While playing around trying to translate some of
Finrod-Zong into Sindarin, it occurred to me that while I vaguely know the relationships between the various Elven languages, I've never actually seen a direct comparison of them. I'm not thinking just of Quenya and Sindarin, either - the First Age has at least eight dialects west of the Blue Mountains! Sure, a lot of them are extremely fragmentary, but if I chose my sentence well, I might be able to create a comparative list.
I wanted to balance showing linguistic differences with using words we actually know; the sentence I came up with is
The stars are beautiful, and you are my star. Working primarily from
Ardalambion and
Eldamo, plus
David Salo on Telerin, I translated them into all the languages of Beleriand and Valinor at the rising of the Sun - and the Primitive Quendian they all came from.
PRIMITIVE QUENDIAN:
Eli banya, ada le êl niō.
- Unlike all its descendents, Primitive Quendian doesn't seem to have a definite article.
NOLDORIN QUENYA:
I eleni vanye nar, ar nalye elenya.
VANYARIN QUENYA:
I eleni vanyai nar, ar nalye elenya.
- The two true dialects of Quenya are very similar; you could almost see them as British and American English, with the differences mostly pronunciation rather than grammar.
TELERIN:
I ēli vaniai, ada de él nia.
- Telerin, meanwhile, is shockingly different. The Noldor called it a dialect of Quenya, but its verb and noun usage is much closer to:
SINDARIN:
In gil bain, a nal gil nín.
- 'Pure' Sindarin, which must be the variety spoken in the area around Nargothrond, is the only one known to have discarded the word 'el' for stars. It's 'gil' all the way!
DORIATHRIN:
In elin bain, a nal el na.
- Doriathrin Sindarin is an early creation, but persists to the final Silmarillion: Dagnir Glaurunga on the Stone of the Hapless shows a Doriathrin 'of' not used in Sindarin. Another major difference is that Doriathrin forms plurals with -in, not by changing the noun's vowels.
NORTH SINDARIN:
In elin bain, a nal el na.
- North Sindarin, as spoken in Mithrim, is a sort of mid-point between Sindarin and Doriathrin. It uses Doriathrin endings, but does modify vowels like Sindarin. By coincidence(?), the Sindarin-style plural for archaic 'elen' (star) is 'elin' - identical to the Doriathrin plural of 'el' (star)!
- Tolkien discussed a third Sindarin dialect, Falathrin, but there's no evidence of its continued existence.
NANDORIN:
I eli bann, ad la el nao.
- The language of Ossiriand... I've had to do a lot of guessing here. 'I eli bann' is probably correct, but the latter half is much more tenuous.
hS