Uruks vs. Uruk-hai

[Tar-Elenion]

Originally posted by elven kismet
everyone seems to suggest that "hai" in suffix form refers to people or man, as far as i've seen, yet i suggest a new theory. Couldn't "hai" also mean improved, or altered (changed, modified, etc.). As it has been seen "hai" is also appears in the form Olog-hai, which is used analogously with Uruk-hai. since these two terms, uruk and uruk-hai, olog and olog-hai respectively, seem to be used in the story in such different contexts (and i understand that this is a hotly debated issue around here) wouldn't it seem sensible that these hai suffixes intimate some sort of modification like sunlight tolerance?

We also have the Oghor-hai (the Druedain (Woses)). It seems unlikely that Orcs would name their hated foes with a 'superlative' suffix.

 

[Tar-Elenion]

Originally posted by Isenho
"Uruk" means "orcs" in the black tongue. and "hai" has to mean "man!"

Uruk means Orc in the B.S. it does not mean OrcS.
Uruk is a singular, not a plural.
'-hai' is only used when referring to groups of beings: Uruk-hai (great soldier-orcs), Olog-hai (a race of black trolls) and Oghor-hai (the Dru-folk).
Since the Olog-hai were Trolls not Men, the theory that '-hai' "has to mean "man!"" does not seem to stand.

 

[aragil]

Woo-hoo, T-E is here, and some promising-looking new blood as well. Hopefully Cian will show sooner or later. T-E- have you been able to raise ShagratU since his return to England?
Anyway, some investigations of Tar-Elenion's and Cian's, which I rather laxly forgot to include in my opening post:

1)

Originally posted by Cian in Orcs out of pods?
Anyway, very little about the Black Speech is known. I bow to my betters with this term as far as scholarly linguistic opinion goes: the following are very well respected Tolkien linguists' views on the seemingly elusive "-hai".

Christopher Tolkien (if not "opinion" at least appendixed): Uruks is an anglicization of Uruk-hai

David Salo: -hai "people, group"

Helge Fauskanger: -hai "folk"

Lisa Star: "-hai" is a collective plural

Carl Hostetter: wrote (in 1993) that he favored the interpretation of "superior". "The Eldarin collective terms -lim, rim, hoth yield nothing that could reasonably be related to -hai." Carl H.

It should be added that Tolkien also used oghor-hai as a term the orcs used to refer to the Drúedain (with Uruk-hai, Olog-hai)

It should also be added that with the publication of Sauron Defeated we find that JRR Tolkien glossed Adûnaic kadar-lâi as "city-folk". Also, from Avarin dialect: Kinn-lai theoried to basically mean "Elf-people". Interesting

Of course of great interest to me is Carl Hostetter's definition, but I note that he seems to be in the minority among the other experts (not the same as being wrong!).

2)

Originally posted by Cian
Part of linguist David Salo's discussion on the English word "Man" as it related to Glorfindels prophecy:

"The key words (for your question) are dîr/nér. These refer to the males of any kind of _hnau_ or intelligent beings, especially of Elves and humans of various sorts."

Another section:

"Which would leave open the possibility that he could be killed by _edhel_, _nogoth_, _onod_, or _perian_. However, it would preclude the possibility he could be killed by a female _adan_." (incidently this is based on a hypothetical and not reflective of Davids view regarding the death of the Witch King)

This is just to show that David is certainly well aware of the various beings in Middle-earth, moreover, I think naturally, he would be not only mindful of possible distinctions between "Man" and "folk" but of distinctions beyond that.

Leave them at the door or not, the linguistic "opinions" from David and others regarding BS -hai (that I posted in the other thread) ... well let's just say that from my experience in reading David, Helge, Lisa Star, Carl Hostetter, are very familiar with Tolkiens world too

3)

Originally posted by Cian
Bombadillodillo,
Generally, JRRT uses collective suffixes in his langs of course, and of note, he does not always hyphenate Urukhai in any event.

