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Uruks vs. Uruk-hai

First off, I'd just like to say that Tar-Elenion, if you have learned how to put a quote inside a quote, then you now have some explaining for the rest of us.
Secondly, regarding this whole 'snaga' thing. We all know what the passage in appendix F says:
The lesser kinds were called, especially by the Uruk-hai, snaga 'slave'.
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It does not say that only the Uruk-hai called lesser breeds snaga, only that they were especially prone to do so. This implies to me that any greater breed would call a lesser breed snaga. In Greenwood's and my theory, the Uruks of Mordor are a greater breed than Snaga of Cirith Ungol. Therefore the Uruks could also call lesser breeds snaga, they just might not have been as prone to it as the Uruk-hai. As I have pointed out to Harad in the pentorclete thread, Shagrat seems to share a lot of traits in common with Ugluk. In my mind the two are more alike then either of them are to Grishnakh or Gorbag. Perhaps Shagrat is equally as arrogant as Ugluk, and so has dubbed one of the lesser Orcs in his command 'Snaga'. I doubt he referred to all such lesser Orcs in his command as snaga, as that would have been confusing for every Orc involved. In my own opinion, Snaga was probably some sort of nickname, like 'Radar' in the MASH tv series. Now that I think of it, Snaga reminds me a lot of an evil, Orcish Radar. I can even imagine Radar saying to Colonel Potter 'Nar! Keep your hands off your knife, or I'll put an arrow in your guts.' Well, maybe not.
Anyway, I have the Haughton Mifflin version from which Tar-Elenion might be quoting, and I note that terms for the same creatures are still usually cross-referenced, like Oliphaunt and Mumak, and the paragraph of different names for the Nazgul. Still the terms Uruks and Uruk-hai are not equated (also Gorbag's statement has been dropped from the entries for uruks-it's on p.721, so I guess no index is perfect). Our point still remains that Uruks is never equated with Uruk-hai in the indices, whether the oft-inaccurate Ballantine, the Haughton-Mifflin, Del-Rey, or thrice revered Allen-Unwin versions. Of course, this indicates to me that the creatures were different, but even more it indicates that CT did not get his UT definition from his father's indices. He did have the letter of 1944 to equate the two terms, but as both CT and I have pointed out, that letter was written before 'Uruks' was applied to Mordor Orcs. The telling thing is that the concept of Uruks predates the use of the term, or even the concept of Saruman's Orcs. They were the 'veritable Orcs' of Moria, or the 'big ones, the orcs of the mountains' in the revision to The Hobbit. 'Veritable Orcs pre-dates the conception of Saruman's Uruk-hai, 'big ones' is after that conception. Both predate the application of the term 'uruks' to Mordor Orcs, and neither one indicates that the uruks have the chief characteristics of the Uruk-hai: mannish equipment and Sun-tolerance. It is fairly clear to me that Tolkien came up with the term Uruk-hai early on for the troops of Saruman. When looking for a name for the large soldiers of Mordor (6 years later), he chose Uruks. I still see no indication that Tolkien intended the two terms to be equivalent, however closely related they are.
 
Since I can absolutely assert that Tar-Elenion's index is definitive myself, I would like for someone to argue the points he brought up one by one. They are valid and have yet to be refuted in the index argument. Greenwood, your index is not the definitive one and that should be conceded and the argument be picked up again on the merits.
 
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I dont want to have to come here to defend Grishnakh. But I will. Shagrat and Grishnakh were Orcs from the same Old School. Call them what you want, they both were Styes in the Red Eye.
 
Originally posted by Greenwood

By your own linguistic type of analysis, this makes it impossible for "-hai" to be Black Speech, but instead it must be an Orcish speech element.
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"Olog-hai" demonstrates conclusively that "-hai" is a Black Speech element. "Uruk-hai" is thus composed of two Black Speech elements.

