Words of Westernesse

Words of Westernesse by Codex Regius ‘I hope you are not all bored. I could give you long lists of other words. Words, words, mostly just that. ... I love these languages, though they are only fragments out of some forgotten book.’ J.R.R. Tolkien, ‘Sauron Defeated’ Sometimes projects outgrow their purpose. This book originated in a humble attempt to discover whether any etymological links could safely be established between Adûnaic, the language of Westernesse in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and its nominal successor Westron, also known as the Common Speech of Hobbits and other peoples in ‘The Lord of the Rings’. Then I found that this could not be achieved without understanding Adûnaic grammar or compiling the attested words of all related languages to trace any suspected relationships. Alas, the known vocabulary of Adûnaic and its daughter – or rather niece - Westron is still overlapping very little. This is due to the selectiveness of the sources: historic literature and myth-making in the case of Adûnaic vs. the rustic background of, primarily hobbitish, Westron. A few links, particularly to the Elvish and Northern Mannish languages, are irmly established; others remain conjecture and we cannot ultimately tell whether Tolkien used similar devices on purpose or whether they were merely the result of having been created by a single mind that involuntarily plagiarised its own familiar patterns. Over time, Tolkien designed three different versions of Adûnaic that, to simplify the discussion, I have unoficially labelled k-, d- and a-Adûnaic. The preix is based on the notion that all three stages provide a word for ‘Earth; Arda’, and they are different in all three cases: kamat, daira, abân (the latter is only attested in the compound Abattârik). k-Adûnaic was rendered obsolete by d-Adûnaic as the latter developed out of the former in a radical transition while our main source on Adûnaic, ‘The Notion Club Papers’, was written. However, its vocabulary was not completely superseded by later versions of the same texts. While there can be no doubt that k-Adûnaic hunekku ‘he came’ was replaced by d-Adûnaic unakkha, it is not evident whether there is really a purposeful succession of daira replacing kamat and abân replacing daira or whether these were simply synonyms developed from different bases. Some basic vocabulary survived the transition of stages, such as balâk ‘ship’, gimil ‘starry sky’, yet it is not known how much of the vocabulary found in the Notion Club Papers was still applicable after the ‘The Lord of the Rings’ was published, as the inal stage of Adûnaic emerged when the Appendices were written, and it is recorded only in a few proper names. Note that a-Adûnaic contains words whose composition expressly violates the rules established in the Notion Club Papers! Inconclusive evidence in Tyalië Tyelelliéva 17 suggests that there were two stages of Westron grammar, too, one imitating a Germanic, the other an Elvish origin. Apparently the former was discussed by Lisa Star. Its vocabulary indicates a close relationship to AL (see the list of abbreviations in the following section) though some variations in spelling are notable, p. e. narac vs. AL narag Dwarf. The Westron grammar dates, hence, later than the composition of d-Adûnaic in RA but probably before Adûnaic was established as the native language of Númenor in KR, excluding the Germanic origin of Westron (see LP on Tolkien’s changing concepts of the fate of Adûnaic). That the vocabulary found in TT17 was at least inspired by RA is demonstrated by similar verb syntax, applying subject and object pronouns as afixes and some recurrent vocabulary: Ad. urûg vs. W. ruccu bear; Ad. tamar vs. W. dramar smith; the application of sexes (not genders) to a noun. Both sources refer to the examples ‘she-bear’ and ‘he-goat’ to illustrate this structure. Hence, if Westron cannot be derived from d-Adûnaic it may perhaps be allowed to suspect features of the little attested a-Adûnaic behind it. Information on the evolution of Adûnaic from its predecessor in the First Age, Hadorian, is only available for d-Adûnaic. Note that the Notion Club Papers record not one but two Third Age descendants of the Númenórean tongue! Words for moon and sun are given for both of them: One pair, Nil and Uir, matches the attested transcription patterns of Westron. The other pair, Njûl and Ýr, does not. Tentatively, it may be assumed that the latter pair of words derives from a hypothetical Black Númenórean descendant of Adûnaic which I shall call Black Adûnaic; it may have been used in Umbar during the early Third Age (for the history of Umbar as far as it can be deduced, see ‘Middle-earth seen by the barbarians, vol. 2’). Black Adûnaic deviated from Westron under the inluence of Harad languages to become a kind of Southron pidgin. Maybe this was still the vernacular in which the Haradrim troops communicated during the War of the Ring when its harsh sound patterns reminded the Gondorians of ‘carrion-bird cries’. Print available at: http://www.amazon.de/Words-Westernesse-Tolkiens-languages-Hobbits/dp/1497560683 Ebooks available at: https://www.xinxii.com/elresults.php?q=Codex+Regius&iSearchButton=Suchen&sid=1 More essays on Tolkien’s works that have been released for free are available on ‘Lalaith’s Middle-earth Science Pages’: http://homepage.o2mail.de/lalaith/M-earth.html