Khuzdul

Khuzdul is a constructed language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien. It is one of the many fictional languages set in Middle-earth. It was the secret language of the Dwarves.

External history

Tolkien noted some similarities between Dwarves and Jews: both were "at once natives and aliens in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue…".^[1] Tolkien also commented of the Dwarves that "their words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic."^[2] Tolkien based Dwarvish language on the Semitic languages. Like these, Khuzdul has triconsonantal roots: √Kh-Z-D "dwarf", √B-N-D "head", √Z-G-L "silver (colour)". Also other similarities to Hebrew in phonology and morphology have been observed.^[3][4]

Although only a very limited vocabulary is known, Tolkien mentioned that he had developed the language to a certain extent. It is unknown whether such writings still exist.^[5]

Internal history

In the fictional setting of Middle-earth, little is known of Khuzdul (once written Khuzdûl), the Dwarves kept it secret, except for place names and a few phrases such as their battle-cry:

The highest level of secrecy applied to Dwarves' real personal names, with the exception of the Petty-dwarves. The personal names of all Dwarves in Tolkien's stories are "outer-names" either from another language (Dalish) or nicknames/titles. Dwarves do not even record their true names on their tombstones. The runes written on Balin's tomb in Moria can be transliterated to read

Only few non-Dwarves are recorded as having learnt Khuzdul, most notably the Elf Eöl and Fëanor's son Curufin.

According to the Lhammas, Khuzdul is a language isolate, the sole member of the Aulëan language family, not related to the Oromëan languages spoken by Elves. Aulëan was named from the Dwarvish tradition that it had been devised by Aulë the Smith, the Vala who created the Dwarves.

It is said in The Silmarillion that Aulë, the creator of the first Dwarves, taught them "the language he had devised for them," which implies that Khuzdul is technically, in reality and fictionally, a constructed language. It is also said that because of the Dwarves' great reverence for Aulë their language remained unchanged, and all clans could still speak with each other without difficulty despite the great distances that separated them. Due to their reverence for their cultural heritage, the Dwarves did not learn Khuzdul as a cradle-speech, as this might mutate the language over time. Instead, Dwarves carefully learned Khuzdul through reverent study as they matured, to make sure that their language was passed down unaltered from one generation to the next. The changeability of Khuzdul versus other languages was compared to "the weathering of hard rock and the melting of snow".

For everyday usage, the Dwarves commonly speak the primary language of the region they are living in, i.e. the Common Speech (Westron), though their pronunciation may have a Khuzdul accent.^[6] There were many similarities between Khuzdul and the native tongues of Men of the Far-East of Middle-earth. This is because in the early days of Middle-earth, Men of these regions had friendly contact with the Dwarves, in which "were not unwilling to teach their own tongue to Men with whom they had special friendship, but Men found it difficult and were slow to learn more than isolated words, many of which they adapted and took into their own language".

Adûnaic, the tongue of Númenor, retained some Khuzdul influences and said to have influenced its basic structure. The Common Speech (Westron) later evolved out of Adûnaic, thus explaining why some words etymologically have Khuzdul roots.

Khuzdul is usually written with the Cirth script, with two known modes used, Cirth Moria and Cirth Erebor.

Iglishmêk

Besides their aglâb, spoken tongue, the Dwarves used a sign language, or iglishmêk.^[7] According to The War of the Jewels, it was learned simultaneously with the aglâb from childhood. In a noisy Dwarvish smithy, the ringing of hammers against anvils was often too loud to allow verbal communication. The Dwarvish sign language was much more varied between communities than Khuzdul, which remained "astonishingly uniform and unchanged both in time and in locality". Tolkien only gave a few examples of the Iglishmêk sign language in his unpublished notes. The command to "Listen!" involved a slight raising of both forefingers simultaneously. The acknowledgment "I am listening" involved a slight raising of the right-hand forefinger, followed by a similar raising of the left-hand forefinger.^[8]

Phonology

The following phonemes are attested in Tolkien's Khuzdul vocabulary.

