Comments by Elaran
These are the 10 posts of 195 by Elaran.
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Help with Sindarin grammar
[Removed messages that were related to a (now resolved) misunderstanding, as well as my comment that started it, to avoid littering the topic.]
@Sami Paldanius: I have sent you a message and a "friendship request" on Facebook. If you wish to address anything else, we can speak privately there.
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Help with Sindarin grammar
Sadly, all of those sources are outdated (including the Gateway), severely so for some. And that "Sindarin Lessons" resource (by which you probably mean the "weebly" website) is bafflingly inaccurate, so I strongly advise staying away from it. I recommend this resource instead. And more importantly, I would recommend joining our instant messaging group Vinyë Lambengolmor where the foremost figures in the field (including David Salo) discuss the languages and help beginners.
1) "Why no hyphen?" - Because Gil-Galad and Gil-Estel are (false) compounds which rather mean "[spark]star of [word], whereas elin gelebrin is simply "silver stars". If you want the elements to form a compound name, that would rather be sg. Celebel (pl. Celebil, Celebelin). The correct singular form of elin gelebrin would be êl gelebren.
2) I would replace narchad with *haded (lenited chaded) from √SKAT "break asunder". I would not use "carfad" (or carphad) for "discussion", Tolkien gives athrabeth for that meaning. Finally, that "Londbar" does not work phonetically, and if it did, it would rather mean "Haven-home". I would need what exactly you mean by "homecoming", but working with "returning home" I would say Barradhed as a compound, or *Radhed na Mar separately.
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Help with Sindarin grammar
Greetings. There is a lot of misinformation on Sindarin grammar out there, either due to plain inaccuracies or because a resource is outdated. "Outdated" because Tolkien's notes are still being published in documents like the Parma Eldalamberon #22 from 2015. And so these documents, besides debunking old unattested theories, replaces some of his own older ideas. Which resource are you using for your studies?
1) It is correct, but there should not be a hyphen between the words.
2) That edonna- comes from Tolkien's Pre-1950 (i.e. non-canon) notes, showing a rather redundant ed "out". We have reason to think that the proper Sindarin form of the verb would be onna-. But "to beget trust" is an Anglicism that does not quite fit the Elvish languages in my opinion, I would rather express this as "to cause trust". I can approach that with a causative verbal suffix, which would yield "to make [someone] trust [something]". And so we would have *estella- (older *esteltha-) "to make trust" (which can also be interpreted as "to give hope" and "to strengthen/restore faith", since estel is "hope, trust, faith"), whose gerund would be *estellad.
[Edit removed.]
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translate Find the light in the Dark to Sindarin
Parf Edhellen can be very informative, but it is primarily a dictionary website, and so it cannot quite help with grammar. For example, to form the "i galad" part of the sentence, I would guess that you simply found galad (which is not quite "light" but rather "radiance") in the dictionary and used it directly, instead of using calad "light" and soft-mutating it to "galad" due to the preceding "i" (I should add that a soft mutated form of the "radiance" galad would be "ñalad"). So you ended up with a seemingly correct form by chance here (if it was indeed by chance and not purposeful), but the rest of the sentence does not work well.
That "rad" is rather "path", the verb is rad(a)- "to make/find a way" and the imperative form (which this sentence needs) is rado, though is not quite the right verb here. The final N in min already works as an article so the following "i" makes it "...the the..." in a way. And dûr should have undergone soft-mutation as it follows "i", which would have been "i nûr" (and not "i dhûr" because [n]dûr is a prenasalised word), though like I said the "i" is redundant.
Normally I skip to a proper translation, but I wanted to point these out to explain that Sindarin has a complex (far more so than I showed here) grammar, as intricate as real languages (if not more, in some cases), since you seemed interested in learning. With that, here is your requested translation:
Hiro i galad mi môr. - Find the light in the dark.
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quenya translation - elemental mage - problems of grammar
I would not worry about using istar. It is certainly better than using an adjective (ñóla) as a noun at any rate.
