The One Wiki to Rule Them All
Don't have an account?
Register
Advertisement
Register
The One Wiki to Rule Them All
The Lord of the Rings Wiki
6,661
pages
in: Language

Languages

Revision as of 23:34, 25 September 2019 by 79.31.252.41 (contribs) (→‎List of languages)
 Sign in to edit

Various languages are used in J.R.R. Tolkien's writings about Middle-earth, including The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Silmarillion. The creation of the mythology that manifests in those works began with Tolkien's passion for language in general [1] and for philology, which is the branch of knowledge dealing with the structure, historical development, and relationships of existing languages. Creating languages was a major early pastime of Tolkien's, ever since his years as a youth.

When discussing the languages of Middle-earth, it is necessary to consider two aspects: their "primary world" history, namely their literal development by Tolkien as a linguist, and their "secondary world" history, their imagined historical development in the history of Middle-earth.

Primary-world history

Tolkien was a professional linguist and a specialist in the Old English language. He was also interested in many languages outside his field and developed a particular love for the Finnish language (he described the finding of a Finnish grammar book as "entering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before"[2]).

Finnish morphology (particularly its rich system of inflection) in part gave rise to Quenya. Another of Tolkien's favorites was Welsh — and features of Welsh phonology found their way to Sindarin. Numerous words were borrowed from existing languages, but less and less obviously as Tolkien progressed, such that attempts to match a source to a particular Elvish word or name in works published during his lifetime are often very dubious.

Language-making was Tolkien's hobby for most of his life. He is known to have constructed his first languages (Animalic and Nevbosh) at a little over thirteen years of age, and he continued to ponder upon his creations up until his death more than sixty-five years later. Language invention had always been tightly connected to the mythology that Tolkien developed, as he found that a language could not be complete without the history of the people who spoke it.

Although the Elvish languages Sindarin and Quenya are the most famous and the most mature languages of those that Tolkien invented for his mythology, they were not near to the only ones. They belong to a family of Elvish dialects that originate in Common Eldarin, the language common to all Eldar, which in turn originated in "Primitive Quendian", the common root of Eldarin and Avarin languages. In addition, there is a separate language family spoken by Men, the most prominent member of which was Westron (derived from the Númenórean speech Adûnaic) or the "Common speech" of the peoples of The Lord of the Rings. Most Mannish tongues showed influences by Elvish, as well as some Dwarvish influences. Several independent languages were drafted as well, for example the Khuzdul language of the Dwarves. Other languages are Valarin (the tongue of the Valar), and the Black Speech created by Sauron during the Second Age.

Elvish scholarship

Although the study of Tolkien's languages is as a rule not taken seriously by mainstream linguistics, a number of serious scholars have worked on compiling all that can be recovered about their histories and grammars. An early book dedicated to Eldarin is An Introduction to Elvish by Jim Allan (published by Bran's Head Books), written before the publication of The Silmarillion in 1977 and therefore mostly outdated.

There are several journals dedicated to the subject:

Secondary-world history

See also Lhammas and Elvish language.

In the fictitious history of Middle-earth, the tongues of the Elves are separated as part of the speakers emigrate to Aman while others stay behind, leading to a split of Quenya (High-Elvish, or "Elf-Latin") and Sindarin.

Middle-earth linguistics

The invention of writing is attributed to Rúmil, who first invented an alphabet: the Sarati (literally "letters"). Fëanor later enhanced and further developed this alphabet into the Tengwar, which were spread to Middle-earth by the Ñoldor and remained "commonly used in the West-lands" by the Third Age.[3] Daeron of Doriath, independently of Rúmil and Fëanor, had invented the Cirth runes, but these were only used for inscriptions, and otherwise were replaced by the use of tengwar, except for among the Dwarves.

An important source of Middle-earth linguistic scholarship is Pengolodh of Gondolin, a lore-master who wrote in Quenya and in Sindarin.[4] He is the author of Quendi and Eldar, the Lhammas (by attribution), and the Osanwe-kenta; and was the last of the Lambengolmor.[5]

In Quenya, lambë, the chief root of the term "Lambengolmor", is the term for spoken language or verbal communication. tengwesta is a more abstract term for a system or a code of signs and may be translated as "grammar".