	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Occlusive	b	t d			k ɡ		ʔ1
Aspirated Occlusive		tʰ			kʰ
Fricative	f	s z	ʃ		(ɣ) 2		h
Nasal	m	n
Trill		(r) 3				ʀ 3
Approximant		l		j

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i iː		u uː
Close-mid	e eː	ə4	o oː
Open-mid			ʌ4
Open		ɡ aː

¹ Often at the start of words that begin with a vowel, often not written.
² Supposedly in Azaghâl, 'gh' [ɣ] is used to represent this sound in Black Speech and Orcish, but wasn't said of Khuzdul. Could also be [ɡh] or [ɡʰ].
³ Alveolar trill [r] a later variant in pronunciation, the uvular trill [ʀ] being the original Khuzdul pronunciation.
⁴ Although no examples are found, Tolkien explicitly states these sounds were frequent in Khuzdul. Possibly found between incompatible consonant formations or current vowels in known corpus.

Khuzdul featurs a 'CV(C)' syllable structure. Words that begin with either a vowel or diphthong have a glottal stop at the beginning. Words can not start with a consonant cluster, and are found in medial or final positions of a word. It is unknown what all the consonant clusters are, few are attested as shown in the corpus above, but presumably are more flexible and varied than of the consonant clusters found in the Elvish languages.

Only one diphthong is attested in Khuzdul: ai [ai], as seen ai-mênu.

The language was said to be "cumbrous and unlovely" (Silmarillon ch. 10) to the elves, with Tolkien describing it as having a cacophonous quality.

Writing Khuzdul

The Cirth runes used to write Khuzdul.

Tolkien wrote most of Khuzdul in the latin alphabet, and in Cirth within Middle-Earth. The dwarves had adopted the Cirth from the elves by the end of the first age, and made changes to their liking to represent the sounds of Khuzdul. There were two methods known of writing Khuzdul, Angerthas Moria when the dwarves still lived in Khazad-dûm before its fall, and Angerthas Erebor once they became fled, and began to further develop the cirth again at The Lonely Mountain.

The following table presents the corresponding cirth and latin alphabet characters, and makes use of the cirth erebor font, and therefore may not display correctly for some users.

Khuzdul in Cirth
Moria	Latin	Moria	Latin		Erebor	Latin	Erebor	Latin
2	b	g	ʔ		2	b	l	i
3	f	l	i		3	f	lÌ	î
6	m	ll ? / ; ?	î		6	m	;	y
8	t	;	y		8	t	S	u
8V	th	S	u		8V	th	SÎ	û
9	d	D	û		9	d	D	z
@	r	z	e		@	r	z	e
%	sh	x	ê		%	sh	zÎ	ê
w	z	c	a		e	k	c	a
e	k	v	â		eV	kh	cÎ	â
eV	kh	b	o		r	g	b	o
r	g	n / M	ô		u / ,	n	bÎ / n	ô
u / ,	n	.	s		a	l	g	h
a	l	/ / >	ə		d	nd	/ / >	ə
d	nd	Z / ?	ʌ		f / g	s	Z / ?	ʌ
f	h				???	ʔ

Additional Cirth in Angerthas Erebor
X	ps 1	C	ts

¹ A certh that was used only by the dwarves, it is unknown it was written for Khuzdul, as the sound of p has yet to be attested.

As an example, the dwarvish battle-cry can be written as thus:

And the only source of Khuzdul written in cirth in the Angerthas Moria mode, as seen in The Lord of the Rings:

Grammar

Little is known of Khuzdul grammar to even construct a sentence, but was known to have its morphology based mainly on Hebrew, and other Semitic languages. Tolkien states that Khuzdul was complicated and unlike the other languages of Middle-Earth at the time in terms of phonology and grammar. It has been said the grammar of Khuzdul influenced the basic grammar of Adûnaic, but little material is given to show these influences other than the mention of where Adûnaic's grammar differs from Quenya. Even then, differences could be influenced by other languages than Khuzdul.

Nouns

Nouns are known to have singular and plural forms, and like the Semitic languages, and can be in the absolute state, or the construct state. The construct state is used to indicate a connection with a following noun, being a quality, belonging or part of that noun. The construct comes before the absolute noun and when compounding words. e.g: Baruk Khazâd! (Axes of - Dwarves) "Axes of the Dwarves" stating that the Axes belong to the dwarves, Khazad-dûm (Dwarves of - Delving) "Dwarrowdelf", stating it's a Dwarvish delving, or possibly a delving of Dwarvish origin. There are no known (if any) definite or indefinite articles in Khuzdul.

Nouns appear to have different declensions that dictate the formation and number of the noun. How many declensions, singular and plural forms and compositional forms there are in Khuzdul is currently unknown. Tolkien has stated that plural formations were said to be similar to Arabic's broken plurals, which would make for many irregular plurals, but little is provided to make such a comparison.

