Etymology: Isengard and Helms Deep

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Mithadan

But I remain convinced that Dwarvish is loosely based upon Hebrew... However, I have no knowledge regarding Tolkien's exposure to that language.

I feel like I have definitely seen this before... Or was it simply that he made some link between Dwarves and Jews as a people and in my mind I've extrapolated that link to language? In any case, as someone who knows a little bit of Hebrew, I think that Khuzdul lends itself very well to Hebrew pronunciation, or perhaps Hebrew phonetics lend themselves well to Khuzdul. But now that I think of it, even the word structure sorta falls naturally when said in Hebrew. It certainly has been my preferred "imaginary accent" for Khuzdul words. I would not be in the least bit surprised if someone did manage to unearth a loose linguistic connection.

I am actually curious if he did not also loosely borrow the writing system for his tengwar. Hebrew script treats vowels in a similar fashion as Elvish - there are no vowels in the alphabet, there are only dot notations (which may or may not be written in, you won't see them in some texts) to indicate vowel sounds, similar to how tengwar works. I believe Arabic has a similar writing system. As a scholar of languages, I am positive that Tolkien would have had some exposure during his studies at least to the basics of the Semitic language group as an example of language diversity... Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic... Something ought to have come up. I have no proof either but I feel like he just ought to have. Maybe he researched Hebrew pronunciation when writing the Shibboleth of Feanor.

Anyways, not to completely sidetrack the thread (which I have been following with some ongoing, albeit vain, curiosity), this is to note that while pet theories are fun, it's one thing to have a pet theory and quite another to keep chasing after it with such perseverance when it comes down to "might have, but [at least as] equally might not have". It sounds like the book was a very dedicated elaboration on what the author wants to be true. Meta-headcanon?