Comments by Gilruin
These are the 10 posts of 226 by Gilruin.
-
Links & Resources
And What About Books?
Most books published on Tolkien’s languages are problematic in some ways.
- An Introduction to Elvish (ed. Jim Allan) — Very solid analysis of what was available at the time. However since it was written before even the Silmarillion was published it is now severely outdated. (Review: Fauskanger)
- Basic Quenya (Nancy Martsch) Solid for its time, but contains a few questionable choices such as excluding forms that were not published during Tolkien’s lifetime, which limits the corpus considerably. (Review: Derzhanski)
- The Languages of Tolkien's Middle Earth (Ruth Noel) — This book contains many avoidable errors even for its publication time and thus can’t be recommended (Review: Gates)
- A Gateway to Sindarin (David Salo) Very in-depth and technical grammar of Sindarin, obviously the result of extensive studies. However Salo at times alters the evidence too freely to fit his theories and erases most of the external chronology of the language by silently updating Noldorin to Sindarin. (Reviews: Renk, Ballet, Hostetter, Wynne)
- A Fan’s Guide to Neo-Sindarin (Fiona Jallings) — The only book on Sindarin that currently can be recommended. (Rewiew: Rosenfelder)
German books: unfortunately, those can’t be recommended either:
- Elbisches Wörterbuch (Wolfgang Krege), Review: Dombach & Renk
- Das Große Elbisch-Buch (Helmut Pesch), Review: Rausch)
-
I need someone to confirm if this sentence is correct.
“Can” or “cannot” is translated with multiple different words in Quenya:
- polin quete “I can speak, I am able [physically] to speak”
- istan quete “I can speak, I know how to speak”
- lertan quete “I can speak, I am free to speak”
- ece nin quete “I can speak, There is a chance for me to speak”
So you need to decide why we can’t understand your sentence, I assume “You can’t because you lack the relevant knowledge about Quenya”, so ista- (not lerta- “I can’t understand because I’m forbidden to”). With that I’d say ú istalde hanya sina quettale/quetie. (← ú “not”, ista- + -lde “y’all know”, sina “this”, quetale “sentence, expression”, quetie “words, *saying”)
-
sindarin translation
I’d say both erandir and erebrandir can work, the latter indeed playing safe to get “lonely” instead of “single, alone”
- -rr- in er + randir is a bit of an unclear matter. It remains in hîr + -rim → hirrim (in Rochirrim, Gonnhirrim), Orrain or unclear etymology and ar- + roch → Arroch, but sometimes reduces to a single -r- like in aglar + rond → Aglarond. I think one can defend both.
- -br- is an allowed cluster in Sindarin (e. g. celeb + rant → Celebrant). Depending on how ancient you want the name to be, you could undo the a-affection in erikwā > ereb (which doesn’t happen if the a isn’t final) producing Eribrandir.
-
Translations of "Keeper" and "Healer"
The suffixes to form agent nouns ("person that does X") are -or and -ron:
For keeper, at least in its usual sense I'd use gartha- "to defend, keep" and form garthor/garthron from it. For "healer" one could go for nesta- -> nestor/nethron or use athae "healing" in as atheron (the verb that corresponds to athae means "to ease, assist" rather than "to heal", but -ron apparently can attach to nouns as well)
-
[Deleted]
There are some nouns you can form from virtually any verb like a gerund "the action of doing X" or an agent noun "the person who does X". For the opposite direction there isn't really any 'obvious' derivation that works for basically any noun and the semantics are generally more complicated, e. g. think about how "to dust" in "to dust a cake" means in a way the opposite from "to dust the house". English is very happy to use nouns as verbs anyway but many other languages use it less frequently or with some further restrictions. Null-deriving verbs from nouns isn't forbidden in Quenya, e. g. tengwa- (which shows again that semantics are difficult because it looks like "to write, i. e. produce tengwar" to me, but actually means "to read, i. e. consume tengwar"). There are also other suffixes like telco "leg" -> telconta- "to stride, i. e. to leg smth.", but as I said, there isn't the one obvious process like the other way around and at least when I'm translating and find myself trying to do that, it usually means I did something wrong/bad/not elegant before.
However saura isn't a noun but an adjective and there are three relatively universal ways of forming verbs from those:
- Causative (primitive suffix -tā) "causing something to become X": ninque/ninqui- "white" -> ninquita- (past ninquitane) "to whiten, make white"
- Inceptive I (primitive suffix -tă) "to become X": ninque/ninqui- "white" -> ninquita- (past ninquinte) "to whiten, grow white"
- Inceptive II (primitive suffix -s(jā)) "to begin to become X": ninque/ninqui- "white" -> ninquirya- (past ninquitasse) "to (begin to) grow pale"
Those would yeald saurata- (sauratane), saurata- (saurante), saurarya- (saurasse) for saura (assuming that the analogy to such verbs from other adjectives would prevent the -rar- from dissimilating in the last form).
-
[Deleted]
to corrupt would be a causative, which I think you could form either from the root THAWtā > sauta- or directly from saura -> saurata-.
However I'd consider using attested hasta- "to mar" instead.
-
I couldn't figure it out
That doesn't seem like Sindarin or any other Tolkienian language. From the looks of it, it might be Grelvish, but I can't help you with that. A short explaining paragraph what that is from Thorsten Renk:
Inside the [Grey Company Elvish] dicionary, we find the entries iant 'old' and iaur 'bridge' which show just how 'loosely' the language is based on Tolkien's work. Essentially, iant iaur 'Old Bringe' found in Tolkien's works was 'used' without any real understanding or appreciation of Tolkien's methods - people just assumed because 'Old' in English is the first word, it must correspond to the first word of the Elvish text. [It's the opposite, compare for example Drúwaith Iaur “Old Púkel-land” or Sennas Iaur “Old Guesthouse”] I don't know if I should cry or laugh when I read something like this, or if I should just look away. (Elfling #34930)
-
Contribution “Rened” by xCelticLynxx
In that case, do you want me to reject the word? It is technically a correctly formed gerund of ren-, it just feels weird to have it as a separate neologism for the same reason we don't record its other forms renin, renig, renil, rên... separately.
-
Contribution “Rened” by xCelticLynxx
Thanks for contributing to Parf Edhellen!
I agree that √REN is the way to go for “memory”, but I don’t think this particular neologism would add much. We already have a verb *ren- proposed from this root, that would regularly form a gerund rened “remembering” and the attested noun √RĒNē >rîn “rememberence” that could be used for “memory”.
gilruin
-
Names
I guess you are trying to form Names in Sindarin? In Sindarin old telumē would develop to telu since m first becomes v after vowels and then v was lost before u, so Findelu. Similarly the Sindarin cognate of Quenya cemen is ceven, so Fingeven. I would advise you to directly search for Sindarin words instead of picking Quenya words and speculating on cognates that can get quite complicated. If I have misunderstood you and you actually want Quenya names, then all the soft mutation and vowel loss should not happen: Telumefin (Telumefinw-) (but be aware about the similar Telufinwë) and Cemnafinwe (cemna “earthen” to avoid the sequence -nf- with cemen).