Aglab Khazad: The Secret Language of Tolkien's Dwarves

J. R. R. Tolkien, best known for his epic works of high fantasy fiction, is also famous for\ud his experimentation in constructed languages. By far his most complex and best-represented\ud languages are those he assigned to his Elves. However, there are snippets from many other\ud constructed languages in his works, all with varying levels of detail and analysis. One such\ud language is Khuzdul, the language of Tolkien's Dwarves. It is poorly represented in Tolkien's\ud works and writings, as the Dwarves kept it secret, barely using it around non-Dwarvish\ud characters and even less frequently providing translations. What data exists, however, provides\ud the basis for a larger language, known as Neo-Khuzdul, used in Peter Jackson's Middle-Earth\ud film trilogies. This paper will provide a linguistic analysis of Neo-Khuzdul and, by extension,\ud Khuzdul itself.\ud I will first provide an overview of what data exists in both sources, text and film, with a\ud brief analysis of each. Then I will provide more in-depth analysis of Neo-Khuzdul in several\ud linguistic areas: I will start with a morphological analysis, looking at both NONCONCATENATIVE\ud MORPHOLOGY, or the way words are formed and given meaning through internal structure, and\ud CONCATENATIVE MORPHOLOGY, or prefixes and suffixes; next, I will look at the syntactic\ud structure of the language; and finally, I will analyze the phonological system of the language and\ud propose several phonetic changes drawn from the data. I will end with a sociolinguistic\ud discussion of what we can glean of Dwarvish culture from its use of language. Overall, I hope\ud this paper will be of interest to linguists, those interested in constructed languages, and those\ud interested in learning more about Tolkien's literary world