed -t- of the derived verb stem conventionally numbered VIII, which assimilates in voice and emphasis to a preceding coronal obstruent. Whether the Khuzdul assimilation took place in Longbeard Dwarvish over the long years between the awakening of Durin and the end of the Third Age, or whether it was something which Aulë/Mahal built into the language from the beginning is a question I haven’t felt the need to answer definitively.

I’m finishing my discussion of Durin’s song with an overview of the remaining words, pointing out some of the sources. By way of comparison, I have added the first (and so far only) “dictionary” of Neokhuzdul that exists, at the link Neo-Khuzdul glossary. There may be some slight discrepancies between the glossary and the list below, but on the whole they seem to be in good agreement. There are also several words in it which are not found below nor, I think, anywhere else.

Adverbs

• gagin “again” — Proto-Germanic *gagina, which forms part of *anagagina which becomes Old English ongean, Modern English again. Cf. German gegen.

Conjunctions

• ra “and” — I do not know where this came from.

Prepositions

• ana “to, toward” — evidently also influenced by Elvish an and na.
• bin “without, lacking” — clearly influenced by Elvish pen “without”, which in turn reflects Greek πένομαι penomai “be poor, have need of” — though I think I had not noticed the connection at the time, or indeed until quite recently.
• ni “in” — it’s in backwards.
• tur “through” — influenced by both Elvish ter- and Old English þurh, both “through”. (The former probably shows the influence of Indo-European √terH, which is of course the source of the latter).
• undu “beneath, under” — Elvish √undu, and English under.

Pronouns

• ku “who” — suggested by the Indo-European root √kwo-.
• maku “no one” — literally “no who.” The use of a prefix ma- as a negative is a little obscure, but perhaps was suggested by Greek μή mē and Sanskrit mā.
• tada “that” — suggested by Gothic þata and Indo-European *tod (Sanskrit tat) “that, it.”

Adjectives:

• kalil “cold” — English cold from Proto-Germanic *kalda- and chill from *kaliz.
• shakar “sharp” — probably simply sound symbolism; I thought that the consonants suggested the sound of something being cut.
• sullu “all” — suggested by Proto-Indo-European *solwos “whole,” which I knew in the shape of Sanskrit sarva “all.”
• ubzar “deeper” — from a root √BZR, intended to explain bizar “valley.” The pattern uCCaC for comparatives and superlatives obviously overlaps with uCCaC for agents, but evidently this didn’t bother me. It is not uncommon in natural languages for similar constructions to have two quite different meanings, if they are unlikely to overlap in practice; for instance, in English the ending -er when attached to adjectives is a comparative ending (e.g. tall:taller) but when added to verbs indicates an agent (e.g. speak:speaker). I don’t remember if this comparison occurred to me at the time, however.
• udlag “very far away” — presumably a superlative, but I don’t know what the base form would have been, perhaps dalig. In any case it is from *dlonghos, the Indo-European basis of both English long and Latin longus.
• ugmal “eldest” — supposed to be a superlative form, from an adjective gamil “old”. The latter word is actually attested in the name of a Dwarf craftsman called “Gamil Zirak the old” (Unfinished Tales, p. 76) but there is no certainty that it actually means “old.” The meaning is really taken from Old Norse gamall “old”.

Nouns

• abad “mountain” — Almost certainly abstracted from Gundabad.
• aban “stone”, adjectival form abanul “of stone, stony” — Looks like a rare case of direct Semitic influence, Hebrew eben < *abnu.
• addad “fathers” — Thus in this transcript, though my early glossary has addâd. The singular was dâd, the root √ʔD, both singular and plural being somewhat irregular. Evidently from a kind of baby talk, “da da” — and of course similar to English dad.
• aklat “sound” — an abstract noun from a root √KLT, suggested by Indo-European *klew- “hear” and *klutos “heard.”
• amrad “death” — an abstract noun, evidently from a root √MRD “die”, which is obviously suggested by Proto-Indo-European √mer- (as in mortal).
• arrâs “flames” — see urus below.
• askad “shadow” — perhaps also originally abstract. Suggested by Proto-Germanic *skadwaz, whence English shade/shadow.
• atkât “silence” — from a root √TKT, suggested by Latin taceo “be silent.” The pattern is evidently the abstract one I took from aglâb “speech.”
• aznân “dark, darkness” — from a root √ʔZN, taken from the first part of Azanulbizar (Dimrill Dale). The form azanân was most likely intended as a sort of “broken” plural.
• bashuk “bones” — a plural apparently founded on the pattern of baruk “axes”. It implies a singular *bashk, which however doesn’t appear in my notes.
• buzrâ “deep” (sc. deep places, depths). From the same root √BZR in bizar “valley” and ubzar “deeper, very deep.” The word may have been intended originally as a plural, though I am not now sure of that.
• fill(u) “skin” — Gothic fill “skin, hide” (cf. archaic English “fell,” a flayed animal’s skin).
• gabil “great” — attested Khuzdul word, from Gabilgathol “Great fortress” and Gabilân “Great river.”
• galab “word” — from the root √GLB taken from aglâb.
• ganâd “halls” — a plural, obviously of gund, taken from both Felak-gundu and Gundabad. Hence evidently I understood Gundabad at the time as “Mountain-of-underground hall.”
• gilim “glint” — suggested by Eldarin √glim-, English gleam, and of course glint itself.
• iklal “cold” — yet another abstract pattern, from the same root as kalil “cold.” Most languages have a fairly large number of ways of constructing abstract nouns indicating qualities.
• kâmin “earth” — suggested by Quenya cemen.
• kilmîn “crown” — Old English helm, from an Indo-European root √kel-. The shape suggests a meaning something more like “helmet-shaped structure.” The crown of Durin depicted on the West-gate of Moria is helmet-like in shape.
• kurd(u) “heart” — Indo-European *kerd-, whence Greek καρδία kardia, Latin cord-, and Gothic hairtō.
• lukhud “light” — English light and the related Gothic liuhad-.
• sanzigil “mithril” — literally “true-silver”. San from Sanskrit san(t-), sat- and Old Norse sannr, both “true” (from an Indo-European word meaning “existing”). This is probably not the secret name of the Dwarves for mithril, but a circumlocution that could be used in public.
• thatur “stars” — this implies a singular thatr (though I do not see that form anywhere in my notes). The inspiration was English “star” and its Indo-European cognates (most of which, however, contain the stem in the form ster- (e.g. ἀστήρ astēr, stella, stairnō), except for Sanskrit tārā, which I may have been thinking of.
• ugrûd “fear, dread” — from a root √GRD “fear”, related to various Eldarin words and roots (√ŋgor-, √ŋgur-) suggesting horror or death.
• ukrat “glory” — Most likely from Old English hréð “glory, fame” < *hrōþiz, whose shape could imply a PIE *krōtis.
• urus “fire” — Intended to be a direct borrowing from Valarin uruš (also rušur) “fire.” The reason Aulë might have had for changing the š to an s remains inscrutable; my reason was probably that I didn’t want it to look exactly like Valarin. The influence of Eldarin uru- “heat” is also evident. The plural arrâs is along the same lines as addâd, a plural formation that is evidently of my own invention.

