Analysis of Ring Inscription by J.R.R. Tolkien himself

I've started my own dialect of Neo Black Speech called "Nûrlâm" in the late 2018 as a subdialect of Shadowlandian (LOS). But the work with direct sources lead to discovery that everything was wrong...

Notice: this is repost of older article from 2020 published on the Black Speech School forum, with some mistakes corrected.

The journal "Parma Eldalamberon" #17 published an analysis of the "Ring Inscription" by J.R.R. Tolkien, made after the publication of "The Lord of the Rings". And it contains important remarks which change a current widespread view on Black Speech! It was published in 2007 but for mysterious reasons they were not used in later analyses of Black Speech (except French Wikipedia), while 'orc-curse' from the same journal was. In defense of Shadowlandian, it was finished in 2004. 

I will quote the most important parts of this analysis with my remarks and highlights.

durb-at=ulûk: durb-, constrain, force, dominate; at, verb ending (like a participle) (durbat = constraining, of a sort to constrain)¹⁾; ulûk, verbal ending expressing objects (particles indicating 'subject' were usually prefixed²⁾) 3rd person pl. "them" (ul) in completive or total form "them-all".

1) so, ending '-at' is some form of participle which can be translated as infinitive ("to rule") and gerund ("constraining"); the combination of such characteristics resembles Latin's gerundive (see Wikipedia), which can be translated the same ways, and was sometimes used instead of future participles. Gerundive will be very suitable for the translation of Ring Inscription into Latin.

2) for many years authors of Neo Black Speech dialects were copying either English or Quenya grammar (as the Shadowlandian dialect). Compare with this analysis of Quenya from Ardalambion site:

Cf. Aragorn's exclamation when he found the sapling of the White Tree: Utúvienyes!, “I have found it!” (utúvie-nye-s “have found-I-it”; LotR3/VI ch. 5)

 In Shadowlandian it will follow the similar pattern: "Gimbuzizgta" or "Gimbuzta-izg"

It's not clear from Tolkien's remark, if all verbs have prefix of person or only when the subject was a pronoun, if subject pronouns were sometimes suffixed, written standalone or both, but at least we are now sure that Classical Black Speech had prefixes too.

Also we now have a confirmation that "-ûk" may be translated as "completely, totally" and not just "all".

The next game-changing quote is about suffix -um:

in the archaic ring-inscription burzumishi is evidently made up of this stem³⁾ + a particularizing suffix or 'article' um⁴⁾, and an enclitic 'preposition' ishi 'in, inside'.

3) it's about stem "bûrz", in LOTR it was written "búrz", but in these later notes Tolkien used circumflex (^) instead of accent mark.

4) so '-um' means not an abstract noun, but an article ("in the darkness").

These J.R.R. Tolkien's notes fortified my decision to make new dialect which became very distinct instead of other people's work "rip-off".

The following links have more info and quotations from Parma Erdalambion journal:

• Canonical Black Speech at Black Speech School site
  
• Black Speech at Nûrlâm's wiki
• Ring Inscription at Nûrlâm's wiki
• Hub for articles with canonical information at Nûrlâm's wiki