Adûnaic

Adûnaic (or Adunaic) ("language of the West") is one of the fictional languages devised by J. R. R. Tolkien for his fantasy works.

One of the languages of Arda in Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, Adûnaic was spoken by the Men of Númenor during the Second Age.

Fictional history

Adûnaic derived from the closely related Bëorian and Hadorian dialects of Taliska, the language spoken by the first and third houses of the Edain when they first entered Beleriand during the First Age (the language(s) of the second house, the Haladin, seems to have had little or no influence on Adûnaic, despite the apparent presence of both the Haladin and the Drúedain in Númenor prior to its downfall). This language seems to have primarily been a creole of the Dwarvish Khuzdul and some Avarin dialects, and it is almost wholly unclear which parts (if any) of its vocabulary and structure were purely "Mannish" in origin, though the answer is probably very little. It is stated that Finrod Felagund was able to quickly master Taliska purely by determining the various changes undergone by its Avarin component from Primitive Quendian, and Faramir stated that all languages of Men are of Elvish descent, suggesting that Taliska and Adûnaic are in fact Quendian/Avarin with some Khuzdul influence (notwithstanding the possibility that Faramir was misinformed, much as how many people mistakenly think English is a Romance language). Once the Edain settled in Beleriand, they eagerly learned Sindarin from its Grey Elven inhabitants, but retained their own tongue, probably whilst borrowing and adapting many Sindarin words to it. By the end of the First Age, Taliska had developed into a language that served as the basis for Adûnaic, the vernacular tongue of the Númenóreans, as well as the languages of the Rohirrim and the Men of Dale.

In Númenor, Adûnaic was the language used in day-to-day affairs by the majority of the population (though Sindarin was probably spoken by many). Its corpus, already a varied mixture of Khuzdul, Avarin, and Sindarin, was probably now exposed more heavily to the influence of Quenya (which served a role much the same as Latin in Medieval Europe) and possibly even Valarin, both due to regular contact with Aman. When the Númenóreans began to establish trading ports (later colonies) on the western shores of Middle-earth, Adûnaic mingled with the languages of various groups of Edain who had not travelled to Númenor, and the resulting trade language quickly spread throughout Eriador and its neighbours, laying the foundation for the later Common Speech.

Following the Akallabêth, the surviving Elendili who established the kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor shunned Adûnaic in favour of Sindarin due to the associations of the former with the tyrannical Ar-Pharazôn and his followers the King's Men. Neglected by the Faithful, Adûnaic (in various forms and dialects) remained the language of the common people throughout most of the west of Middle-earth, and by the time of the War of the Ring at the end of the Third Age, it had developed into the various dialects of Westron.

Although "classical" Adûnaic was not spoken after the Akallabêth, surviving groups of the King's Men (referred to as Black Númenóreans) who served and worshipped Sauron (notably in Umbar) continued to speak a debased form of the language (called Black Adûnaic) as recently as the War of the Ring at the end of the Third Age.Template:Citation needed

Very few words of Adûnaic are known, though those that are borrow heavily from various Elven languages. Adûnaic also seems to conform to a variant of the consonantal root system used in Khuzdul (as does its successor language, Westron). It is also one of perhaps only two or three of Tolkien's languages known to possess noun classes, which roughly correspond to four grammatical genders.

Concept and creation

Although Tolkien created very few original words in Adûnaic, mostly names, the language serves his concept of a lingua franca for Middle-earth, a shared language for many different people. This lingua franca is Westron, which developed out of Adûnaic, "the language of the culturally and politically influential Númenóreans."

Tolkien devised Adûnaic (or Númenórean), the language spoken in Númenor, shortly after World War II, and thus at about the time he completed The Lord of the Rings, but before he wrote the linguistic background information of the Appendices. Adûnaic is intended as the language from which Westron (also called Adûni) is derived. This added a depth of historical development to the Mannish languages. Adûnaic was intended to have a "faintly Semitic flavour".Template:Rp Its development began with The Notion Club Papers (written in 1945). It is there that the most extensive sample of the language is found, revealed to one of the (modern-day) protagonists, Lowdham, of that story in a visionary dream of Atlantis. Its grammar is sketched in the unfinished "Lowdham's Report on the Adunaic Language".

Tolkien remained undecided whether the language of the Men of Númenor should be derived from the original Mannish language (as in Adûnaic), or if it should be derived from "the Elvish Noldorin" (i.e. Quenya) instead. In The Lost Road and Other Writings it is implied that the Númenóreans spoke Quenya, and that Sauron, hating all things Elvish, taught the Númenóreans the old Mannish tongue they themselves had forgotten.