For a hyphenated example of "folk" see Adûnaic kadar-lâi which means, according to Tolkien, "city folk"

~ (-lâi) may come from Avarin Kinn-lai ~ itself perhaps a reflex of *Quende-lië ~ well attested "a-infixion" (See Elvish stem LI) can explain the form in the Avarin clan name suffix. Stem LI > Q. lië "people".

Tar-Elenion, weekends are tough for me to respond, but I'll hopefully address the questions you raised (re: Carl Hostetter), as best I can, come monday-ish if not sooner. Cheers

4)

Originally posted by Cian
I couldn't find anything further here Tar-E. He did give a response (not in a linguistic forum) on "-hai" back in 1993, before all of HoMe was published ("Soory" is so spelt purposely I'd say):

"Soory, I've drawn a blank on this one, though I tend to favor the interpretation that it means "superior" (The Eldarin collective terms, i.e., -lim, -rim, -hoth, yield nothing that could reasonably be related to -hai)." C. Hostetter 1993

The other opinions on "hai" were:
David Salo ~ "people, group"
Helge F. ~ "folk"
Lisa Star includes it in her (given in three parts) study of JRRT's collectives.

(well, to give all those opinions over here now )

Again I think it's interesting that Hostetter doesn't feel that "-hai" fits in with the other collectives.

5)

Originally posted by Cian

Originally posted by Tar-Elenion
... and should feel free to give additional insight). Literally 'adan' (the singular) is an adaption to Sindarin of the Quenya 'atan' (see WotJ, Quendi & Eldar). The plural Quenya name for Men Atani literally means 'the Second Folk' (see Q&E) but is normally translated 'Men'. It comes from the Common Eldarin 'tata', 'atta' two.

Dúnedain would naturaly be given as "Western-men" as likely as Q. Núnatani, but indeed adapted adan hailed from a "second" sense in Q. atan. Adan can be glossed "Man" or "one of the Second people, folk"

There's nothing much additional about that though but thanks for the confidence vote.

6)

Originally posted by Cian
something from Helge
Note Helge Fauskangers entry on olog in which he writes a "variety" of Troll, and immediately follows with Olog-hai "Olog-people".

Agree with HF or not on -hai, I thought it might be interesting to note that a trained lang-guy sees nothing awkward with slapping a collective to a "variety" of Troll.

7)

Originally posted by Cian
Are you referring to Uruk and Uruk-hai here? If so the general force of the argument simply offers a "word" with slapped on collective. As Tolkien invented Nogoth and Nogothrim.

Stem *RUKU
ancient forms:
ruk-, rauk-, uruk-, urk(u), runk, rukut/s strengthened: gruk-, elaborated guruk-, ñguruk
CE: *rauku, *raukó
more "ancient": (uruk) urku/ó, adj. urká
Quenya: urko pl urqui (d.*urku or *uruku)
Sindarin: urug, orch (d. *urkó, adj. *úrká)
Adûnaic: urkhu, urkhu

Generally speaking: what Tolkien did invent was a very real interelated history of langs, and in the context of "found" texts ... Tolkien even took pleasure in asterisking some of his own forms as if they were unattested which they then are, in a historical sense, within the fantasy of translation.

This seems to come mostly from Q and E (HoME 11, pp 389-391). There's an interesting bit from HoME 10 which might imply that Uruk and Olog share a similar root, but that's for my next post.

8)

Originally posted by Tar-Elenion
I dont think Gorbag 'said' 'Uruks'. 'Uruks' (an anglicization) is what was used to translate what Sam actually heard him say through the Ring (taking into account the internal history presented (see App. F and Prolouge)).

From the Choices of Master Samwise
He heard them both clearly, and he understood what they said. Perhaps the Ring gave understanding of tongues, or simply understanding, especially of the servants of Sauron its maker, so that if he gave heed, he understood and translated the thought to himself.

What Sam may have heard through the Ring was *URUKIN, This is may be the same word that Gandalf used in Moria. The tracker and soldier Orc are speaking Westron (being of different breeds they used that tongue, App. F) but both know the word 'Uruk-hai' so there is no need for that to be rendered into Westron.