Note that only Khuzd "Dwarf" and Rukhs "Orc" are the only nouns fully attested in this table.

Some words have identical nominative and construct states, in singular and plural. Only Bark "Axe" is attested.

Other noun declension types are likely to exist, but little detail is provided to show a full singular/plural and absolute/construct state relations. Of these, the only hints that point to their existence is in compounded attested words and single words. Some attested examples provided that might provide parts of declension are:

Note that the pattern of CvCvC, where the vowels are the same as the other might hint to a pattern for singular construct forms.

Possibly hinting a common singular pattern of vCCvC.

Another noun form that may exist would be a collective noun, such as a singular group of things.

¹ Theoretically would mean "roots? (a collection of roots?)".

² Possible assimilation: Khazad-tûm → Khazad-dûm.

Verbs

Only four verb words are known. The exact tense or use of the verb is unknown:

Gunud : "delve underground, excavate, tunnel",

√S-L-N / Sulûn / Salôn : "fall, descend swiftly" (VT48:24)

Felek: "hew rock"

Felak : To use a tool like a broad-bladed chisel, or small axe-head without haft

Lexicon

Placenames & Names

Azaghâl: Presumably only an 'outer name' or title in Khuzdul, not an inner name.

Azanulbizar: 'Dimrill Dale'

Barazinbar: 'Redhorn' (Caradhras)

Bundushathûr: 'Cloudyhead'

Buzundush: 'Blackroot', earlier name of the Silverlode

Felakgundu: Lord of Caves, literally 'cave-hewer'; from this was derived Felagund, the sobriquet of Finrod

Gabilân: 'Great River'

Gabilgathol: 'Great Fortress' (Belegost)

Gamil Zirak: 'Old Spike' The nickname of a smith of the Firebeard Dwarves.

Gundabad: Mount Gundabad

Ibun: Name of one of the Petty-Dwarves, possibly a real inner Khuzdul name.

Kibil-nâla: a name for (but possibly not a translation of) the Silverlode

Khazad-dûm: Dwarf-mansion, Dwarrowdelf' (later known as Moria)

Kheled-zâram: 'glass-lake', i.e. Mirrormere

Khîm: Name of one of the Petty-Dwarves, possibly a 'inner name'.

Mahal : the Maker, Aulë

Mîm: Name of one of the Petty-Dwarves, possibly a 'inner name'.

Narag-zâram: 'Black-lake', early name, Mirrormere?

Nargûn: Mordor

Narkuthûn / Narukuthûn: Nargothrond?

Nulukkhizdîn: Nargothrond?

Sigin-tarâg: The Longbeards, the house of Durin

Sharbhund: Amon Rûdh, possibly meaning 'Bald Hill' as is in Sindarin

Tharkûn: Gandalf, said to mean 'Staff-man'

Tumunzahar: 'Hollowbold' (Nogrod)

Udushinbar: Earlier name of Bundushathûr

Uruktharbun: Earlier name of either Khazad-dûm or Azanulbizar, meaning unknown

Zigil-nâd: earlier name of the Silverlode

Zirakinbar: 'Silverhorn', earlier name of Zirakzigil

Zirakzigil: 'Silvertine' (Celebdil)

Words

aglâb : spoken language

aya, ai- : upon

azan : dark, dim

baraz : red

bark : axe - baruk : axes

bizar / bizâr? : dale or valley

bund : head

buz / bûz : root?

duban : valley

dûm / tûm¹ : delving, subterranean mansion, hall

dush / dûsh? : black, dark?

felak : tool for cutting stone

felek : hew rock

gabil : great

gamil : old?

gathol : fortress

gundu : underground hall

hund : hill?

iglishmêk : sign-language of the dwarves

inbar : horn

kheled : glass, mirror

Khuzd : Dwarf - Khazâd : Dwarves

Khuzdul : Dwarvish language

kibil : silver (metal)

ma- : Passive participle? In Mazarbul

mazarb : written documents, records

mazarbul : records, as in Moria's Chamber of Mazarbul, and its Book of Mazarbul

mênu : you (pl. accusative)

-n : one, person (suffix)

nâla : path, course, river-course or bed

narâg : black

Rukhs : Orc - Rakhâs : Orcs

sigin : long

sulûn / salôn : fall, descend swiftly

sharb : bald?

shathûr : clouds

tum / tûm : hall?, delving?

