The seventh line of Ae Adar Nín, Tolkien’s Sindarin translation of the Lord’s Prayer (VT44/21). The first word ar is a form of a “and”. The second word díheno is the imperative form of díhena- “to forgive”, followed by ammen “for us”, a combination of an “to, for” and men “us”.
The fourth word is the definite article i “the”, followed by the plural form úgerth of úgarth “trespass, ✱misdeed” and the lenited form vin of the possessive pronoun min “ours”. The adjectival elements follow the noun as is usual in Sindarin. See the entry for the second line of this prayer for a discussion of the use of the definite article i “the” before the possessed noun in this phrase.
Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:
> ar díhen-o am-men i úgerth vin [← min] = “✱and forgive-(imperative) for-us the trespasses ours”
Conceptual Development: Tolkien initially wrote the (singular) form ugarth “trespass” after the verb before deleting it and writing the rest of the phrase, which may help explain why the definite article is not in its usual plural form before vowels: in. Tolkien first wrote the unlenited form min of the pronoun “our” before replacing it with the lenited form vin. In both min and vin, the vowel i was short where it was long in the previous line of the prayer, but this may have been a slip.
The seventh line of Átaremma, Tolkien’s Quenya translation of the Lord’s Prayer. The first word is ar “and”, followed by a combination of the imperative particle á and the (dative) second person plural pronoun men “[for] us”. Next follows apsene, the aorist form of the verb apsen- “forgive”. The final word úcaremmar “our trespasses” is the first person plural exclusive possessive form of úcarë, with the usual plural suffix -r indicating the possessed noun was also plural (“trespasses” as opposed to “trespass”).
Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:
> ar á-me-n apsenë úcare-mma-r = “✱and (imperative)-us-for forgive trespass-our-(plural)”
Conceptual Development: Earlier versions of the prayer used a different verb avatyar- for “forgive”, in what was probably a suffixed imperative form avatyara (I-IIa) or ávatyara (IIb-IV). In version I-IV, this was followed by the ablative form mello “[from] us” of the pronoun me.
Earlier versions of the prayer used a variety of words for “trespass”: lucassë (I), lucië (IIa-IIb), luhta (III-IV deleted) and rohta (III-IV). Most instances used the same possessive suffix -mma “our” as the final verion of the prayer, but version III used an independent pronoun menya, in its plural form menye to agree with the plural noun “trespasses”.
| I |IIa|IIb|III|IV|V|VI| |ar| |avatyara|ávatyara|ámen| |mello|apsene| |lucassemmar|i luciemmar|menye {luhtar >>} rohtar|{luhtammar >>} rohtammar|úcaremmar|