In the interest of keeping this story in a more-or-less chronological order, and having covered most of the work related to the Khuzdul of the films of The Lord of the Rings, I’m going to go back a bit and discuss another rather tangled complex of languages I worked on: the Black Speech of Mordor, and its various Orkish progeny.

Creating these languages posed problems similar to those of Khuzdul, but in a much more acute fashion. Whereas for Khuzdul there was at least a small vocabulary (but enough to establish a consistent phonology) and some hints at grammar, so that one knew at least what kind of language it was, for the language invented by Sauron we had almost nothing: just the inscription on the One Ring, and a couple of other words and names (such as Lugbúrz “Dark Tower,” uruk “soldier-orc,” snaga “slave-orc,” olog “troll,” ghâsh “fire,” nazgûl “ringwraith,” sharkû “old man,” and tark “man (of Gondor)”; and possibly some much older words used by the Orcs in the First Age, like golug “elf” and oghor “Wild Man”. Of the lesser Orkish dialects, just a curse uttered by a Mordor-orc, which is translated three different ways, and a variety of names are available (Isengard-orcs: Lugdush, Mauhúr, Uglúk; Mordor-orcs: Gorbag, Grishnákh, Lagduf, Muzgash, Radbug, Shagrat, Ufthak).

Appendix F provides some other indications of the nature of the languages in question: with regard to the Orcs, that they “took… other tongus and perverted [them],” making “brutal jargons”; that there were “as many barbarous dialects as there were groups or settlements,” and consequently that there was no single Orkish language, and that one Orkish tribe would be unable to communicate with another through its own language, and that therefore Westron became their <i>lingua franca</i>.

With regard to the Black Speech, it appears that Sauron devised it with the intention of it being the common language of all his subjects, but merely succeeded in providing certain common items of vocabulary for the various Orkish groups. During most of the Third Age it was forgotten, but the end of the Third Age Sauron revived it as the ‘national language’ of Mordor, and it was consequently used by his own soldiers — but in a “debased” form. This language was also used by the Olog-hai, a breed of trolls found in Mirkwood and in Mordor.

Beyond that, we have the general characterization that the sound of spoken Black Speech was “menacing, powerful, harsh as stone” — characterizations that are a little hard to relate to its written transcription.

The vowel sounds in the inscription on the Ring include only a, i, u, and û [uː]; but o is found elsewhere. The sound i is rare, and e is not found at all.

The consonants seen are:

There is really nothing exceptional in this sound system; except for [x] and [ɣ], all the sounds are easy for English-speakers to pronounce, and those sounds are fairly common in other well-known languages.
What may make the language “harsh” is the abundance of unsimplified consonant clusters of various types: Initial gl-, kr-, sk-, sn-, θr-; internal -bh-, -db-, -fθ-, -gb-, -gd-, -gl-, -gr-, -mb-, -mp-, -rb-, -rz-, -ʃd-, -ʃn-, -zg-; final -ŋk, -rk, -zg. These give the language a somewhat clunky, overcrowded phonæsthetic, but in this respect English is no better and quite possibly worse. One also notes a relatively high proportion of velars, as compared to the Elvish languages, which are coronal-rich. But perhaps more than any of this it’s the preponderance of back vowel sounds which most contribute to the “heavy” sound of the language.

But for all that, I can’t say that I personally find it an unlovely language. Gandalf’s voice may have become “menacing” when uttering the words on the Ring, but I could just as easily produce the same sounds with charming effect. In terms of its sounds, I think Black Speech comes closest to Persian, which I find a very appealing-sounding language — though front vowels are much more common in Persian.

Since I had so little direct linguistic information about Black Speech to go on other than what could be gleaned from the Ring-inscription (object suffixes -ul, -ulûk; verbal infinitive (perhaps) ending -at; abstract ending -um in burzum “darkness”, containing the same burz element seen in Lugbúrz “Dark Tower”; postposition -ishi “in”) I had to go on à priori notions of what a language such as Black Speech might be like — I had to get inside the mind of Sauron, and try to figure out what somebody like the Dark Lord of Mordor might put into his language.

As a matter of fact, this is something I had thought about some years before. As an undergraduate in college, I had contributed to a set of ongoing stories, where each participant wrote additional chapters and introduced characters and events as he or she pleased. Into one of these stories I introduced the character (played partly for humor, partly tragically) of a misfit Orc who, sometime after the fall of Mordor, had found himself transported through time and space into a new environment. On introducing this Orc, I thought it would add a touch of realism to let him speak in his own language; so I sketched the outline of what I imagined Black Speech might be like, and wrote a couple of paragraphs in it.

I have no idea if any copy of this text survives somewhere in my files. At any rate, I made no direct use of it, except for one small element that I retained in memory, the 1st person pronoun za — possibly suggested by Avestan azəm.

What I did retain, however, was the overall notion of Black Speech as a complex but consistent language, rich in affixation and inflection, but with a wholly transparent morphology. Indeed, the transparency of the morphology, the lack of any phonetic alterations between morphemes that could obscure the structure, would help explain the prevalence of clashing consonant clusters; morphemes ending in one consonant were jammed up against morphemes beginning in another, with nothing to ease the transition.