thark : staff

turg : beard - tarâg : beards

-u : of

ûl : streams

-ul : of, genitive/patronymic ending

uzbad : lord

uzn : dimness, shadow

zahar : hollow?

zâram : pool, lake

zigil : silver (colour)

zirak : spike, silver

¹ Seen in Tumunzahar, with 'bold' in 'Hollowbold', an obsolete term for dwelling. Possibly assimilates into 'D' when preceded by one, e.g. "d-t" = "d-d", as seen in Khazad-dûm

Consonantal Roots

√ʔ-B-D: ??? - Gundabad

√ʔ-B-N: ??? - Ibun

√ʔ-G-L: Language, Aglâb, Iglishmêk

√ʔ-R-K: ??? - Uruktharbun, may be outdated

√ʔ-Y-ʔ: Upon

√ʔ-Z-G: ??? Azaghâl

√ʔ-Z-N: dimness, darkness

√B-N-D: Head

√B-R-Z: Red

√B-Z-ʔ / √B-Z-N: Root? - Buzundush

√D-B-N: Valley

√D-Sh / √D-Sh-ʔ: dark, darkness? - Buzundush

√F-L-K: Hew, Hewer, A thing that hews

√G-B-L: Great in size

√G-M-L: Old, Great in age

√G-N-D: Cave, Tunnel

√G-Th-L: Fortress? - Gabilgathol

√H-N-D: Hill? - Sharbhund

√H-L: ??? Azaghâl

√K-B-L: Silver (metal)

√Kh-L-D: Glass, Mirror

√Kh-M: ??? - Khîm

√Kh-Z-D: Dwarf

√M-H-L: Create? Maker? - Mahal

√M-M: ??? - Mîm

√M-N-ʔ / √M-N: 2nd person pronoun

√N-B-R: Horn

√N-L-ʔ: Path, Course, River-course or bed

√N-R-G: Black

√R-Kh-S: Orc, Goblin

√S-G-N: Long

√S-L-N: Fall, Descend swiftly

√Sh-M-K: Gesture?, Sign? - Iglishmêk

√Sh-R-B: Bald? - Sharbhund

√T-R-G: Beard

√Th-R-B: ??? - Uruktharbun, may be outdated

√Th-R-K: Staff

√Z-B-D: Lord

√Z-G-L: Silver (Colour)

√Z-Gh?-L: ??? Azaghâl

√Z-H-R: Hollow? - Tumunzahar

√Z-R-B: Write, Inscribe

√Z-R-K: Spike

√Z-R-M: Pool, Lake

References

1. ↑ Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. (1981), The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, #176, ISBN 0-395-31555-7 
2. ↑ "An Interview with J.R.R. Tolkien". BBC Four. January 1971. 
3. ↑ Fauskanger, Helge K. "Khuzdul - the secret tongue of the Dwarves". Ardalambion. University of Bergen.  Missing or empty |url= (help); |access-date= requires |url= (help)
4. ↑ Åberg, Magnus (2007). "An Analysis of Dwarvish". In Stenström, Anders. Arda Philology 1. First International Conference on J. R. R. Tolkien's Invented Languages. Stockholm, 4–8 August 2005. pp. 42–65. 
5. ↑ Pesch, Helmut W. (2003). Elbisch (in German). Bastei Lübbe. p. 37. ISBN 3-404-20476-X. 
6. ↑ Solopova, Elizabeth (2009), Languages, Myths and History: An Introduction to the Linguistic and Literary Background of J.R.R. Tolkien's Fiction, New York City: North Landing Books, p. 84., ISBN 0-9816607-1-1 
7. ↑ J. R. R. Tolkien (1994), The War of the Jewels (volume 11 of The History of Middle-earth), Harper Collins, part 4 appendix D p.395; ISBN 0261 10314 8
8. ↑ Tolkien, J.R.R. (July 1998). Hostetter, Carl F., ed. "From Quendi and Eldar, Appendix D". Vinyar Tengwar (39): 5, 10. 

Further reading

• Hostetter, Carl F (2006). "Languages Invented by Tolkien". J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. Routledge. ISBN 0415969425. 

External links

• An analysis of Dwarvish
• Ardalambion site; discussion of Khuzdul
• Eldamo: Khuzdul Compilation
• Khuzdul Documents & Dictionaries - Neo-Khuzdul, based on Tolkien's attested Khuzdul.
• A suggested expansion of Khuzdul into a fully functional language
• http://midgardsmal.com/