Lately I’ve been getting more and more requests for direction to online resources devoted to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Elven languages. I don’t know if Peter Jackson has incorporated much Elvish into the upcoming movies (it would be neat to hear snippets of Sindarin drifting across the room as the Hobbits wander through Rivendell, or to overhear background conversations in the Sindarin dialect of Lorien as the Fellowship passes time there). Maybe people are hoping to be ready for such eventualities. Maybe they just want to learn Elvish.
Of course, there is Elvish and there is Elvish…and there is Elvish. A small community of linguists devote some of their spare time to studying Tolkien’s constructed languages. To some extent these languages have been growing through the years as licensees of Tolkien Enterprises and the Tolkien linguistic community have proposed new names, devised new words, or attempted to deduce roots and cognates in various dialects. These “new words” are not honest-to-goodness “J.R.R. Tolkien words”, but if the wordmakers understand the rules of the languages correctly, the words are legitimate extensions of the languages, though we should perhaps envision these new word sets as defining new dialects to keep them distinct from Tolkien’s dialects.
Although there are a number of very well designed Web sites which provide tutorials and basic vocabularies, the language researchers have a relatively small collection of source books to work with. Tolkien never published any formal Elvish dictionaries or grammars, but he did provide some information about the Elven languages, and his son Christopher has provided much more information.
To fully understand how the Elven languages evolved, one needs to read through the entire History of Middle-earth series. Most of the information is provided in only a few books, but there are snippets and tidbits scattered throughout them all. The history of the Elven tongues may be reduced to a few phases, however. The first phase is barely distinguishable (phonetically, in the way the words sound) from the nonsense words many present-day fantasy novels resort to for names of characters and places. They did possess what Christopher said was an underlying “sophisticated and phonetically intricate historical structure”.
The names from the first phase are derived from a language Tolkien called “Qenya” and another he called “Goldogrin” (the language of the Gnomes, the race of Elves in The Book of Lost Tales whose role was given to the Noldor in The Silmarillion). He devised two lexicons (word lists or dictionaries) for these early languages.
There are some words from these early languages which were carried forward: “Ainur”, “Balrog”, “Eldamar”, etc. The meanings were not always preserved (“Elda”, for instance, meant “a beach-fay” in Qenya). But many of the names in The Book of Lost Tales appear somewhat crude or primitive when compared to the later names which replaced them in Quenya and Sindarin: “Bronweg” became “Voronwë” in Quenya, for example, “Eruman” became “Araman”.
Christopher Tolkien provides appendices for these names in volumes I & II of The History of Middle-earth, The Book of Lost Tales, Part One and Part Two.
The second phase expanded upon the early languages, and it is documented in The Lost Road and Other Writings, volume V of The History of Middle-earth. The two primary sources of information here are “The Lhammas”, a history of how the Elven languages developed and branched out from one another as the Elves expanded across the world, and “The Etymologies”, the ultimate source for the most developed versions of Qenya and Noldorin (which replaced Goldogrin and was subsequently replaced by Sindarin).
Noldorin was the language spoken by the Exiles, the Noldor who returned to Middle-earth in rebellion. But Tolkien subsequently decided that they should be speaking Sindarin (and he indeed devised an explanation for the sudden shift from their use of Quenya, the language they spoke in Aman: King Thingol of Doriath learned of the Kinslaying of Alqualonde, and he forbade all Sindar to respond to the language of the Kinslayers).
“The Lhammas” provides both historical and linguistic information, since it tracks the migrations and diversifications of the Elves. Their story was for the first time given a complete narrative history, from beginning to end (ending with the overthrow of Morgoth), in the related text “Quenta Silmarillion”, which was Tolkien’s first attempt to redefine his early mythology as a wholly separate story (the original mythology of The Book of Lost Tales was tied geographically to England). So there are close connections between “The Lhammas” and the first “Quenta Silmarillion” (which was written in the mid-1930s, about 20 years after Tolkien wrote the first parts of The Book of Lost Tales).
“The Etymologies” is more of a bridge work between the second phase and the third phase. The third phase encompasses his work on the Elven languages which he named Quenya and Sindarin as publication of The Lord of the Rings became imminent. Although Tolkien completed the bulk of the story by 1948, he made subsequent revisions to the texts over the next 4-5 years and he especially introduced significant changes and additions to the linguistic and historical traditions as he prepared and then condensed the LOTR appendices in the early 1950s. Somewhere in the 1940s JRRT stopped emending “The Etymologies”, so his Elven languages continued to evolve without an authoritative reference.
The fourth phase is represented by essays associated with Tolkien’s attempts to rewrite “Quenta Silmarillion” after The Lord of the Rings was published. The most definitive work published to date is “Quendi and Eldar”, an elaborate analysis of the evolution of key roots from early Elven to the various dialectal forms. The essay as a consequence also provides much historical information which is nowhere else to be found. Unfortunately, it also contains some material which is contradicted by other sources.
