--- In elfling@y..., "Ryszard Derdzinski" <galadhorn@i...> wrote:
> It shows how important is to show to the public how much knowledge and
how
> hard work is needed to make the film as realistic as it is. People watchi=
ng
> LotR movie should always remember that all Elvish dialogs and runic or
> tengwar inscriptions are not simple "ble ble", but they really mean
> something concrete in the languages or scripts of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Thanks, Ryszard; it's a point well worth making.

To go over what happened briefly: in May of 1999, I was asked to provid=
e
some translations and renditions into a mode of _Angerthas_ for the runic
lettering that would appear on the walls of Moria. I worked with John Howe=

and Grant Major on this; Grant wrote the texts he wanted rendered into
Khuzdul (to be accurate: part Khuzdul, and part my own inventions), and I
faxed back transcriptions into cirth. It was a few days' work, and then of=

course the inscriptions had to be turned into actual artifacts that would g=
ive
the flavor of the Dwarvish civilization in Moria.
And just yesterday, I turned on the DVD so I could grade papers while
listening to the commentary sound-track from the design crew. Imagine my
surprise, when (on Disc II, scene 35 "Balin's Tomb"), just after the entran=
ce of
the Fellowship into the Chamber of Mazarbul, I heard the following
commentary from Grant Major, and Dan and Chris Hennah:

GRANT MAJOR: There's quite a interesting story attached to all the letterin=
g
on the walls here, because we, well, I personally, actually, wrote the text=

which was translated into Dwarvish and then applied onto the walls, and so =
I
was very careful with the place names and the people's names and what
have you, and of course there is a limited amount of information that I cou=
ld
glean from the books in terms of the histories here, whatever; I did write =

down all the history part of it myself, and as fate would have it, there wa=
s a
Tolkien language scholar who was invited onto set; and he happened to visit=

this particular Balin's tomb set one day off-shoot, and he reported to the =

producer that there was all sorts of inane comments written on the walls,
like, -- I can't remember the exact quote he used, but something like "Joe =

was here" and various other irrelevancies.

DAN HENNAH: And this guy went away, really pissed off, and he sent a letter=

to the production saying he was outraged that we would take this so lightly=
,
and Tolkien's work, and there will be people who'll have alphabets --
translation alphabets -- and they'll --

CHRIS HENNAH: Who will freeze frame it, and --

D. HENNAH: And they'll freeze frame it, and they'll see "Joe was here" writ=
ten
in Dwarvish and they'll be really pissed off.

MAJOR: You couldn't believe how shocked I was when I heard this news from
the producer and Barrie Osborne, so I immediately got our in-house
translator onto the set to find out where this lettering was, and she
scrutinized every last square foot of lettering, couldn't find it.
And nevertheless this guy was insisting that these marks were there, and of=

course we were freaking out because it had all been shot with such a lot of=

attention to detail in terms of costume and stunt work and creature effects=
,
and obviously materials collected by the computer and graphics department
for the subsequent computer stuff, so we were in a state of high alert here=
,
and we just could not find the sequence and so in the end, we had to go
back to the producer, and say, "hey, you know, we just can't find where it =
is;
as far as we can see, everything is kosher here."
And so he went back to the translator, or the scholar, and said "where did =

you think you saw it?"
And the scholar said, "Well, I just had it reported to me by one of the fil=
m
crew on the set," and of course this film crew member was obviously taking =

the piss out of, and was just sort of inventing a story which had snowballe=
d
into sort of a horror story from our point of view.

D. HENNAH: And we eventually found out that it was just one of the chippies=

having a joke, one of the carpenters having a joke at the expense of this g=
uy
--

C. HENNAH: Because the guy was so serious --

D. HENNAH: Because the guy was so serious, it sort of made a, you know...
[sighs]

C. HENNAH: So we wasted quite a lot of time...

D. HENNAH: Yeah. Mind you, it was just indicative of the lengths we went t=
o
to try to keep everything as authentic as possible.

There's something amusing about the story, of course, told long after t=
he
fact; but I find something annoying about it too. I don't know who this
"Tolkien language scholar" was, but I don't much appreciate his behavior,
which I think reflects badly on real scholars of Tolkien's languages all ov=
er the
world. First of all, assuming that this story about the carpenter's joke =
is
substantially true, why would this "Tolkien language scholar" have accepted=

the account without - for instance - just going up to the walls and *readin=
g*
what was on them? And why did he make a fuss and bother - clearly causing=

a good deal of trouble to a lot of people - based on a second-hand story,
insisting on the existence of something that was never there? This kind of=

thing makes us who study Tolkien's languages come off as idiots or buffoons=
.
If I knew who the person was who did this, I'd ask him for an apology.

