Hail friends!

Firstly, I fear this will be a long post, so bear with me.

Here’s the short version for those eager to get started in all that is new.

Quite a few people have been very appreciative about the dictionaries (and thank you for that my friends), but let’s face, I’ve made them very large… as a result, almost impossible to use with ease.

The main reason I have chosen to include all declensions and conjugations was merely to ensure fan-fiction writers would have all the words at their finger tips.

When I hear however that most people have tremendous difficulty using these large documents, it means I need to provide another solution, something faster, something easier to use and something that might even assist in the building of sentences.

Hence…

DS Neo-Khuzdul Translation Tool

This tool will allow anyone (with Microsoft Excel) and basic knowledge of Neo-Khuzdul to create their own lines in Neo-Khuzdul.

Word of warning though… this is a language tool, it’s not Google Translate (without being too critical about Google Translate, maybe that’s not a bad thing). What I mean is that you still need to have some basic understanding about Neo-Khuzdul to use it.  Word order for instance is determined by the user, not the tool.

If you are looking for a magical tool that will translate not only words, but also set the perfect word-order, while taking into account all possible conjugational forms and nuances this may very well disappoint.  If however you are familiar with Neo-Khuzdul, have tried your hand at translations in the past, but find the dictionaries cumbersome and not fast enough to work with… then you’ll likely be pleased with this tool.

Some things to take into account when using:

• You must enable macros when using the excel, or it will NOT work (Tools, Macro, Security, Enable all)
• The excel contains over 200.000 search values, it is recommended to close other applications while running it to ensure the search goes faster. Slower systems might have a bigger impact due to this.
• When searching for words, try to be specific. For instance, if you are searching for the word “win”, it is best to look for “to win” if you are looking for a conjugated form of the verb or “win ” (with a space) if you are looking for the noun “the win”. Doing so will exclude words like “wind, wine, wink, swing, twine, etc..”, making the search faster.
• Final translations in English use standards forms, not indicating the personal forms (for instance: “to drink”, instead of “he drinks”). This is meant to be this way, the personal form after all is selected in the” construct page”.

The tool itself has a handy (yet concise)  step-by-step on how to use it.

Download the Translation tool HERE

Before creating this tool I had to update the dictionaries, including several support documents. You’ll find those usual place HERE

Now, the long version… or in other words, what has changed/been added exactly.

Below, in Italics is a list of the changes/additions made to the dictionaries:

• Direct changes:
  Added Past Participle Perfect / Present Participle
  “Familiar FORM” now correctly called “disrespectful (contemptuous) FORM”
  changed ending of imperative plural from “i” to “î” in tri-radical roots (was already present in bi-radical roots)
  “ayi” changes to “ê” in compounds
  added many new radicals based on recently released information from David Salo
  changed “portent” from “SD” to “NTHN” radical
  changed “shard” from “KRK” to “KFK” radical
  changed type 10 3-radical plural from “CaCâC” to “aCaCâC” – including construct state (aCaCuC)
  changed type 15 3-radical plural from “aCaCâC” to “aCâCaC” – including construct state (aCâCuC)
  added “ay” to “ê” crasis on type 15 plurals and singular and plurals in the constructed form.
  changed HRN to SHRG radicals for “lie”
  changed “trust” from KRT to KRD, and “beat” from KRD to KRT, added “drum” to KRT
  added duzu./duzi and d’zu./d’zi. in pronouns
  crasis for “w”-combinations established
  added causative form (including causative transitive)
  changed “lift (rise)” from “TRZ” to “_LZ”.
  added “to grow” and “to cultivate” to MHL verb of “to raise”
  added SHRD, as “to swing”
  added “brother” to KhRM (kinsmen) – in addition to keeping brother NDD
  changed “treason” from HFR to ShNKh
  “To be” documentation added (verb “tati”)
  added adjective type 11 (related to volume, density, substance, resistance or mass) “sherek”, and ul-type clarified (+ document on adjectives)
  added plural adjective forms
  changed “wife” to “partner” and used derived noun forms (-ûn/-ûna,…) for “wife, husband, etc..”.
  updated document 21 (usage of “-ul” and “-u”) to include “-im-“
  changed “swoon” from “DRB” to “DRD”
  removed “stop” from “‘KhZ” and added to “DRB”
  added “ThMR” for “retreat”, removed “retreat” from “NNK”
  added “yîr” and “tîr” as alternatives for “there”
  changed “yonder” to “yonder place”
  added “bi” as alternative for “from”
  added “zû” as alternative for “now”
  clarified the difference between “alarm (feeling)”, linked to  and “alarm (device)”
  merged “dawn” and “morning”, added “alarm (device)” to BKN
  added “sighted” as adjective
  removed “to watch” and “to keep watch” from “to see”, and added to “TRD”
  removed “to summon” from “ThHR” and added as causative to “to come”
  added “bikûr” and “dukûr” as “whence” and “whither”.
  added new document conserning interrogative words.
  changed “KLT” from “sound” to “hearing” and added “ZMR” as “sound (noise)”
  changed “forget” from “GBY” to “NThR”
  added “iy” to “î” crasis
  changed “burn” from “MHR”, to “RSR”, which was in fact an initial mistake from myself as it always was meant to be “RSR” (linked to ‘urs which is “fire”).
  added “KBR” as EredM. for “beast”
  changed “aim” to “shooting at” and added “to aim” along with “target” as “TLZ” (from the Gothic “tila” – to aim)
  formed type 26 EredM. to accomodate “kobor” as a new form.

