Khuzdul

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. 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. 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.

Phonology

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

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

¹ Often at the start of words that begin with a vowel, often not written in the Latin alphabet, but has its own rune in Angerthas Moria.
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 No examples found, Tolkien explicitly states these were frequent in Khuzdul, and have their own Cirth runes. Possibly in between incompatible consonant formations or current vowels in known corpus.

Khuzdul features a 'CV(C)(C)' syllable structure. Words that begin with either a vowel or diphthong have a glottal stop at the beginning to fill the place of an initial consonant. 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, as 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

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 fled, and further developed the cirth when they settled at Erebor, 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.

¹ Cirth used only by dwarves. It's unknown if ps was written for Khuzdul or for other languages, as [p] is yet to be attested in Khuzdul.

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 & Adjectives

Nouns and adjectives 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. There are no known (if any) definite or indefinite articles in Khuzdul.

Nouns and adjectives appear to share different declensions that dictate the formation and number. How many declensions there might be 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. Words that are theoretical constructions are marked with an asterisk *.

Some words have identical nominative and construct states, both within their singular and plural forms. 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:

Some patterns can be seen that hint at some details of what state and/or number a noun is in:

A CVCVC pattern, seen in CaCaC, CeCeC and CiCiC for common singular construct patterns:

baraz, kheled, zigil.

A ‘VCCVC pattern, seen in ‘iCCaC and ‘uCCaC for a common singular pattern:

‘inbar absolute form, ‘uzbad, construct form.

Vowels in the order of "i, a" or "u, a" seem to apply for singular nouns:

zirak, ‘inbar and duban, ‘uzbad.

Long vowel sounds seem to appear only in the absolute state, and can be any number, but more likely in plural forms:

khazâd, nâla’, zâram, narâg, dûm/tûm and ‘ishmêk.

Another noun form that may exist is the collective numbers, along with the singulative form. This is from observation of the names Buzundush and Tumunzahar, where "-n-" means a person / place; thus making a singular instance of what makes the collective, e.g. a single hall, out of a group of halls, the same as seen in Gabilân, Nargûn, Nulukkhizdîn, Tharkûn, and in the composition form of "-un-" due to having a short vowel instead of long vowel.

¹ Possible assimilation of "dt" → "dd": Khazad-tûm → Khazad-dûm.

Most compounded words feature an Adjective-Noun pattern, however a Noun-Adjective pattern has also been observed. This could hint into a flexible pattern that allows both forms of Adjective-Noun and Noun-Adjective patterns, with the adjective taking the construct state. This could be done to stress the first element or for artistic purposes.

An example of Adjective-Noun pattern include:

Barazinbar: baraz "red", inbar "horn".

Kibil-nâla: kibil "silver (metal)", nâla "path, course, river-course or bed".

Kheled-zâram: kheled "glass, mirror", zâram "pool, lake".

and one example of a Noun-Adjective pattern:

Zirakzigil: zirak "spike, tine", zigil "silver (colour)".

Verbs

Only four verb words are known. The exact tense or use of these verbs are unknown:

Felak : To use a tool like a broad-bladed chisel, or small axe-head without haft. Felek: hew rock. Gunud : delve underground, excavate, tunnel. √S-L-N, Sulûn, Salôn : "fall, descend swiftly" (VT48:24).

Words

¹ Seen in Tumunzahar in 'Hollowbold', with 'bold' as an obsolete term for dwelling. Assimilates to 'D' when precedes one, e.g. d-t = d-d : Khazad-dûm