Comments by Gilruin
These are the 10 posts of 226 by Gilruin.
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Help with English->Sindarin poem
faer is a bit more general than fae, the latter is the soul of an Elf or Man specifically, whereas faer would also be usable in something like “the Holy Spirit”.
Fae doesn't mean “radiance” however or at least Tolkien never glossed it that way, I think. Faer could possibly be extended to mean “radiance” in archaic speech after its Quneya equivalent faire “spirit (disembodied), phantom; †radiance”, but with galad, aglar and glawar at our disposal I don't see why we need to do that.
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Help with English->Sindarin poem
A possibility that would be less close to the original poem, but better fits the intention would be fae(r) na naur “spirit to fire”. Eldarin seems to allow for the metaphor of fire describing or being connected to the soul as we can see in the name Fëanáro “Spirit of Fire”.
Also
vín>> bín (← soft mutation of pín), because it's “we all” and not “we but not you”.
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Help with English->Sindarin poem
I don't have the time for a full discussion of your translation right now, but i can share what I'd translate. If you need grammar resources (looking at forms like toll in your translation, your own resources seem to be out of date in some places), I'd suggest starting here and here.
na in erthyr erf od in oduler
towards the realms (← pl. of athor) [of] matter [← neologism from Quenya erma] from which they came
ill dandolathar
all back-come-will-plural (dandol- “back-come” is attested for return as well)
ith roe bín na ceven
the bodies (← aw/au changes to oe in plural, in rh- mutates to ith r-) of-ours (← mín with soft mutation) towards earth (not mutating this particular word seems to be a special case, regular would be na geven)
i hereg bín na nen
the blood (← soft mutation of sereg, which seems to be the more usual term) of-ours (← mín with soft mutation) towards water
brass na naur
(white) heat to fire (ûr would have been “fire to fier” but I don't know whats the intended sense of this line. Is it still metaphorically about people?)
thûl na ‘wilith
breath (not using hwest because it can also mean “breeze” and thûl would add some connection to “spirit” as well) to air (← soft mutation of gwilith)
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Celebrimbor Ring Transcription- Shadow of War video game
Considering his gloss I believe that Röandil intended mi sad “in-the place” as a definite phrase with a preposition *min triggering mixed mutation like be → ben, nu → nuin. (I'm uncertain about eliding the n for definite prepositions other than en in analogy to ben genediad but presumably *e·genediad and think that mixed mutation does s > h, so effectively *min had, but we really don't have anything solid to go by, I believe)
Also, Fiona translated a slightly sorter part of the Text in this article.
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Business Name Translation Check
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Business Name Translation Check
tirith is an abstract noun, it means "guard" in the sense of "to be on guard". The agent noun of tir-, that is the person doing the guarding would be tiron. Fern does mean "dead person", but "the Dead" are plural, which would be firn (in Sindarin every noun is pluralized like English foot -> feet or mouse -> mice). The genitive "of" can indeed be implied just by putting the words next to each other as you did. Thus:
Tiron Firn “Watcher of the Dead”
((Also, no, it's not quite the right place, I think suche requests should go under "general discussion", not under "contributions", as you don't wan't to put something new in the Lexicon))
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The Enūma Eliš in Quenya
ᴺQ.!narassë, narasse n. “pasture” [created by Boris Shapiro]
Now I feel a bit stupid. I had Eldamo in academic mode...
sang- instead. So sangette?
Eldamo says early sanga- can remain valid. Bad things happen to basic verbs ending in g.
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The Enūma Eliš in Quenya
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The Enūma Eliš in Quenya
It's coming together now, apart from this one phrase I don't see any problems left. 👍
were- is rejected, as the root was changed WER > WIR, I would update the verb as wir-, past tense wirne
About narrasse & þangette (now you intend the citation from as þa(g)-?) I'm not sure yet.
