The English philologist and author J. R. R. Tolkien created several constructed languages, mostly related to his fictional world of Middle-earth. Inventing languages, something that he called glossopoeia (paralleling his idea of mythopoeia or myth-making), was a lifelong occupation for Tolkien, starting in his teens.
Tolkien's glossopoeia has two temporal dimensions: the internal (fictional) timeline of events in Middle-earth described in The Silmarillion and other writings, and the external timeline of Tolkien's own life during which he often revised and refined his languages and their fictional history. Tolkien scholars have published a substantial volume of Tolkien's linguistic material in the History of Middle-earth books, and the Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon journals. Scholars such as Carl F. Hostetter, David Salo and Elizabeth Solopova have published grammars and studies of the languages.
He created a large family of Elvish languages, the best-known and most developed being Quenya and Sindarin. In addition, he sketched in the Mannish languages of Adûnaic and Rohirric; the Dwarvish language of Khuzdul; the Entish language; and the Black Speech, in the fiction a constructed language enforced on the Orcs by the Dark Lord Sauron. Tolkien supplemented his languages with several scripts.
Tolkien was a professional philologist of ancient Germanic languages, specialising in Old English. Glossopoeia, the construction of languages, was Tolkien's hobby for most of his life. [1] [2] At a little over 13, he helped construct a sound substitution cypher known as Nevbosh, [T 1] 'new nonsense', which grew to include some elements of actual invented language. Tolkien stated that this was not his first effort in invented languages. [T 2] Shortly thereafter, he developed a true invented language called Naffarin. [T 3] One of his early projects was the reconstruction of an unrecorded early Germanic language which might have been spoken by the people of Beowulf in the Germanic Heroic Age. [3]
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] [lower-alpha 1]
Being a skilled calligrapher, Tolkien invented scripts for his languages. [5] The scripts included Sarati, Cirth, and Tengwar. [6]
Tolkien was of the opinion that the invention of an artistic language in order to be convincing and pleasing must include not only the language's historical development, but also the history of its speakers, and especially the mythology associated with both the language and the speakers. It was this idea that an "Elvish language" must be associated with a complex history and mythology of the Elves that was at the core of the development of Tolkien's legendarium.
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 Dimitra Fimi questions this claim. In particular, his September 1914 The Voyage of Earendel the Evening Star, based on the Old English poem Crist 1, shows that he was starting to think about a mythology before he started to sketch his first invented Middle-earth language, Qenya, in March 1915. Further, the steps that led to his first attempt at the mythology, [lower-alpha 2] the 1917 draft of The Book of Lost Tales , involving the character of Earendel in its first story, did not involve his invented languages. [7] Tolkien was, rather, in Fimi's view, emphasizing that language and myth "began to flow together when I was an undergraduate [at Oxford, 1911–1915]" (as Tolkien wrote in 1954), [T 6] and stayed that way for the rest of his life. [7]
In 1937, Tolkien wrote the Lhammas , a linguistic treatise addressing the relationships of the languages spoken in Middle-earth during the First Age, principally the Elvish languages. The text purports to be a translation of an Elvish work, written by one Pengolodh, whose historical works are presented as being the main source of the narratives in The Silmarillion concerning the First Age. [8]
The Lhammas exists in three versions, the shortest one being called the Lammasathen. [9] The main linguistic thesis in this text is that the languages of Middle-earth are all descended from the language of the Valar (the "gods"), Valarin, and divided into three branches: [8]
Internally, in the fiction, the Elvish language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language. [10]
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]
Tolkien worked out much of the etymological background of his Elvish languages during the 1930s, resulting in The Etymologies . [T 7]
Tolkien based Quenya pronunciation more on Latin than on Finnish, though it has elements derived from both languages. Thus, Quenya lacks the vowel harmony and consonant gradation present in Finnish, and accent is not always on the first syllable of a word. Typical Finnish elements like the front vowels ö, ä and y are lacking in Quenya, but phonological similarities include the absence of aspirated unvoiced stops or the development of the syllables ti > si in both languages. [11] The combination of a Latin basis with Finnish phonological rules resulted in a product that resembles Italian in many respects, which was Tolkien's favourite modern Romance language. [T 9]
Quenya grammar is agglutinative and mostly suffixing, i.e. different word particles are joined by appending them. It has basic word classes of verbs, nouns and pronouns/determiners, adjectives and prepositions. Nouns are inflected for case and number. Verbs are inflected for tense and aspect, and for agreement with subject and object. In early Quenya, adjectives agree with the noun they modify in case and number; in later Quenya, this agreement disappears. The basic word order is subject–verb–object. [11]
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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 10]
Unlike Quenya, Sindarin is mainly a fusional language with some analytic tendencies. It can be distinguished from Quenya by the rarity of vowel endings, and the use of voiced plosives b d g, rare in Quenya found only after nasals and liquids. Early Sindarin formed plurals by the addition of -ī, which vanished but affected the preceding vowels (as in Welsh and Old English): S. Adan, pl. Edain , S. Orch, pl. Yrch . [12] Sindarin forms plurals in multiple ways. [13]
Tolkien devised Adûnaic (or Númenórean), the language spoken in Númenor, shortly after World War II, and thus at about the time he completed The Lord of the Rings , but before he wrote the linguistic background of the Appendices. Adûnaic is intended as the language from which Westron (also called Adûni) is derived. This added a depth of historical development to the Mannish languages. Adûnaic was intended to have a "faintly Semitic flavour". [14] Its development began with The Notion Club Papers (written in 1945). It is there that the most extensive sample of the language is found, revealed to one of the (modern-day) protagonists, Lowdham, of that story in a visionary dream of Atlantis. Its grammar is sketched in the unfinished "Lowdham's Report on the Adunaic Language". [T 11]
