Comments by Gilruin

These are the 10 posts of 226 by Gilruin.

  • Taur in compounds

    That's just a spelling error, of course I mean Rhovandor with a voiceless rh.

  • Taur in compounds

    You are right, n + lost vowel + t becoming nd is very well attested, but I don’t think we have an true example of n + t without an intervening vowel, so I extrapolated n·t > þ from m·p > f (kw becomes p very early, so the relevant forms for Sindarin are really jēn-penta, en-ped-). For [n]dan- I would be cautious about assuming it has no final vowels:

    [About Q. nancar- and S. dangar-:] Both probably < nana-; but in older formations there are examples of ndan-: as in Q nanwen-, return, nan-men, S damen. (PE17/166)

    When no compounding is involved, -nt- first turns into -nþ- and then into -nh- > -nn- pretty regularly: Q. anta- vs S. anha-, Q. fanta- vs S. fanha-, mantinā > mannen. From ifant, ephat- and the nasal mutation tiw → i·thiw I assume that nasals vanish at morphem boundaries before fricatives f, þ χ turning -n·þ- to þ instead of usual -nh- > -nn-, but I would say it’s tenuous enough that -nn- is a good option as well.

    Thinking about it more though perhaps Rovandor Rhovandor is the safer alternative, not as the proper historic development of srāban-taurē, but as a Sindarin compund in analogy to all those cases of words with final vowels. The general lenition of adjectives or the case of palan + tíriel > palan-díriel show that eventually the prevalent assumption in Sindarin becomes that every word once ended in a vowel that is now lost even in cases where it isn’t historically justified.

  • Taur in compounds

    There are a couple of instances in which au > o didn't happen:

    • Gaurhoth, Gorthaur, Rauros, Tauron: here it seems that an o in another syllable inhibits this change. For this reason Elaran has revised rostor to rostaur (the latest version of Eldamo isn't imported to Parf Edhellen yet). In Thorondor I would explain the reduction by analogy: Tolkien cites the suffix as -dor with lenition and reduction already carried out so it might have become an independent word not imideatly connected to taur any more (just like I wouldn't expect ortha- to conjugate orthaun, orthaug... just because it contains an o).
    • Rhudaur, Draugluin and Glaurung suggest that u might inhibit this sound change as well (Turgon is a counterexample but again -gon might be a recognized suffix).
    • Bauglir, Anfauglith, Naugrim, ilaurui are hard to explain, I would treat them as words from dialects where the reduction of au was less prevalent (like for example in German ü became i in words that entered the standard from some dialects but not from others).

    For a more detailed exploration of the evidence, take a look at Paul Strack's article about this sound change.

    Now rhovan + taur is tricky for two reasons:

    1. The primitive form would be srāban-taurē > rhauvan-naur so the question becomes how two aus interact.
    2. Unlike in Rauros, Rhudaur etc. there is an intervening syllable that could block the interaction here.

    Personally I would guess Rovathor in this case, Rauvathaur seems like a bit of a mouthful. It might be possible that one reduces but the other doesn't but I wouldn't speculate on that.

    (And primive n + t in compounds developes to nth > th cf. jēn-kwantā > iphant/ifant, en-kwet- > ephed-, n + t > nd only happens if there was a primitive vowel between: kjeleperina-tal > Celebrindal)

  • Translation for a tattoo

    Technically, I suppose it could be translated no im but I wouldn't recommend tattooing that; as far as the currently published material goes the relation between Sindarin emphatic ("you in particular") and reflexiv ("yourself") is a mess. I would recommend that you transcribe the English sentence with Tengwar, which still looks good and doesn't need to deal with the uncertainties of translation: General mode for English.

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  • Intensive so

    lange and an-/am- are good options, depending on the exact situation I would also look at ta. For the second kind of "so" I would use síve ... tambe.

  • Links & Resources

    Writing Systems

    • Mellonath Daeron Indices of Tengwar and Cirth Specimina (DTS & DCS) — An index to all known examples of Tolkien using those scripts.
    • Index of Significant Samples (Chris McKay) — Reproductions of attested Tengwar Texts (up to 2004) with a computer font.
    • Amanyë Tenceli (Måns Björkman) — Articles about the Tengwar and Sarati.
    • Tengwar Primers (Per Lindberg) — Guides for writing Quenya, Sindarin and Swedish in Tengwar.
    • The Tecendil Handbook (Arno Gourdol) — An introduction to writing with Tengwar in the General Mode for English and Sindarin, the Mode of Beleriand and the Classical Mode for Quenya.
    • Full Tengwar Modes for Modern English (Ronald Kyrmse) — with a table of attestatiouns for each sign.
    • Phonetic Tengwar modes (“Mach” J. Wust) — Overview, Two phonetic “full writing” modes, A phonetic tehtar mode.
    • The Letters of Middle-earth (Ostadan) — An introductory article about Tengwar, Cirth and the runes of the Hobbit.
    • Tengwar Numerals (Christopher Tolkien, Quettar) — A report about Quenya numerals (PDF, PostScript). Those numbers however don’t agree with the ones we see Tolkien using in the King’s Letter (analysis).
    • Free Tengwar Font Project (“Mach” J. Wust, John Winge) — A project to develop smart Tengwar Computer fonts and to strive for their standardization.
    • Glǽmscribe (Benjamin Babut, Bertrand Bellet) and Tecendil (Arno Gourdol) — Automatic transcribers into Tolkien’s writing systems. Even though they are both quite good, they can not pick up on every subtlety that needs to be considered by themselves. If you don’t have a good grasp on Tengwar yourself, check your transcriptions here or in one of the other discussion groups.
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  • Links & Resources