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The Enūma Eliš in Quenya
estane nér
i cemen lá quetiélane
ontanet vs ontanenteI feel like there is a bit of confusion about passive voice in Quenya. Unlike many Indoeuropean languages Quenya has no separate paradigm for finite verbs in the passive. If a passive verb is needed, there seem to be two strategies:
- Put the verb into a passive participle form and connect it with ná-: "the bread is eaten" i masse matina (ná). For other tenses, I think it is more idiomatic to conjugate ná- than to opt for a e. g. past participle to focus on what was/will be going on rather then how it affects the preset: i masse matina né "the bread was eaten"
- Omit the subject: Think about it, what does mate even mean? In a way it means "it eats", but properly that would be matisse, so it just means "eats". This distinction between 3rd person and distinct subject provides another source for a passive-like construction: mate i masse "eats the bread". The "who?" is unspecified which is exactly what a passive should do for us. The same thing should be possible for the forms matir "eat [plural]" (vs matilte) and matit "eat [dual]" (vs matitte)
Generally and especially in instances where the passive voice in English is primarily a way to shift focus i like the second aproach more. This is where my suggestions lá estaner tarmenel "named not the heaven" and ontanet Ainur "created [dual in a very vague reference to Apsu and Tiamat doing the creation] the gods [plural, so all the other gods apart from A & T]".
estane nér
More specifically this is a construction that can't happen. Estane means "named" as in "I named my horse Rochallor". Nér does mean "were". However together they can't mean "were named" like in the English passive construction. The problem (apart from not recognizing it as a separate verb conjugation pattern) is that regular English verbs don't distinguish their simple bast (estane "named) and passive past participle (estiéna "named") forms. Some verbs however. Irregular verbs however sometimes do: rance "broke" vs ráciéna "broken".
keep the quet- participle and the esse- instrumental case
I still firmly believe that this is not the domain of the instrumental case: queta Quenya “speak Quenya” ✧ PE17/137; PE17/138 and cé mo quetë ulca “*if one speaks evil” ✧ VT49/19 both have their object in common/accusative case. To remove the suggestion of the earth already existing, perhaps nusa, lá equetier esse cemenwa "below it, [they] did not say the earth's name" (There is it again, subjectless passive)
What do you think of Minyaro or Minyamo 'the first one'
Minyamo should work fine. -r(o) is normally reserved for verbs.
because if I recall right having three adjacent vowels is forbidden in Quenya and this is a genitive of a gerund
All of those where at some point the Quenya genitive. It depends on how you reconcile Tolkien's ideas. Choose one and be consistent. But yes, -io would be my choice as well.
from me:
I would form the preterite of óstim- as óstimne(tte)
óstim- is something that can't happen in Quenya, long vowels shorten before clusters.
nenetwar or nenitwa
The template is:
noun-epithetic vowel-possesive suffix-plural marker-case, so nentwar, cf. hildinyar “my heirs” (LotR/967) = hild-(i)nya-r, máryat “her (two) hands” (RGEO/58-59) = má-rya-t.
wísse, þangane, narasse
I will look into them, but not now. However form the top of my head: long í shortens before a cluster.
from me:
yá Ainúron alquen lá nemiélane
nemiélane >>> némiélane, as we got rid of the nm cluster preventing the lengthening.
from me:
Also, as you're using LĀ-negation in the rest of the text you should lá- as the simple negative prefix: maranwentar lámartaine
Apparently la- as a prefix doesn't have the long a.
The only thing I should clarify is that the gods being referred to are other gods created by the merging of Tiamat and Apsu's waters, so the pronominal would be pl. vs dual
As I mentioned above: ontanet Ainur "created [dual in a very vague reference to Apsu and Tiamat doing the creation] the gods [plural, so all the other gods apart from A &T]"
'of heaven' is a genitive case so tarmenelo?
I think the genitive of tarmenel would be tarmenélo with prosodic lengthening, cf. Ilúvatar -> Ilúvatáro. I used the possessive-adjectival case here, as I felt like the relationship was more intrinsic.