Languages constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien
The English
Tolkien's glossopoeia has two temporal dimensions: the internal (fictional) timeline of events in
have published grammars and studies of the languages.He created a large family of
Context
Tolkien's hobby: glossopoeia
Tolkien was a professional
In 1931, Tolkien gave a lecture about his passion for constructed languages, titled A Secret Vice. Here he contrasts his project of artistic languages constructed for aesthetic pleasure with the pragmatism of international auxiliary languages. The lecture also discusses Tolkien's views on phonaesthetics, citing Greek, Finnish, and Welsh as examples of "languages which have a very characteristic and in their different ways beautiful word-form".[T 4] Part of the lecture was published in The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays; in the part that was not, Tolkien gave the example of "Fonwegian", a language with "no connection whatever with any other known language".[4][a]
Being a skilled calligrapher, Tolkien invented scripts for his languages.[5] The scripts included Sarati, Cirth, and Tengwar.[6]
Tolkien's theory of invented languages
Tolkien was of the opinion that the invention of an
Tolkien wrote in one of his letters:
what I think is a primary 'fact' about my work, that it is all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration. ... It is not a 'hobby', in the sense of something quite different from one's work, taken up as a relief-outlet. The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows. I should have preferred to write in 'Elvish'. But, of course, such a work as The Lord of the Rings has been edited and only as much 'language' has been left in as I thought would be stomached by readers. (I now find that many would have liked more.) ... It is to me, anyway, largely an essay in 'linguistic aesthetic', as I sometimes say to people who ask me 'what is it all about'.[T 5]
The Tolkien scholar and folklorist
Lhammas
In 1937, Tolkien wrote the
The Lhammas exists in two versions, the shorter one being called the Lammasathen.
- Oromëan, named after Men are Oromëan.[8]
- Aulëan, named after
- Melkian, named after the rebellious Orcs and other evil beings. (This tongue is unrelated to the Black Speech of Sauron.)[8]
Middle-earth languages
Elvish languages
Internal and external histories
Internally, in the fiction, the
Externally, in Tolkien's life, he constructed the family from around 1910, working on it up to his death in 1973. He constructed the grammar and vocabulary of at least fifteen languages and dialects in roughly three periods:[10]
- Early, 1910 – c. 1930: most of the proto-language Primitive Quendian, Common Eldarin, Quenya, and Goldogrin[10]
- Mid: c. 1935–1955: Goldogrin changed into Noldorin, joined by Telerin, Ilkorin, Doriathrin and Avarin[10]
- Late: Ilkorin and Doriathrin disappeared; Noldorin matured into Sindarin.[10]
Tolkien worked out much of the
Quenya
Tolkien based Quenya pronunciation more on
Sindarin
A Elbereth Gilthoniel |
Start of the Sindarin poem "A Elbereth Gilthoniel" |
Tolkien wrote that he gave Sindarin "a linguistic character very like (though not identical with) British-Welsh ... because it seems to fit the rather 'Celtic' type of legends and stories told of its speakers".[T 9]
Unlike Quenya, Sindarin is mainly a
Mannish languages
Adûnaic
Tolkien devised
Tolkien remained undecided whether the language of the
Rohirric
Tolkien called the language of Rohan "Rohanese".[T 13] He only gave a few actual Rohirric words:[15]
- Kûd-dûkan, an old word meaning "hole-dweller", which evolved to kuduk, the name the Hobbits had for themselves[15]
- Lô- / loh- corresponding to Éothéod, "horse-people". This word is an exact homonym of the Hungarian word for "horse", ló. The Rohirric word for "horse" has been identified as a cognate for Tolkien's Elvish words for "horse": rocco (Quenya) and roch (Sindarin). All names beginning with Éo- supposedly represent Rohirric names beginning with Lô- or Loh-, but the Rohirric forms of names such as Éomer and Éowyn are not given.[15]
Language | Word | Comments |
---|---|---|
Rohirric | lô- | e.g. Lôgrad, "Horse-mark" |
Hungarian | ló | Homonym of the Rohirric |
Old English | éoh | "war-horse", hence Éothéod , "Horse-people"
|
Quenya | rocco | "horse" |
Sindarin | roch | hence, Rohirrim, "Horse-people" |
Only one proper name is given, Tûrac, an old word for King, the Rohirric for
Dwarvish
Some samples of
Entish
The language of the
... slow, sonorous, agglomerated, repetitive, indeed long-winded; formed of a multiplicity of vowel-shades and distinctions of tone and quantity which even the loremasters of the