Sauron, I imagined, was an enormously practical person, who would have made the Black Speech as “perfect” (according to his notions of perfection) as he could make it, with a rigorous consistency and logic, but without making any allowance for æsthetics. It would not eschew borrowings from other languages of Middle-earth, but it would adapt them to its own style. It would in fact have been, as my friend Helge Fauskanger terms it, Sauron’s Esperanto.

Whether I actually managed to capture this vision of Sauron’s mind in my version of Black Speech may be doubted. I largely lack that sort of mental rigor, and when it comes to language I often prefer sloppiness to tight organization. Nonetheless, I think I succeeded in making my version of Black Speech a bit more consistent than most of the other languages of this milieu, though not without its own quirks.

In sharp contrast to the relatively tight organization of Black Speech, the Orkish languages were to be simple, disorganized, and inconsistent, the result of years of rapid and ungoverned evolution. There would be grammar, of course, but also a fair amount of toleration of variation, and a continuous tendency to proliferate new words and abandon old ones. They would show a strong influence from Black Speech, at various stages in their development; but they would fail to adhere by its rules.

For the Lord of the Rings films I intended to come up with three Orkish dialects in addition to Black Speech: one, spoken by the Orcs of Mordor, would be closely based on Black Speech, but spoken in a more casual and clipped manner. The other two, the Orkish of Isengard and the Orkish of Moria, ideally should have been developed as wholly independent languages, touched by Black Speech only through borrowings. Faced with rapidly approaching deadlines, however, I cheated; I made all of them descendants of Black Speech, via a hypothetical Proto-Orkish, with the language of Isengard showing several distinguishing sound changes, and the language of Moria showing an even more advanced set of sound changes, intended to give the Moria-goblins a hissing, sibilant sound.

The last was not actually my own idea; I received a message (February 20, 2001) from writers Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh, asking for the following characteristics of the Orcs:

Mordor Orcs – harsh and guttural, reflecting the barrenness of Gorgoroth.
Moria Orcs – more secretive, whispery, hissing, reflecting the darkness of the tunnels.
For the Uruk-hai we want powerful sounds that reflect aggression and hatred, also a discipline to the language not shown by the lesser Orcs.

Since “harsh and guttural” and “aggression and hatred” were likely to be associated with these languages in any case, I didn’t have to do much with regard to the dialects of Mordor and Isengard other than to render them distinct; but for Moria I had to implement sound-changes (of a somewhat improbable nature) that considerably increased the proportion of fricatives.

By way of illustration, I copy a list of words which I wrote out at the beginning of this task. From *lutu- down this is actually a rationalization of miscellaneous jottings, not necessarily consistent with the rest of this list or even with themselves; they were probably added later. You can also observe that I was not very consistent with my choice of symbols.

Isengard kūm is doubtless a mistake for kʰūm. There are likely other errors as well.

I did not write down any details of the sound changes, since I presumably made them up as I went along; nonetheless they appear to be fairly regular. Mordor-Orkish loses the final vowels in nouns, and adds an epenthetic vowel in some final consonant clusters. Isengard-Orkish aspirates initial voiceless stops and voices medial ones, while turning medial voiced stops to voiced fricatives (but -d- to -r-), drops preconsonantal r with compensatory lengthening, and has a variety of other assimilations. Moria-Orkish assimilates like Isengard-Orkish, but also turns almost all stops to fricatives.

I’ve received an inquiry about the meaning of the runes on Kíli’s talisman stone. The words inscribed on it are innikh dê.

The first is the singular imperative of the verb nanakha “return, come back”, which has a triliteral root √n-n-kh which obviously has been formed from the biliteral root √n-kh “come,” which is in turn clearly related to Adûnaic nakh-. The pattern is iCCiC, as is generally the case with other imperatives.

Dê combines a preposition d(u) “to, toward” (whose real-world inspiration is the Gothic preposition du) with the 1st person singular pronominal suffix -ê.

The meaning of the phrase on the stone is therefore “return to me.” Its precise application in Kíli’s case is something I’m not privy to, and I expect that passionate film fans can guess it more easily than I can.

On this, the 122nd anniversary of the birth of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, the Miðgarðsmál blog would like to wish him a

• Mána ontalérë
• Aur onnas alwed
• Ênâd-nurt gêdul

and a

• Zeyborzi undumi bolneg

Glosses
Quenya
mána “blessed”
onta- “produce, create, beget, give birth to”
ontale “production, creation, genealogical descent” — hence (presumably) birth as well
ré “day” (of 24 hours)
ontale+ré = ontalére, preserving the original long final vowel of *ontālē (cf. yáviére, tuilére)

Sindarin
aur “day” (of 24 hours)
onnas “birth” — a conjectural noun form, from the slightly less conjectural onna-, equivalent to Quenya onta- (cf. edonna- “beget”)
alwed “fortunate, prosperous”

Neo-Khuzdul
ênâd “birth” from *aynād, from the root √YND “give birth to” (influenced in fact by both Quenya yondo and Semitic √WLD, √YLD).
nurt “24-hour day” — a word from archaic formation, from √NRT “turn”; probably referring, not to the turning of the earth on its axis, but to the apparent turning of the sun around the earth. This root has been in my notes for a while, and I can’t find which word it was originally intended to explain or remember its origin; it looks now like simply an anagram of “turn,” but I may have had something else in mind, possibly Indo-European *wert- . “Turning” itself would be anrât.
gêdul “joyful, happy,” from a noun gayad, gêd- (*gayd-). No doubt Latin gaudium had an influence here.

Orkish (The dialect used in the film of The Hobbit)
zeyborz “day,” literally “light-dark”; zey from more archaic *zil, and borz from Black Speech burz.
The suffix -i marks a noun or noun phrase that is modified by an adjective or another noun. Its origin is probably the same as the Elvish relative pronoun i or ya.
undum “birth” or “spawning” from a verb und- “procreate.” This again seems to show Elvish influence.
The Orcs do not really appreciate the concept of joy, as understood by most other creatures (a literal description of it in Orkish would amount to “madness”), much less blessedness. I was forced to use an approximation of the concept that would make sense to an Orc:
bolneg “free from pain,” from the Orkish root √bol- (cf. bolum “pain”) and the privative suffix -neg, marking an absence of something. The latter is reminiscent of Latin negare; this is a coincidence (as they say in Middle-earth). The actual source is Quendian *-enekā, from the root √nek- “deprive of.”

