title_body: Is Tolkien's Dwarvish really based on Hebrew?
upvoted_answer: Yes.
  According to this interview with Tolkien, he really did design it to be Semitic.  He says,
  
  The dwarves of course are quite obviously,  wouldn't you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? Their words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic.
  
  In other words, he did design their tongue to be very like the Semitic language, possibly since their history resembled that of the Jews.