Re: tolkien?

Oops, sorry about that. Like I said, too much caffeine.

-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU] On
Behalf Of Andreas Johansson
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2003 11:24 AM
To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
Subject: Re: tolkien?

Quoting Greg <greg.johnstons@...>:

> Funny you should mention this, as I had too much caffeine last night and
was
> reading the Appendices. The Quenya word for orc is evidently "orch," which
> uses the archaic Quenya spelling.
Nope, it most certainly isn.t It's the Sindarin word for "orc", however. Pl
_yrch_.

Quenya has a couple variants; etymological _urco_, pl _urqui_, and Sindarin-
influenced _orco_, pl _orqui_ or _orcor_. (This following the later info in
Quendi and Eldar; back in the 30s, when the Professors was writing the
Etymologies, _orco_ was a perfectly regular Q derivation.)

It's said somewhere (unfortunately don't have the books at hand to check out
exactly where) that the Common Speech, lacking /x/ adopted Sindarin [x] as
/h/
initially and medially, but as /k/ finally, so it would seem that _orc_ is a
CS loan from Sindarin. (It's also an OE word meaning something like "demon";
coincidence, as they say in Middle-earth!)

                                                                  Andreas

> -----Original Message-----
> Quoting Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>:
>
> > Naaaa, if i were really that skillzed and/or audacious i would've come
> > up with a lot more than just some sound correspondences and a
> > word-analysis or two, i'd've filled in the whole Drughu language!
> > Since I am writing this email while offline and therefore can't check
> > for everything i've posted to the Conlang list about the
> > Drughu-Rokbeigalm connection, here's what i remember:
> >
> > The Drughu word "gorgûn" used by Ghân-buri-Ghân is analyzable as:
> >
> > gorgu+u+n
> > |gorgu| [gorgu] meaning "orc" (the Rok. cognate meaning something like
> > 'swarm' if i remember correctly could be |gaurg| [gO4g], |gaurguh|
> > (with final [V]) or |gaurgoo| (with final high central rounded vowel)
> > depending on whether the final vowel was originally */@/, */@:/, or
> > */u/)
>
> Have you done anything with Tolkien's statement that _gorgûn_ seems to be
> related to the Elvish words for "orc"? I've got my books back in Sweden,
so
> I
> can't give you the reference, but I think it's in the essay "Quendi and
> Eldar"
> in The War of the Jewels.
>
> Incidentally, _all_ words for "orc" in Tolkien's languages seem to be
> ultimately derivable to the Quendian root *RUK "fear". Besides the
plentiful
> Elvish words and _gorgûn_, the Professor notes that Dwarvish _rukhs_, pl
> _rakhâs_, seems to derive from it*, and the Black Speech word _uruk_ is
not
> only reminicent of "orc" in general sound, but identical to an attested
> primitive derivative of *RUK (attested in the sense that Tolkien mentions
a
> such "reconstructed" form).
>
> * Since both Dwarvish and Primitive Quendian distinguish plain /k/ from
the
> aspirate /kh/, I've always found it intriguing that the Dwarvish forms are
> not
> _ruks_, _rakâs_. Were I interested in fan fiction, I'd done something on
> that
> long ago.
>
>                                                           Andreas
>