Although there is quite a bit of Orkish in the films of The Hobbit, the vocabulary involved in the dialogue is quite small. This is for two reasons: first, the dialogue is fairly repetitive; second, the Orcs are intended to have had a fairly small vocabulary to begin with, supplementing it as needed by words from the languages of Elves, Dwarves, and Men, and also Black Speech, when that became widely used in Middle-earth again at the end of the Third Age. Even what can be considered the foundational vocabulary is itself a mélange of older borrowings, very few of which can be traced back to the aboriginal Orkish of the First Age — which was itself influenced by both Avarin and Eldarin languages, and may even have been a simplified Avarin language to begin with. One such word that might seem to have survived, in various forms, is golug “elf”; but it seems more likely that it was a revival, reimported from Black Speech. The original word, however, may well have been an alteration of the Sindarin word golodh “one of the Noldor.”

Because of the limited nature of this vocabulary, it is possible to list all of the Orkish words that have appeared in the Hobbit films thus far. Some of these words are pan-Orkish; most, however, are probably limited to the Orcs who lived at the northern end of the Misty Mountains, with a standard (if such a thing can be said to exist) originally set by the Orcs of Mount Gundabad, prior to the Dwarf and Goblin war, about 150 years before Bilbo’s journey. But the internal evidence of the language suggests that the vernaculars of several different tribes were combined to form this standard; and in the time since the war, much change and decay had already taken place, particularly the loss of final vowels, which are however retained in some situations. Here then is this short word-list, all that can (so far) be gleaned from the meager evidence.

A
a-, pref.: away, out
â, cj.: and
ab, pref.: after, behind, following
abgur, v.: follow, chase after, pursue
-ai, -ayi-: plural suffix attached to peoples
adad, n.: being
agor, agr(a), n.: blood
-an(i): past tense suffix
ân, n.: human being
arg, a.: other
argad, n.: another thing
ash, a.: one, some
ashad(o), n.: one thing, a single thing
az, pron.: I
azgar, n.: war [Adûnaic zagar-]

B
bag, v.: pay [Eldarin *mbakh-?]
bakh, n.: shadow
ban, v.: stay, remain
band, n.: town
bar, a.: advantageous
bir(i), prep./postp.: for, to
bolneg, a.: painless
bolum, n.: pain
borzum, n.: darkness [cf. BS burzum]
buzb, n.: maggot, fly [cf. Eldarin *buzb-]
bû, v.: passive auxiliary
bun, num.: two
bûn, v.: past tense of na-, “was, were”

D
dâ, n.: land [*daɣ]
dai, cj.: then, therefore, in that case
dai, pron.: they
-d(o): 3rd person suffix “their”; “him, her, them”
dorg(u), n.: master [*durbgu]
du, cj.: than [probably the same as below]
du, prep.: to [cf. Khuzdul du]
dum, av.: to the end, to completion, to success
dur, av.: soon
durdur, av.: very soon

E
-esh, postp.: in [BS ishi]
êsh, a.: alone [*ashi-]

G
-g(i), -g(u): 2nd person suffix “your”
ganzil, v.: remember
gar, av.: already
garm, n.: wolf
gast, n.: fear
gast, v.: fear
gel, av.: around
gelnakh, v.: to surround
gim, v.: find [cf. BS gimb-]
gin, a.: new [cf. Eldarin *win-?]
gin, n.: report, news
gir, v.: try
gloz, v.: sleep
go, postp.: with
golgi, n.: female elf
golug, golg-, n.: elf
gonakh, v.: come together, gather (intr.)
gor, n.: death
gor, v.: kill [*gur-; cf. Eldarin *ŋgur-]
gorb, v.: catch, grab; understand
gorgar, n.: bane, killer, slayer [*gurkar-]
gorgor, v.: slaughter, kill in large numbers
gorun, a.: killed, dead
gorz, v.: end, finish (something)
gud, av.: for a long time
gukht(i), n.: horde [cf. Eldarin *wekt-]
gul, n.: trick, deception, illusion
gun, a.: near
gur, v.: run, go (quickly)
gûr, n.: heart [cf. Sindarin gûr]

Gh
ghâsh, n.: fire [pan-Orkish word]

H
hag, v.: do, act
hakht, v.: speak [Eldarin *pakt-]
har, v.: travel, move
hir, postp.: by, through
hirimbag, n.: controller, wielder [cf. BS krimp-?]
horug, v.: hunt
horuga, n.: hunter
hugum, av.: here
hukh, v.: curse word
hum, av.: now
hur, av.: so
hurnash, intj.: “so it is”; unquestionably, definitely, exactly
huru, n.: eastern region, the east

I
-i: precedes modifying nouns and adjectives, linked to preceding noun
i, rel. pron.: which, that
-(i)d: 3rd person object suffix: him, her, it, them
ishor, num.: three

K
kab, v.: have
kair(a), n.: life [cf. Eldarin *koir-]
ker, v.: hide
ki, pron.: you [cf. Eldarin *ki-]
ki, cj.: if
kibul, n.: silver [Khuzdul kibil]
kil, v.: hide, conceal
kin, v.: see [cf. Eldarin *ken-]
kirg, n.: crossing, (mountain) pass
kirm(a), n.: blade
kirz, n.: tooth
kirzad, a.: toothed, dangerous, vicious
kod,dem. pron.: that
kogum, av.: that place, there; where
kom, av.: that time, then; when [*ko-mi]

Kh
kharb, n.: beast
khobd(u), n.: head
khozd, n.: dwarf [Khuzdul khuzd]
khun, n.: dog
khurg, n.: guts, bowels