    Archives of Previous Commuinities

    • TolkLang — An archive of the TolkLang mailing list (1990-2013) with partial mirrors of the lists Lambengolmor (2002-2010, the messages 11nn-22nn are not properly archived) and Elfling (1998-2012).
    • Tolkien List Search — Searchable Archive of TolkLang (1990-2013), Lambengolmor (2002-2019), Elfling (1998-2019), Elfscript (1999-2007) and Elfscript2 (2007-2017). Unlike the TolkLang mirrors, this archive does not contain the message numbers for other lists than TolkLang itself.
    • G+ LoME Archive — Searchable archive of Tamas Ferencz’s Google Plus community “Languages of Middle-Earth” (2012-2018).
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  • Links & Resources

    Articles

    • Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon (Carl F. Hostetter, Patrick H. Wynne et. al.) — The journals that publish Tolkien’s notes on his languages (Errata).
    • Tengwestië (Carl F. Hostetter, Patrick H. Wynne et. al.) — The online journal of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship.
    • Eldamo (Paul Strack) - Apart from the collection of attested vocabulary that serves as a source for this lexicon, Eldamo also has articles on the historical phonology and grammar of Tolkien’s languages. A mirror is available at http://pfstrack.github.io/eldamo/
    • Mellonath Daeron — Website of the language guild of the Swedish fan association Forodrim.
    • Sindanórië (Roman Rausch) — A site with articles on various topics including essays less explored languages such as Telerin, Mithrimin and Goldogrin an analysis of names from The Histories of Middle-earth and a comparison between natural languages and Eldarin.
    • Tenguesta Goldorinwa (Rac_co.On) — A Neo-Quenya reference grammar, primarily concerned with presenting one possible coherent system (originally for a translation project of Alice in Wonderland). Note the non-standard spelling in this document, e. g. the site name would be represented as Tengwesta Ñoldorinwa according to the usual spelling conventions. A related project is the Quettasta Goldorinwa mapping out the semantic spaces of common English words and their Neo-Quenya translations.
    • Ardalambion (Helge Fauskanger) — Articles on most of Tolkien’s languages as well as how they could fit together in a consistent framework of Neo-Eldarin.
    • Parma Tyeplelassiva (Thorsten Renk) - Articles on various topics, mostly about grammar.
    • Tolkiendil (various) — Hosts linguistic articles from I·lam Arth, Otsoandor and Miðgarðsmál
    • elm (Ales Bican) — Articles on the Atalante Fragments, the Merin sentence, Quenya’s s-case and a guest article on a Tengwar spelling for Quenya with implicit a’s by David Salo.
    • Studies on the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien (Harri Perälä) — “Are High Elves Finno-Uguric?” and a tutorial on writing with Tengwar fonts.
    • Lambenórë (David Giraudeau) — various articles and indices to the Parmar Eldalamberon.
    • Middle-earth Science Pages (Andreas Moehn) — Linguistic articles available on the Internet Archive: the Etymology of the Atani languages, An Interpretation of the Names in the Line of Elros and Lalaith’s Guide to Adûnaic Grammar
    • Quasi-Khuzdul — An exploration of all attested Khuzdul material.
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  • Links & Resources

    General Linguistic Resources

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  • Links & Resources

    Beginners’ Resources

    • Pronounciation Guides — Quenya (RealElvish, Julian Bradfield), Sindarin, Adûnaic
    • Atanquesta (Tamas Ferencz) — A Neo-Quenya primer.
    • Eldamo Introductory Quenya (Paul Strack) — A course that explains in more detail how we know the things we do.
    • RealElvish (Fiona Jallings) — Easy-access information including pre-made names and a phrasebook. RealElvish Academy also offers four courses Carpho/Teitho/Gelio/Nevio Edhellen that introduce you to (Neo-)Sindarin’s pronunciation, writing systems and grammar. Gelio Edhellen and Teitho Edhellen can be viewed as a Google Doc and a PDF respectively, but for the rest you need to create an account for the site.
    • Eldamo’s basic grammar (Paul Strack) — Overview of the major features of Quenya and Sindarin grammar with links to more in-depth articles.
    • Glǽmscrafu (Benjamin Babut, Bertrand Bellet) — Attested texts in Tolkien’s languages and some of the languages that inspired him with both audio recordings and transcriptions into other writing systems such as the Tengwar, Cirth or Futhark.
    • Ni-bitha Adûnâyê (Thorsten Renk) — Course on Neo-Adûnaic. Note that since then the Adûnaic word for the language itself — Adûnayân — has been published, which supersedes Renk’s reconstruction Adûnâyê. Compare with Paul Strack’s analysis.

    The Courses below are good, but outdated to some extend by new publications of source material:

    • Ardalambion’s Quenya Course (Helge Fauskanger) — Includes material up until Vinyar Tengwar 44 and Parma Eldalamberon 15 (2003). Unlike Atanquesta it goes into greater detail why it recommends the thing it does, so it is still worthwhile to read after you have gone through Atanquesta to understand the methods of crafting Neo-Quenya. (An Introduction and appendices are available here.)
    • Quetin i Lambe Eldaiva (Thorsten Renk) — Includes material up until Vinyar Tengwar 49 and Parma Eldalamberon 17 (2008). Also, note that Renk prefers to use the paradigms that are closest to the publication of the Lord of the Rings while many others prefer to use the latest paradigms available.
    • Pedin Edhellen (Thorsten Renk) — Includes material up until Vinyar Tengwar 49 and Parma Eldalamberon 18 (2010).

    There are many other resources for beginners available on the internet, but generally they can’t be recommended: Usually they are part of fan sites that wanted to offer Elvish sections after the release of Peter Jackson’s movies and were compiled from earlier versions of the courses above often with an incomplete understanding of them. However, if you encounter a particularly promising-looking course that is not listed here, feel free to ask about it.

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