Eldar had not attempted to represent in writing[T 15]
To illustrate these properties, Tolkien provides the word a-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lindor-burúme, meaning hill. He described it as a "probably very inaccurate" sampling of the language.[T 15]
Black Speech
Tolkien devised little of the Black Speech beyond the
In the fiction, the Black Speech was created by the Dark Lord Sauron to be the official language of all the lands and peoples under his control: it was thus both in reality and in the fiction a constructed language.[21] The Orcs are said never to have accepted it willingly; the language mutated into many mutually unintelligible Orkish dialects, so that Orcs communicated with each other mainly in a debased Westron.[10]
Analysis
Origins
Tolkien developed a particular love for the Finnish language. He described the finding of a Finnish grammar book as "like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before".[T 17] Finnish morphology, particularly its rich system of inflection, in part gave rise to Quenya.[T 17] Another of Tolkien's favourites was Welsh, and features of Welsh phonology found their way into Sindarin.[22]
Linguistic mapping
When writing The Lord of the Rings (1954–55), a sequel to The Hobbit (1937), Tolkien came up with the literary device of using real languages to "translate" fictional languages. He pretended to have translated the original language Westron (named Adûni in Westron) or Common Speech (Sôval Phârë, in Westron) into English. This device of rendering an imaginary language with a real one was carried further by rendering:[23]
- Rohirric, the language of
- names in the tongue of Old Norse forms[23]
- names of the Kingdom of Rhovanion by Gothic forms, thus mapping the genetic relation of his fictional languages on to the existing historical relations of the Germanic languages.[23]
Furthermore, to parallel the
The language represented in this history by English was the Westron or 'Common Speech' of the West-lands of Middle-earth in the Third Age. In the course of that age it had become the native language of nearly all the speaking-peoples (save the Elves) who dwelt within the bounds of the old kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor ... At the time of the War of the Ring at the end of the age these were still its bounds as a native tongue. (Appendix F)[T 15]
Rohirric is represented in The Lord of the Rings by Old English because Tolkien chose to make the relationship between Rohirric and the Common Speech similar to that of Old English and Modern English.[T 13]
Tolkien stated in
Study
The first published monograph dedicated to the Elvish languages was An Introduction to Elvish (1978) edited by Jim Allan (published by Bran's Head Books). It is composed of articles written before the publication of The Silmarillion. Ruth Noel wrote a book on Middle-earth's languages in 1980.[27]
With the publication of much linguistic material during the 1990s, especially in the
David Salo's 2007 A Gateway to Sindarin presents Sindarin's grammar concisely.[31] Elizabeth Solopova's 2009 Languages, Myth and History gives an overview of the linguistic traits of the various languages invented by Tolkien and the history of their creation.[32]
A few fanzines were dedicated to the subject, like Tyalië Tyelelliéva published by Lisa Star,[33] and Quettar, the Bulletin of the Linguistic Fellowship of The Tolkien Society, published by Julian C. Bradfield.[34] Tengwestië is an online publication of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship.[35] Internet mailing lists and forums that have been dedicated to Tolkien's constructed languages include Tolklang, Elfling and Lambengolmor.[36][37][38] Since 2005, there has been an International Conference on J.R.R. Tolkien's Invented Languages.[39]
Notes
- ^ All the same, Fonwegian contained words like agroul for "field", cf. Greek ᾰ̓γρός (agrós), and nausi for "sailor", cf. Greek ναύτης (naútēs), which do "suggest derivative origin".[4]
- ^ Fimi notes that this process was analysed by John Garth in his 2003 biography Tolkien and the Great War.[7]
References
Primary
- ^ Tolkien 1983, p. 200
- ^ Tolkien 1983, p. 203
- ^ Tolkien 1983, p. 209
- ^ Tolkien 1983, "A Secret Vice"
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #165 to the Houghton Mifflin Co., 30 June 1955
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #144 to Naomi Mitchison, 25 April 1954
- ^ Tolkien 1987, pp. 378–379
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #223: "I remain in love with Italian, and feel quite lorn without a chance of trying to speak it."