L
-l: accusative suffix
lo, prep.: beyond, exceeding, excessive, too
log, n.: horse [cf. Eldarink *rok- and Northmannish *loh-]
lôg, n.: lake
loga, n.: horse-rider
lum: suffix indicating units of measure; X-lum = “X by X”
lur, a.: wet
lurdâ, n.: “wet land,” swamp

M
marg, v.: attack
mazd, v.: think
-m(i): 1st plural suffix, “we”
mig, a.: small, little
migul, migl-, n.: tiny, despised thing
mod, pron.: what?
mog, v.: permit, allow
mogum, pron.: where?
mol, n.: associate, ally
mong, n.: road
mor, pron.: how?
morg(u), n.: bear
moz, dem.pron.: this
murg, a.: many
murg, n.: a multitude
murg, v.: to be many, multiply, abound
murgad, n.: number

N
-n: definite suffix
na, v.: be [Eldarin na-]
nakh, av.: backwards, back
nakh, v.: come [Adûnaic]
nakht, v.: cause to come, lead
nar(u), postp.: to, toward; till, until
narnar, c.: until
narg, v.: want
nauzd, v.: smell, have a smell
nazd, a.: near
-neg: privative suffix, without, -less
nuzd(u), n.: scent, smell
nuzd, v.: smell (something), track

O
ô, o, cj.: but
ob(o), prep.: about; with; from
-ob: suffix of deprecation
obgur, v.: escape, get away
obhakht(i), n.: excuse
obhakht, v.: “speak away,” to excuse oneself
obkhurg, v.: remove the bowels, disembowel
obrish, v.: cut off
om-: comparative or superlative prefix (when du is not used)
omash, a./av.: first
omgun, a.: nearer, nearest, next
ommig, a.: less, least
ommurg, a.: more, most
ord, n.: mountain
org, n.: orc

P
pog, n.: ten
poig, n.: boy

R
-r: accusative suffix (archaic variant of -l)
ragsh, v.: tear
ran, n.: king [cf. Sindarin aran]
rang, v.: abandon, leave
ri, v.: taste
rish, v.: cut
rizg, v.: impale
ru, prep.: on, upon
ruzad(a), n.: opportunity (literally “on-fall”)
ruzad, v.: come upon, happen on

S
silz, v.: lie
silig, v.: let, release, loose

Sh
-sh(i): 3rd person subject suffix: he, she, it, they
shâ, av.: not
shad, n.: nothingness, void, destruction
shadgar, n.: destroyer
shâgum, n.: no place, nowhere
shâhakht, v.: say no, refuse
shast, v.: hear [cf. Eldarin √slas]
shâzil, a.: unknown
shâz’liz, a.: any, whatever (literally “I don’t know”)
shir, a.: fresh
shirz, n.: fragment, piece; “cut”
shirzlum, av.: piece by piece, piecemeal, by pieces
shog, v.: drink [cf. Eldarin √suk-, √sok-]
shorâ, a.: pale
shorakh, shrakh, n.: scum, filth
shotag, v.: break [cf. Eldarin √stak-]
shûg, a.: foul
shûg, n.: filth
shul, v.: wait, stay, tarry, stop
shulun, a.: delayed, late

T
tar, v.: cross [cf. Sindarin thar "across"]
torag, v.: bring, fetch, summon
torask, v.: beat, strike
torkh, n.: nest, lair
tud, v.: watch [Westron]
tung, n.: price
tunum, num.: thousand
tur, v.: have power, be able

U
-ug: suffix of completeness or generality; “all”
ulg(u), a.: each, every
ul(u), a.: all
um, a.: bad, worse
-un: impersonal verbal suffix, “one” (archaic)
-un: passive participle suffix
unar(u), n.: father
undag(u), adj.: born [*ontaku]
undum, n.: birth

Y
-ya: future suffix
yaz, n.: name [cf. Q esse]
yaz, v.: to call, to name
-yesh: locative suffix, “in”
yun, n.: offspring, spawn

Z
-z(a): 1st person possessive suffix, my
zad, v.: fall
zadgar, v.: cause to fall, cut down
zag, pron.: self (oneself, himself, herself, themselves)
zail, v.: learn
zey, n. & a.: light
zeyborz, n.: “light-dark,” a cycle of day and night
zidgar, v.: inform, make known
zidg(u), n.: wizard
zib, a.: fast
zibzib, a.: very fast
zil, v.: know
zog, v.: look for, expect, seek
zor, a.: hard
zorzor, a.: very hard
zung, a.: safe, secure
zungum, n.: safety, security
zur, v.: lose, lose track of

One of the most common questions I’ve been asked about neo-Khuzdul is “what does Gimli say to Haldir?” This has been asked since the release of The Fellowship of the Ring way back in 2001. With the release of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug last year, the question was revived in the form “what does Thorin say to Thranduil?”

The answers are a bit embarrassing to me for three different reasons.

First, it’s not a line I wrote. I was asked to come up with a curse for John Rhys-Davies, playing Gimli, to utter in the scene in Lothlórien. What I came up with was embarrassingly insipid and weak — I think because I was (and still am) a bit squeamish about real profanity, even in a language that nobody could understand. After all, some day I was going to have to explain this, possibly to audiences containing small children; and I’ve just never been very good at profanity, even if I can appreciate the kind of torrent of lyrical invective which is, alas, so very rare these days. So I just rendered “a great darkness upon you Elves” into the kind of Khuzdul I was producing then:

Gabil-narga ai-mênu Kanâd!

Of course, I’ve changed neo-Khuzdul quite a bit since then, and if I were to do it today, it might come out as:

Aznân gabil ai-fnadumên!

Where we see a bit of colloquial Khuzdul syncope. The elements are much the same, but the word for “elf” changed when I realized that the first Elves that the Dwarves would have encountered would probably have been of Telerin origin, or Avari closely related to the Teleri, calling themselves some version of *Pendi.

This is not, of course, anything that ever appeared on film or was recorded in the first place. This leads to my second embarrassment:

I had no idea what the line John Rhys-Davies uttered meant for over a decade. I don’t even know how it came to be filmed that way; a story that I heard was that he ad-libbed it on set, being unable to produce the line I wrote for one reason or another. But that is a second-hand or third-hand story, or worse, and if he has a different story to tell about it, it supersedes anything I have to say on the subject. What I always said when I was asked was that I assumed it was so unspeakably nasty as to be untranslatable — at least in polite company!

