Adûnaic
the speech of Númenor
Definition
Adûnaic is the speech of Númenor — the language of the Men of the West, developed in the island-realm from the tongue the Edain had brought out of Beleriand, and enriched (in the earlier generations) by the Elvish lore of the Andunië houses. It was the daily tongue of the Númenóreans throughout the Second Age, and from it in time was descended the Common Speech of the later ages.
The Speech of the Kings
- In the first centuries of Númenor, the men of the faithful west (of Andúnië) spoke also Quenya and kept Elvish names; but the majority of the Númenóreans used Adûnaic, a “western” tongue built on the speech of the Edain.
- As the “Men of the Sea” grew proud and the Shadow fell upon the realm, Adûnaic became the badge of the Kings’ party: under the later monarchs (and with the urging of Sauron) the Elvish tongues were forsaken, and even the names of the ancestors were dragged into Adûnaic forms. The faithful would neither use nor remember these “abased” names.
Legacy
After the Downfall, the surviving Númenóreans of the west — the exiles and the ship-master folk — carried Adûnaic to the coasts of Middle-earth; slowly, mingled with the speech of the Middle Peoples, it became the Westron or Common Speech of the Third Age, the “language of the West” in which all the events of the later tales are (by the translation used in the Red Book) actually told.
Significance
Adûnaic is the great witness of the Númenórean pride: a human tongue conceived as rival and replacement of the Elvish, which then — ironically — furnished the world with the everyday speech by which the last Elvish matters are recorded. Its name itself means “of the West” (adûn, “west”), a word the proud set against the Elvish Andúnië.