Notes on Motives in the Simarillion - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

ArcusCalion · 08-18-2021, 01:05 PM

Fin all of your points I agree to. You were correct in guessing my reasoning for most if not all of these. I will explain my elvish changes below.

NoM-11 & NoM-12: This change was based on a very late change to the text of Laws and Customs of the Eldar regarding the word for the 'matter' of Arda. Originally Tolkien referred to the 'matter of Arda as hrón (sometimes rhón) which he then changed to hrondo and finally hröa as the word for 'physical flesh, matter'. However, he then went back and changed hrón to mean 'matter, physical substance' as opposed to hröa meaning 'body, flesh.' This finally was changed in the margins to orma which was elsewhere written as erma (I believe in Osanwe-Kenta which was written after the base text of Laws and Customs). This is the (long and convoluted) reasoning behind the change.

NoM-17: This change was made based on the dating of the references. I believe Hastaina was written in (i believe) Laws and Customs as a later note. I will have to double-check when I am home and have access to my texts, but I know this was an attempt on my part to standardize it. As far as I know both are valid late-term Quenya, with hasta- meaning 'to mar' and sak- meaning 'to hurt.' However, the word sak- seems to conflict with the word sac- meaning 'to close'. Both would be written sac- in Third Age Quenya, so to avoid the linguistic uncertainty, and also based on the later change in the other document, I went with Hastaina. Hopefully this reasoning makes sense. As I said, many of the works in Volume 3 get very technical in terms of the Elvish linguistic development.

08-18-2021, 01:05 PM	#2
ArcusCalion Quentingolmo Join Date: Aug 2017 Posts: 525	Fin all of your points I agree to. You were correct in guessing my reasoning for most if not all of these. I will explain my elvish changes below. NoM-11 & NoM-12: This change was based on a very late change to the text of Laws and Customs of the Eldar regarding the word for the 'matter' of Arda. Originally Tolkien referred to the 'matter of Arda as hrón (sometimes rhón) which he then changed to hrondo and finally hröa as the word for 'physical flesh, matter'. However, he then went back and changed hrón to mean 'matter, physical substance' as opposed to hröa meaning 'body, flesh.' This finally was changed in the margins to orma which was elsewhere written as erma (I believe in Osanwe-Kenta which was written after the base text of Laws and Customs). This is the (long and convoluted) reasoning behind the change. NoM-17: This change was made based on the dating of the references. I believe Hastaina was written in (i believe) Laws and Customs as a later note. I will have to double-check when I am home and have access to my texts, but I know this was an attempt on my part to standardize it. As far as I know both are valid late-term Quenya, with hasta- meaning 'to mar' and sak- meaning 'to hurt.' However, the word sak- seems to conflict with the word sac- meaning 'to close'. Both would be written sac- in Third Age Quenya, so to avoid the linguistic uncertainty, and also based on the later change in the other document, I went with Hastaina. Hopefully this reasoning makes sense. As I said, many of the works in Volume 3 get very technical in terms of the Elvish linguistic development. Last edited by ArcusCalion; 08-20-2021 at 08:03 AM.