Nonetheless, “Quendi and Eldar” (published in The War of the Jewels, volume XI of The History of Middle-earth) is regarded as an important source of information. It is a must-read for the Tolkien linguist.
Finally, with publication of The Peoples of Middle-earth (volume XII of HOME), Christopher Tolkien brings us back to the years when The Lord of the Rings was being prepared for publication and provides some interesting linguistic guides not found in the book itself.
Historically, our first authoritative source of information on the Elven languages came in The Lord of the Rings, in the appendices on the calendars and writing systems. Of course, there are various Elven words and phrases throughout the book for some of which translations are provided (although not necessarily literal translations). These were, for years, the only real source of information on the Elven languages.
Then in the 1960s Tolkien published (in conjunction with Donald Swann) The Road Goes Ever On, a small book which provided music for some of the songs from the book. Tolkien provided notes which tantalized the linguistic community and shed new light on the languages. Sadly, this book is difficult to find as it has been out of print for many years.
Next came A Tolkien Compass, a collection of essays about Tolkien’s work to which he contributed a guide to translation of names and words. But there the primary sources ended. J.R.R. Tolkien died before he could provide anything else to his fans. This book is also difficult to find now.
After his father’s death in 1973 Christopher Tolkien took up the task of preparing a Silmarillion for publication. When The Silmarillion was finally published in 1977 Christopher included both an index with translations of many Elven words and names and an appendix on “Elements in Quenya and Sindarin Names” which became the first definitive work on the subject from a hand other than J.R.R. Tolkien’s.
In 1980 Christopher unleashed Unfinished Tales upon the world, and that book provided more new names and words, particularly in the section on Numenor. Although no linguistic appendix was provided, the index again provided translations for many names.
Finally, in 1981 Humphrey Carpenter published The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, from the pages of which some further linguistic gems may be mined. Except for The History of Middle-earth books (1983 – 1996), there are no other currently available primary or secondary sources. Some previously unpublished linguistic material has been made available in limited distribution through the journal Venyar Tengwar.
Although a number of tertiary source books have been published through the years, the only one I have seen treated with any respect or credibility by Tolkien linguists is An Introduction to Elvish by Jim Allen, but it’s considered to be an outdated work. Even the widely respected Complete Guide to Middle-earth by Robert Foster is not extended much credibility for the translations. Foster has not revised his book since before Unfinished Tales was published, and many of his translations are regarded as questionable or even just wrong. Other authors who have earned even less praise than Foster among the linguists include Ruth Noel, J.E.A. Tyler, and David Day.
Of course, the point of the email I’ve been receiving recently is that people are looking for online sources of information. There are literally thousands of Tolkien Web sites. No one person has reviewed them all (at least, I haven’t found any Web site whose Webmaster makes such a claim). How many are devoted to the languages? I don’t know. But whenever people ask for online resources they are inevitably pointed to Ardalambion.
Next stop on the linguistic resources tour is usually The Elvish Linguistic Fellowship, a special interest group of The Mythopoeic Society, a fannish research organization devoted to studying the works of the Inklings (the informal literary group Tolkien and C.S. Lewis — among others — belonged to). The Elvish Linguistic Fellowship publishes the Vinyar Tengwar journal.
Another respected journal is Parma Eldalamberon, an occasionally published journal which carries the work of Patrick Wynn, Christopher Gilson, Carl Hostetter, and Arden Smith, who presently have access to Tolkien’s unpublished linguistic material. They have provided a full Qenya lexicon in a limited edition.
Not quite so distinguished as the above two sites, Silent’s Tolkien Pages contain a Quenya-to-English dictionary and a tutorial in Elven grammar.
Those who are especially brave of heart and sound of mind may also be tempted to subscribe to The Tolkien Language Mailing List. When I was briefly subscribed to the list long ago I decided it was neither for the faint of heart nor the not-so-linguistically minded. This Web site does provide a searchable archive, however.
Most of these pages contain links to other sites of interest to Tolkien linguists (and would-be Tolkien linguists). I’ve also tried to provide a selective list of sites at Talk About J.R.R. Tolkien and Middle-earth: A Guide To Tolkien Discussion on the Web (NOTE: That link directory has been taken down as of June 2011).
I don’t specialize in the study of Tolkien’s languages, and I admittedly crawl out on a limb with a noose around my neck whenever I venture into linguistic discussions. My work has been confined to researching the histories and cultures of Middle-earth, which field occasionally touches on the linguistic material but doesn’t require a linguistic background or a thorough understanding of the Elven languages.
What I can provide is the simplest and barest of introductions to Tolkien’s languages, but I feel fortunate to be able to point people to these online resources. I hope this list helps, but keep those cards and letters coming, folks. 🙂
This article was originally published on October 29, 1999.
