Sindarin 

ae adar nín

Ae Adar Nín

Tolkien’s translation of the Lord’s Prayer into Sindarin, composed sometime in the 1950s, first published in the “Ae Adar Nín” article in Vinyar Tengwar #44 (VT44/21). According to Bill Welden, it is written on the back of the postcard used to write version V (the second-to-last version) of Átaremma, Tolkien’s Quenya translation of the same prayer. Tolkien omitted the last two lines of the prayer from the Sindarin translation.

Tolkien did not provide an explicit translation, so the English text is from the common English translation of this prayer among Catholics. English words with no Sindarin counterpart are in brackets. Further discussion can be found in the analysis of the individual phrases. My analysis largely follows that of Bill Welden’s “Ae Adar Nín” article (VT44/21-30), though I also consulted David Salo’s analysis of the prayer (GS/231-3).

ae adar nín i vi menel

our Father who [art] in Heaven

The first line of Ae Adar Nín, Tolkien’s Sindarin translation of the Lord’s Prayer (VT44/21). The first word Ae is probably a variation of the vocative a “O”. The second word is adar “father”, modified by the possessive pronoun nín “my”, with the adjectival element following the noun as is usual in Sindarin. The fourth word is i “who” followed by vi the lenited form of mi “in” and menel “heaven”. There is no Sindarin word for “to be” in this phrase, as there is in English (“art”).

Both Bill Welden and David Salo point out (VT44/22, GS/231) that Tolkien’s use of the 1st-person-singular possessive pronoun nín “my” in this first phrase (where the original prayer had “our”) is somewhat peculiar, since elsewhere in the prayer he used mín for the 1st-person-plural possessive “our”. Bill Welden suggested that Tolkien may have use the 1st-singular here to connote greater intimacy (VT44/22).

As pointed out by Bill Welden (VT44/23-4), Tolkien did not use Q. menel for the Christian Heaven in the final Quenya version of the prayer, replacing it with the name Q. Eruman. Elsewhere, S. menel properly referred only to “the heavens” (holding the stars) and its application to the Christian Heaven would not be appropriate (MR/387). Perhaps Tolkien would have replace S. Menel with a Sindarinized form ✱Eruvan of the Quenya name, if he had made the same change in the Sindarin prayer.

Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:

> ae Adar nín i vi Menel = “✱O Father mine who [art] in Heaven”

a

o

O Elbereth Gilthoniel A Elbereth Gilthoniel. The alternative form ae may be used when the next word begins in a: Ae Adar nín, O my Father (VT44:23). By another theory, ae represents a + the definite article i (✱a i Adar nín "o the Father of mine").

a

interjection. o

interj. o. A Elbereth Gilthoniel 'O Elbereth Who lit the Stars'.

Sindarin [(PE17 Sindarin Corpus) PE17:20] -. Group: Parma Eldalamberon 17 Sindarin Corpus. Published by