Writing and spelling

Sindarin and Quenya are often written in the tengwar script, which Tolkien especially devised for them, or alternatively in the rune-like cirth. When Middle-earth languages are written with the Latin alphabet, either acute accents (á, é, í, ó, ú) or circumflex accents (â, ê, î, ô, û, ŷ) mark long vowels depending on language or other convention. The diaeresis (ä, ë, ö) is normally used to mark 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 should be sounded as if spelled dah-leh in English rather than as dale and the first three letters of Eärendil represent eh-ahr rather than the English word ear. (But occasionally, especially when writing proto-Eldarin forms, Tolkien used the macron to indicate long vowels and the dieresis on ä, ö, and ü as in German to indicate i-modification or e-modification.)

In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien adopted the literary device of claiming to have replaced the original Westron with English.[6] This device of rendering an imaginary language with a real language he carried further, rendering Rohirric, related to an older form of Westron, by Old English, and names in the tongue of Dale in the north of Rhovanion by Old Norse forms, thus mapping the genetic relation of his fictional languages on the existing historical relations of the Germanic languages. A natural consequence of this is that Tolkien never worked out the languages thus ‘’replaced’’ in any detail because they never appeared in the texts.

List of languages

  1. Elvish languages:
  2. Mannish languages (all showed influence by Avarin tongues as well as Khuzdul):
  3. Tongue of Dwarves:
  4. Languages of the Ents
    • Old Entish.
    • "New" Entish
  5. Languages of the Ainur (Valar and Maiar)
  6. Languages of the Orcs
  7. Various debased forms of the Black Speech and regional dialects influenced by Westron
  8. Primitive methods of communication

Languages in further detail

  1. Elvish languages:
         * Primitive Quendian
               o Avarin languages (at least six languages)
               o Common Eldarin
                     + Quenya
                           # Vanyarin Quenya
                           # Noldorin Quenya
                     + Common Telerin
                           # Telerin of Valinor
                           # Sindarin (at least three dialects, namely Northern, Doriathrin and Gondorian)
                           # Nandorin languages (influenced by Avarin)
  2. Mannish languages (all showed influence by Avarin tongues as well as Khuzdul):
         * Languages of forefathers of the First and Third Houses of the Atanatári
               o Taliska (two dialects)
                     + Adûnaic
                           # Westron or "Common Speech" (influenced by Sindarin, and languages of Eriador)
                                 * Hobbitish (influenced by languages of Northmen)
                           # Black Adûnaic of Black Númenóreans
               o Languages of Men of Eriador during the Second Age
               o Languages of Northmen
                     + Dalish
                     + Rohirric
         * Language of forefathers of the Second House of the Atanatári
               o Haladin language
               o Dunlending
         * Drûg languages
               o Language of the Drúedain of Brethil
               o Language of the Woses of Drúadan forest
         * Many Haradrim languages
         * Many tongues of Easterlings
  3. Languages of Dwarves:
         * Khuzdul
         * Iglishmek (sign language)
  4. Languages of the Ents
         * Old Entish
         * "New" Entish
  5. Languages of the Ainur (Valar and Maiar)
         * Valarin
               o Black Speech, created by Sauron
  6. Languages of the Orcs
  7. Various debased forms of the Black Speech and regional dialects influenced by Westron
  8. Primitive methods of communication
         * Language of the Trolls
         * Language of the Wargs

References

  1. ↑ The Philosophy of Tolkien, ch. 9: "The Philosophy of Language", pg. 155
  2. ↑ The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 214
  3. ↑ The Lord of the Rings, Appendix E: Writing and Spelling, II: "Writing", i. "The Fëanorian Letters"
  4. ↑ The History of Middle-earth, Vol. XI: The War of the Jewels, Part Four: Quendi and Eldar, Appendix D., pg. 396
  5. ↑ The History of Middle-earth, Vol. XI: The War of the Jewels, Part Four: Quendi and Eldar, Appendix D., pg. 397
  6. ↑ The Lord of the Rings, Appendix E: Writing and Spelling, I: "Pronunciation of Words and Names"

External links

Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.
More Fandoms
Advertisement

Fan Feed

More The One Wiki to Rule Them All