Tar-Elenion, if you have anything of linguistic import that you want to add from U vs U-h please feel free. I thought I'd repost these particular quotes to not only re-fresh our memory, but also to help out anyone who didn't have the "benefit" of following along with us in that long-ish thread.

 

[aragil]

Re: Re: What does '-hai' mean?

Originally posted by Tar-Elenion
*Shark is unattested to in the corpus. It is a hypothetical of Craig Daniels'. He also suggest simply shar. You may wish to see if any other known B.S. compunds syncope in that manner.
Also would it need to be dropped from the compounds Olog-hai and Oghor-hai?

"Syncope"? I must say, you lost me there. As for "Shar-ku" vs "Shark-ku", I doubt I'll be able to find another Black Speech term to test this. I was hoping that either you or Cian would be able to fill me in on whether or not the Elvish Languages might do this- since Black Speech proportedly bases much of it's vocabulary and grammatical structure off of these.
If any other Elvish or Black-Speech words follow this pattern of contraction (is that what syncoping means?), then I would think that Olog-hai might also drop the k sound, as Ologkai sounds awkwards (to me at least). Then again, this is the farthest I've ever dabbled in philology, and my opinion doesn't amount to too much (yet).
Oghor-hai has some dubious (to say the least) distinctions. As we pointed out in U vs U-h, it was supposed to be a derogatory handle used in First Age Beleriand- a full age of the world before Sauron "invented" Black Speech (and with it "-hai"). Aside from the essay on the Druedain, there is no further support for this, and not much background for the term even in that essay. I imagine that by the time Tolkien came up with Oghor-hai (late 60's? early 70's?) he was merely following the convention he had earlier established. In this regard I think Uruk-hai and Olog-hai are the much more interesting forms to investigate. I will mention that I think Druedain uses "edain~=men" as a collective plural in the same sense in which I think you say "hai=folk" is a collective plural, so I don't see the problem of Oghor-hai being a direct translation of Dru-edain (hyphen added by me for emphasis).

Originally posted by Tar-Elenion
Since the Olog-hai were Trolls not Men, the theory that '-hai' "has to mean "man!"" does not seem to stand.

I agree that "-hai" does not have to mean man, but I don't think there's anything from the Olog-hai definition to preclude it. ShagratU and I discussed this at length in U vs U-h, here's a snippet of what ShagratU had to say:

Selected from ShagratU's post here
Yes, I wasn't very clear there. Let me attempt to clarify. Tolkien says that the Stone Trolls are just "counterfeits" rather than "rational incarnates", as the Orcs are. (He says this in the letter where he points out that Treebeard was wrong about the Orcs being mere counterparts). But he says that there are other types of troll, "for which other origins are suggested."

So as the Stone Trolls aren't really alive but are made of "animated" stone, it is highly unlikely that they can breed with anything. Moreover, Tolkien says that the other kind(s) of troll have different origins. If the Olog-hai were bred from Stone Trolls and Men, they would have common origin with the Stone Trolls. But they don't.

So what I meant was that the Olog-hai are clearly not crossbred Stone Trolls, but trolls made in an entirely different sort of way. I think Tolkien even suggests that they might have been made from some "primitive" human stock (neanderthals?), but they clearly aren't made from the Stone Trolls.

But whatever the Olog-hai were made from, they are unambiguously trolls. They're not "like half-trolls" or "troll-men", but "trolls". In his letters, when he discusses different sorts of troll, Tolkien never uses "half-trolls" or "troll-men"; the new sort of troll may have been bred from some sort of Men, but they are definitely full trolls, and always described as such.

I've looked for some references, and here's what I've found. I'll say that you're reasonably familiar with the first :

From Letter 153 to Peter Hastings
I am not sure about Trolls. I think they are mere 'counterfeits', and hence (though here I am of course only using elements of old barbarous mythmaking that had no 'aware' metaphysic) they return to mere stone images when not in the dark. But there are other sorts of Trolls beside these rather ridiculous, if brutal, Stone-trolls, for which other origins are suggested.

