Comments by Gilruin

These are the 10 posts of 226 by Gilruin.

  • Quenya translation of "Ḥad Gadya" proofreading

    That’s a lovely idea, don’t let the long list of points scare you, your translation is already quite good!

    máyá, cuimacira, néna, ruiné, olbá, roá, miué, yacincé

    The accusative case only existed in an ancient version of Quenya called Parmaquesta, later the nominative/common was used instead. Since your verb forms on the other hand don’t look archaic at all, I’d suggest to drop the distinct accusatives.

    nahtane

    I would prefer it’s attested half-strong past nacante (√NAK-T-a > nahta-, past √NAK(A)-T-ne > nacante)

    máyá

    Later the spelling maiya/maia is more usual.

    fíriëo

    One can break up this three vowel sequence as fíriéno (cf. márie → máriéno), but your form should be fine as well (cf. sindie → sindieo), though a bit more awkward to pronounce.

    mondo

    I would prefer the form mundo, Tolkien used both but the latter is more in line with the Sindarin cognate mund.

    yulne

    -ln- is not an allowed sequence in Quenya, it changes to -ld- yielding past forms like tul- → tulde, yul- → yulde, but there is a competing form in analogy to the perfect tul- → túle, yul- → yúle. I would suggest you use the same paradigm for both verbs in a single text.

    luhtyane

    This neologism is somewhat uncertain and the -tya ending doesn’t make it easy to figure out a past tense form. One can make a case that the Sindarin verb luithia- “quench” is instead cognate with the attested Quenya verb luita- “to flood, inundate, drench”, which would have either a strong past luine/lúye or a half-strong form luyunte.

    palpane

    Due to the form of it’s root √PALAP, I would suggest that this is a TALAT-stem verb, which would result in a past form √PALAP-ne > palampe

    i yacince, i homancane atya

    This reads “the baby goat, that bought my father”, you want i yacince, i atya homancane to keep “my father” as the subject.

    telpenten

    I don’t think you can say “two silver” in Quenya because it’s a mass noun, just like you can’t say “two oil” in English. Unfortunately Tolkien didn’t leave us with much trade related vocabulary, but we know of a Gondorian silver coin, the canath “quater”, which would be casta in Quenya, so perhaps castanten.

    er yacince

    I’d use min instead of er, becaues it isn’t “the one baby goat, the single or most outstanding baby goat in exisance”, but merely one in its plain numeric sense; the father could have decided to buy two instead and the semantics of the poem wouldn’t massively change.

    i X i Y

    I think in this long chain of rellative clauses it is permissable in Quenya to drop the first i, so e. g. nacante cumacir, i nacante mondo, i yulde nén instead of nacante i cuimacir, i nacante i mondo, i yulde i nén, because the following relative clause helps to define the noun in question.

  • Elvish from Amazon’s Rings of Power

    Names from Various Leaks

    (Neo-)Quenya

    [1], [2] — April 11th, 2022

    • Ñólion (a friend of Isildur, leaked as Nolion) might be ñolë + -ion “son of knowledge”.
    • Ontamo (a friend of Isildur) is attested as “mason”, probably in this case as a title, like we see with Nówë being primarily known as Círdan “Shipwright”
    • Valandil (a friend of Isildur) “Friend of the Valar” is attested as the name of Isildur’s son

    • Kemen (son of Ar-Pharazôn) is attested as “earth”. (The name has been confirmed by the Explore Entertainment article) This is somewhat problematic as a name:

      The mere names of things, such as ‘hill, river, tree’, and especially of unique things, as ‘sun’, were not used, at any rate without differentiation: [...] for that would imply some kind of total equation or identity. An Elf (or Man) would not be called Anar ‘Sun’ even to depict great glory or radiant vigour. [...] But an Elf or Man could be called Anárion, Anardil [Parma Eldalamberon #21, p. 86]

      Also, it would be uncharacteristic for Ar-Pahrazôn, who didn’t use his Quenya name Tar-Calion and renamed Tar-Míriël to Adûnaic Ar-Zimraphêl due to his hatred of the Elves, to give his son an Quenya name. Potentially since it is spelt with k rather than c it might be intended as a Mannish name instead. Adûnaic words however cannot contain a short e, which makes the name still somewhat hard to explain (or at least Anûnaic as described in Sauron Defeated doesn’t permit short e, later we see words such as Belzagar. However dismissing the description in Sauron Defeated essentially means that we have thrown out our only substantial source for Adûnaic, which seems counterproductive for making up Adûnaic names).

    • Carine: the sister of Isildur was confirmed to be named → Eärien later.
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  • How do I begin learning Sindarin?

    Sure, I would recommend:

    With Tolkien's languages, one problem is that much information you will find is rather outdated, because not all resources are still being updated when new information gets published, so keep that in mind when you find other resources.

  • Difference between ore and romen

    In the Classical mode for Quenya, you use rómen if the r is followed by a vowel, a y or another r, otherwise with óre. The combination rd is written with arda:

    rómen , cirya , urra , formen , alcar , arda (rómen, cirya, urra, formen, alcar, arda)

    For the general use, it depends on whether you transcribe Quenya, Sindarin, rhothic dialects of English or non-rhothic dialects of English. Most English in Tengwar you will see on the internet use basically the same rule as in Quenya, rómen before vowels, óre otherwise:

    red , car , art (red , car , art)

    Also, this site has really great articles on the different Tengwar models, you might want to give it a look: at.mansbjorkman.net

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  • Difference between ore and romen

    That depends on the mode (Classical, Beleriand, General use for English depending on the accent, etc.) you want to write in, they have different conventions.

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  • How should I say 'I love you'?

    I did not notice Gilruin's posting, but he is absolutely right regarding the debatable placement of pronouns in accusative, although we do have attested le linnathon, "I sing to you," and le nallon, "I cry [to you]."

    I believe that those are specifically dative forms and I’d suggest to mutate the verb in this construction, which just goes to show how little we know about this. (The undebatable example would be hain echant, so gin melin would be my preferred option if we front the pronoun, but we don’t know whether some kind of mutation should occure)

    My current thoughts are: discord.com

  • How should I say 'I love you'?

    Tolkien didn't translate the phrase, but we can try using what we know of his words and grammar rules:

    • Quenya: melin(ye) tye
    • Sindarin: melin gin

    The Quenya translation is probably a valid way of saying "I love you" the Sindarin one is less certain because we lack a good example of how accusative pronouns ("you" in this case) behave.

  • [Deleted]

    Take all the time you need!

    This is probably a good moment for thanking you for your work on this amazing site.

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  • How do you create a gloss?

    In any case, rach + gaud can't produce rahaud IMO.

  • Bado go Eru?

    Exactly. The words in the Sindarin version are:

    • nor- in its imperative noro "run!"
    • gu a neologism for "with"
    • sûl in its soft mutated from hûl (because gu ends in a vowel)
    • pad-/padra- in the imperative pado/padro "walk!"
    • Eru
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