I didn’t even know exactly what he had said, much less its meaning. So when I finally got asked about it by the scriptwriter I had to find the scene and listen to it over and over and over again before I came up with:

 [ɪʃˈkɑkʰʍi ɑɪ duˈrugnul]

Well, that may be Khuzdul, but it’s not my Khuzdul, and even includes a sound that I excluded from neo-Khuzdul — any variation of /w/. But when I heard that there was consideration of having Thorin use the same curse, I thought “Aha! Here’s a chance to deal with all of those questions, and the additional ones to come.” So I sat down and reverse-engineered (so to speak) a Khuzdul version from Rhys-Davies line, using my grammar and phonology.

What I came up with was:

îsh kakhfê ai-’d-dûr-rugnul

îsh fit in well with my overall scheme for imperatives, CiCiC; it could come from a root ʔAYAŠA or *ʔAWAŠA ([j] regularly substitutes for /w/ before a vowel in Longbeard Khuzdul). ʔAWAŠA is reminiscent of English “wash,” and suggests a meaning “pour out, pour down, pour over.”

kakhf (f substituting for ʍ, since I had no /w/-type sound) is reminiscent of Latin cacāre, and so I decided that it must mean excrement or fæces.

-ê was the already-existing first person singular possessive.

ai we already knew meant “upon”.

So what was “durugnul”? Obviously it had to refer to the Elves in some way. But it had to be bitterly contemptuous, in a peculiarly Dwarvish way. It should go beyond the usual reflections on intelligence, sanity, sexuality and personal hygiene that are the backbone of so many English curses.

After quite a lot of thought (more than I like to admit to) I came up with the compound dûr-rugn. On the face of it, this isn’t much of an insult. Dûr simply means bare, naked, or uncovered, from a root √DAYARA (*√DAWARA) “strip, shave, make naked”; rugn (plural ragân) is the lower jaw (or chin). Dûr-rugnul is an adjectival form (here used substantively, preceded by the definite object marker id-) meaning “bare-chinned” or more literally “with naked (hairless) lower jaw.”

It is, Tolkien wrote, “characteristic of all Elves to be beardless” (Unfinished Tales, p. 247); but all adult Dwarves, male and female, have beards of which they are very proud. Only a very young Dwarf, or one who had suffered some tragic injury or illness, would lack a beard.

The beardlessness of Elves would therefore appear comic to the Dwarves, a sign that they were at best infantile, and would be an obvious subject of mockery; it might also suggest that they lacked the gonads (of either sex) to produce a proper beard. At any rate, to go about with a bare chin must appear to the Dwarves to be shameful, all the worse for the fact that the Elves appear unconscious of their shame, or even proud of it.

Of course, when walking in the world, a Dwarf generally keeps such thoughts to himself; but they are apt to be let loose when under stress or when angry. So we find both Gimli and Thorin using this crude Dwarvish surmise about the less-than-intact nature of the Elves in their curses.

The literal meaning is therefore May my excrement be poured upon the naked-jawed (ones); a meaning giving the full connotation of the words would necessarily be less literal and more expressively vicious.

So at long last, there is the answer — or, at any rate, an answer, if perhaps not the fully satisfying one people may have been looking for. And if I don’t find it quite as loathsomely vile as I always assured people it was, I suppose I have noone but myself to blame for my third embarrassment.

I get a lot of questions about particular lines of dialogue in The Hobbit films, requests to translate and so forth. I would like to comply, but unfortunately I don’t have a complete script of all the films, or even DVDs, and even under the best of conditions it would be difficult to figure out which of the lines I contributed were actually used, and if so, where.

So I’m going to start doing the next best thing. I will start recording all of the lines I wrote for the film on this blog, with some analysis, though I may have to trade off thoroughness for quantity.

So here’s a start, with some of the Dwarvish lines, since these tended to be earlier and may, I guess, be a little more interesting than some of the other languages.

Ifridîzun
“Ready yourselves!”
Root √frd “prepare, make ready”
Imperative 2pm. ifridî
Pronominal suffix 2pm. -zun
Hence “you prepare yourselves”

Urâd Zirnul
“Iron Hills”
Root √ʔrd, singular urd “hill”, pl. urâd
Root √zrn, zirin “iron” (the metal) + adjectival ending -ul, with syncope of zirin > zirn.
I think this may never have been used in the films, and if so, might be considered slightly apocryphal. I would probably think twice about using the same word for both Erebor and the Emyn Engrin. Unless, from the Dwarvish perspective, the term relates not to the size of the rock visible above ground, but the extent of the caverns delved out underground.

Akkâ Belkulu Dain-Uzbad
“Lord Dáin’s Mighty Force”
Root √kʔ “have power” adapted to the (fairly common) aCCâC abstract noun pattern; here it appears that the glottal stop assimilates to a preceding k, i.e. *akʔâ (or perhaps *akʔâʔ; I can’t find any counter-examples) > akkâ.
Root √blk “be mighty, be strong” > belk “might, strength, power” + -ul > belkul “mighty, of might” + -u object suffix, as the “mighty force” is the object of Dáin’s azbâd — i.e., that thing which he rules or governs.

Ifthuzirin
“Ironfoot”
Nominal root √ʔfth “foot” > ifth “foot.” The following -u is not the objective ending, but rather a (rarely seen) construct ending which links it to a following noun taken as a genitive or attributive.
Ifthu-zirin = “foot-of-iron.”

Khuzd belkul
“A mighty dwarf”
Khuzd “dwarf,” belkul “mighty” (as above).

Some more material prepared for The Hobbit, from the early stages of production. I present the forms exactly as I first wrote them, with some suggested emendations based on later developments.

Lu akraditu!
“I don’t believe it!”
lu: “not”, a general negating particle
akraditu: root √krd “believe, trust”; akradi “I believe”; -tu 3ms. suffix
Obviously that should really mean “I don’t believe him.” Originally — at the time I wrote this line — I didn’t have a masculine/neuter contrast, but at a later date I added the neuter suffix -hu, which would be more correct -hu: akradihu. I don’t know if this line ever actually was used in the film.

