Questions on Adunaic and Quenya

Hello all, I've got some really burning questions. Unfortunately I'm not a linguist so I'm finding it difficult to make sense of some of my readings on Numenor. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Quenya

In the word Herunumen (as in Tar-Herunumen) is the word using the genitive case ? Does anyone know if the word translates as 'west belonging to the lord' or 'lord belonging to the west '?

Adunaic

Is the name 'Adunakhor' a singular or plural, or possesive ?

Could somebody please translate the following into Quenya and then the tengwar for me:

'To West Lay All Dread'

Thanks
monks

ps Happy New Year!

[Legolas]

Both are singular, and I think are used in genitive case - 'lord over the west' or 'lord to whom the west belongs' - in irreverence to the real lords of the West, the Valar.

I don't know of a word meaning simply 'to' being used to indicate direction in elvish, so you could use 'in.'

in - mi
the - i
in the - mí
west - adúnë, also númen
to lie - cait-

That's the root form of lie...for the present tense, you add a for caita.

all - ilyë
dread - gaya, also goroth

The vocabulary above is taken mainly from Galadriel's Altariello naine Lóriendesse. In that passage, she says something similar to what you're trying to say:

ar sinda-nórie-llo caita mornië - "and gray-country-from lies darkness"

So to say "in the West lies all dread" would be something like

mí Adúnë caita ilyë gaya

[Alcarillo]

The names Herunumen and Adunakhor do mean "Lord of the West", but no elements of those names are actually put into the genitive case. They're nominative (at least for Herunumen), but are easily understood as ___ of the ___.

Originally Posted by Legolas

mí Adúnë caita ilyë gaya

Tsk tsk tsk . . . mixing Sindarin and Quenya, are we? D or G cannot stand alone in Quenya. D can appear in ld, nd, or rd, and G only in ng. Try Númessë caitar ilyë nortor. Númen can be used as a name without the article the. You should also know that this translates to In the West lie all horrors; norto is glossed as only a horror, so I just used a plural. I could find to dread in Quenya, but not a noun form. That's the best I can do.

There's a lot of info on Tolkien's languages at Ardalambion.

[Legolas]

First, I make no claim to be a language master.

You would use lie in this instance.

lie - to occupy a position or place

adún for 'west' is not Sindarin. In Sindarin, we are given annún and dûn. As for the assertion that I mixed Quenya and Sindarin by using the word, look at what Tolkien himself wrote - Galadriel says mi oro-mardi lisse-miruvore-va Adúnë pella Vardo tellumar nu luini ("in the high-halls sweet nectar of the west beyond Varda's domes...")

Sindarin or not, if Adúnë is good enough for Galadriel's Quenya, it is good enough for mine.

As you say, a stand-alone 'g' is out of place in Quenya, but it is apparently present in earlier elvish speech - gaya is not Sindarin, but from the older elvish that Quenya and Sindarin derived.

The first name was evidently adopted in the form Ossai, which became naturally Q Osse. In S Ossai would become ossi > ussi > yssi to which the ending (of male names) -on was added; or else the adjective *gaira 'awful, fearful' was prefixed, producing Gaerys. The latter was more often used by the inland Teleri. *gaira is from *gay- 'astound, make aghast', which was also used in the oldest Eldarin word for the Sea: *gayar, Q ear, S gaear.

We can make guesses at a word from that passage, but at the time, I was avoiding guesses. [This leads to the obvious point of difficultly in 'saying' things in elvish languages - we don't have even close to a complete vocabulary list.]

But since, I have found the Quenya form.

45. Quenya aika was derived from a Common Eldarin stem GAYA 'awe, dread'; but the adjectival form *gayaka from which aika descended was not preserved in Telerin or Sindarin. Other derivatives were *gaya 'terror, great fear': Telerin gaia, Sindarin goe, Quenya aya. Adjectives formed on this, Telerin gaiala, Sindarin goeol, replaced Quenya aika. In a name of this sort in Sindarin the noun would most naturally have been used, producing goenaur > Goenor. Also *Gayar- 'the Terrifier', the name made for the Sea, the vast and terrifying Great Sea of the West, when the Eldar first came to its shores: Quenya Ear, Earen, Telerin gaiar; Sindarin gaear, gae(a)ron, Belegaer. This word is also found in the Quenya name Earendil, the mariner (sea-lover); see p. 348.

Simply drop the g for the word in Quenya - aya.

mi Adúnë caita ilyë aya

Thanks for the replies- this is a great forum :

I asked this same question to Helge Fauskanger of Ardalambion;

My question:
Even though Herunumen appears in the Silmarillion index as Lord of the
West, is it a correct Quenya translation?

