Saturday, March 21, 2026

Kutaerbo, kutaernu

In Words 1:1, kutaerbo kutaernu is glossed "it is directly onward, It is straight below." In Words 4:6kutaernu kutaerbo is "It is underneath, it is straight ahead."

The element taer means "lofty" in Sindarin and "straight" in Noldorin.

Sindarin bo (soft mutation of po) means "on" and occurs in Tolkien's Sindarin translation of the Lord's Prayerbo Ceven sui vi Menel "on Earth as [it is] in Heaven," where it is clearly a preposition, followed by an object. Daymon apparently reads taerbo as "straight on," with "on" in the English adverbial sense of "onward," but there is no evidence in Tolkien of such usage.

Both Sindarin and Quenya have nu as the prepositon "under." Again, it always appears with an object in Tolkien, as in Sindarin Dor-nu-Fauglith "Land under Choking Ash"; however, the word order appears to somewhat flexible, as in Quenya  Vardo tellumar nu luini "beneath the blue vaults of Varda."

Daymon's translation implies that ku- means "it (is)," but all I can find in Tolkien is the Early Quenya prefix ku-, defined as "dual 1(b)," presumably meaning the dual first-person pronoun ("we two"). Tolkien distinguished between inclusive ("I and thou") and exclusive ("I and a third person"), but I'm not sure which of the two is indicated by the parenthetical letter b.

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