disagreeing with Greenwood
Originally posted by Greenwood
Example 7 has been the subject of much debate here, so it is at best ambiguous, but Aragil and I argue that in the light of the eight earlier instances the weight of evidence is on example 7 also referring to Saruman's troops.
The problem is that nothing in the context suggests that it is a reference to Saruman¡¯s troops. All the rumours that the soldier-orc mentions are highly consistent with the information that Shagrat had to report, and which he seems to have reported not only to
Barad-dur, but to
Orc positions close to
Cirith Ungol. ¡°7¡± is
ambiguous, but in context, a reference to
Uruks of
Mordor seems much more likely than a reference to Isengarders.
Of course, if we accept Christopher
Tolkien¡¯s view that ¡°Uruks¡± is just an Anglicization of ¡°
Uruk-hai¡±, then no problem arises, and the reference is almost certainly to the ¡°filthy rebel¡± Gorbag and his troop.
Originally posted by Greenwood
The final example (12) has also been the subject of considerable debate here. I have expanded the quotation given to show the full context of the usage. It seems clear to me that "uruk" is being referred back to orch in discussing the derivation of the word. The subject of the last sentence is the word snaga, not "Uruk-hai" and in no way does it imply that "Uruk-hai" and "uruk" are equivalent as some have argued. If that were the case than it would mean that "Uruk-hai" was a singular noun, which it clearly is not in all the uses in LOTR.
The argument is that Uruk-hai here sounds like a collective or plural term for uruks. When the passage is read in the context of Appendix F, it appears to indicate that ¡°Uruk-hai¡± was the racial name for the great soldier-orcs of
Isengard and Mordor. If ¡°Uruk-hai¡± applied only to the Isengarders, one would expect a definition in this section on ¡°
Orcs and the
Black Speech.¡± The silence is deafening!
Originally posted by Greenwood
As for the argument that "Uruk-hai" is always a plural noun so we can therefore assume uruk is it singular form, there is nothing to support this.
Except that the term is only used in a plural or collective sense, and that most, if not all, of Tolkien¡¯s invented
languages contain plural or collective tags (-rim, -lai, -r, etc.) at the end of words.
Olog-hai and Oghor-hai are also only ever used in a plural or collective sense. Also, the way in which the Appendix F section reads is highly suggestive, particularly in light of the description of the Olog-hai a few paragraphs later.
Originally posted by Greenwood
Tolkien never tells us how to refer to one individual member of the "Uruk-hai", so we don't know what the singular form would be. The singular form might be "Uruk-hai", just as the singular form of Nazgul is Nazgul. (I will return to example 12 below.)
All we can say with ¡°Nazgul¡± is that it clearly wasn¡¯t ¡°Anglicized¡± as ¡°Uruks¡± was, most likely because there were hordes of Uruks and only 9
ringwraiths. Uruks were doubtless commonplace for those areas on the receiving end of Orc raids, whereas
the Nine were not.
I think it¡¯s quite possible that there are no plurals in Black Speech, but in that case, the language would almost certainly require collective tags, for which ¡°-hai¡± seems a likely candidate.
Originally posted by Greenwood
The use of the word "uruks" is more complex. The word "uruk" (no 's') is only used once (example 12) where it is lowercase and italicized. It is clear that Tolkien in this example is giving the etymology of the base word (uruk). There are two instances (examples 8 and 9) of the word "Uruks" (capitalized and with an 's') and in both cases it is clearly referring to large Mordor orcs and the capitalization makes the usage appear to be a proper name for a group. We are left with four instances (examples 10, 11, 13 and 14) of the use of the word "uruks" (lower case). In examples 10 and 13 the word is also italicized. I do not think it is an accident that Tolkien uses the lowercase in these instances.
There are three hefty objections to this argument. The first is that Tolkien is remarkably inconsistent in his use of capitalization; we get both ¡°Orcs¡± and ¡°orcs¡±, for instance. So drawing a distinction between ¡°uruks¡± and ¡°Uruks¡± seems no more reasonable than drawing a conclusion between ¡°Orcs¡± and ¡°orcs¡±, or ¡°
Dwarves¡± and ¡°dwarves¡±.
