ti thornath: ach gerion cé lostathar trî ith rhîw ngerthob

I am sure this is all sorts of messed up. But I wanted to try my hand a sentence that had a mixture of things in it to see how it all works. So I took magic card text for a called called Balduvian Bears.

The text reads: “They’re a hardy bunch, but I’d still bet that they just slept through the worst of the cold times.” —Disa the Restless, journal entry

So, knowing the limited vocabulary of Sindarin I came up with: They are all (a) steadfast-group, but (I ponder) if (they will sleep) through the horrible winters.

I came up with: ti thornath: ach gerion cé lostathar trî ith rhîw ngerthob

ti pron "they are all", Thorn adj. “steadfast” + ath suf. “Collective or group plural”, :

ach conj. “but”, gerion 1st per sg. “I ponder”, cé conj. “if”, ” lostathar v. 3rd per. pl. “they will sleep” trî prep “through”, i article. “the”, gorthob adj. “horrible”, rhîw n. “winter”

Would love to hear your thoughts, or different ways I should look at it.

Comments and corrections:

• The collective plural suffix is used for nouns, not for adjectives. In truth I would avoid inserting "all" into this to begin with, as I am not sure we know how "they all" should be formulated, and the quantifier is not present in the original text anyway. I would rephrase "They’re a hardy bunch" as "They [are] a steadfast people" - Ti lî thorn.

• I believe that ach should cause mutation of the following word (though I think some might disagree with me on this score); thus > ach 'erion [...].

• I would use pi for "if". That being said, I do not think this word is even applicable in this context, it doesn't make sense to me.

• Your translation also flips the past tense into a future tense... Why?

• I would recommend against using losta- for "sleep" (it is better as the verb "to bloom"); in Quenya this root is verbal, and in older drafts of Sindarin it was also a basic verb, so I would use lor- here.

• The definite plural of rhîw would be ith-rîw, with the rhotic consonant revoiced.

• The plural of gorthob is gerthyb. For the lenited form thereof, it is common practice in Neo-Sindarin to employ a clearer spelling convention that Tolkien, and write ñorthob (pl. ñerthyb) instead of ngorthob.

  • The reason for this is because Tolkien's spelling convention is at times ambiguous: e.g. with the word galad "radiance", Tolkien would write "the radiance" as i ngalad and "for radiance" as a ngalad, but in truth they would be pronounced differently - [ɪŋalad] vs. [aŋgalad]; thus, it is standard practice in Neo-Sindarin writing to write these as i ñalad and a ñgalad instead, to better reflect the pronunciation.

I'll offer a translation of the original sentence: They’re a hardy bunch, but I’d still bet that they just slept through the worst of the cold times.

Ti lî thorn, ach ebgenin i olúrer trí i·raw-egil el·lui ring.

Lit.: "They [are] a people steadfast, but I expect that they slept through the worst of the times cold."

A few clarifications of my translation:

• olúrer: 3rd person plural past tense of lor-.

• i·raw-egil: nominalised form of raw-egil, itself a plural of raw-ogol, a superlative of ogol "bad"; thus i·raw-egil = "the worst" (pl.). Note that ogol, due to its etymology, has the very irregular (reconstructed) plural egil (instead of the regularly expected *egyl).

• el·lui: from en (definite genitive preposition) + lui = plural of lû "time", with nasal mutation (because plural). The exact mutation to use in this case is subject to debate; I am basing this off of my previous notes, but I was planning to revisit the subject later this year.

That was my fault flopping from past to future when I was trying to think of a way to rephrase. As, I wasnt sure how to do "worst" for even "cold times". I rephrase that sentence so many times LOL. Thank you for your comments it helps be better understand how to put things together.