• Adapted concepts:
  I had rather a challenge with Salo’s “gelekh” meaning “occasion (time)”.  The CeCeC is a pattern I’ve always used for non-metal materials [like Tolkien’s “glass” (kheled)].
  So, this meant I had to accept this concept as being a non-metalic fabric.  I normally would have gone with aCCâC for this kind of abstract words [like Tolkien’s “language” (aglâb)]
  Eventually, after thinking long and hard about this, I accepted this concept as being “a moment in the -fabric- of time”, hence accepted the CeCeC pattern.
  I could however not accept the G-L-Kh radicals, seeing that I had already used them for a different (rather prominent) concept (“good”,”well”, etc..).
  Hence I purposely changed Salo’s GLKh to GLK in my neo-Khuzdul version.
  It was one of the only Salo’s concepts I was unable to fit in directly as is.

• Another concept I didn’t directly adopt, was “YBTh” for “weave”, as I had “BBN” which came from a mix between the Old High German “weban” and “vefur” (both “web”)
  Reason for this is that “YBTh”, used for “spider”, could have a second meaning in my version as “young crawler”, also meaning “spider”.
  So I found there was no direct reason to change it.
  I had thought about changing it to “YBTh”, but was in the end more pleased with the structure of incarnates then an entirely invented structure (CêCiC).

• Also, the Neo-Khuzdul/English dictionary has now been sorted based on the alphabetic order of the Neo-Khuzdul radicals (much like dictionary word order in other Semitic languages).

• Lastly the following support documents have been updated:
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents – Index
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-01 – Personal Pronouns
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-02 – The Verb
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-03 – Verb Forms
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-04 – Noun Types
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-05 – Construct State Rules
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-07 – Usage of negation and affirmation
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-10 – Conjunctions
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-14 – Monophthongization and vowel crasis
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-18 – To be-To Have
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-21 – When to use UL-U
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-27 – Lesson Plan
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-30 – Measurement Units Distance
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-31 – Measurement Units Weights
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-32 – Measurement Units Volume
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-33 – Idioms and Expressions
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-34 – Radical Index
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-35 – Parts of the Body
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-38 – Imperative and Jussive
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-39 – Seasons and Feasts
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-41 – Sentences
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-42 – Forms of Politeness

• New documents:
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-43 – Adjective Types
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-44 – Interrogative Words
  The Dwarrow Scholar – Neo-Khuzdul Support Documents N-44 – Insults

With all this update and creation work… I think I’ll take a little break from Neo-Khuzdul for a few weeks… as I’m so tired I’m confusing dwarves with dwarfs…

Is that the Dwarrow Scholar sleeping?

Ever at your service