Originally posted by Greenwood

You are the one ignoring your own wish to use the posthumously published material by ignoring this. You are now apparently trying to pick and choose which bits of linguistic history you like.
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Not so. I would agree with you that the posthumously published material cannot be used to contradict the published sources, but only to illuminate them. There are clearly chronological inconsistencies in Tolkien's unpublished works, and this would appear to be one of them. We know from LotR that "-hai" is Black Speech.


Because certain Black Speech elements are common to all Orcish dialects, with "Uruk-hai" evidently being one of them. There is clearly no need for Ugluk to anglicize "Uruk-hai", as it is a term used and understood by Mordor Orcs of different breeds. English speakers frequently use foreign terms when they know that those terms are understood by their listeners.


They are stating who they are; there is no need for them to Anglicize the term. Anglicizations tend to occur when native English speakers use a term frequently and adapt it to their own patterns for convenience.


Tolkien tells us that the different Orcish groups preserved some Black Speech elements in their dialects.

Originally posted by Greenwood
Your arguments are filled with "ifs" and "possibilities".
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That's because they are reasonable, and advanced reasonably!


Any argument on this issue has to be built on "ifs and possibilities", or rather, probabilities. This is due to the absence of a clear definition of the term by JRRT (although CT's UT index entry may be drawn from such a definition). Without such a definition, we can all only argue on probabilities. However, some things are definite, such as the fact that JRRT used "Uruks" to describe Saruman's elite Orcish troops.



No, it's not clearly an inconsistency. Saruman's great orcs are described as "uruks" in LotR, and we are told that the term uruk applied to them in Appendix F. Given Tolkien's demonstrable inconsistency with capitalization, UT is entirely consistent with LotR on this point.

LotR allows for the possibility that "Uruks" can refer to Saruman's great soldier-orcs; the "Isen" text is therefore not inconsistent with LotR on this point.
 

The hobbit narrators are reporting what the orcs said. We know from what they said that their information was consistent with the information that Shagrat had to report. Shagrat's information was in fact incorrect on this point, but he had good reason to believe that there was indeed an Elf-warrior loose. Therefore the orc's comments are consistent with Shagrat's information.

Originally posted by Greenwood
But we (the readers), and the hobbit narrators (POV again, remember), know that Frodo is not a dwarf-man. It is another wildly inaccurate rumor.
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Being a hobbit, Frodo is a "sort of small dwarf-man". That's what hobbits are.


Originally posted by Greenwood
Yes, indeed we have "rebel Uruk-hai" and the only Uruk-hai that have ever been mentioned in LOTR have been Saruman's.
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Which proves nothing as to whether the term can be applied to Mordor-orcs or not. This reference may be to "Uruk-folk" of Mordor. The previous usage of the term does not rule out the possibility.


In the "internal" concept, the hobbit narrators are reporting the speech of the orcs, not inventing it. They do not necessarily understand it. They clearly do not understand the usage of "Snaga", and use it as a proper name. At the time, Frodo and Sam had never heard the term "Uruk-hai". They might well have inferred that it was a reference to the "black Uruks" of Mordor, which it may well have been.

Originally posted by Greenwood
Thus we have a third wild rumor, just like the other two.
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The first two rumours are highly consistent with the information that Shagrat had to report. He was told that there was a great warrior around, who was probably or possibly an Elf. He had captured a sort of small dwarf-man. It thus seems very likely that the third rumour is equally consistent with Shagrat's information, and that Gorbag's troop were in fact "a pack of rebel Uruk-hai."

Originally posted by Greenwood
And as Aragil has pointed out, it is quite clear from the text that the two orcs are complaining about the fact that the "higher-ups" don't know what is going on.
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The "Higher-Ups" don't know exactly what is going on. They only have the information provided by Shagrat and perhaps the Nazgul to go on, and they don't know the full story. That doesn't change the fact that the orcs have information that is highly consistent with Shagrat's knowledge of the situation.


It was"all the lot together." "Together" need not imply that the three parties are working in concert, merely that they were all involved in the disturbance at the Tower.

