The War of the Jewels (71 page)

The Dwarves claimed to have met and fought the Orcs long before the Eldar in Beleriand were aware of them. It was indeed their obvious detestation of the Orcs, and their willingness to assist in any war against them, that convinced the Eldar that the Dwarves were no creatures of Morgoth. Nonetheless the Dwarvish name for Orcs, Rukhs, pl. Rakhas, seems to show affinity to the Elvish names, and was possibly ultimately derived from Avarin.

The Eldar had many other names for the Orcs, but most of these were 'kennings', descriptive terms of occasional use. One was, however, in frequent use in Sindarin: more often than Orchoth the general name for Orcs as a race that appears in the Annals was Glamhoth. Glam meant 'din, uproar, the confused yelling and bellowing of beasts', so that Glamboth in origin meant more or less 'the Yelling-horde', with reference to the horrible clamour of the Orcs in battle or when in pursuit - they could be stealthy enough at need. But Glamhoth became so firmly associated with Orcs that Glam alone could be used of any body of Orcs, and a singular form was made from it, glamog. (Compare the name of the sword Glamdring.) Note. The word used in translation of Q urko, S orch, is Orc. But that is because of the similarity of the ancient English word orc, 'evil spirit or bogey', to the Elvish words. There is possibly no connexion between them. The English word is now generally supposed to be derived from Latin Orcus.

The word for Orc in the now forgotten tongue of the Druedain in the realm of Gondor is recorded as being (? in the plural) gorgun. This is possibly derived ultimately from the Elvish words.

Appendix D.

*Kwen, Quenya, and the Elvish (especially Noldorin) words for 'Language'.

The Noldorin Loremasters state often that the meaning of Quendi was 'speakers', 'those who form words with voices' -

i karir quettar omainen. Since they were in possession of traditions coming down from ancient days before the Separation, this statement cannot be disregarded; though the development of sense set out above may also stand as correct.

It might be objected that in fact no stem *KWEN clearly referring to speech or vocal sound is found in any known Elvish tongue. The nearest in form is the stem *KWET 'speak, utter words, say'. But in dealing with this ancient word we must go back to the beginnings of Elvish speech, before the later organisation of its basic structure, with its preference (especially in stems of verbal significance) for the pattern X-X(-), with a fixed medial consonant, as e.g. in stems already exemplified above, such as *Dele, *Heke, *Tele, *Kala, *Kiri, *Nuku,

*Ruku, etc. A large number of monosyllabic stems (with only an initial consonant or consonant group) still appear in the Eldarin tongues; and many of the dissyllabic stems must have been made by elaboration of these, just as, at a later stage again, the so-called *kalat- stems were extended from the disyllabic forms: *kala > *kalat(a).

If we assume, then, that the oldest form of this stem referring to vocal speech was *KWE, of which *KWENE and *KWETE were elaborations, we shall find a striking parallel in the forms of

*KWA. This stem evidently referred to 'completion'. As such it survives as an element in many of the Eldarin words for 'whole, total, all, etc. But it also appears in the form *KWAN, and cannot well be separated from the verb stem *KWATA, Q quat-

'fill'. The assumption also helps to explain a curious and evidently archaic form that survives only in the languages of Aman: *ekwe, Q eque, T epe. It has no tense forms and usually receives no pronominal affixes, (Note 29, p. 415) being mostly used only before either a proper name (sg. or pl.) or a full independent pronoun, in the senses say / says or said. A quotation then follows, either direct, or less usually indirect after a 'that'-conjunction.

In this *ekwe we have plainly a last survivor of the primitive

*KWE. It is again paralleled by a similar formation (though of different function) from *KWA: *akwa. This survives in Quenya only as aqua 'fully, completely, altogether, wholly'. (Note 30, p. 415) Compare the use of -kwa in the formation of adjectives from nouns, such as -ful in English, except that the sense has been less weakened, and remains closer to the original meaning of the stem: completely . (Note 31, p. 415)

In Quenya the form eques, originally meaning 'said he, said someone' (see Note 29) was also used as a noun eques, with the analogical plural equessi, 'a saying, dictum, a quotation from someone's uttered words', hence also 'a saying, a current or proverbial dictum'.

We may therefore accept the etymology of *kwene, *kwen that would make its original meaning 'speaking, speaker, one using vocal language'. It would indeed be natural for the Elves, requiring a word for one of their own kind as distinguished from other creatures then known, to select the use of speech as a chief characteristic. But once formed the word must have taken the meaning 'person', without specific reference to this talent of the Incarnates. Thus *nere, *ner a male person, a man was derived from *NERE referring to physical strength and valour, but it was possible to speak of a weak or cowardly ner; or indeed to speak of a dumb or silent kwen.

It might therefore still be doubted that in the derivative

*kwendi the notion of speaking was any longer effectively present. The statement of the Loremasters cannot, however, be dismissed; while it must be remembered that the Elves were always more deeply concerned with language than were other races. Up to the time at least of the Separation, then, *Kwendi must still have implied 'we, the speaking people'; it may indeed have primarily applied to concourses for discussion, or for listening to speeches and recitations. But when the Elves came to know of other creatures of similar forms, and other Incarnates who used vocal language, and the name *Kwendi, Quendi was used to distinguish themselves from these other kinds, the linguistic sense must have been no longer present in ordinary language.

With regard to the word Quenya: an account is given above of the way in which this word became used first in Aman for Elvish speech, (Note 32, p. 416) and then for the dialects of the Eldar in Aman, and later for the language of the Vanyar and Noldor, and finally in Middle-earth for the ancient tongue of the Noldor preserved as a language of ritual and lore. This is historically correct, whatever may be the ultimate etymology of Quenya before the Eldar came to Aman. The view taken above (p. 360) is that it is derived from an adjective *kwendja formed upon the stem *kwende (of which *kwendi was the plural), meaning 'belonging to the Quendi or Elves'.

