Angerthas Moria

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Angerthas Moria was a variation of the Cirth used by the Dwarves of Moria.

History

During the Second Age, or maybe its beginning, the Dwarves got accustomed with Angerthas of the Noldor (Angerthas Daeron) and they modified it to suit Khuzdul, their language. This alphabet was spread further wherever the Dwarves went.

Centuries later, when the Dwarves colonized Erebor, the system was further developed and produced the Angerthas Erebor.

Characteristics

The Dwarves introduced various new cirth and some unsystematic minor changes to the values. The greatest of those changes, which resulted in major reorder, was the switch of the cirth for s and h (f and .), and for unknown reasons, the abandonment of the cirth $, q for which they substituted R, T. Subsequently they used @ for r and subsequently u for n!

They used also ,, which was a simplified form of u. Following the relation of those two letters, they gave to w the value z to relate better with ., which as mentioned had now the value s.

Tolkien doesn’t mention any other cirth abandoned by the Dwarves but much must have been, as there are many that represent sounds not occuring in (at least our published words of) Khuzdul, like th, dh, hw etc. It is strange also to observe that some of the cirth they introduced represent sounds not occuring in their language, like nj, hy, ñ, y-, hy! Of course, our corpus of Khuzdul is very limited to judge the necessity or not, of these sounds.

1

p

8

t

#

ch

e

c

i

kw

R

j

f

h

2

b

9

d

r

g

o

gw

T

zh

3

f

0

th

%

sh

t

ch

p

chw

a

l

g

‘

4

v

!

dh

y

gh

Q

ghw/w

5

hw

@

r

w

z

u

n

W

ñgw

d

nd

h

ñ

J

nj

6

m

E

ñw

j

ng

7

mb

l

i

;

y-

S

u

z

e

c

a

b

o

,

n

/

(e)

V

+h

A

hy

D

ú

x

é

v

á

n

ó

..

s

Z

(u)

B

&

F

w

m

œ

G

y