We the readers know that Sam was not in fact an Elf warrior, but Shagrat didn't know that, and had reason to believe that he was. Shagrat also knew that a "sort of small dwarf-man" and, evidently, a "pack of rebel Uruk-hai" were involved.

Originally posted by Greenwood
But the Isengard coinage would be perfectly understandable to any orc who knew the suffix "-hai" (whatever it means) that comes from the Orc language.
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You are forgetting that there is no such thing as "the Orc language". Tolkien is very clear on this point. The Orcish dialects are mutually incomprehensible, but do have common elements derived from Black Speech.

Originally posted by Greenwood
That the two Mordor orcs know the term is no proof it is a Black Speech term.
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But Appendix F demonstrates quite clearly that it is a Black Speech term.


Because the word is perfectly comprehensible. Why would Orcs "anglicize" a term when there was no need to? It's native speakers of English who tend to Anglicize terms, not those who speak it as a second language.

Originally posted by Greenwood

But there is nothing odd about the soldier orc's comments. What is odd is your interpretation of them.
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The soldier-orc supplies three rumours. The first two are highly consistent with the information available to Shagrat. It's perfectly possible that the third is too.

What is odd is insisting that the soldier-orc's reference must be to Isengarders rather than Gorbag's troops. Until this point, "Uruk-hai" has only been used in reference to Saruman's troops, but that doesn't mean it cannot be applied to Sauron's. The soldier-orc's comments suggest very strongly that it can. By way of analogy, until the Appendices, "uruks" has only been used in reference to Sauron's troops. However a single reference demonstrates that it can also be applied to Saruman's.

Originally posted by Greenwood

You mean such a word as Nazgul?
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Nazgul is evidently neither singular nor plural. Black Speech does not appear to have plurals as English does, but appears instead to rely on group markers such as "-hai". Therefore Tolkien has not made a singular term plural, as you claim. What he has not done is provide us with an Anglicization of a term for a group of Nazgul, presumably because such an "Anglicization" never occurred, the Nazgul not having been a commonplace for centuries like the Uruks.]
 
Shagrat's information

There was a lot of discussion earlier in this thread about the timetable of Shagrat's report of the goings-on at the Tower of Cirith Ungol. I would like to add the following observations:

1) Shagrat appears to have commanded other orcs than those in the Tower (who were all killed). We know this from the conversation between the tracker and the soldier-orc. It appears that Shagrat was the soldier-orc's commanding officer, although the soldier was obviously not stationed at the Tower. We can infer that aside from the Tower, there were also detachments under Shagrat's control in the surrounding area, probably based in orc-holds such as that the tracker calls home.

2) Such orcs were most likely the first individuals to whom Shagrat conveyed his information, en route to Barad-dur. This explains why the soldier-orc's comments match so closely with the information that Shagrat had to report.

3) The tracker and soldier appear to know that Shagrat is alive, but likely to be facing demotion or worse. This indicates very strongly that the search parties received their orders from sources who had heard Shagrat's account of events, perhaps first-hand.

All of this suggests that the soldier-orc's information is based on Shagrat's own account, perhaps relayed by Shagrat's subordinates in other orc-holds. Given the fidelity of the soldier's information to Shagrat's, we have strong reason to suspect that "rebel Uruk-hai" is indeed a reference to Gorbag's band, and not to some imaginary group of Isengarders.
 

Grond

I will concede that there are evidently a number of versions of the LOTR index out there and that evidently the one in my copies is not the latest. However, nothing in the various quotes that Tar-Elenion posts about revisions is specific to the Index. That aside, I will go back and respond as you ask to the points he makes from his version of the index.