Helge:
It is a slightly strange form. Heru means lord, númen means west.
"Lord-(of)-West", then. But it is possible that the word comes from an
older conceptual phase, in which _-n_ was the genitive ending, and with
_núme_ rather than _númen_ was the word for "west" (compare Letters:361).
If so, we could read _heru-núme-n_ "lord-west-of".

The Tolkkien letter states:
'Q. nume 'going down, occident';numen 'the direction or region of the sunset' + nore 'land' as an inhabited area. I have ofetn used Westernesse as a translation.'
[sorry no diacritic marks in the above- there should be over 'u' in numen and 'o' in nore]

I've also been reading this website page:
http://rover.wiesbaden.netsurf.de/~l.../Names_LE.html

There are a lot of unanswered questions on there.

My gut feeling is with Legolas on:

'Both are singular, and I think are used in genitive case - 'lord over the west' or 'lord to whom the west belongs' - in irreverence to the real lords of the West, the Valar.'

Not because of any linguistic understanding I have I must add , but due to the context of the narrative. The Faithful are said to have taken great offence at this name. I can see 3 or 4 possible reasons for such offence:

1) Simply by breaking with the tradition of taking an Adunaic name on ascension. This is grounds for offence, but I think that there is something much deeper going on in the narrative. :

‘And the nineteenth king took the sceptre of his fathers, and he ascended the throne in the name of Adunakhor, Lord of the West, forsaking the Elven-tongues and forbidding their use in his hearing. Yet in the Scroll of Kings the name Herunumen was inscribed in the High-Elven speech, because of ancient customs, which the kings feared to break utterly, lest evil befall. Now this title seemed to the Faithful over-proud, being the title of the Valar; and their hearts were sorely tried’

Note: Tolkien uses the plural ‘Valar’. He also uses throughout the Akallabeth 'Lords of the West' to describe the Valar. according to Unfinshed Tales, the Akallabeth is supposed to be written by Elendil. as he was one of the Faithful, his lore and understanding of such subtleties would be good.
It’s also stated in Unfinished Tales:

'But these titles were held by the Faithful to be blasphemous, for they signified ‘Lord of the West’, by which title they had been wont to name one of the great Valar only, Manwe in especial.

Tolkien seems to be pointing to the actual words used rather than the breaking of the custom.
I'm assuming that the Aratar were given this title- not just Manwe. so in essence, the Valar did not take it themselves, the Elves gave it. Also, it did not 'belong' to any one Vala.
So this reasoning leads me onto the last two reasons which are more linguistic

2) The genitive case would cause great offence because it states ownership/possesion of the West. It's almost a reversal of authority.

3) The singular would again cause great offence, because it was not applied to any one Vala by the Elves, and none of the Vala laid claim to it individually. Also in support of this,

I noted on the above webpage (Lalaith's) that the article states that the two singular forms of the Quenya and Adunaic 'Lord of the West' are in the rejected texts.

4) The actual translation from Herunumen to Adunakhor is wrong. This would also be offensive- Tolkien was a linguist after all.

This lead me to my original question: is Adunakhor the plural, singular, possessive?

The upshot is, I think the offence is on the linguistic level- the most profound level for Tolkien nad therefore the most provocative. In fact I can point out in the Akallabeth that at every stage in the dissolution of faith in the Kings Men, Tolkien articulates it in linguistic terms.

I may be in the guilty of simply agreeing with what I want to hear here . I naturally want to hear an answer which fits into my 'reading' of the Akallabeth, which seems to agree with Legolas.

On the Quenya translation of 'To West Lay All Dread'

I agree that Galadriel, in Tolkien's scheme, would be the most reliable Keeper of the Elven lore.

Taking the meaning of 'dread' from the sea definately satisfies my sensibilities on this. I realise that the choice of words can be arbitrary to some degree because of the incomplete vocabulary, etc. To explain, the phrase is intended to be a dedication to a close friend of mine who passed away: his name was Wesley Alldred. The connotations of 'horror' are too severe for the context you understand. His place of rest is the Atlantic, on the Outer Hebrides, so the meaning of dread=sea would be more poetically fitting. I'm also trying to identify him poetically with one of the Faithful who sees the coming of the DownFall of Numenor.
With this meaning in mind, anymore suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks very much
monks

[Alcarillo]

Originally Posted by Legolas

adún for 'west' is not Sindarin. In Sindarin, we are given annún and dûn. As for the assertion that I mixed Quenya and Sindarin by using the word, look at what Tolkien himself wrote - Galadriel says mi oro-mardi lisse-miruvore-va Adúnë pella Vardo tellumar nu luini ("in the high-halls sweet nectar of the west beyond Varda's domes...")

In my copy of FotR, Galadriel says Andúnë rather than Adúnë.

Simply drop the g for the word in Quenya - aya.

Fair enough. Plus, the sea connotations are far better than nortor, I'll admit.