For the record, there is nothing in Mazarbul that reads "Joe was here"=
or
anything like it. The primarily visible inscription reads as follows (you =
are
welcome to "freeze frame" the shot and check it!):

Gabil gund Mazarbul Sigin-turgul Khazaddûmul. Durin Uzbad zahra.
"Great Chamber of Records of the Longbeards of Khazad-dûm. Lord Durin
built (it)."

All of this is actually attested Khuzdul (though much only in proper names)=
,
except for _zahra_, which is back-formed from -zahar "building" in
Tumunzahar "Hollowbold", and _turgul_, which relates to _tarâg_ "beards",
as khuzdul "of dwarves, dwarvish" relates to khazâd "dwarves".

Other inscriptions may read (I do not know if all of them were created =
or
not):

Lai Khazaddûm, zibdîn Durin Ulganul
Behold Khazad-dûm, realm of Durin the Deathless
_Lai_ "Behold" is an invention.
_zibdîn_ is also an invention, backformed from _uzbad_, according to the
pattern of _khizdîn_ (in Nulukkhizdîn "Dwarf-dwelling on the Narog", the ol=
d
Dwarvish name for Nargothrond).
I forget exactly what the thinking was behind "ulganul", but it seems to ha=
ve
the adjectival ending -ul, and probably a privative prefix as well.


Lai Khazad-dûm zai Azanulbizar, Zibdîn Durinônul
Behold Khazad-dûm by Azanulbizar, realm of Durin's sons

_zai_ "by, at"; an invented preposition
_Durinônul_: from the invented suffix -ôn "son".

Durin [certh for 3] Uzbad Khazaddûmu
Durin III, lord of Khazad-dûm

Straight Khuzdul.

Durin mabazgûn au Abzag Durinu & [certh for "and"] Náin Durinul Abzag
Durinu ya bazghu
Durin slain by Durin's Bane, and Náin Durin's son, Durin's Bane also slew h=
im

mabazgûn "slain", from an invented root _bazaga_ with a participial prefix =

ma- (which I imagined to be seen in _mazarbul_) and a personal suffix -ûn =

(cf. the Khuzdul name for Gandalf, Tharkûn "staff-man").
au "by (instrumental): also invented
abzag "bane, slayer": also invented from the same root _bazag_
Durinu: takes -u as the suffix for an objective genitive
ya "also": invented
bazghu: past tense form bazg + 3rd singular masculine object suffix -hu.

Thrór Rayad Dáinu; Rakhâs bazghu; Azog wakrish shathûrhu
Thrór Heir of Dáin; Orcs slew him; Azog cut off his head
rayad "heir" is invented, presumably from a root rayada "succeed" or the li=
ke
wakrish: from a root karasha "cut", wa- probably being an adverbial prefix =

"off, away".
shathûr is attested in _Bundushathûr_ "Cloudyhead"; -hu is a 3rd singular
masculine possessive suffix.

Frerin Thráinul, Mabazgûn zai Azgâr Azanulbizarul, zai shakâl Kheled-zâramu=
l,
& Fundin mabazgûn
Frerin Thráin's son, slain in the Battle of Azanulbizar, on the shores of
Kheled-zâram, and Fundin slain

azgâr: "battle", an invention
shakâl: "shores", invented, according to the plural pattern of _khazâd_

Gabil Azgâr Gundabadul & Ningulul; Mernak Mabazgân
The great Battle of Gundabad and Gladden; remember the Dead

Ningul "Gladden"; an invention, supposed to resemble Elvish _Ninglor_
mernak "remember", also an invention; I forget the exact reasoning behind
this particular form, perhaps meren "remember" plus an imperative suffix, o=
r a
prefix me- (plural?) plus a root ranaka. I suppose it is ironic that I ha=
ve
forgotten the root for "remember"!

Ganâd Barazinbarul
(The) mines of Barazinbar
_ganâd_, plural of _gund_ (as in Felak-gundu "cave-hewer"), on the model of=

the plural _khazâd_

Azgâr Azanulbizarul
(The) battle of Azanulbizar

Zahar Durinul
(The) house of Durin
zahar, "building, house", again as in Tumunzahar.

Again, the wording here is that of Grant Major, the renditions into
neo-Khuzdul are mine (as was the transcription into _cirth_).

I should add that my construction of neo-Khuzdul (or pseudo-Khuzdul, if =
you
prefer) changed over time, and that the constructions I used in the
soundtrack differed in some particulars; in particular, I elaborated the ve=
rbal
system a good deal more and in some different ways than the examples
above suggest.