In the index in the editions Tar-Elenion has, as apparently in all the indices mentioned, Uruks and Uruk-hai are given seperate entries as Aragil pointed out. If it turns out that there are creatures in LOTR that are the same, but have different names referring to them and each name is given a seperate entry, then all that can be said about seperate entries in the index is that it doesn't mean anything. Unless the entries are directly cross-referenced (as apparently Uruks and Uruk-hai never are), the seperate index entries certainly does not prove that the two are identical. As Aragil has pointed out, however, given that none of the versions of the index have Uruks and Uruk-hai together or even cross-referenced to each other, this is a strong indication that CT's single index entry for the two terms in UT did not come from his father's draft index.

There are seperate entries for Elf (with Elves as a sub-entry), Elf-kindred, and Elven-folk.
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Without knowing what each of these entries refers to it is hard to respond, but if Elf-kindred refers to the so-called half-elven such as Elrond, then they are different from elves and deserve a seperate entry. I do not know what Elven-folk is referring to.


I have agreed that Appendix F says the Black Speech word uruk refers to the large soldier orcs of Isengard and Mordor. Appendix F, however, does not say that Uruks and Uruk-hai are equivalent. I have already, repeatedly stated my views on the snaga issue and why it also does not make Uruks and Uruk-hai equivalent.


I do not see how this sheds any light either way on the question at hand.

In regard to the snaga entry I repeat what I saud before:

Re: the great Snaga debate. Appendix F does indeed say that the Uruk-hai use the word snaga to mean slave and this does tell us that Ugluk, unquestionably a Uruk-hai, was calling his scout "Slave". This clearly differentiates this usage from the chapter in RTOK where the orc in the service of the tower of Cirith Ungol is named Snaga (as Christopher Tolkien also recognizes.)
 

Tar-Elenion

Thank you for taking the time to give the full quote. It does not change what you posted earlier, so I will merely repeat what I said earlier: It says there were extensive revisions to the appendices by Tolkien, it does not say to the index.
 
Quote by ShagratU
"Olog-hai" demonstrates conclusively that "-hai" is a Black Speech element.
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How does it demonstrate "conclusively that -hai is a Black Speech element"? All Appendix F says is that a certain type of troll was called Olog-hai in Black Speech. Appendix F also says that uruk is Black Speech, but it does not say that Uruk-hai is Black Speech. The only other word we are ever given in any of Tolkien's writing is Oghor-hai and it clearly comes from a time before Black Speech. This clearly indicates that "-hai" predates Black Speech. You wish to say that it indicates a chronological inconsistency between LOTR and the Druedain essay. I do not see any inconsistency. There is nothing in LOTR to prove "-hai" is Black Speech. The Druedain essay indicates it is not, this is not an inconsistency, but a clarification and you say we should look to the unpublished works for such clarifications. You seem to want to declare inconsistencies only when they are convenient for you.

Because certain Black Speech elements are common to all Orcish dialects, with "Uruk-hai" evidently being one of them.
Click to expand...

Or these elements could come from the Orcish dialects that predate Black Speech as the suffix "-hai" is shown to do by the term Oghor-hai.

They are stating who they are; there is no need for them to Anglicize the term.
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I agree, Saruman's troops are stating who they are, the Uruk-hai. That is the reason they do not use the term Uruks.


We agree, JRRT never gave a clear definition and all we can go on are his usages in LOTR where Uruk-hai are Saruman's troops and Uruks are Sauron's.

Saruman's great orcs are described as "uruks" in LotR, and we are told that the term uruk applied to them in Appendix F.
Click to expand...

Saruman's troops in LOTR are called Uruk-hai, not Uruks. Appendix F tells us uruk is a Black Speech word and it is indeed used for Saruman's elite troops in its modified form of Uruk-hai.

As to the soldier and tracker orc exchange, it is clear where the rumors came from, what is equally clear is that they are all wildly wrong: Sam is not an elf-warrior -- Sam is a hobbit; Frodo is not a dwarf-man -- Frodo is a hobbit; Gorbag was not a rebel Uruk-hai of Isengard -- Gorbag was a thiefing Mordor uruk; and there are no elf-warrior, dwarf-men and Uruk-hai running around together in Mordor.


More later.
 
