Teach me Elvish

Post by **Alatar** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 12:07 pm

Is there anyone here who could give me a grounding in Sindarin? Following along with TTBKs score discussion has reawakened my desire to understand a little Elvish. I'm not looking to be fluent, merely to be able to translate the poems in the books and also the lyrics used in the Soundtrack.

Bear in mind I have never studied Latin or Finnish and the most work I have ever done on Tolkien linguistics was to break down the ring verse in black speech.

Anyone?

Tue Dec 06, 2005 3:57 pm

I'll add my voice to this request. Although I am a notoriously bad linguist.

I would love to get NiennaSorrowing to come here. She is definitely one that could help with this. Does anyone have an email address for her?

Post by **Jnyusa** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 5:24 pm

There are elvish dictionaries and tengwar fonts available online. I've never tried to learn elvish that way myself, but some of the people on TORC have done it, I believe.

There are also a couple threads over there we could link to, until someone comes up with Nienna's address, assuming she would be willing to renew the lessons here. (I'll look for the links when I'm over there.)

Jn

Post by **Erunáme** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 5:25 pm

Some useful links:

http://www.elvish.org/gwaith/language.htm

http://councilofelrond.com/modules.php? ... ent&cid=31

http://www.elvish.org/gwaith/movie_elvish.htm#doorspell
http://www.elvish.org/gwaith/movie_news.htm

If you want to study Quenya:

http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/

edit: Just studying some dictionaries wouldn't be the way to go if you want to actually learn Sindarin. If all you want to do is translate, then you should be able to decipher lines with a dictionary, but you wouldn't understand the verb conjugations or mutations.

Tue Dec 06, 2005 5:27 pm

Thanks, Eru.

Post by **Alatar** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 5:33 pm

I don't suppose you'd like to teach us Eru?

Post by **Rowanberry** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 6:03 pm

The Council of Elrond Sindarin course to which Eru linked is quite good, if you really have time to delve into it; it's one of the things that originally drew me to that site, but alas, I've been all too pressed for time to really take up with it.

And, for Quenya, the Ardalambion course can hardly be surpassed.

Post by **Erunáme** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 6:11 pm

Alatar wrote:I don't suppose you'd like to teach us Eru?

I just have all the links because I've always wanted to learn myself. Unfortunately I don't know Sindarin or Quenya.

The only thing I can kind of do is write with the Tengwar characters.

Post by **Leoba** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 3:47 pm

The lady you need here in Breogan, who I think has already signed up? She's as fluent as fluent gets.

Post by **SilverScribe** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 9:24 pm

Think we could bribe her with cyber-chocolate?

I'd be real interested in this too, I used to cruise the Sindarin and Quenyan threads in Languages on TORC until my current project sucked the time and life out of me . . .

Post by **MithLuin** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 5:32 am

I don't know Sindarin, either.

But I think the easiest way to start is just to get a skeleton vocabulary based on the names in the books. This will not help you with forming sentences (no verbs), but it is a starting point, I guess.

So...

Amon = Hill
Emyn = Hills

Anduin = Long River
Anfalas = Long Strand

orc = orc
yrch = orcs

Elendil = Lover of Stars
Amandil = Lover of Aman
Anárion = Son of the Sun (I think)
Isildur = Lover of the Moon

Gondor = Land of Rock
Mordor = Dark (Black) Land
Mormegil = Black sword

Gildor = Star Lord
Galdor = Tree Lord

Legolas = Green Leaf

Elladan = elf-man
Elrohir = elf-knight

Eldar = People of the Stars
Elbereth = Queen of the Stars (star-queen)

Bilbo's lesson to Frodo in Rivendell:
adan = man
dun = west
Dúnadan = Man of the West (west-man)

This is, of course, not a lesson. But the people who write the tutorials do suggest sitting down with the books and making up your own word list. It gives you a much better feel for the vocabulary than just reading off a dictionary.

That being said, someone like me would never discover the secrets of Elvish linguistics just by looking at the samples Tolkien left us! When I want to know how to say something in Elvish, I look it up on Ardalambion.

Post by **Rowanberry** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 10:32 pm

[shameless advertising]

The Council of Elrond website has a fairly good Sindarin course for those who really want to give their time to learn it. But, to take this course, you must register on the site.