A prefix appearing before the Adûnaic names of kings and queens, the equivalent of Q. Tar- “High” (SA/ar(a)). It is most likely either a prefixal form of Ad. ârû “king” or derived from the same root. Conceptual Development: This prefix was introduced in the earliest versions of Adûnaic from the 1940s (SD/311, SD/248), and survived in the later Adûnaic names of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.
Adûnaic
ki
pronoun. *you
ar-
prefix. king or queen
ârû
noun. king
A noun translated as “king” (SD/429). The Adûnaic word for “queen” is not attested, but could be a feminized form of this word, such as ✱ârî.
ar-pharazôn kathuphazgânun
King Ar-Pharazon the Conqueror
A phrase given by Tolkien as an example of how a pair of nouns would be declined into the subjective case, with only the last noun inflected (SD/429). The entire noun phrase would be the subject of the sentence. It is contrasted with Ar-Pharazônun kathuphazgân, where the first noun is inflected instead. This would be a the sentences “Ar-Pharazôn (is) a conquerer”.
ar-pharazônun kathuphazgân
King Ar-Pharazon is (was) a Conqueror
A phrase given by Tolkien as an example of how the subjective case can be used to represent the verb “to be” (SD/429). Since the first noun the subject, the second noun is the predicate and the verb “is” is implied. Depending on context, the sentenced could refer to the past so that the subjective would represent “was” instead. This sentence is contrasted with Ar-Pharazôn kathuphazgânun, where the second noun is inflected in the subjective instead, so that the entire noun phrase would be the subject: “King Ar-Pharazon the Conqueror...”.
gimlu-nitîr
kindler of a (particular) star
An example illustrating the difference between the singular noun gimli “star” and the collective-noun gimil “(all) stars” as used in the name Gimilnitîr “Star-kindler, kindler of all the stars” (SD/428).
ar-pharazôn
King Pharazon
A short phrase illustrating the Adûnaic compositional genitive (SD/435).
ar-pharazônun bâr ’nanadûnê
King Pharazon is Lord of Anadune
An example sentence illustrating Adûnaic grammar: it is a copula (a “to be” expression) without an explicit verb for “is” (SD/428). The subject of the sentence, Ar-Pharazônun, is in the subjective case, which represents the verb “to be”. The rest of the sentence, Bâr ’nAnadûnê “Lord of Anadune (Númenor)” is the predicate and is in the normal-case. This sentence also provides an example of the use of the genitive prefix an- “of”, here elided to ’n because of the preceding uninflected noun.
ârû ’nadûnâi
King of the Anadunians
An phrase illustrating Adûnaic grammar, in particular how the genitive prefix an- “of” must be used when a plural noun needs to be put into a genitive relationship with another noun (SD/429). Without the an-, the preceding noun would be in an objective relationship instead. Here the an- is elided to ’n because of the preceding uninflected noun.
phazân
noun. prince, king’s son
A noun translated as “prince, king’s son”, given as an example of a noun with a long vowel in its final syllable that (archaically) uses the declension for a strong-noun, the rare class of Strong-Ib nouns (SD/436-7). By the time of Classical Adûnaic, it could be declined as an ordinary weak-noun instead.
nitir- Reconstructed
verb. to kindle
A verb attested only as an agental-formation in the names Gimilnitîr “Star-kindler” and gimlu-nitîr “kindler of a (particular) star” (SD/428). Thorsten Renk suggested (NBA/32) the base verb is nitir-, and this seems to me to be the likeliest possibility. Andreas Moehn instead suggested (EotAL/NIT’Y) that the verb stem may be nit-, and that the -îr is some kind of feminine agental suffix.
khô
noun. crow
A noun translated “crow” (SD/426). Tolkien listed this noun in two forms, khâu and khô, both as examples of seemingly uniconsonantal nouns that prehistorically were biconsonantal (from prehistoric ✶khaw). Most authors have suggested these are simply variations on the same noun illustrating different paths of phonetic development (AAD/18, AL/Adûnaic). Another interesting possibility is that khâu is an (archaic?) subjective form of khô, produced from the usual a-fortification of primitive ✶khaw → ✶khāw, which would develop phonetically in Classical Adûnaic to khâu and khô. As support for this idea, the plural form of khâu is given as khāwī(m), which appears to include the subjective plural suffix -im.