Phonology

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Occlusive	p b		t d			k ɡ	ʔ
Fricative	f v	θ	s z	ʃ		x ɣ	h
Affricate	p͡f	t͡θ		t͡ʃ d͡ʒ		k͡x
Nasal	m		n			ŋ
Trill			r
Approximant			l		j	w

	Front	Back
Close	i iː	u uː
Close-mid	eː1	oː1
Open	a aː

¹Adûnaic is fundamentally a three-vowel language, with a length distinction; the long eː and oː are derived from diphthongs aj and aw, as is the case in Hebrew and in most Arabic dialects, in line with the Semitic flavour that Tolkien intended for both Adûnaic and Khuzdul, which influenced it.

Grammar

Most information about Adûnaic grammar comes from an incomplete typescript Lowdham's Report on the Adûnaic Language, written by Tolkien to accompany The Notion Club Papers. The report discusses phonology and morphological processes in some detail, and starts to discuss nouns, but breaks off before saying much about verbs, other parts of speech or the grammar as a whole. It appears that Tolkien abandoned work on the language after writing this portion of the Report, and never returned to it.Template:Rp

Nouns

Most nouns are triconsonantal, but there are a number of biconsontantal nouns as well. Nouns can be divided into three declensions, called Strong I, Strong II and Weak. The two strong declensions form their various cases by modifying the last vowel, similarly to English man/men. The weak declension forms its cases by appending a suffix.

There are three numbers, singular, plural and dual. Dual is used mainly for "natural pairs", like eyes and shoes. There are three cases, Normal, Subjective and Objective. The Subjective case is used as the subject of a verb. The Objective case is used only in compound expressions and appears only in the singular. The Normal case is used in all other circumstances, such as the object of a verb.

Example declensions:

	Strong I	Strong II	Weak
Meaning	house	sea	strength
Singular Normal	zadan	azra	abār
Singular Subjective	zadān	azrā	abārā
Singular Objective	zadun	azru	abāru
Dual Normal	zadnat	azrāt, azrat	abārat
Dual Subjective	zadnāt	azrāt	abārāt
Plural Normal	zadīn	azrī	abārī
Plural Subjective	zadīna	azrīya	abārīya

Sample Text

This Adûnaic text, part of the tale of the Fall of Numenor, appears in The Notion Club Papers. It is fragmentary because it appeared in a dream to the character Lowdham, and is only partially translated by him because he did not know the language. Words in bold are not translated at the point in the text where the translation is first given, but their translation is given later in the story.Template:Rp

Kadō   zigūrun zabathān unakkha ... ēruhīnim
and so Sauron  humbled  he-came ... Children of God

dubdam ugru-dalad    ... ar-pharazōnun azaggara
fell   shadow-under  ... Ar-Pharazon   was warring

avalōiyada     ... bārim an-adūn yurahtam dāira
against Powers ... Lords of-West  broke   Earth

sāibēth-mā   ēruvō    ... azrīya du-phursā    akhāsada
assent-with  God-from ... seas  so-as-to-gush into chasm

... anadūnē zīrān    hikallaba    ... bawība dulgī
... Numenor beloved she-fell down ... winds  black

... balīk hazad an-nimruzīr azūlada
... ships seven of-Elendil  eastward

Agannālō     burōda nēnud ... zāira   nēnud
Death-shadow heavy  on-us ... longing on-us

... adūn izindi   batān tāidō ayadda: īdō kātha batīna lōkhī
... west straight road  once  went    now all   roads  crooked

Ēphalak   īdōn    Yōzāyan
far away now (is) Land-of-Gift

Ēphal ēphalak   īdōn    hi-Akallabēth
far   far away now (is) She-that-hath-fallen

External links

• Andreas Moehn – Lalaith's Guide to Adûnaic Grammar
• Thorsten Renk's Ni-bitha Adûnâyê
• Adûnaic from Almavarno in Italian
• Adûnaic at Ardalambion
• The page at LangMaker
• A page which details the language's vocabulary and grammar

This article is part of a series on the languages and worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien. Conlangs: Adûnaic * Avarin * Black Speech * Khuzdul * Quenya * Quendian * Sindarin * Westron Conworld: Middle-earth Conpeoples: Elves Terms and techniques coined: Diachronics * Legendarium * Lámatyáve * *