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The 9th phrase of the Lament of Akallabêth (SD/247). The subject agannâlô “death-shadow” is a compound of agan “death” and nâlu “shadow” in the subjective case. The next word burôda “heavy” is simply an adjective, and nênud “on us” is a combination of the pronoun nê “us” and the prepositional suffix -nud “on”. Since there is no verb, the subjective here functions as the verb “to be” (SD/429), so that the English translation should be “the death-shadow is heavy on us”, though Tolkien did not include “is” in his translation.

In the previous (second draft) version of this sentence, the spelling of some words were slightly different: buruda (as it was in the first draft) instead of the final form burôda and nēnu instead of the final form nēnud (SD/312). The first draft of this sentence uses the same words but is grammatically different.

[< Previous Phrase] Lament of Akallabêth (first draft) [Next Phrase >]

The first draft of the 9th phrase of the Lament of Akallabêth (SD/312), which was close to the final version but had minor differences in spelling and grammar. The subject agannūlo “death-shade” seems to be in the normal-case rather than the subjective, and nūlo “shade” is a variant spelling of later nâlu. The word burudan “heavy” seems to buruda (so spelled in the second draft but burôda in the final version) with the predicate suffix -n “is”. The final word nēnum “on us” is a combination of the pronoun nê “us” and the prepositional suffix -num “on” (nēnu in the second draft and nēnud in the final version).