Thread: Languages
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Old 07-11-2007, 02:16 PM   #18
William Cloud Hicklin
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Be advised however that Tolkien himself never created a "conversational" Sindarin or Quenya. He was constantly rewriting and revising and changing his mind, more with languages even than in his narratives. (one minor example: in the LR 2d Edition he changed 'omentielmo' to 'omentielvo' to reflect an altered declension). Helge Fauskanger's Ardalambion site represents a neo-Quenya- a synthetic version cobbling together elements of Quenya from different periods in its development, speculation, and outright invention. The same is true of David Salo's "Gateway to Sindarin" (and Salo is often unclear about what's genuine Tolkien and what isn't). According to Carl Hostetter, who ought to know, both sometimes outright contradict Tolkien's writings in order to impose an artificial 'structure.'

The best source for Tolkien's actual linguistic material is the History of Middle-earth, especially Vol V (the Etymologies) and Vol XI (Quendi and Eldar) - although those pieces are twenty years apart, separated not only by the Lord of the Rings but also the Great Language Shift which converted Noldorin into Sindarin. After that, there are the 'major works' published in Parma Eldalamberon (at this writing only works up through the 1920's), and for shorter (and more recent) works Vinyar Tengwar.
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