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #144 to Naomi Mitchison, April 1954
- ^ Tolkien 1992, Part Two: "The Notion Club Papers"
- ^ Tolkien 1996, p. 63.
- ^ Tolkien 1987, p. 68 and note p. 75.
- ^ Vinyar Tengwar(42): 8.
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #176 to Naomi Mitchison, 8 December 1955
- ^ a b c d e f Tolkien 1955, Appendix F
- Parma Eldalamberon(17): 11–12.
- ^ a b Carpenter 2023, #163 to W. H. Auden, 7 June 1953.
Secondary
- ^ Fauskanger, Helge Kåre. "Tolkien's Not-So-Secret Vice". Retrieved 28 October 2023.
- ^ "Tolkien's Languages: The Tongues of Middle-Earth". 2013. Archived from the original on 24 December 2013.
- ^ Tolkien's name for himself in Gautistk was Undarhruiménitupp. John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War. p. 17. Andrew Higgins, In Dembith Pengoldh A column on Tolkien's invented languages Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Journal of Tolkien Research. 3 (1): Article 3.
- ^ Hammond, Wayne G., Scull, Christina, J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, p. 190.
- ^ Smith, Arden R. (2015). "Writing Systems". The Tolkien Estate. Archived from the original on 14 April 2021. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
- ^ a b c Fimi 2010, pp. 63–67 "Ideal Beings, Ideal Languages".
- ^ a b c d e Tolkien 1987, Part 2, Chapter 5, "The Lhammas"
- ^ Both are published, as edited by Christopher Tolkien, in The Lost Road.Fimi 2010, pp. 73, 102
- ^ a b c d e f Hostetter 2013.
- ^ ISBN 978-9197350013.
- ^ Salo 2004, p. 94, section 6.2 (see also sections 4.33, 4.37).
- ^ Salo 2004, pp. 95–100.
- Sauron Defeated, p. 240
- ^ a b c d e Fauskanger, Helge K. "Various Mannish Tongues - the sadness of Mortal Men?". Ardalambion. University of Bergen. Retrieved 24 October 2012.
- ISBN 978-0-415-96942-0.of a :þeod (a nation, people)'.
'the chief
- ^ Bosworth, þeóden; (also spelt ðeoden), cognate to the Old Norse word þjóðann.
- ^ Solopova 2009, p. 22
- ^ Tolkien commented of the Dwarves that "their words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic.""An Interview with J.R.R. Tolkien". BBC Four. January 1971. Archived from the original on 14 November 2021.
- ^ Fauskanger, Helge K. "Orkish and the Black Speech". Ardalambion. University of Bergen. Retrieved 2 September 2013.
- ISBN 978-3-11-082006-5.
- ISBN 0-8020-3806-9.
- ^ a b c d e Shippey 2005, pp. 131–133.
- ^ Fimi 2010, pp. 189–191.
- S2CID 170366632– via Project MUSE.
- ^ Fimi 2010, pp. 191–192.
- ^ Noel 1980.
- ^ Solopova 2009, p. 90
- ISBN 978-1-13588-034-7.
- ^ Hostetter 2007, pp. 1–46.
- ^ Salo, David (2007) A Gateway to Sindarin: A Grammar of an Elvish Language from J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, University of Utah Press.
- ^ Solopova 2009
- ^ "Tyalië Tyelelliéva". Lisa Star. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
- ^ "Quettar". Quettar. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
- ^ "Tengwestie". Elvish Linguistic Fellowship. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
- ^ "The Tolkien Language List". Retrieved 8 April 2015.
- ^ "Elfling". Retrieved 8 April 2015.
- ^ "The Lambengolmor List". Elvish Linguistic Fellowship. Retrieved 8 April 2015.
- ^ "Omentielva". omentielva.com. Retrieved 9 May 2017.
Sources
- ISBN 978-0-35-865298-4.
- OCLC 222251097.
- S2CID 170601512.
- ISBN 978-0-415-86511-1.
- Noel, Ruth (1980). The languages of Tolkien's Middle-earth. Boston: OCLC 6043062.
- ISBN 978-0874809121.
- ISBN 978-0261102750.
- ISBN 978-0-9816607-1-4.
- OCLC 519647821.
- OCLC 417591085.
- ISBN 0-395-45519-7.
- ISBN 0-395-60649-7.
- ISBN 978-0-395-82760-4.