This line of reasoning is quite speculative. Nevertheless, it is probably easier to use the form khô over khâu, since the inflections of khô would be more regular: plural khôi, dual ✱khôwat, objective ✱khôwu, etc.
îdô
adverb. now
A word translated “now” in the Lament of Akallabêth (SD/247). In the final manuscript version, this is the only form of the word, but in the final typescript version and in all earlier versions, it sometimes appears in the form îdôn.
Some authors have suggested this variation occurs when îdô appears before words beginning in a vowel or semi-vowel (AL/Adûnaic, NBA/12), but this seems unlikely to me. Carl Hostetter, Patrick Wynne and Andreas Moehn instead suggested (VSH/18, AAD/16, LGtAG, EotAL/DAW) that îdôn is a subjective inflection of the word îdô, being used as a noun. The key evidence supporting this second theory is that where the form îdon appears, its gloss is always “now (is)” rather than simply “now”. As discussed elsewhere (SD/429), the subjective inflection can function as the verb “to be”.
I tend to agree with this theory of Hostetter, Wynne and Moehn, but I think the actually development is somewhat more complex. In the first draft version of the Lament of Akallabêth, this form of the word appears twice as īdōn “lo! now is”. As noted by Mr. Moehn (LGtAG), this version of the Lament used a predicate suffix -n “is” in several places: burodan “heavy-is”, rōkhī-nam “bent-are”. It seems likely that draft form īdōn “lo! now is” is another variation of this earlier syntax.
The draft predicate suffix -n differed from the later subjective case in that it applied to the predicate of a clause instead of the subject. Compare these changes from the draft to final versions:
agannūlo burudan “death-shade heavy-is” >> agannâlô burôda “death-shadow [is] heavy”
batānī rōkhī-nam “ways bent-are” >> batîna lôkhî “ways (are) bent”
In both draft sentences, the subject is uninflected and the predicate has the predicate suffix -n/-nam. Conversely, in the later sentences the subject is inflected into the subjective case while the predicate is uninflected. This demonstrates the functional shift in the use of the predicate suffix -n in these drafts to the later use of the subjective inflection.
In both the second draft and final typescript versions of the Lament, the form îdôn was retained in all the sentences where it appeared in the first draft. This means that it could have been a remnant of this earlier syntax. The form îdôn could be reinterpreted as the sentence’s subject, but this is also problematic, since îdô is certainly neuter and its subjective form should be ✱îdôwa, not îdôn.
It is my belief that Tolkien eventually decided that the suffix -n could no longer be used in this context and removed it, switching to an uninflected îdô “now” everywhere in the text as is the case in the final manuscript version of the Lament. On the basis of this deduction, I also believe that the manuscript version was written after than the typescript version.
balak
noun. ship
The noun for “ship”, attested only in the plural (balîk) and objective (balku) forms (SD/247, PM/151). Its plural form indicates that it is a strong-noun (Strong I), so its final vowel must be short. In theory its final vowel could be any of a, i or u, each of which would be replaced by long î in plural nouns. However, its attested objective form uses the variant objective-with-syncope form balku instead of ordinary ✱baluk. Since the Adûnaic syncope seems only to occur for nouns with two identical short vowels, this indicates the singular form of this word is balak.
kali
noun. woman
A noun translated “woman” (SD/434).
lâi
collective noun. folk
sulum
noun. mast
A noun translated “mast” illustrating the development of Primitive Adûnaic palatals, or c-series (SD/419). This example may also be related to the draft (?Adûnaic) name for the Pillar of Heaven Meneltyūlā, which contains a word much like the cognate of sulum: Q. tyulma.
thâni
noun. land
A noun translated “land” (SD/435) appearing in the Adûnaic names for the Blessed Realm: Amatthâni and thâni’nAmân. Its Primitive Adûnaic form was also ✶thāni, though its primitive was glossed “realm" (SD/420).
zâyan
noun. land
An Adûnaic word for “land” (SD/423). It has an irregular plural form zâin which is the result of the phonetic change (SD/423): [[pad|medial [w] and [j] vanished before [u] and [i]]]. Thus, the archaic plural changed from †zâyîn > zâîn > zâin.
Conceptual Development: In earlier names this word appeared as zen (SD/378, 385).
A pronominal prefix, most likely the second person pronoun “you”, appearing in the verb kitabdahê “[you] touch me” in the sentence bâ kitabdahê (SD/250). See the entry on pronominal-prefixes for more discussion.