Skip to main content

tolkiens legendarium - Why would Bilbo agree to arbitration in the Khuzdul language?


In The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the Dwarves present Bilbo a contract. It's presumably in Westron, but through the magic of Translation Convention, it appears on-screen in its entirety in English, which has allowed a lawyer to analyze it. It turns out to be a fairly solid contract, except for one thing:



Disputes arising between the Contract Parties shall be heard and judged by an arbitrator of the Company’s choosing and all pleas shall be pleaded, shrewed [sic], defended, answered, debated and judged in the Dwarvish Tongue



The "Dwarven tongue" is Khuzdul, an "Afro-Aulësiatic" language not provably related to more widely known languages of Middle-earth. It's at least as distant from Westron as Hebrew is from English (notwithstanding the false cognate quackery that is Edenics). Only a handful of non-Dwarves ever learn Khuzdul, as Dwarves use Westron in public. As Royal Canadian Bandit pointed out in a comment:




there are no non-dwarves who speak any Dwarvish, aside from a handful of words. In the LOTR books, Gandalf refers to it as "the secret dwarf-tongue they teach to none" while trying to work out the password to Moria. So poor Bilbo would get a hearing where his advocate, his opponent, and the judge were all dwarves speaking a language he couldn't understand.



Why would Bilbo in his right mind agree to arbitration in Khuzdul when the Dwarves are fluent in Westron? True, Westron's ancestor Adûnaic has some Khuzdul loans, but I can't see how Bilbo could follow the proceedings from just that. Or is there some difference in knowledge of languages between book-verse and movie-verse?



Answer



There's no answer given in the movie1, but there are a few equally plausible explanations:




  • He didn't read that far. When he reads the contract, Bilbo is more than mildly hung up on the liability clauses:



    Bilbo: Terms: Cash on delivery, up to but not exceeding one fourteenth of total profit, if any. Seems fair. Eh, Present company shall not be liable for injuries inflicted by or sustained as a consequence thereof including but not limited to lacerations... evisceration... incineration?



    Bofur: Oh, aye, he’ll melt the flesh off your bones in the blink of an eye.


    Bilbo: Huh.


    Balin: You all right, laddie?


    Bilbo: Uh, yeah... Feel a bit faint.


    An Unexpected Journey (2013)



    It's possible that, after talking himself into being okay with being burned alive by a dragon, he just skipped to the bottom and clicked "I Agree"




  • He didn't expect it to be an issue. This is something people do all the time when entering into contracts; they assume something won't be an issue, so they don't make a fuss about it. Is this particularly wise? No, not remotely. But it's possible





  • He wasn't in his right mind. Bilbo's decision to join the Dwarves is shown as being a very spur-of-the-moment decision, not particularly well thought-out. Even if he did read the arbitration clause, it's possible he (in his temporary madness) simply didn't process how big of a deal it was.




Personally, I think the most likely answer is that he didn't read that term of the contract, or at least didn't internalize it; we have evidence from later in the series that Bilbo may not have payed particularly close attention to the contract he signed. A major plot point in the film (and also in the book) is that Bilbo takes the Arkenstone as the entirety of his share of the treasure:



Thranduil: The Heart of the Mountain. The King's Jewel.


Bard: And worth a king's ransom. How is this yours to give?


Bilbo: I took it as my fourteenth share of the treasure.



The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)



But, as lawyer James Daily notes in a post on his blog analyzing the full text of the contract2, this is blatantly a violation of one of the terms of that agreement:



Burglar acknowledges and agrees that each item of the Company's valuables, goods, money or merchandise which he recovers from the Lonely Mountain [the 'Recovered Goods'] during the term of his engagement with the Company, shall remain the Property of the Company at all times, and in all respects, without limitation.


Furthermore, the company shall retain any and all Recovered Goods until such a time as a full and final reckoning can be made, from which the Total Profits can then be established. Then, and only then, will the Burglar's fourteenth share be calculated and decided.



So, despite his claims, the Arkenstone was never actually his to give.



1 The contract as written doesn't appear in the book



2 Based on a full-sized, officially-licensed replica


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...
Post a Comment
Read more

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...
Post a Comment
Read more

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...
Post a Comment
Read more