The second quote comes from Morgoth's Ring, Myths Transformed (p. 414 of my edition). As you can see, it backs up ShagratU's assertion that the Olog-hai might have been bred from Neandertalic stock:

From Morgoth's Ring
The Elves would have classed the creatures called 'trolls' (in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) as Orcs - in character and origin - but they were larger and slower. It would seem evident that they were corruptions of primitive human types.
At the bottom of the page my father wrote: 'See The Lord of the Rings Appendix p. 410'; this is the passage in Appendix F concerning Trolls.
...
He now expressly asserts the earlier view (see p. 408 and note 1) that the Orcs were in origin corrupted Elves, but observes that later' some were probably derived from Men. In saying this (as the last paragraph and the reference to The Lord of the Rings Appendix F suggest) he seems to have been thinking of Trolls, and specifically of the Olog-hai, the great Trolls who appeared at the end of the Third Age (as stated in Appendix F): "That Sauron bred them none doubted, though from what stock was not known. Some held that they were not Trolls but giant Orcs; but the Olog-hai were in fashion of body and mind quite unlike even the largest of Orc-kind, whom they far surpassed in size and power.'

As you can see, Tolkien's "Trolls they were" statement does not preclude him from thinking of the Olog-hai as originating from humans. In fact, this seems to be exactly what the good professor had in mind!
The beginning of the passage is also where I get the idea that 'olog' and 'uruk' are both probably related, and originate from the primitive stem *ruku, as seen in Q&E (HoME 11, p. 389). I can't find a Quenya term for trolls, but the Sindarin term is Torog, which is reasonably close to S. orch/yrch/orchoth for Orcs and BS Olog for troll. I am of course assuming this relatedness because the passage says the elves would have classified the trolls as "orcs".

Before anyone accuses me of making too hard of a sell for "hai"="men" (certainly before isenho again states that "hai" must ="men"), I acknowledge that there still seem to be a lot of problems here. In the first place, "-hai" might work as "men" in the case of Oghor-hai just as "-edain" in Druedain. But this seems to be different than the other usages. In Druedain the "dru" seems to be adjectival (also "dun" in Dunedain). However, the "uruk" in Uruk-hai and the "olog" in Olog-hai are almost certainly not adjectival. The Olog-hai are trolls, the Uruk-hai are Orcs, regardless of whether or not these respective races have humanish origins. Still, I think this is fun to dabble in, and I would like to solidify my own (quite imperfect) understanding of what exactly constitutes a collective plural such as "folk" or "people".

 

[aragil]

Forgot to say- Merry Christmas to anyone who finds this thread interesting enough to read (ho-ho-hai)!

 

[aragil]

Paiging all Cians

You out there anywhere?

 

[Cian]

Cian is out on vacation (regarding Uruk-hai) and forgot his pager too (on purpose)

Maybe Jallan will offer a general opinion or whatever (he started posting here recently).

_____

Perhaps the person who theoried *shark-ku (and writes probably *shar-ku in his wordlist), Craig Daniel, did so because he thought it possible the sound might be absorbed in composition.

The Craig Daniel who suggests hai as 'race'

 

[aragil]

Craig could have been correct on the one hand, and woefully wrong on the other. In any case where does that leave us (or me, more properly)?

Craig thinks that sharku could be from *shark and *ku, with one of the k's being absorbed in composition.
Presumably, with no other knowledge available, there could be a plural of *ku= **khai (two asterisks denoting the extra amount of speculation going on here). I would like to point out that though this is speculating, it is not totally without basis in the languages of middle-earth, after all Sindarin has several vowel-change plurals: adan-edain, orch-yrch, correct?

Looking at HoME, we see all the early versions of Uruk-hai so spealt- both in the chapter "An Orc Raid" and in the early sketch of Aragorn's parley at the gate of the Hornburg in "Helm's Deep". However, there is the distinct possibility that these were additions by the editor (CT), as the well known letters of May and August 1944 both have urukhai so spelt, without the hyphen. Any chance that Uruk and **khai went the way of tar & khil-tarkil?

 

[jallan]

It seems some want me to join in here.

Unfortunately, I have nothing to add to the hypotheses.

