Elvish languages (Tolkien)

The first stanza of Tolkien's Quenya poem "Namárië", written in his Tengwar script.

J. R. R. Tolkien began to construct his first Elvin tongue c. 1910–1911 while he was at the King Edward's School, Birmingham and which he later named Quenya (c. 1915). At that time, Tolkien was already familiar with Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and several ancient Germanic languages, Gothic, Old Norse and Old English. He had invented several cryptographic codes such as Animalic, and two or three constructed languages including Naffarin. He then discovered Finnish, which he described many years later as "like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me."[T 2] He had started his study of the Finnish language to be able to read the Kalevala epic.

The ingredients in Quenya are various, but worked out into a self-consistent character not precisely like any language that I know. Finnish, which I came across when I first begun to construct a 'mythology' was a dominant influence, but that has been much reduced [now in late Quenya]. It survives in some features: such as the absence of any consonant combinations initially, the absence of the voiced stops b, d, g (except in mb, nd, ng, ld, rd, which are favoured) and the fondness for the ending -inen, -ainen, -oinen, also in some points of grammar, such as the inflexional endings -sse (rest at or in), -nna (movement to, towards), and -llo (movement from); the personal possessives are also expressed by suffixes; there is no gender.[T 3]

Tolkien with his Quenya pursued a double aesthetic goal: "classical and inflected".[T 4] This urge, in fact, was the motivation for his creation of a 'mythology'. While the language developed, he needed speakers, history for the speakers and all real dynamics, like war and migration: "It was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of 'history' for Elvish tongues".[T 5][2]

The Elvish languages underwent countless revisions in grammar, mostly in conjugation and the pronominal system. The Elven vocabulary was not subject to sudden or extreme change; except during the first conceptual stage c. 1910–c. 1920. Tolkien sometimes changed the "meaning" of an Elvish word, but he almost never disregarded it once invented, and he kept on refining its meaning, and countlessly forged new synonyms. Moreover, Elven etymology was in a constant flux. Tolkien delighted in inventing new etymons for his Elvish vocabulary.

From the outset, Tolkien used comparative philology and the tree model as his major tools in his constructed languages. He usually started with the phonological system of the proto-language and then proceeded in inventing for each daughter language the many mechanisms of sound change needed.

I find the construction and the interrelation of the languages an aesthetic pleasure in itself, quite apart from The Lord of the Rings, of which it was/is in fact independent.[T 6]

In the early 30s Tolkien decided that the proto-language of the Elves was Valarin, the tongue of the gods or Valar: "The language of the Elves derived in the beginning from the Valar, but they change it even in the learning, and moreover modified and enriched it constantly at all times by their own invention."[T 7] In his Comparative Tables, Tolkien describes the mechanisms of sound change in the following daughter languages: Qenya, Lindarin (a dialect of Qenya), Telerin, Old Noldorin (or Fëanorian), Noldorin (or Gondolinian), Ilkorin (esp. of Doriath), Danian of Ossiriand, East Danian, Taliska, West Lemberin, North Lemberin, and East Lemberin.[T 8]

In his lifetime J.R.R. Tolkien never ceased to experiment on his constructed languages, and they were subjected to many revisions. They had many grammars with substantial differences between different stages of development. After the publication of The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), the grammar rules of his major Elvish languages Quenya, Telerin and Sindarin went through very few changes (this is late Elvish 1954–1973).

Internal history of the Elvish languages.

The Elvish languages are a family of several related languages and dialects. Here is set briefly the story of the Elvish languages as conceived by Tolkien around 1965. They all originated from:

• Primitive Quendian or Quenderin, the proto-language of all the Elves who awoke together in the far east of Middle-earth, Cuiviénen, and began "naturally" to make a language. All the Elvish languages are presumed to be descendants of this common ancestor.