Smaug mamarda
“Smaug is dead.”
mamarda: root √mrd “die”; past participle mamard, used as a stem to which perfect endings (in this case -a, the 3sm.) are added.

Anthân lu sharagên
“Omens do not lie”
anthân: “sign, omen” a feminine noun that I intended to be both singular and plural. However, going by similar patterns I used later, it should have been anathân as a plural. The root is √nthn “point out.”
sharagên: root √shrg “to lie, to say a falsehood”, perfect stem with 3pf. ending -ên.

Karâk Urdekul
“Ravens of Erebor”
kark, pl. karâk: “raven:
urdekul: genitive/adjectival form formed by adding -ul to the name Urdek “Lonely Mountain” = urd “mountain” + êk, shortened form of ayik “alone, single, lonely.” I should have written Urdêk, Urdêkul.

Mafarrakh d’afrukh
“A burden to carry”
mafarrakh: habitual past participle of √frkh “carry,” here used as a noun: “thing habitually carried” > burden.
du: “to, for (the purpose of)”; here elided to d’ before a word beginning with a vowel.
afrukh: gerund “carrying” from √frkh

Lu mafrad d’abkâr
“Not fit for a fight”
mafrad: “prepared, ready” from the root √frd “prepare, make ready.” This is a different participial form, indicating some present state, so literally “being (now) prepared.”
abkâr: “fight, strife, battle” from √bkr “fight”; the word abkâr “a fight,” delimited in space and time, can be distinguished from the more abstract gerund abkur “fighting.”

Lu kalzatha bark
“Couldn’t lift an axe”
lu: “not”
kalzatha: root √ʔ-l-z “rise” > causative √ʔ-l-z-th “cause to rise, lift, raise” > ka- prefix indicating ability or potentiality + alzatha perfect 3ms. “he lifts/lifted” (as a matter of general fact, rather than an ongoing event)
bark: “axe”
“He has/had no ability to cause the axe to rise” = “Couldn’t lift an axe.”

Nê ikrid ûdar!
“Never trust a wizard”
nê: “don’t” — a negative particle used with injunctions or other non-real expressions. Lu negates things that are happening or have happened; nê negates hypotheticals, things that would happen or might happen or haven’t happened yet.
ikrid: imperative singular of √k-r-d “believe, trust”
ûdar: “wizard,” literally “knower,” from the root √y-d-r “know, be wise” placed in the uCCaC pattern. *uydar > *uwdar > ûdar; or perhaps the historically original root was √w-d-r after all.

Imrid amrad ursul!
“Die a death of flames”
imrid: imperative sg. of √m-r-d “die”
amrad: abstract noun from the same root
ursul: adjective “of flames, flaming, fiery” with -ul suffix added to urus “flame, fire,” with syncope of the stem (urus > urs-). The root is √ʔ-r-s “fire, burn”

Urus d’zun!
“Fire upon you!”
d’zun: contracted from duzun (stressed on the second syllable), from the preposition du “to, for” + the suffix -zun “you (masculine plural).”
I’m not sure of the context here, but most likely this should be dumên, not duzun, as the Dwarves tended to refer to their enemies using a (contemptuous) familiar form.

Ikhfitu!
“Take that!”
ikhfitu: imperative ikhfi from the root √kh-f “take, receive” + 3ms. suffix -tu. As noted in a previous post, the neuter suffix -hu had not been invented at this stage, and should really be used instead of -tu here: Ikhfihu!

Of various roots which could be translated “take,” √kh-f means “accept something given or dealt to one” (not necessarily something beneficial) and √g-r-b means “grasp or seize,” often, though not necessarily, with the implication that the thing taken is in another’s possession, and is relinquished unwillingly.

Irsir!
“Burn!”
Singular imperative of the simple (intransitive) verb from the √ʔ-r-s root.

Ikhf’ id-ursu khazâd
“Feel the fire of the dwarves”
ikhfi: imperative of √kh-f, “receive, accept,” elided to ikhf’ before another word beginning with i-
id-ursu: “the fire (of)” the noun urus “fire” with a definite accusative prefix id- and a connecting (construct) suffix -u.
khazâd: “dwarves,” plural of khuzd

Igribî ‘b-bekâr d’zun
“Arm yourselves”
igribî: imperative plural of √g-r-b “take, seize”
ib-bekâr: “the weapons,” elided to ‘b-bekâr after a long î. Bekâr is the plural of bekar “weapon,” but the plural is more often used. Ib is the same definite accusative prefix as id-, but assimilated to the following consonant.
d’zun: contracted from du-zun “for yourselves” (preposition du “to, for”, -zun “you plural”).

Du-bekâr!
“To arms!”
du “to,” bekâr “arms”

Gelekh d’ashrud bark
“Time to swing an axe”
gelekh: “time, occasion” from the root √g-l-kh “happen, occur (punctually)”
d’ashrud: du “for” + ashrud, gerund (or infinitive) of the verbal root √sh-r-d “wield, control.” On second thought I wonder if this should have been ashrudu, part of a construct formation with bark: “for the wielding of an axe.”
bark: axe

M’imnu Durin
“In Durin’s name”
mi: “by, with (some instrument)”; elided to m’ before another word starting with i-
imn: “name”; construct form imnu
Durin: proper name, in Mannish form, of the progenitor of the Dwarves; his true name would not be used above ground, or where non-Dwarves could hear it.