We know little about the Black Speech, must less its development, and I wonder if Tolkien's remark about various dialects of Orkish may have been in part a cover to make it unnecessary to go deeply into creating yet another consistant language, especially one intended to be ugly.

Tolkien provides in different places two different translations of the curse of the Modor Orc, which doesn't provide much hope that he himself took the Black Speech very seriously.

All recently relations suggested here I find possible, but I think we don't have enough background knowledge for any measure of whether they are likely, or whether Tolkien might have thought at some time or other that they were likely.

 

[aragil]

A long expected party

Glad you finally made it, jallan. I was beginning to wonder if you'd ever show.
Incidentally, your theory on Tolkien and the Black Speech is what I accused the language folk of doing:

Originally posted by me, nearly a year ago
I am sure that David et al are more familiar with the races (and languages) of Middle-Earth than I am. I wasn't trying to accuse them of an ignorant mistake, but rather a hasty mistake. If they have spent as much time on 'hai' as we have spent here on this post, then I wouldn't even accuse them of a hasty mistake. It seems to me that black speech is much less fleshed out than most of the other languages of Middle-Earth, so I just assume that the linguists have spent less time on it. If this is the case, then it might be possible that they took a glance, said 'hai looks like folk', and then decided to get back to languages which were more fleshed out and interesting (and nice sounding).

Everything I posted was possible? That's somehow unsatisfying- perhaps it really is more fun to work with the fleshed out languages. As Cian pointed out some time ago, we don't even seem to know whether BS words have singular and plural forms or whether they use some sort of external marker. Hurrumpf.

What about the problem of Oghor being adjectival to make Oghor-hai reflect S. Druedain. Does that mean that -men can not be considered a plural marker?
An alternative theory of mine which has been encouraged by your post is that Black Speech is such a crude language that the order of elements in a word essentially becomes meaningless- nazgul might as easily be gulnaz; and Uruk-hai, Oghor-hai, and Olog-hai might actually all refer to creatures with both mannish and "other" characteristics. Not exactly the same as saying troll-men for Olog-hai, for instance, but it does have it's advantages. First off, I think Black Speech should be crude- vulgar sounds with poor gramatical structure and lack of element order in words seems to fit the concept of Orc-language nicely. Second, it would explain why the Orc-men don't say much at Helm's Deep. Notice that they seem to make up a significant part of Saruman's forces at Helm's Deep (Gamling, Merry, and Aragorn all refer to them), yet they don't seem to get a lot of narrative devoted to them during the action. Unless you assume that "We are the Fighting Uruk-hai" refers to both Men-orcs (large and cunning) and Orc-men (treacherous and vile).
It's a thought, anyway.

 

[jallan]

From Unfinished Tales, "The Drúedain", Note 6:

It is stated in isolated notes that their own name for themselves was Drughu (in which the gh represents a spirantal sound). This name adopted in Sindarin in Beleriand became Drû (plurals Drúin and Drúath); but when the Eldar discovered that the Drû-follk were steadfast enemies of Morgoth, and especially the Orcs, the 'title' adan was added, and they were called Drúedain (singular Drúadan), to mark both their humanity and friendship with the Eldar, and their racial difference from the people of the Three Houses of the Edain. Drû was then only used in compounds such as Drúnos 'a family of the Drû-folk', Drúwaith 'the wilderness of the Drû-folk'. In Quenya Drughu became Rú, and Rúatan, plural Rúatani.

There is nothing to suggest that drú- is especially adjectival, though of course in Sindarin, as in English, noun forms are used adjectivally on occasion.

There is nothing to indicate that Oghor- is necessarily at all related to Drughu or any of its Elvish derivatives, though it might be through a series of changes such as Drughu > Urugh > Urghu > Ughru > Oghr > Oghor. The order of these changes here is mostly arbitrary.

Aragil posted:

First off, I think Black Speech should be crude- vulgar sounds with poor gramatical structure and lack of element order in words seems to fit the concept of Orc-language nicely.

The Black Speech invented by Sauron certainly must have had full grammar. He intended it to be useful and used, even for precise incantations such as we find in the Ring inscription, and to be the common tongue of all who served him, though he failed in this.

