sindarin for "The Elfmaid's Lament"

Best I can come up with is:

i elleth glim nírol în

or:

i ellas glim nírol în

Literally: the elfmaid voice sorrowful hers

Suggestions for improvement? (Thanks!)

For me, I would say i-Naergon en-Eledhes. Which I believe would be The Lament of the Elfmaid.

A Sindarin search on "lament" does not find naergon, but a search for naergon does. And a sindarin search for eledhes finds nothing, but a search for elf-maid finds eledhes.

The indexing on this dictionary, which is otherwise great, needs improvement!

Two questions: (1) Why not:

i-Eledhes Naergon în,

which would be The Elf-maid's Lament?

(2) Why eledhes vs ellas, elles, or elleth?

I use Eldamo. Naergon eldamo.org and Eldhes eldamo.org and also has Elleth eldamo.org. I would use either of those because they are already attested. :)

In multiple languages, the genitive and the possessive are considered identical. Sindarin also belongs to this category. However, English is different as it requires adding an apostrophe "s" to indicate possession. Therefore, it is necessary to adjust to the idea of possessives as "of" phrases.

A friend’s laugh - the laughter of a friend - i-lalaith mellon or using the Neo-Sindarin lall i-lall mellon. The laugh of a friend.

You could also do i-Naergon Eledhes/Elleth. I don't believe there is a need for the reflexive "în". This would be "The lemant of a elf maid." Oh, and you don't have to capitalize either. I just liked the looks of it. Thinking it was a title. :)

To me i-Eledhes Naergon în reads like "The elf maid of her own lemant."

My intended meaning is that an elf-maid expressed a powerful lament about her sorrowful plight.

So, it is "her" lament, as it's by and about her.

It's my understanding that the i- expression is in reference to a specific person as opposed to a generic one.

Alternatively, how about:

Elleth Naergoned.

From sindarinlessons.weebly.com

Oh, and the place where it happened was renamed The Elfmaid's Lament, so it is a title of a sort.

I would advise not to use weebly it is has inaccuracies and has incomplete information. See here at eldamo.org about possessive pronouns.

Here is info on the definite article i eldamo.org.

I think Naergon Elleth "A Woeful lament of a Elfmaid" would work perfect for you then. Unless some others have any other ideas.

I know it may seem silly to some, but:

"The Lament of the Elfmaid" just does not mean the same to me as "The Elfmaid's Lament".

In my story, "The Elfmaid's Lament" refers to an elfmaid who is overcome by sorrow and that grief comes out powerfully in song. The focus of the phrase is on the elfmaid.

"The Lament of the Elfmaid" puts the focus on the lament and not the person. Plus it's ambiguous, as it could be "about" an elfmaid instead of "by" one.

I'll confess that the linguistic-oriented grammar explanations hurt my brain.
It often short-circuits when presented with this info.

The reflexive possessive " în" seems like it ought to be useful here, or the possessive suffixes.

Thoughts?

There seem to be several misunderstandings here. I'll try to address them all, but some of my explanations may be slightly technical.

Firstly, to put to rest the question of genitives and possessives in Sindarin: Sindarin makes no distinction between A of B and B's A. To give you an example, the following two phrases (both composed and translated by Tolkien himself, so they are "canonical") are both composed from a noun followed by a name: Certhas Daeron "Daeron's Runes" and Lest Melian "Girdle of Melian".

Therefore, both "An Elf-maid's Lament" and "Lament of an Elf-maid" will be Naergon Elleth in Sindarin, ignoring the question of which words you choose for "Elf-maid" and "lament". There is simply no way around that. Rínor's suggestions were valid.

Regarding the reflexive possessive pronoun în - it simply does not fit here. A construction like i-Eledhes Naergon în does not mean what you intend it to mean; rather, it means, perhaps, something along the lines of "an Elf-maid belongs to her own lament", and to me at least that seems like a very strange thing to say.

In a construction like Naergon Elleth "Lament of an Elf-maid" does not suffer from an ambiguity of whether the lament is about an Elf-maid or by an Elf-maid. The "about" meaning would necessarily be constructed differently, Naergon oh Elleth.

The last thing to note is regarding the English meanings: there is actually very little meaningful difference between the English phrases "lament of the Elf-maid" and "the Elf-maid's lament", and certainly little to no difference in focus. To use syntactical terminology, in both cases lament is the head of the noun phrase, and therefore lament is the word in focus. In the case of "lament of the Elf-maid", the prepositional phrase "of the Elf-maid" adds information about lament, but the focus is still, of course, lament. Likewise, in the case of "the Elf-maid's lament", the phrase "(the) Elf-maid's" specifies which lament we are talking about, i.e. adds more information about the lament. The only truly tangible difference between these two options is the ambiguity of which part is definite in "the Elf-maid's lament" - it can be parsed either as [[the Elf-maid's] lament] or as [the [Elf-maid's] lament].

But this, as I said, is rather besides the point, since the only available option in Sindarin is [lament][Elf-maid].

As to word choices and definiteness: "Elf-maid" can be rendered as Elleth or Eledhes, choose whichever. "Lament" can be naergon, or a somewhat less emphatic naenad (the latter is a neologism). Since we are talking about a specific Elf-maid, I would render this as Naergon i-Elleth, though you can also make the whole phrase definite ("The lament of the Elf-maid") - i-Naergon i-Elleth.

I hope this makes things clearer.

Thank you EVER so much for your explanation. You made this topic very clear and understandable to me!

Even better, this was extremely helpful:

'A construction like i-Eledhes Naergon în does not mean what you intend it to mean; rather, it means, perhaps, something along the lines of "an Elf-maid belongs to her own lament", and to me at least that seems like a very strange thing to say.'

It IS a very strange thing to say and absolutely PERFECT for the story I'm writing. In my story, an elf-maid travelling thru Sarn Erech received such dreadful news that when she sang that evening, her grief overmastered her. Out poured such a song of sorrow and grief it caused all the living within hearing to be filled with grief and anguish. The dead flocked to the area and stood silently and listened respectfully.

The innkeeper renamed his inn "The Elfmaid's Lament", but the 'strange construction' fits even better.

The story has a letter from the master of the nearest elf haven, Edhellond, reporting this incident to the Lady of Lorien. He's gotten garbled accounts of it because those who know the full story are not talking. The 'strange construction' of the name will only add to his puzzlement and I'm changing his letter to pass that along.

Thanks again!