Comments by Elaran
These are the 10 posts of 195 by Elaran.
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Help with translation into Sindarin.
No, Noldorin also had "parf > perf". It is more of a case of overlooked evidence, I think. Although one can offer counter examples, "aCCi > eCC" outnumbers them. We could just mark the entries as unsafe or add a note at the end.
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Help with translation into Sindarin.
I can (as I have administrative powers), and I would (since it is indeed problematic). But that is what "Parviphith" (i.e. H. K. Fauskanger's wordlist) offers, and Parf Edhellen's owner (aka Aldalëon) is against changing the original entries from external documents. So I will leave it to him.
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Help with translation into Sindarin.
2 - "ú-vedir" would rather mean "(they) cannot eat", as Tolkien says (after stating his dislike towards using √U for negation and choosing √LA) here:
The nuance will remain important. úchebin will mean not 'I do not keep', but 'I cannot keep'.
4 - lhûg does not necessarily mean "dragon". That meaning was only given in 1940 drafts, whereas all Post-LotR works gloss it as "reptile, snake, serpent, worm". The root of this word, which is √LOK, simply means "bend, loop", so arguably lhûg can be used with any thin and long creature (without limbs). It even applies to hair: loch "ringlet" < LOKko, also Q. lócë "curl of hair" & Q. locin[a?] "bent".
4.1 - The plural of hwand should not be "hwaind" because its final consonant cluster (i.e. -nd) would prevent I-intrusion. So the plural should be hwend (cf. parf > perf [not "pairf"], cam(m) > cem(m) [not "caim"], anfang > enfeng [not "enfaing"]).
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Help with translation into Sindarin.
@Alden: It has problems, no lenition or pluralisation of some elements. Here instead:
Theryn ló-vedir thluig.
I replaced leweg with lhûg (lenited plural "thluig") because there is evidence that the former may need to be lŷg which is only glossed as "snake" whereas lhûg has both "snake" and "worm" senses.
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Help with translation into Sindarin.
You have beaten me at my own game! You are right, nasals vanished before spirantal clusters, and medial "ŋχ" did not become "ŋg" until after that. But bachor can be simply from MBAKʰrō, without the intrusion of "n", the result would remain the same either way. The same goes for lathron, hence its attested ancient form "la(n)srondo" with the "n" in parentheses. But pethron is definitely from KWEnTro-ndo, and tachol & niphred are also good examples. So, my "dangron" should rather be *dachron:
NDAŋKro-ndo > ndaŋkʰrondo > ndaŋχrondo > daŋχrondo > daŋχrond > daχrond > daχronn > daχron = *dachron
I also thought that we could utilise BERÉK by prefixing (a)n- as in aníra- "to long for" and natha- "to bring help to". Sadly, I don't think that we know enough about how that would work with a root which shows syncopation in isolation. Instead, if we dare to reassign the attested sense of breitha- to *brega- (arguably more fitting), we could rather use breitha- for "to attack" directly.
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Help with translation into Sindarin.
Agreed on all points with the BEREK discussion.
I now see what you mean regarding past tense, though I still fail to see why we should not use the passive participle. As for different forms of past tense, you are right that we have only one, since Common Eldarin "I saw" and "I have seen" were unified in Sindarin. We could try reconstructing "I was seeing" (in fact one could argue that present imperfect is already attested, and we have arguably enough material to attempt the idea), but no need to go there now.
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Help with translation into Sindarin.
@Sami Padanius: Unlike aglar & egleria- which are derived directly from aklar(a) < KALAR, breged comes from ancient "BEREK-e-tē", which is clearly an earlier approach to Sindarin's gerund suffix -ed < -itā. That is to say, direct verbal derivations from BEREK would rather be breitha- (which is indeed attested), and *bregia- (although we lack attested verbs with "...gia...", possibly due to "initial kj/gj > k/g", occurring medially), or perhaps *breg- directly. In any case, I find BEREK "wild, fierce, violent, sudden" to be a fitting root for deriving "to attack". What I used was KOT(H) > oktā- > oktʰā- > oxþa- > oiþa- > oeþa- = *oetha- "to be hostile (towards), attack" (although it is more like "to make war", a connection which is shared by NDAK derivatives, so it can be overlooked with a semantic shift argument).
until someone tells me that we know how to form more than one past tense in Sindarin
Not sure what exactly you mean by this. But regardless, it would be safe to say that we do indeed know about past formations in more than one flavour.
I like using NDUL. I dislike dagnir, as with most late compounds for what should be early concepts, hence my *dangron (<NDAnKrō-ndō). I would have used *dagor (<NDAKrō) but it clashes with the attested dagor (<NDAKrō as well, though it should be *NDAKrē) which is "battle". So if I use NDUL as well, I would say *doldangron.
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Help with translation into Sindarin.
Trying to translate without having studied grammar beforehand (which I'm guessing is the case here) could hardly yield any proper results with a complex language like Sindarin, especially in cases like this where we lack attested vocabulary for what we wish to express. Sindarin has niether "assassin" nor "to attack" (from which the passive participle would be derived), and there is no way to form these words as neologisms consensually. I could say this, the other would say that, and both would be neither wrong nor right. But my attempt would be:
Ethio! [Name] *oethannen na *ndengryn!
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Translation and elfish writing
I would say:
Núyalë mir Lopotumbo ar Entulië.
"Descending into (the) Rabbithole and Returning."
Tengwar Transcription.Note: Earlier notes on Quenya has lopotundo for "rabbithole", but the second element of that compound tundo is rather used for tall hills and towers. Meanwhile the very similar sounding tumbo "deep valley" is derived from √TUB to which are assigned meanings like "deep, low, under, below ground, hollow, excavated". So, remaining close to the original while still aiming for accuracy, I made the change to *lopotumbo.
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Quenya translation help?