"As for the other kind of Troll, the Olog-hai, no reference to their origin has been found, except for Appendix F: "That Sauron bred them none doubted, though from what stock was not known." However, they were definitely true Trolls, not large Orcs."
Source:Tolkien FAQ and book list by William D. B. Loos

Since a theme of Tolkien was that evil could corrupt but not create a species it seems logical that the olog-hai is a bred version of a troll and was given a derivative name to signify the difference. olog=Troll hai= from or after
Tolkien in appendix f said that the Uruk-hai emitted from both Mordor and Isengard. If the suffix -hai indicateds a modified or bred version would it be logical to conclude that the Uruk-Hai is a modified or further corruption of the uruks the Black language word for orc. Who they were bred with I can find no indication. The Uruk-hai could have believed that they were a superior versionof the more traditional orc (uruk) therfore the prideful declaration that we are the fighting Uruk-Hai.This is also probably why no self-respecting Uruk-hai would ever refer to themself as a uruk. I believe that uruks (basic orcs) and the Uruk-hai a larger next generation orc existed both in Mordor and Isengard and were used by both Sauron and Sauruman.
 
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And this is the crux of the whole debate. You and Tar-Elenion have insisted the soldier orc's comments refer to Gorbag and his boys. Now you say that the comments "suggest" that Uruk-hai can be applied to Sauron's orcs. (The strength of a suggestion doesn't matter, it is still only a suggestion.) Aragil and I argue that there is just as much, or more, reason for it to "suggest" the Uruk-hai reference is to Saruman's troops. When you combine that with the fact that the reader has never heard the term used for or by any troops except Saruman's you have a veritable certainty. And yes "until the Appendices, "uruks" has only been used in reference to Sauron's troops". That is exactly our point! Tolkien would be a very poor storyteller indeed to write LOTR in such a way that his readers read the whole narrative and are given a consistent usage of uruks for Sauron's troops (which of course argues against the soldier orc meaning Sauron's troops in his Uruk-hai statement) and Uruk-hai for Saruman's troops, only to confuse his readers by equating the terms in the Appendix! One thing we all agree on is that Tolkien was not a poor storyteller but a great one!

Let us look at Tolkien's Introduction to the First Edition. In it, referring to the third volume, ROTK, Tolkien says: "And for those who like such lore in an appendix some brief account is given of the languages, alphabets, and calendars that were used in the Westlands in the Third Age of Middle-earth. Those who do not need such information, or who do not wish for it, may neglect these pages and the strange names that they may meet they may, of course, pronounce as they like. Care has been given to their transcription from the original alphabets, and some notes are offered on the intentions of the spelling adopted. [There is a footnote making it clear that by spelling, Tolkien is talking in reference to pronounciation.] But not all are interested in such matters, and many who are not may still find the account of these great and valiant deeds worth the reading. It was in that hope that I began the work of translating and selecting the stories of the Red Book, part of which are now presented to Men of a later Age, one almost as darkling and ominous as was the Third Age that ended with the great years 1418 and 1419 of the Shire long ago." [emphasis added] Here we have Tolkien at the outset of LOTR anticipating that many readers will not read the Appendices. Indeed, he is encouraging those readers who are not interested in further Middle-earth history and minutia to not read the Appendices. [In the Introduction to UT, CT cites a letter of his father's in which JRRT says: "I now wish that no appendices had been promised!" This letter was written before ROTK was published. -- added in later edit.] However, you are insisting that Tolkien was such a bad writer that he is going to change the meaning of words and passages in the narrative for those readers who do read the Appendices and leave the readers who do not read the Appendices with a false impression. Thus, readers of the Appendices are admitted to some sort of secret fraternity with a truer understanding of the LOTR narrative than those who do not. I do not believe that Tolkien was playing these sorts of head games with his readers, or was that bad a writer. Those are the only choices if you are arguing that the meanings of words are going to be changed for those that read the Appendices while Tolkien is telling his readers: "Don't bother to read the Appendices if you don't want to, you will still understand the story without the Appendices." As I said, this is the very crux of our argument. When you argue that we can only really understand the true meaning of Uruks and Uruk-hai from reading the Appendices, I say that Tolkien's own words from the Introduction to the First Edition indicates that your reading of the Appendices must be wrong! He would not actively deceive a portion of his readers in this way! Not and be the great writer he clearly is. It is your interpretation that must be wrong!
 