I prefer a more homogeneous pattern with such things. Here:
Vílistar Air-wizard (note the acute mark "VÍL...")
Nénistar Water-wizard
Cémistar Earth-wizard
Náristar Fire-wizard
Cálistar Light-wizard
Móristar Dark-wizard
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quenya translation - elemental mage - problems of grammar
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Phrase “Merry Christmas!” by Aldaleon
Yes, it must be referring to the winter solstice, after which the "Sun" starts going back "up" (having reached its lowest point in the sky).
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Sindarin Translation help for Pen and Paper RP
If the name is supposed to be used for those who sing as a profession or something along those lines, then it should be linnyr. Or if it is supposed to be (the descendant of) the "Third Clan's" original name (i.e. ancient "Lindāi" who were later called the Teleri), then it can be used if you distinguish the group's name with the addition of "e-Daur a Nen" and such. But now, here is the history of the term in Sindarin:
Its original Sindarin form was Glinnel (pl. Glinnil), which was "a word only known in historical lore" and referred the whole clan (i.e. all Lindar/Teleri). Later the Nandor (who still called themselves "Lindi (sg. Lind?)") came to Beleriand and the Sindar adapted that as Lindel (pl. Lindil) alongside (or later) Lindedhel (pl. Lindedhil) for the Nandor. The Sindar later replaced these with Laegel (pl. Laegil) "Green-elves" to refer to the Nandor, but the Nandor might have kept them while speaking Sindarin.
The (seemingly) latest Lindedhel (pl. Lindedhil) could arguably cover both the Sindar and the Nandor. But as I mentioned, it cannot be used for a small group of Elves by itself, so it needs additions like "e-Daur a Nen" to distinguish the group (otherwise Lindedhil would refer to "All Nandor (and Sindar)"). And given its rather complicated history, I would avoid them. Of course linnyr (i.e. the professional singers, if you will) also needs additions, to be more than "just some singers".
I can instead offer:
Torlinnor (pl. Torlinnyr) - "Forest-singers"
Haelinnor (pl. Haelinnyr) - "Far-singers"
Dúlinnor (pl. Dúlinnyr) - "[Twil/n]ight-singer(s)"Or:
Aerlinnor (pl. Aerlinnyr) - "[Sea/Holy]-singer(s)"
Randliron (pl. Randliryn) - "Wandering-reciter(s)"
Lirgon (pl. Lirgonin) - "Song-lord(s)"
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Sindarin Translation help for Pen and Paper RP
First issue: linnath would mean "(all) songs" (-ath is the "collective plural" suffix, not plain plural) rather than simply "singers". Quenya has Linda(r) for "Singer(s)", whose direct cognate would indeed be lind in Sindarin (and become linnath with -ath), but this word is already being used for "song". That is why the attested (partial) cognate of that term in Sindarin is rather Lindel (or Glinnel). But these terms refer to the Telerin Elves, not singers in general. So a combination of linna- "to sing" and the agental suffix -or would be more proper. That gives linnor, whose plural form would be linnyr.
That "en" should cause what we call "mixed mutation", which means (among other things) that the initial P, T, C(K) of the words that follow it need to become B, D, G. Also, "en" receives elision in these cases, which your first line misses although the other two show it. Hence my correction of "en-taur" to "e-Daur".
As for changing glad, the word requires its root to be "GALÁT" whereas we only have GÁLAD which yields galadh. It is an attested word, but there are no (published) documents which explain its etymology and attest "GALÁT", so I deem it unsafe to use. As for changing palan with haer, the latter is more fitting for the sense that you wish for the name. That should be all.
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Sindarin Translation help for Pen and Paper RP
There are indeed problems. I can go into detail if you wish, but for now I will simply offer more proper translations:
Linnyr e-Daur a Nen
Linnyr e-Daur Chaer
Linnyr e-Galadhuial