adûn

noun. west, westward

A noun meaning “west(ward)” (SD/435, PE17/18). Tolkien stated that was “a loan word from Eldarin speech in the language of the Folk of Hador, from which Númenórean was later derived” (PE17/18). Probably it is derived from S. dûn “west”, as suggested by several authors (AAD/9, EotAL/NDU). Tolkien stated that it was an adjective and its proper noun form was adûni (SD/435), but adûn was used as a noun in phrases such as Bârîm an-adûn “Lords of the West” (SD/247).

adûn izindi batân tâidô ayadda

[the] road west once went straight, (lit.) west straight road once went

The 11th phrase of the Lament of Akallabêth (SD/247), whose word order varied considerably in the different drafts of the text. The first two words are the adjectives adûn “west” and izindi “straight, right, true”. They modify the subject batân “road, path, way”, which is in the normal-case rather than the subjective. This is consistent with the grammatical rules of Lowdham’s Report, since the verb ayadda has a pronominal suffix a- “✱it” (SD/429).

The fourth word is an adverb tâidô “once, then”. The verb form yadda seems to be the past tense of #yad- “to go”, functioning here as a pluperfect (see SD/439). This makes sense in the narrative, since this sentence describes the previous state (the road west going straight to Valinor) while the next sentence uses the aorist tense to describe the current state (all roads being bent around the now-round world).

Tolkien’s glosses match the word order of the Adûnaic sentence: “west straight road once went”. This might be rendered in more ordinary English as “[the] road west once went straight”.

The previous (second draft) version of this sentence had more differences from the final version than any other sentence in the second draft (SD/312). It had a different word order, with the adjective izindi “straight” appearing directly before the verb, perhaps functioning as an adverb. It has ēluk instead of tâidô and the verb form yadda is missing the pronominal prefix a-. Unfortunately, Christopher Tolkien did not publish the English glosses for this sentence, so it is hard to decipher the meaning (if any) of these differences.

bârim an-adûn yurahtam dâira sâibêth-mâ êruvô

Lords of [the] West, they rent [the] Earth with assent from Eru

The 4th phrase of the Lament of Akallabêth (SD/247). One major conceptual change from earlier versions was that the subject of the sentence was plural Bârim an-Adûn (“Lords of the West”) instead of the earlier singular Bârun an-Adûn (“Lord of the West”). It seems that Tolkien decided that the drowning of Númenor was attributed to all of the Valar rather than just Manwë. A similar change from singular to plural was made in the corresponding Quenya sentence: herunūmen >> númeheruvi.

The subject Bârim of this sentence is the subjective plural of bâr “lord”. It is modified by the adjectival phrase an-Adûn “of the West”, with the genitive prefix an- “of” added to the noun adûn. The verb has the 3rd-plural suffix yu- “they”. In the grammatical rules of Lowdham’s Report this makes the subject emphatic, with a meaning more like “It was the Lords of the West who broke the Earth...” (SD/429).

The verb form rahtam is the aorist tense of rahat- “to break” with the verb plural suffix -m. The object of the sentence, dâira “Earth”, is in the normal-case.

The base sentence is modified by the prepositional phrase sâibêth-mâ Êruvô “with assent from Eru”. The combination sâibêth-mâ is the word sâibêth “assent” and the prepositional suffix -mâ “with”. The final word Êruvô is the name Êru and the prepositional suffix -ô “of”, with the usual glide-consonant [w] (which was sometimes written “v” as mentioned on SD/434) between the u and the following suffix.