After those phrases, there follows a list of much shorter phrases and words, none more than two words long:

Insid, pl. insidî
“Sit down!”
Imperative from the root √n-s-d.

inkhir, pl. inkhirî
“Come away”
Imperative from the root √n-kh-r, which is an extension of the biliteral root √n-kh “come.”

ithmir, pl. ithmirî
“Get away”
Imperative from the root √th-m-r “leave, retreat, remove (from).”

ithmir b’tîr
“Get away from there”
bi: preposition “from, away from” (a location at or nearby something, not from inside it)
tîr: “there, that place” — usually of a place nearby or within reach; cf. yîr “there yonder” (sc. in the distance, though still visible) and kûr “where?”

idribtu, pl. idribîtu
“stop it”
Imperative of root √d-r-b, with 3s suffix -tu; as mentioned, this should now be -hu.

ithrik, pl. ithrikî
“steady”
Imperative of root √th-r-k “hold steady, hold up, support”

therek ikhlit, pl. therkâ ikhlitî
“Hold firm”
therek, pl. therkâ: “firm, fast, steady,” adjective from the root √th-r-k “hold steady.” The -â ending here is an adjectival plural; therkâ is a syncope of *therekâ, vowels in open medial syllables being prone to syncope.
ikhlit, pl. ikhlitî: imperative from the root √kh-l-t “hold, hold tight, maintain”

sâti khuzd
“You are a dwarf” (a statement of vivid, current fact)
sâti “you (sg. m.) are,” imperfect 2sg.m. from the root √ʔ-t “to be”: *sa-ʔt-i > sâti.

îridzu du-khuzd
“You are a dwarf” — literally “Know yourself for a dwarf”
îridzu: îrid, imperative sg. m. of √y-r-d “know” (*iyrid > îrid) + suffix -zu 2sg. m. polite suffix
du “to, for”
khuzd “dwarf”

ashnakh: treason (root √sh-n-kh “betray”)
khurm: brother (nominal root √kh-r-m “brother”)
umral: (close) friend (root √m-r-l “love”)
udmay: comrade (root √d-m-y “accompany, go along with”)

banak magar
“well done”
banak “well”: adjective used adverbially from the root √b-n-k “good” (in an ethical or moral sense)
magar: past participle from the root √g-r “do”

zanag bakarsu, pl. zangâ bakarsun
“you fought bravely”
zanag, pl. zangâ: adjective used adverbially, from the root √z-n-g “brave”
bakarsu 2sm. perfect, bakarsun 2pm. perfect, from the root √b-k-r “fight”

zik “yes”
I don’t know if this was included in the films; I hope not. I’d prefer to treat it as apocryphal, for the simple reason that I don’t like it (with this meaning).

lû “no”
Obviously related to lu “not.”

ammanizu
ammanizun
mammanizu
mammanizun
Four ways of saying “thank you” depending on the number of people on whose behalf it is said and the number of recipients. From the root √m-m-n “think well of, show gratitude to,” in the forms 1s. imperfect ammani and 1p. imperfect mammani, combined with the 2sm. suffix -zu or 2pm. -zun.

fund, pl. fanâd “elf”
Presumably a borrowing from something like *pend-, an Avarin (Nelyarin) cognate to *kʷend-, but with vowels adapted to the model of khuzd pl. khazâd.

Nê kikûn ikrid fund!
“Never trust an elf!”
Nê: negative used with imperatives and other wishes; “don’t”
kikûn: “ever,” “at any time”; cf. kûn “when?”
ikrid: imperative sg. of √k-r-d “believe, trust”
fund: elf

Risrithî ‘t-tebud
“Burn the corks”
risrithî: imperative plural of √r-s-r-th, causative (with -th suffix) from √r-s-r “burn”: “cause to burn” = “burn (something)”
it-tebud: id-, definite accusative prefix, assimilated to tebud, plural of tebad “stopper,” using the CeCaC pattern often used for words for tools, from a root √t-b-d “block, stop up.”

ekûn lu zayara
“There’s one missing”
ekûn: one person (√ʔ-y-k “one” + -ûn suffix of persons); should be êkûn
lu: not
zayara: 3ms. perfect of root √z-y-r “be present, be here”
one-person not is-here

Nê kikûn inthir!
“Never forget”
nê: “don’t”
kikûn: “ever, at any time”
inthir: imperative singular of root √n-th-r “forget”

The following was written for a scene involving Thorin, Balin, and a guard. I do not know if it appeared in the film or not.

Zimrith ib-bekan!
“Sound the alarm!”
zimrith: “sound, cause to sound”; imperative from the causative root √z-m-r-th, expanded from the root √z-m-r “make a noise”
ib-bekan: ib- accusative definite suffix id-, assimilated to following b-; bekan “alarm,” noun for a tool that “wakes” (√b-k-n) one.

Uzbadê?
“My lord?”
uzbad “lord” (agent noun from √z-b-d “rule”) + the 1sg. possessive suffix -ê

Inkhith id-utrâd — igritu zû!
“Summon the guard! Do it now!”
inkhith: imperative from √n-kh-th, causative of √n-kh “come”: “cause to come” > “summon”
id-utrâd: id- accusative definite suffix; utrâd plural of utrad “a guard, a watchman” or “one who watches,” agent form of √t-r-d “watch.”
igritu: igri imperative from √g-r “do, act, perform, accomplish” + 3sg.suffix -tu (should be -hu)
zû: now

Kud tâti?
“What is it?”
Kud: what? (interrogative)
tâti: it is, 3sm. perfect of the root √ʔ-t: *ta-ʔt-i > tâti.

Uslukh!
“A dragon!”
Obviously a loan from an Avarin or Nandorin word, with the Eldarin root √slok- (cf. Quenya hlókë).

Ansaru kitnul, ifridî bekâr!
Centre company, ready weapons!

ansar: company, group; from the root √n-s-r “come together, form a group”; with the construct suffix -u
kitnul: adjectival derivative of kitin, from the root √k-t-n middle, central
ifridî: plural imperative from the root √f-r-d “make ready”
bekâr: plural of bekar “weapon” from the root √b-k-r “fight”

Îmî, îmî, kabâru drekh!
“Scram, scat! you mangy animals!”
îmî: imperative plural from the root √y-m (*iymî > îmî)
kabâr: plural of kobor “beast”; with construct suffix -u
drekh: some sort of skin disease

Various single words:
kharâm “brothers” (plural of khurm)
udâmai “comrades” (plural of udmai) — root √d-m-y “accompany, go along with”
umâral “friends” (plural of umral) — root √m-r-l “love”
itkit “shut up!” imperative of √t-k-t
yêbith “spider” — from the root √y-b-th “weave”
kud? “what?”
ugrad “coward”, pl. ugârad (root √g-r-d “fear”)