User talk:Vardelm

Baruk

The reference given was written by Tolkien in the late fifties; the full entry, Parma Eldalamberon 17, page 85 reads:

"The language of the Dwarves is only seen in some geographical names and in the battlecries at Helm's Deep. It is Semitic in cast, leaning phonetically to Hebrew (as suits the Dwarvish character), but it evidently has some 'broken' plurals, more in Arabic style: baruk being the plural of bark 'axe', and Khazâd of Khuzd."

So while I agree with your first edit, I disagree with your second. -- Ederchil 12:28, 26 March 2008 (EDT)

Re: Baruk

Could you please clarify which edits you agree or disagree with? Is it that you agree with baruk possibly being a genitive case and disagree with the idea that there are more than a "few" broken plurals in Khuzdul?

If so, I think we read Tolkien's statement that Khuzdul "evidently has some 'broken plurals" a bit differently. That difference is how much weight we place on "some". To me, I read into that "at least some, if not many" broken plurals. At the very least, it seems to be much more than what Hebrew has, otherwise why would he compare Khuzdul as being more like Arabic in that regard?

Also, all the examples of singular & plural nouns in the attested corpus are either broken plurals or lend themselves to being so. We have khuzd/khazâd, rukhs/rakhâs, and bark/baruk (or perhaps barûk if Khuzdul has Hebrew style construct states and it uses the same pattern as shathûr). The only other plurals we seem to have are tarâg and possibly bizâr, depending on which analysis of Azanulbizar you believe. Is it not significant that, of the very few examples we have of Khuzdul, pretty much all of the nouns show up as broken plurals? The only possible plural that doesn't follow this would be khizdîn, for which we have no translation and thus no evidence that it is a plural at all.

I look forward to your reponse and possibly an interesting discussion regarding Khuzdul's structure.