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Quote by Strider97
Tolkien in appendix f said that the Uruk-hai emitted from both Mordor and Isengard.
Click to expand...

There is no such statement in Appendix F.


We agree on most points, except that uruks are not "basic orcs", they are large soldier orcs. And yes both Sauron and Saruman had large soldier orcs, but Saruman's are a somewhat different, larger breed than Sauron's and are the ones that call themselves Uruk-hai. No Mordor soldier orc ever calls himelf Uruk-hai.
 
Clarifications, somewhat OT

Aragil wrote:
First off, I'd just like to say that Tar-Elenion, if you have learned how to put a quote inside a quote, then you now have some explaining for the rest of us.
Click to expand...

I did the 'quote' and '/quote' with brackets[], for the statement that I was replying to. Then I 'copied' the statemement that I made, and 'pasted' inside that 'quote' and enclosed it in the 'quote' and brackets.

{QUOTE}XXX wrote:
{QUOTE}YYY wrote:
blah blah blah{/QUOTE}

blah blah blah {/QUOTE}

Replace the {} with [].


Re: Index,
Grond, Aragil; Thank you.



The 'Elf-kindred' is referenced to Aragorn's statement that "So it is that Luthien Tinuviel alone of the Elf-kindred has died indeed and left the world...", after singing part of the Lay in 'A Knife in the Dark'. Luthien is the only Elf to have been permitted this grace, and 'Elf-kindred' here is referring to Elves, not the Half-elven of whom others had 'died indeed and left the world'. The next couple of sentences do speak of some of the 'Half-elven'.

'Elven-folk' is referenced to: "It was the Elven-folk of Gildor who told me this...", Aragorn in 'Strider'. "...the rider was of the Elven-folk", i.e. Glorfindel, 'Flight to the Ford'; and "No tidings Elven-folk have heard Of Amroth evermore", Legolas' song of Nimrodel in 'Lothlorien'.
 
Greenwood,

I will check my source for that quote. I had looked it up several weeks ago. It might have been from the Sil. index. I was posting without my reference material. I will learn not to do that. The qoute is acurate but I will get you the source.
 
Right, Appendix F says that uruk referred to, applied as a rule to: great soldier-orcs out of Mordor and Isengard.

Considering that Balrog refers to a powerful demon basically, and so does "BalrogS" refer to the same demons ... or considering what Silmaril and "SilmarilS" both refer to ... what's the opinion on what uruk and "urukS" might reasonably refer to?
 
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Exactly, Appendix F says uruk applies to the great soldier orcs of Mordor and Isengard. It does not say Uruk-haiapplies to the great soldier orcs of Mordor and Isengard.
 
Originally posted by Cian
Any opinion as to my question on uruk/S though?
Click to expand...

Throughout the narrative of LOTR, JRRT uses Uruks to refer to the soldier orcs of Mordor. In Appendix A there is a mention of uruks from the Misty Mountains in Saruman's service but this is in the early 2990's, approximately thirty years before the action of LOTR and these were presumably the original stock from which Saruman developed his Uruk-hai.

Also we see in Quendi and Eldar in The War of the Jewels (p. 390) that the Black Speech word uruk was borrowed by the orcs from ancient Elvish Tongues. We also see there that JRRT said uruk referred "to the trained and disciplined Orcs of the regiments of Mordor".
 
And adding the Appendix F info: that uruk refers to the great soldier-orcs of Mordor and Isengard. I think that is worth considering here, and that the other mentioned anglicized forms refer to the same thing that they anglicize.
 
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