Tolkien invented two subfamilies (subgroups) of the Elvish languages. "The language of the Quendelie (Elves) was thus very early sundered into the branches Eldarin and Avarin".[T 9]

• Avarin is the language of various Elves of the Second and Third Clans, who refused to come to Valinor. It developed into at least six Avarin languages.
• Common Eldarin is the language of the three clans of the Eldar during the Great March to Valinor. It developed into:
  • Quenya, the language of the Elves in Eldamar beyond the Sea; it divided into:
    • Vanyarin Quenya or Quendya, colloquial speech of the Vanyar, the Elves of the First Clan;
    • Noldorin Quenya (and later Exilic Quenya), colloquial speech of the Noldor, the Elves of the Second Clan.
  • Common Telerin, the early language of all the Teleri
    • Telerin, the language of the Teleri, Elves of the Third Clan, living in Tol Eressëa and Alqualondë.
    • Nandorin, the language of the Nandor, a branch of the Third Clan. It developed into various Nandorin and Silvan languages.
    • Sindarin is the language of the Sindar, a branch of the Third Clan, who dwelt in Beleriand. Its dialects include Doriathrin, in Doriath; Falathrin, in the Falas of Beleriand; North Sindarin, in Dorthonion and Hithlum; Noldorin Sindarin, spoken by the Exiled Noldor.

The acute accent (á, é, í, ó, ú) or circumflex accent (â, ê, î, ô, û, ŷ) marks long vowels in the Elvish languages. When writing Common Eldarin forms, Tolkien often used the macron to indicate long vowels. The diaeresis (ä, ë, ö) is normally used to show that a short vowel is to be separately pronounced, that it is not silent or part of a diphthong. For example, the last four letters of Ainulindalë represent two syllables, and the first three letters of Eärendil represent two syllables.

Internal development of the Elvish word for "Elves"

Below is a family tree of the Elvish languages, showing how the Primitive Quendian word kwendī "people" (later meaning "Elves") was altered in the descendant languages.[T 10]

Time Period	Languages
The Awakening	Primitive Quendian The tongue of all Elves at Cuiviénen kwendī
The Westward March	Quenya Vanyar and Noldor Quendi	Common Eldarin The tongue of the Elves during the March Kwendī			Avarin Avari, those Elves who stayed at Cuiviénen and from there spread across Middle-earth (many languages) Kindi, Cuind, Hwenti, Windan, Kinn-lai
The First Age of the Sun		Telerin Teleri in Aman Pendi	Sindarin Elves of the Third Clan in Beleriand did not use it: "P.Q. *kwende, *kwendī disappeared altogether."[T 10] The exiled Noldor used in their Sindarin: Penedh, pl. Penidh[T 11]	Nandorin Elves of Ossiriand sg. Cwenda[T 11]
				Silvan[lower-alpha 1] The Wood-elves of the Vale of Anduin Penni

The languages can thus be mapped to the migrations of the sundered elves.[T 10]

Elvish Languages mapped to the Sundering of the Elves: Languages (such as Quenya) are shown in Boldface Blue; examples are the words for "Elves" in those languages (such as "Quendi"), shown in Italic Black. These are overlaid on a map of Arda, with Aman on the left, Middle-earth on the right, the arrows and Green labels showing the migrations of the Elvish kindreds. The lowest Elves, the Avari, fragmented into many kindreds with different languages.[T 10] Locations are diagrammatic.

Sindarin and Quenya have similar pronunciations. The following table gives pronunciation for each letter or cluster in international phonetic script and examples:

Vowels

Consonants (differing from English)

• The letter c always denotes [k], even before i and e; for instance, Celeborn is pronounced Keleborn, and Cirth is pronounced Kirth; thus, it never denotes the soft c [*s] in cent.
• The letter g always denotes the hard [ɡ], as in give, rather than the soft form [*d͡ʒ], as in gem.
• The letter r denotes an alveolar trill [r], similar to Spanish rr.
• The digraph dh, as in Caradhras, denotes [ð] as in English this.
• The digraph ch, as in Orch, denotes [χ] as in Welsh bach, and never like the ch [*t͡ʃ] in English chair.
• The digraph lh denotes [ɬ] as in Welsh ll.

