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G-i-P Report: languages of Middle-earth
in the H3 soundtrack

Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins Esq.

Thanks to Tomasz „Elensil” Grzebyk’s help we can analyze today the linguistic content of the Digital Booklet with the lyrics, descriptions and credits from the soundtrack of The Battle of the Five Armies (the sountrack can be found on Deezer.com). This is the linguistic material we can find in the following themes (in our analysis we use David Salo’s A Gateway to Sindarin; words which are not asterisked can be found in Salo’s dictionary). Let us see how often the meaning of the lyrics differs from the official translation! (licentia poetica?):

I. Smaug theme: „Fire And Water” from 03:30 [Sindarin]

„Smaug’s besected theme sneers in strings and shakuhachi over the respiration of low alternating chords. Indonesian gamelan, Tibetan bells, and harp in octatonic runs glint above the orchestra like moonlit jewels as mixed chorus sings accusations in Sindarin:”

Gwiliel i ngurth
tri ‚welwen, orchal
O mael en-aran
awarth i mellyn

‚Death has awoken / And taken to wing / Now all shall be forsaken / To the greed of the king’

[lit. ‚Floating the death / through the way of air, superior. / From the lust of the king / [the] abandonment of the friends’]

*gwiliel v. ‚floating in the air’; *gwili- v. ‚to float in the air’ [?]
i
art. ‚the’
ngurth
n. ‚death’; soft mutation of the gurth ‚death’
tri adv. pref. ‚through’
‚welwen n. ‚way of air
orchal
adj. superior
o
prep. ‚from’
mael n. ‚lust’
en
art. ‚of the’
aran
n. ‚king’
awarth
n. ‚abandonment’
i art. ‚of the’
mellyn
n. pl. ‚friends’; n. sg. mellon

II. ? [Sindarin]

„But the Elves have come girded for war. After a quotation of the same arpeggiated string gure that played as Thorin and Thranduil spoke in the Elvenking’s hall, the Phrygian-tinged intervals of the Elves’ theme are underpinned by rigorous percussion gures. Chorus sings:”

Gail i vegil dîn
Laich ring silir
Man dambeditha?
Man i othgeredir?”

‚Bright their swords shone / With the gleam of a chill  ame / And who shall answer for this? / Who shall we blame?’

[lit. ‚Bright the sword his / cold leaping flames shine white. / Who will answer [this]? / Who

gail adj. ‚bright’
i
art. ‚the’
vegil
(megil) n. sg. ‚sword’; not lenited form sg. megil ‚sword’
dîn
pron. ‚his’
laich n. pl. ‚leaping flames’; n. sg. lach
ring
adj. sg. & pl. ‚cold’
silir
v. pres. sg. ‚they shine white’
*man
pron. ‚who’
*dambeditha
v. fut. ‚will answer’; cf. dambeth n. ‚answer’ (HoMe XII, 395)
i rel. pron. ‚who, which’
*othgeredir
n. ‚misdoer’; cf. oth- from PE17:151, 172 + ceredir “doer, maker”. (A nomen agentis for othgarn ‚misdeed’)

III. Dain’s arrival [Sindarin]

„With Dain’s arrival, the Battle of Five Armies rages forth. As chorus notes in Sindarin:”

Glîr i Ngurth

‚Death has begun its dance’

[lit. ‚Sing the Death!’]

*glîr v. ‚sing!’; cf. gliri ‚to sing’; or n. ‚song’
i
art. ‚the’
ngurth
n. ‚death’; soft mutation of the gurth ‚death’

III. In Thorin’s theme [Khuzdûl]

„Beneath, the harmonic support drops the thirds from the chords to create cold parallel  fths,
and chorus sings in Khuzdul, the language of the Dwarves:”

Glîr i Ngurth

„Beneath, the harmonic support drops the thirds from the chords to create cold parallel fifths, and chorus sings in Khuzdul, the language of the Dwarves:”

Yand Durinul
Adbâr geleth bat’ ar’âkâtizu
Anâs arbâtul sanagênizu

‚Son of Durin, grief sits cold / Upon your face / Years of hardship / Have left their trace’

The meaning of these lines can be analyzed using David Salo’s data about his Neo-Khuzdûl.

Information

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G-i-P stands for Gwaith-i-Phethain, „The Fellowship of the Word-smiths”™ or the linguistic website devoted to post-Tolkienian constructions in the „œreconstructed” languages of Middle-earth [link].

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Kategorie wpisu: Adaptacje tolkienowskie, Filmy: Hobbit i WP, G-i-P Report, Lingwistyka

4 Komentarzy do wpisu "G-i-P Report: languages of Middle-earth
in the H3 soundtrack"

Alexander Zapryagaev, dnia 17.01.2015 o godzinie 14:29

„i vegil” in the second seems singular to me. Plural should definitely be „i(<-in) megil".

S. P., dnia 17.01.2015 o godzinie 14:33

*_othgeredir_ is obviously a noun, with _oth-_ from PE17:151, 172 + _ceredir_ „doer, maker”. (A nomen agentis for _othgarn_ „misdeed”.)

Galadhorn, dnia 17.01.2015 o godzinie 14:40

Thank you! I have added your corrections. Great, you commented it!

Sara, dnia 04.02.2015 o godzinie 8:40

Does anyone figure out the complete lyrics in „Fire And Water”? I think there’re more than one aria, and I’m not sure if I hear it wrong… but I think the actural lyrics are somehow different from what’s given.

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