Comments by Sami Paldanius
These are the 10 posts of 18 by Sami Paldanius.
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West of moon, East of sun into Sindarin / Tengwar
Tarana wrote:
I was looking for a translation of "West of (the) moon, East of (the) sun" into Sindarin
The intended thought of those phrases within Tolkien's poem[1] in LotR is "toward the west [as viewed] from the Moon, toward the east [as viewed] from the Sun".
A non-ambiguous translation would therefore be na ndûn o(d)/uin Ithil, na 'rûn o(d)/uin Anor; although the preposition na might presumably be omitted in poetic language (leaving the lenited[2] first consonants nd- and 'r- to indicate the "motion toward X", in resemblance of certain real-life languages) in light of the fact that Tolkien gave us the verse Ónen i-Estel Edain "I gave the Hope [to] Men" (a syntactic reversal of Modern English "I gave Men the Hope").
O or its prevocalic variant od means "from", and uin stands for "from the". (With Sindarin na 'rûn one can also compare the attested Quenya name Rómenna "Eastwards".)
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Help with Sindarin grammar
1) I have no issue with ✶Elin-Gelebrin .
2) If this is to be a personal name, I can easily see the verb "beget" being represented by either a short adjective/action noun (viz. ✶eduin < OS ✶eton-ia < -jā), the third participle ( -iel ) or an agental noun type formation such as ✶ed-on¹, -onweg, -odhron for a male and edodhril or ✶eduneth for a female. "Trustworthy" might simply be conveyable with ✶estellen or ✶astorren — since -ren (= -len ) means "X-like in hue OR WORTH" (and it's predecessor -rin was used to translate "X-able, -ible" during the Early Noldorin stage of the language : see e.g. eldamo.org).
¹ From OS ✶eton-no (see similarly derived words from TOLKIEN, LISTED in "A Gateway to Sindarin" p. 162) or ✶etono (cp. TAN : eldamo.org).
For examples of how the final and first consonants of Sindarin compound elements change when joined, there is a handy free guide to consult at www.tolkiendil.com .
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Help with translation into Sindarin.
Being prompted by the derivation-attempt of synonyms of the thankfully existing and attested dagnir from (N)DAK, I am still searching for Tolkien's own examples, trying to ascertain his ultimate opinion on how the nasal + k/kʰ + r combination(s) developed into Sindarin from earlier Eldarin.
The only phonetical pointer which I've found thus far is bachor (< OS *mbañkʰro) from c. 1940, though pethron and nathron — both being agent-nouns from plosive-final (..K, ..P, ..T) roots — are obviously also noteworthy.
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Help with translation into Sindarin.
@Elaran:
[...] 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.
Also, since we don't know the gloss for the root BEREK itself, the verb ✷ breg(a)- [ with which cp. dreg(a)-, groga- ] might be intransitive.
After all these considerations, simply using the attested verb breitha- with a preposition [ dan or bo ] before an animate object seems like the recommendable course if one desired to use the word-stock of BEREK for translating "to attack (sb)".
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.
Past tense forms as different in meaning as English "I saw", "I have seen", "I had seen". Indeed I'll be glad to be reminded of how such can be formed.
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Help with translation into Sindarin.
Given the pair aglar / egleria- , it seems to me that a verb derivation *bregedia- could be used to convey "to submit sth to sudden violence".
Another makeshift way to convey "to attack" would be the (rather Modern English like?) use of the theoretical verb *(coth)alcha- "to (enmity-)rush" (< ALAK; cp. ercha- , narcha- ).
I would forgo the English passive + preposition + agent construction and simply translate the expression literally as "[Help!] Assassins (-> *doldagnir(rim) ¹ ?) attacked X" — until someone tells me that we know how to form more than one past tense in Sindarin. ;-]
[ ¹ In imitation of the name Dolwethil (not "Dulwethil") which contains an element from the root (N)DUL. In the Finnic languages, "assassin" is translated by a compound with elements whose meanings are synonymous with the above. We also seem to lack any Eldarin pointers for "hired, paid", etc. ]
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Where to learn sindarin?
The Neo-Sindarin textbook by the webmistress of realelvish.net can be viewed (at least in part?) at books.google.fi
The formation of the Plural Nouns (by myself): arcanaverba.neocities.org
Eldamo's Sindarin section: eldamo.org
There is a very educational forum discussion about Tolkien's late view of the Sindarin future tense (hopefully readable until April 2, 2019) at plus.google.com
When it comes to creating compound words and names (i.e. the question "what will -x+y- sounds produce?"), the second best thing after owning Salo's book "A Gateway to Sindarin" is the website www.tolkiendil.com
The classical mode for writing Sindarin with Tengwar: tolkienonline.de
The mode of Beleriand: at.mansbjorkman.net
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-u dual (Quenya)
Reconstructions of the U-dual in some high-visibility online sources.
[ realelvish.net ]
[ en.wikibooks.org ]
[ folk.uib.no ]
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Serve (Quenya)
Regarding "to serve", the word-adaptation which one finds the quickest, here or at Eldamo [Original appearance: elvish.org], is probably used by many neo-Q. writers — even though /beujâ-/ in The Etymologies is actually the stem behind the Old Noldorin/Sindarin words, and some W-diphthong roots like KEW instead have a -ta- derivative as the TRANSITIVE verb on the Quenya (Valinorean) side of the language family.
Tom's question also includes an important point: Do we know how to derive Quenya verbs which mean (or which include the sense) "to behave like X"?
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Arrogant (Quenya)
Given the two meanings of #z-j-d [is.gd], I suspect Hebrew-speakers or -lovers might feel tempted to use wel(va) [eldamo.org], either alone or as a compound element.
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Arrogant (Quenya)
At Eldamo one finds the close-call neologism * immoquanta "full of him/herself, egotistic, narcissistic" — compare e.g. Finnish (yli+)itse+varma "(overly) self-confident".
