Dwarf - Iglishmêk

Besides their aglâb, spoken tongue, the Dwarves used a sign language, or iglishmêk. According to The War of the Jewels, it was learned simultaneously with the aglâb from childhood. In a noisy Dwarvish smithy, the ringing of hammers against anvils was often too loud to allow verbal communication. The Dwarvish sign language was much more varied between communities than Khuzdul, which remained "astonishingly uniform and unchanged both in time and in locality". Tolkien only gave a few examples of the Iglishmêk sign language in his unpublished notes. The command to "Listen!" involved a slight raising of both forefingers simultaneously. The acknowledgment "I am listening" involved a slight raising of the right-hand forefinger, followed by a similar raising of the left-hand forefinger.