"Sarati" in Tolkien's first Elvish script, Sarati

Tolkien wrote out most samples of Elvish languages with the Latin alphabet, but within the fiction he imagined many writing systems for his Elves. The best-known are the "Tengwar of Fëanor", but the first system he created, c. 1919, is the "Tengwar of Rúmil", also called the sarati. In chronological order, Tolkien's scripts are:[3]

1. Tengwar of Rúmil or Sarati
2. Gondolinic runes (Runes used in the city of Gondolin)
3. Valmaric script
4. Andyoqenya
5. Qenyatic
6. Tengwar of Fëanor
7. The Cirth of Daeron

Prior to their exile, the Elves of the Second Clan (the Noldor) used first the Sarati of Rúmil to record their tongue, Quenya. In Middle-earth, Sindarin was first recorded using the "Elvish runes" or Cirth, named later certar in Quenya. A runic inscription in Quenya was engraved on Aragorn's sword, Andúril. The sword's inscriptions were not shown in the movie trilogy, nor in the book.

The Etymologies is Tolkien's etymological dictionary of the Elvish languages, written during the 1930s. It was edited by Christopher Tolkien and published as the third part of The Lost Road and Other Writings, the fifth volume of the History of Middle-earth. Christopher Tolkien described it as "a remarkable document." It is a list of roots of the Proto-Elvish language, from which J. R. R. Tolkien built his many Elvish languages, especially Quenya, Noldorin and Ilkorin. The Etymologies do not form a unified whole, but incorporate layer upon layer of changes. It was not meant to be published. In his introduction to The Etymologies, Christopher Tolkien wrote that his father was "more interested in the processes of change than he was in displaying the structure and use of the languages at any given time."[T 14]

The Etymologies has the form of a scholarly work listing the "bases" or "roots" of the protolanguage of the Elves: Common Eldarin and Primitive Quendian. Under each base, the next level of words (marked by an asterisk) are "conjectural", that is, not recorded by Elves or Men (it is not stated who wrote The Etymologies inside Middle-earth) but presumed to have existed in the proto-Elvish language. After these, actual words which did exist in the Elvish languages are presented. Words from the following Elvish languages are presented: Danian, Doriathrin (a dialect of Ilkorin), Eldarin (the proto-language of the Eldar), (Exilic) Noldorin, Ilkorin, Lindarin (a dialect of Quenya), Old Noldorin, Primitive Quendian (the oldest proto-language), Qenya, Telerin.

The following examples from The Etymologies illustrate how Tolkien worked with the "bases":

• BAD- *bad- judge. Cf. MBAD-. Not in Q [Qenya]. N [Noldorin] bauð (bād-) judgement; badhor, baðron judge.
• TIR- watch, guard. Q tirin I watch, pa.t. [past tense] tirne; N tiri or tirio, pa.t. tiriant. Q tirion watch-tower, tower. N tirith watch, guard; cf. Minnas-tirith. PQ [Primitive Quendian] *khalatirnō 'fish-watcher', N heledirn = kingfisher; Dalath Dirnen 'Guarded Plain'; Palantir 'Far-seer'.

This organization reflects what Tolkien did in his career as a philologist. With English words, he worked backwards from existing words to trace their origins. With Elvish he worked both backward and forward. The etymological development was always in flux but the lexicon of the Elvish tongues remained rather stable. An Elvish word (Noldorin or Quenya) once invented would not change or be deleted but its etymology could be changed many times.

Tolkien was much interested in words. Thus The Etymologies are preoccupied with them, and only a few Elvish phrases are presented. The Etymologies discuss mainly the Quenya, Old Noldorin, and Noldorin languages. The text gives many insights into Elvish personal and place names which otherwise would remain opaque.

Christopher Tolkien stated that his father "wrote a good deal on the theory of sundokarme or 'base structure' ... but like everything else it was frequently elaborated and altered".[T 14] In 2003 and 2004, Vinyar Tengwar issues 45 and 46 provided addenda and corrigenda to the original published text.

• Languages constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien
• A Elbereth Gilthoniel
• Namárië
• Lhammas

This section lists the many sources by Tolkien documenting Elvish texts.

See also Douglas A. Anderson, Carl F. Hostetter: A Checklist, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007).

• Elvish.org FAQ – Article by Carl F. Hostetter. Succinct citations of Tolkien's own views of the purpose, completeness and usability of his languages.
• The Elvish Linguistic Fellowship: Publishes the journals Parma Eldalamberon, Tengwestië, and Vinyar Tengwar