Comments by Röandil
These are the 10 posts of 143 by Röandil.
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My nickname
It’s noted to be an archaic structure and generally replaced by ar, so I’d probably just say Hantale ar namárie!
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Two possible options for "I will not fear"?
- Þosse vá mauyauva ni
See above. I think the closest Quenya equivalent to “must not” here would be volitional prohibitive vá, so I’d say Vá þoryuvan(ye) “I shall not/will not/must not fear.”
- Þossë órinehtar ná
Missing the definite article here, so Þosse i órinehtar (ná). I’ll honor your choice of óre, but I do think the closer Elvish match to Herbert’s “mind” in the Litany is indo.
- Þossë nihtaqualmë nin, tyaren nancarinqua
This reads “Fear bit-death-agony for-me, cause-I destroyful.” I’d recommend the adjective nitya (“little, small”) and the noun ñuru (“death” as an abstract). Tyar- is a good choice but misconjugated, and -inqua doesn’t attach to verbal stems. We could revise this to Þosse i nitya-ñuru (ná) i tyare aqua nancarme “Fear (is) the little-death that causes complete undoing/destruction.”
- Þossenya termaruvan
Termar- is intransitive “stand, endure, last” (lit. “through-abide”); for “face, confront,” I’d recommend tenta- “be directed toward” or tar- “stand” with the allative: Tentuvan(ye) þossenya “I-will-face my-fear” or Taruvan(ye) þossenyanna “I-will-stand against-my-fear.”
- Lavuvan sa lahta nin, ar tere nin
Here’s an instance where I think Quenya would be very inclined to append the object as well as the subject: lavuva-n sa > lavuva-nye-s. Nin is dative “to/for me”; the object of infinitive lahta and preposition ter would likely be nominative-accusative ni, though I think we need another verb here for the sense of “pass/move through” to resolve the semantic friction of !lahta ter: Lavuvanyes lahta (ni) ar termene ni “I-will-allow-it to-pass-over (me) and move-through me.”
- ar y’avánie sa
In the instance of yá avánie, the perfect augment would be more likely to elide than the long vowel of yá (WJ:366). Additionally, we’d see a subject suffix rather than an independent pronoun here, so ar yá vánies. (I don’t think auta- is quite the right verb for “go past, pass by” and would use men- myself.)
- queruvan i órë, cenuva i lomentierya
Cen- should take a dative gerund here for the sense of “in order to see,” and lomentie is the parting of journey-paths, the opposite of omentie, the junction of the directions of two people. Mentie or just tie are probably more appropriate here: Queruvan i óre cenien (men)tierya “I will turn the óre to-see its-path.”
- Þossë i avánie, nauva sinome umuntiéva
This reads “Fear that has-passed, will-be here have-nothinged.” The first half doesn’t reflect the relativity of the original, and Tolkien abandoned the stative (umuntiéva) in later writings as the “be” root ceased to be √YĒ. I’d say Yanna/ainomenna eménie i þosse, munta euva “Where/wherever the fear has gone, nothing shall-exist.”
- rie lemyauvan
I’d say Inye rie lemyuva or …termaruva — lemya- almost certainly wouldn’t preserve -a in its future inflection. Without the free-standing emphatic pronoun, rie seems to be modifying the action of the verb over its agent; the comparable difference in English would be something like “Only I, I alone, will remain” vs. “I will remain and remain only, do nothing else.”
Again, lovely work, and thanks again for sharing!
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My nickname
Er is the adjective “one, (a)lone”; nassë is a noun meaning “nature, true being” or “person, individual.” You’re looking for what in English is an impersonal/indefinite pronoun, whose closest Quenya equivalents are mo or quén.
In this instance, though, we can nominalize (i.e. turn into a noun/name) the adjective calima with the suffixes I outlined above. The resulting forms mean “bright one, one who is bright.” Quenya does this frequently, most notably in many of the Elvish tribal names: Vanyar “The Fair Ones,” from the adjective vanya “fair, beautiful, unmarred.”
I’d say handa for “intelligent.”
