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Khuzdul, Tolkien's mysterious dwarvish language, is limited in vocabulary (we don't know most of the words) and I can't find hello anywhere. Some notes:

  • According to this, "good" is "gamut" and "day" is "manan", so "gamut manan" might sort of convey what I'm looking for. (On the other hand, I have no idea if the grammar here is correct.)
  • This lists neither "gamut" nor "manan" as valid words in Khuzdul, so a reliable dictionary also seems to be somewhat in demand.
  • This gives "huglgla" as hello. Again, this is listed in neither of the above links.

So, how would you say hello in Khuzdul? Are either of the above three sources reliable? The middle link seems to be closest to Tolkien's actual works, and seems to be cited decently frequently, but perhaps work has been done since that was published.

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  • Out of those three links the only one which is somewhat reliable is the middle one. Although that particular page hasn't been updated in years, that's just because nothing new has been published. Fauskanger is still active and updates his site. I would completely disregard anything from the other two links. Another good source for Khuzdul is Eldamo. But as you'll see there simply isn't enough attested Khuzdul out there to say "Hello" without fabricating your own completely original language like the movies did. – user650 Jun 5 '18 at 8:44
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Well, from what we can glean out of the given texts, I'd be looking for something more like "at your service" rather than "good day".

I know the movies aren't canon, but Jackson depicts the Dwarves as not really comprehending Bilbo when tries to "good morning" them. And Gandalf's retort is classic. That greeting might be a cultural artifact of the Shire.

I wouldn't place too much faith in the lists you link to. They're fan art, which is fine as far as it goes. Especially the third one: that's just horrible garbled English. I mean really: Baruk Khazâd! next to Haw aru tauu? - - - I should think it would be difficult to make a worse reconstruction of Khuzdul.

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