Pengolodh the Loremaster of Eressea says, in his Lammas or Account of Tongues, that Quenya meant properly 'language, speech', and was the oldest word for this meaning. This is not a statement based on tradition, but an opinion of Pengolodh; and he appears to mean only that Quendya, Quenya is actually never recorded except as the name of a language, and that language was the only one known to exist when this word was first made.

In any case it is clear that Quenya was always in fact particular in its reference; for when the Noldorin Loremasters came to consider linguistic matters, and required words for speech or vocal language in general, as a mode of expression or communication, and for different aspects of speech, they made no use of the element *kwen, quen or its derivatives.

The usual word, in non-technical use, for 'language' was

'lambe, Q and T lambe, S lam. This was undoubtedly related to the word for the physical tongue: *lamba, Q and T lamba, S lam. It meant 'tongue-movement, (way of) using the tongue'.

(Note 33, p. 416) This use of a word indicating the tongue and its movements for articulate language no doubt arose, even in a period when all known speakers spoke substantially the same language, from elementary observation of the important part played by the tongue in articulate speaking, and from noticing the peculiarities of individuals, and the soon-developing minor differences in the language of groups and clans.

Lambe thus meant primarily 'a way of talking', within a common generally intelligible system, and was nearer to our

'dialect' than to 'language'; but later when the Eldar became aware of other tongues, not intelligible without study, lambe naturally became applied to the separate languages of any people or region. The Loremasters, therefore, did not use lambe as a term for language or speech in general. Their terms were derived from the stem *TEN 'indicate, signify', from which was formed the already well-known word *tenwe > Q tengwe

'indication, sign, token'. From this they made the word tengwesta 'a system or code of signs'. Every 'language' was one such system. A lambe was a tengwesta built of sounds (hloni).

For the sense Language, as a whole, the peculiar art of the Incarnates of which each tengwesta was a particular product, they used the abstract formation tengwestie.

Now *TEN had no special reference to sound. Ultimately it meant 'to point at', and so to indicate a thing, or convey a thought, by some gesture, or by any sign that would be understood. This was appreciated by the Loremasters, who wished for a word free from any limitations with regard to the kind of signs or tengwi used. They could thus include under tengwesta any group of signs, including visible gestures, used and recognized by a community.

They knew of such systems of gesture. The Eldar possessed a fairly elaborate system, (Note 34, p. 416) containing a large number of conventional gesture-signs, some of which were as

'arbitrary' as those of phonetic systems. That is, they had no more obvious connexion with self-explanatory gestures (such as pointing in a desired direction) than had the majority of vocal elements or combinations with 'echoic' or imitative words (such ps *mama, Q mama sheep, or *k(a)wak, Q quako 'crow').

The Dwarves indeed, as later became known, had a far more elaborate and organized system. They possessed in fact a secondary tengwesta of gestures, concurrent with their spoken language, which they began to learn almost as soon as they began learning to speak. It should be said rather that they possessed a number of such gesture-codes; for unlike their spoken language, which remained astonishingly uniform and unchanged both in time and in locality, their gesture-codes varied greatly from community to community. And they were differently employed. Not for communication at a distance, for the Dwarves were short-sighted, but for secrecy and the exclusion of strangers.

The component sign-elements of any such code were often so slight and so swift that they could hardly be detected, still less interpreted by uninitiated onlookers. As the Eldar eventually discovered in their dealings with the Naugrim, they could speak with their voices but at the same time by 'gesture' convey to their own folk modifications of what was being said. Or they could stand silent considering some proposition, and yet confer among themselves meanwhile.

This 'gesture-language', or as they called it iglishmek, the Dwarves were no more eager to teach than their own tongue.

But they understood and respected the disinterested desire for knowledge, and some of the later Noldorin loremasters were allowed to learn enough of both their lambe (aglab) and their iglishmek to understand their systems.

Though a lambe was thus theoretically simply a tengwesta that happened to employ phonetic signs, hloniti tengwi, the early loremasters held that it was the superior form, capable of producing a system incalculably more subtle, precise and extensive than any hwerme or gesture-code. When unqualified, therefore, tengwesta meant a spoken language. But in technical use it meant more than lambe. The study' of a language included not only lambe, the way of speaking (that is what we should call its phonetics and phonology), but also its morphology, gram-mar, and vocabulary.

The section omitted from Appendix D (see p. 359) begins here. The remainder of the text, which now follows, was all included in this Appendix.

Before he turned to other matters Feanor completed his alphabetic system, and here also he introduced a change in terms that was afterwards followed. He called the written representation of a spoken tengwe (according to his defini-tion)(23) a tengwa. A 'letter' or any individual significant mark had previously been called a sarat, from *SAR 'score, incise' >

'write'.(24) The Feanorian letters were always called tengwar in Quenya, though sarati remained the name for the Rumilian letters. Since, however, in the mode of spelling commonly used the full signs were consonantal, in ordinary non-technical use tengwar became equivalent to 'consonants', and the vowel-signs were called omatehtar. When the Feanorian letters were brought to Beleriand and applied (first by the Noldor) to Sindarin, tengwa was rendered by its recognized Sindarin equivalent tew, pl. tiw. The letters of the native S alphabet were called certh, pl. cirth. The word in Exilic Quenya certa, pl.

certar was an accommodated loan from Sindarin; there was no such word in older Quenya. The Sindarin certh is probably from *kirte 'cutting', a verbal derivative of a type not used in Quenya, the form of which would in any case have been *kirte, if inherited.