Dunlending Tongue

[Glorelendil]

For all you Tolkien Linguists out there, what can you hypothesize about the language of the Dunlendings? More specifically, if I want to invent names and vocabulary for the language, what historical language should I base it on?

[Falenthal]

The Picts or Caledonians from the actual Scotland?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caledonians

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictish_language

[Glorelendil]

The Picts or Caledonians from the actual Scotland?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caledonians

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictish_language

Picts are an interesting option. I was sort of thinking of the Welsh, or other druidic Britons who were pushed out by the Christian Anglo-Saxons. Not an historian, so that is probably an oversimplification, and ignores the Romans, but it's a nice analogue to the Dunlendings, I think.

[Otaku-sempai]

For all you Tolkien Linguists out there, what can you hypothesize about the language of the Dunlendings? More specifically, if I want to invent names and vocabulary for the language, what historical language should I base it on?

If you mean the Dunlendings who remained in Dunland then I would think that their descendants would have been the Celts or a pre-Celtic people of southern France. That would give us the Gauls (Men of Eriador?), the Aquitani, and the Belgae.

I would guess that the base language of Eriador evolved into the Gaulish form of Celtic and the Dunlendings (if they were the ancestors of the Belgae) might have instead used another Indo-European language group later known as Belgian. Note that most scholars favor Gaulish as being the language of the Belgae. Perhaps the Belgae represents the Dunlendings who were successfully integrated into the Eriadorian culture.

In we want to posit that the southern Dunlendings eventually migrated or were pushed westward and became the Aquitani then I would suggest that they represent the precursors to the Basque people and language. Given the uniqueness of the Basque tongue, I might go with that.

[zedturtle]

Well, the suggested names do point to Pictish/Welsh/Celtic language inspirations, as least to represent the 'actual' language that the Dunlendings would have spoken, of which we have nothing, other than that it was alien or very far removed from Adûnaic, the word Forgoil, and possibly the hint that names Erech, Forlong and possibly Umbar and Arnach might be included in proto-Dunlendish.

Tunum seems to have a Roman inspired name, though with such a short name there's always the possibility that the source is obscured or confused.

[Halbarad]

'We will take their King.Death to the Forgoil! Death to the Strawheads! Death to robbers of the North!"

It is often interpreted that the third statement in that one quote is the translation for the second. I disagree though and believe that the structure does not definitively support that interpretation.

The Prof mixed cultures and tongues to form his own creations that were, at once, recognisable but not mere carbon copies of real world peoples and languages.

I believe that 'Forgoil' is a pseudo Gaelic word invented by Tolkien for a pseudo Celtic people....the Dunlendings.

My own interpretation is as follows,
The first part of the word 'For' is his take on the Gaelic word 'Fir' meaning man or men. The second part, 'Goil', I believe is his take on Gall meaning Foreigner.

This suggests to me that Forgoil simply means Foreigner or Stranger.

Thus you have 'Death to the Foreigners! death to the Strawheads! Etc.......'

The writers of Horselords seem to have gone with Brythonic/Cymric sounding names for Dunlendings. Given the above, I would suggest Goidelic(Irish/Scottish)names to be equally viable.

[Glorelendil]

Thus the only dwarves who can legitimately use Scottish accents are the ones who lived among the Dunlendings...

But, anyway....Highlander. I like it.