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Two possible options for "I will not fear"?
- Lá þoryuvan / Þosse vá mauyuva ni
Vá is prohibitive “must not, shall not, is not to,” so third-person usage in Þosse vá mauyuva ni is ungrammatical, as “fear” isn’t an entity whose volition can be negated. I’d actually swap lá and vá in these sentences.
- If I remember right sorya/thorya is a matter of whether or not I’d like to go with Exilic Quenya thanks to the Shibboleth of Fëanor.
Sort of: “[M]any among the Exiles restored the sound [þ], after their adoption of Sindarin as their diurnal speech, a language which favoured the sound [þ]. Some retained it in imitation of the Vanyar […] This was done chiefly in reciting or reading aloud matter written in PQ. In the actual use of the TQ as a spoken language s for þ remained characteristic of the Ñoldor” (PE19:71). Regardless of its dialectal pronunciation, it would have always been “properly” spelled with þúle in the tengwar, so many neo-Elvish authors today mirror that usage with thorn in the Latin alphabet.
- On that note I’ve steadily worked through the entire Litany Against Fear...
Nice job! There are some inflectional slips throughout and a few misused words. I’ll post a line-by-line in its own comment.
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My nickname
Note that Quenya calima only conveys the "luminous, not dark" senses of English "bright." It doesn't mean "smart" or "intelligent."
The most usual route here would be to add a name-forming suffix to the adjective. Masculine options could be Calimo, Calim(i)on; feminine, Calime, Calim(i)el, etc.
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Translation for a title and/name
You’re very welcome! Happy to help.
Dictionaries can only get you so far, and that’s especially the case with the Elvish languages — they provide the words but don’t teach you how they work together as elements of a functional language.
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Translation for a title and/name
“Noldorin” is the name of the draft language that would later be termed Sindarin as Tolkien developed his legendarium. Some Noldorin words can be updated pretty straightforwardly to fit the framework of Sindarin, while others require more finessing.
I’d render “nameless” with pen-eneth (compare Pen-adar “Fatherless,” one of Bombadil’s epithets). This would mutate with a definite article: I Ben-eneth “The Nameless (One).”
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Need help building a quenya word. "Snowelf" would that be Loselda (Q.) or something else? Also, I think Losedhel (S.) for sindarine?
Close! I’d say Lossel for both Quenya and Sindarin, but note:
- QUENYA: Lossel (stem Losseld-), pl. Losseldi
- SINDARIN: Lossel, pl. Lossil (or possibly Lessil with full i-affection)
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Questions about a cobbled-together name, “ Tarwëndil”
In a similar way, could it be said that an ‘American accent’ for Tarwendil would be ‘Tar’ ‘when’ ‘dill’?
I’d support that, yes. A speaker of American English would likely rhyme the last syllable with “dill” rather than “deal” in that position.
The -dil part of the word (in my interpretation) indeed matches the pronunciation of English "dill" (the herb) (IPA [dil]), with a short i. I don't know about American accents, I feel that in British English (at least Southern British) "deal" would have a long i.
“Dill” is rather [dɪɫ] in almost all dialects of English; the difference isn’t so much quantitative — “long” vs. “short” — as qualitative: tense/close [i] vs. lax/near-close [ɪ].
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Suggestions for translation?
A combination *Alcarcelumë would mean “Glory-stream” (and is a bit long for a Quenya compound besides), so I wouldn’t recommend it for this meaning.
Other compound options from the root √KEL:
- Celcalar “Streaming Lights”
- Celcálë “Streaming Light”
- Celalcar “Streaming Glory” (/splendor/radiance/brilliance)
And from √SIR:
- Sircalar “Flowing Lights”
- Sircálë “Flowing Light”
- Siralcar “Flowing Glory” (as above)
Re: “dancing lights,” I wouldn’t use the verbal stem lilta- in a compound, but I think we can extrapolate a late-concept root *√LIL from given materials to incorporate: Lilcalar, Lilcálë, Lil(t)alcar, etc. A phrasal translation would likely be some variant of lilta(i)la cala(r)/cálë.