Secondly, in the post-LotR text, ¡°The
Battles of the Fords of the Isen¡±, Tolkien uses the capitalized ¡°Uruks¡± to refer to Saruman¡¯s uruks on several occasions. Of special note is the fact that one group of ¡°Uruks¡± described therein is
Ugluk¡¯s band.
Thirdly, the italicization is inconsistent. In lower case, ¡°uruks¡± is sometimes italicized and sometimes not. No plausible reason other than oversight presents itself. Therefore, we should probably conclude that capitalization and italicization are just minor editorial inconsitencies.
Originally posted by Greenwood
In these cases Tolkien is using the word "uruks" as a general (generic) term for all large soldier orcs (this also explains example 12). These large soldier orcs are in the service of both Sauron (the "Uruks" proper) and Saruman (a new breed, the "Uruk-hai").
Except of course that ¡°Uruks¡± is used to describe Saruman¡¯s Uruk-hai in UT.
Originally posted by Greenwood
Both Tar-Elenion and ShagratU seem to have conceded that Saruman has a new breed of orc in his employ.
Throughout this discussion, I¡¯ve always maintained that Saruman¡¯s Uruk-hai have a hint of Man-blood. So there¡¯s no concession involved.
Originally posted by Greenwood
It seems to me that the above explanations of these words simply and clearly explain all their usages in LOTR without resorting to elaborate arguments about when characters are hearing translations and when they are not and various other convoluted explanations.
Of course the ¡°elaborate arguments¡± that you refer to are exactly the sort of thing that exercised Tolkien during the writing of LotR. When Tolkien explicitly tells us that a character is hearing a translation, then we can be sure he
is hearing a translation. There¡¯s nothing convoluted about that.
However, an argument that relies on Tolkien¡¯s demonstrably inconsistent use of capitalization, and which then cannot be reconciled with some of his usages, does involve a certain amount of convolution!
Originally posted by Greenwood
To sum up orc is the broadest general category (all Uruks and Uruk-hai are orcs); uruks (lowercase) is a more restricted category and refers to large soldier orcs (all Uruks and Uruk-hai are uruks); but Uruks and Uruk-hai (uppercase) are each sub-categories of uruks belonging to Sauron and Saruman, respectively.
So what about Ugluk and his followers, who are explicitly described as both ¡°Uruk-hai¡± and ¡°Uruks¡±?
Originally posted by Greenwood
As to the related, but seperate, discussion of the meaning of the suffix "-hai", I still suggest that it is in some way related to a tolerance of sunlight in creatures that might normally be expected to dislike the sun. Saruman's Uruk-hai boast of their disdain for the sun when most orcs do not like the sun. The Olog-hai are a form of trolls that tolerate the sun when normal trolls cannot tolerate the sun. We are left with the Oghor-hai from Unfinished Tales. We are told in UT that Oghor-hai is the orc's name for the Druedain. We are also told that another name for the Druedain is Pukel which means goblin (=orc), so we have the Druedain being considered somewhat goblin-like (orc-like) in appearance, but they can tolerate the sun because they are not true goblins, but are indeed men. Thus we can make a sun connection for all three uses of the suffix "-hai".
This doesn¡¯t hold up to scrutiny. There is no indication that ¡°Pukel¡± or ¡°Oghor¡± mean ¡°Orc¡± in Tolkien¡¯s work. Unless you can prove that it does, your theory is baseless.
Moreover, asking the monosyllable ¡°-hai¡± to mean ¡°resistant to sunlight when not normally expected to be so¡± is asking a lot. To fit your theory, you have to find a way of cramming a minimum of two unrelated
concepts into one syllable. This is very unlikely.
Finally, we have the precedent for Black Speech epithets and adjectives. They come before the noun that is modified. ¡°Nazgul¡± and ¡°
Sharku¡± bear this out. The definition of ¡°-hai¡± as ¡°-folk¡± or ¡°-race¡± is the only one so far proposed that fits the available linguistic evidence.