Since the form Oghor-hai dates to the First Age, we might suppose that the Black Speech was partly based on some particular Orkish speech.

The various types of Orcs we hear speaking in Common Speech or in Black Speech translated by the Ring speak in a "low" English style, but generally do so in complete sentences with a full grammar. The goblins in The Hobbit even sing a song, presumably of their own composition.

Their Orc jargons, largely derived from Black Speech, might be mutually unintelligible, but would surely also be true speech with a full grammer, not some kind of sub-speech needing gestures to be understood.

Ghân-buri-Ghân speaks more "primitively", but probably mostly from lack of familiarity with Common Speech. Tolkien has him get quite huffy when asked how he knows the size of the army besieging Minas Tirith, and he insists that he can calculate and reckon quite well, thank you, even "men in dark" and then proves it by giving the number of the Rohirrim host.

 

[aragil]

Originally posted by jallan
The Black Speech invented by Sauron certainly must have had full grammar. He intended it to be useful and used, even for precise incantations such as we find in the Ring inscription, and to be the common tongue of all who served him, though he failed in this.

I'll agree that Sauron was cunning enough to come up with as lovely a language as anyone- but it seems that he (or Tolkien) created words with the harshest, ugliest sounds possible. The fact that Tolkien gives two translations of the same curse of the Moria Orc suggests to me that Black Speech was particularly hard to formulate into English- perhaps very alien or primitive in grammar and vocabulary (if we stay within the secondary reality and pretend that Tolkien was translator rather than creator, of course). I don't intend to say that Black Speech lacked any grammar, just that it was perhaps primitive/crude. My question is whether or not 'Uruk-hai' could actually mean 'Orc-men', (assuming hai=men), with neither the 'Orc' or 'men' element being more important, but rather implying an even partnership. Nazgul too- which is more important, ring or wraith?

 

[jallan]

Sauron would doubtless try to put particularly biases into the words and grammar of Black Speech.

There are always things that are easy to say in one language but difficult in another.

But what reason not to create a language that otherwise matches the efficiency of already existing languages for most purposes?

One would want verb tenses or aspects or some comparable method to distinguish what one had done from what one was now doing.

One would want to distinguish an Orc chasing an Elf from an Elf chasing an Orc.

Sauron might try to make the Black Sppech very simple and regular, as is often done with invented languages.

But there was little point in Sauron creating a tongue intended for use by all his servants, not just the more stupid and menial of the Orcs, that was inadequate to convey meaning clearly.

 

[aragil]

I don't think I'm saying it would be difficult to convey meaning. I'm suggesting that in the case of a hybrid race or a race with characterstics of two other races, that the name for the hybrid race would be composed of two elements of equal weight- the elements could be randomly chosen- first or second element would not carry any additional significance.

 

[10000 strong]

i think uruks are cooler, I don't know why, I think they look scarier than the big old fat uruk hai

 

[Tar-Elenion]

Originally posted by 10,000 strong
i think uruks are cooler, I don't know why, I think they look scarier than the big old fat uruk hai

'Uruks' and 'Uruk-hai' are the same thing. 'Uruks' is simply the anglicization of 'Uruk-hai'.

 

[10000 strong]

Originally posted by Tar-Elenion
'Uruks' and 'Uruk-hai' are the same thing. 'Uruks' is simply the anglicization of 'Uruk-hai'.

well whatever, i'm talking about the orcs of mordor

 

[Tar-Elenion]

So am I. There were Uruk-hai in Mordor as well. Sauron's Uruk-hai.

 

[aragil]

T-E, would it at least be possible to convince you to say "I believe that Uruks and Uruk-hai are the same thing", in recognition of the ~600 posts on this thread arguing that point?

 

[Tar-Elenion]

JRRT uses the two words interchangeably in Letter 78.

"And of course, as you already discover, one of the discoveries of the process is the realization of the values that often lurk under dreadful appearances. Urukhai is only a figure of speech. There are no genuine Uruks, that is folk made bad by the intention of their maker; and not many who are so corrupted as to be irredeemable...".

That is good enough for me.