Tolkien remained undecided whether the language of the Men of Númenor should be derived from the original Mannish language (as in Adûnaic), or if it should be derived from "the Elvish Noldorin" (i.e. Quenya) instead. [T 12] In The Lost Road and Other Writings , it is implied that the Númenóreans spoke Quenya, and that Sauron, hating all things Elvish, taught the Númenóreans the old Mannish tongue they themselves had forgotten. [T 13]
Tolkien called the language of Rohan "Rohanese". [T 14] He only gave a few actual Rohirric words: [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 Théoden. [15] That in turn is the Old English word þéoden , [16] meaning "leader of a people", "king" or "prince". [17] As with other descriptive names in his legendarium, Tolkien uses this name to create the impression that the text is "'historical', 'real' or 'archaic'". [18]
Some samples of Khuzdul, the language of the Dwarves, are given in The Lord of the Rings. The explanation here is a little different from the "Mannish" languages: as Khuzdul was supposedly kept secret by the Dwarves and never used in the presence of outsiders (not even Dwarvish given names), it was not "translated" by any real-life historical language, and such limited examples as there are in the text are given in the "original". Khuzdul was designed to resemble a Semitic language, with a system of triconsonantal roots and other parallels especially to Hebrew, just as some resemblances between the Dwarves and the Jews are intentional. [T 15] [19]
The language of the Ents is briefly described in The Lord of the Rings. As the Ents were first taught to speak by Elves, Entish appears related to the Elvish languages. However, the Ents continued to develop their language. It is described as long and sonorous, a tonal language somewhat like a woodwind instrument. Only the Ents spoke Entish as no others could master it. Even the Elves, master linguists, could not learn Entish, nor did they attempt to record it because of its complex sound structure: [T 16]
... 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 16]
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 16]
Tolkien devised little of the Black Speech beyond the Rhyme of the Rings. He intentionally made it sound harsh but with a proper grammar. He stated that it was an agglutinative language; [T 17] it has been likened to the extinct Hurrian language of northern Mesopotamia. [20]
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]
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 18] Finnish morphology, particularly its rich system of inflection, in part gave rise to Quenya. [T 18] Another of Tolkien's favourites was Welsh, and features of Welsh phonology found their way into Sindarin. [22]
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]
Furthermore, to parallel the Celtic substratum in England, he used Old Welsh names to render the Dunlendish names of Buckland Hobbits (e.g., Meriadoc for Kalimac). [T 16] The whole device of linguistic mapping was essentially a fix for the problems Tolkien had created for himself by using real Norse names for the Dwarves in The Hobbit , rather than inventing new names in Khuzdul. This seemed a clever solution, as it allowed him to explain the book's use of Modern English as representing Westron. [24] Because of this, Tolkien did not need to work out the details of Westron grammar or vocabulary in any detail. He does give some examples of Westron words in Appendix F to The Lord of the Rings, where he summarizes Westron's origin and role as lingua franca in Middle-earth: [T 16] [25]
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 16]
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 14]
Tolkien stated in The Two Towers that the name Orthanc had "by design or chance" two meanings. In Sindarin it meant "Mount Fang", while in the language of Rohan he said it meant "Cunning Mind". The author Robert Foster notes that orþanc genuinely does mean "cunning" in Old English, so that the homonym Tolkien had in mind was between Sindarin and Old English, that is, translated or represented Rohirric. Foster comments that since it would be unlikely for a homonym also to exist between these two languages and actual Rohirric, and for the Old English and the Rohirric to be synonyms as well, Tolkien had made an error. [26]
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 History of Middle-earth series, and the Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon material published during the early 2000s from among the 3000 pages of linguistic material held by the team of editors including Carl F. Hostetter, [28] [29] Tolkien's constructed languages have become much more accessible. [30]
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]
The Cirth is a semi‑artificial script, based on real‑life runic alphabets, one of several scripts invented by J. R. R. Tolkien for the constructed languages he devised and used in his works. Cirth is written with a capital letter when referring to the writing system; the letters themselves can be called cirth.
The Tengwar script is an artificial script, one of several scripts created by J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings.
The Elvish languages of Middle-earth, constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien, include Quenya and Sindarin. These were the various languages spoken by the Elves of Middle-earth as they developed as a society throughout the Ages. In his pursuit for realism and in his love of language, Tolkien was especially fascinated with the development and evolution of language through time. Tolkien created two almost fully developed languages and a dozen more in various beginning stages as he studied and reproduced the way that language adapts and morphs. A philologist by profession, he spent much time on his constructed languages. In the collection of letters he had written, posthumously published by his son, Christopher Tolkien, he stated that he began stories set within this secondary world, the realm of Middle-earth, not with the characters or narrative as one would assume, but with a created set of languages. The stories and characters serve as conduits to make those languages come to life. Inventing language was always a crucial piece to Tolkien's mythology and world building. As Tolkien stated:
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.
In the fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien, the Dwarves are a race inhabiting Middle-earth, the central continent of Arda in an imagined mythological past. They are based on the dwarfs of Germanic myths who were small humanoids that lived in mountains, practising mining, metallurgy, blacksmithing and jewellery. Tolkien described them as tough, warlike, and lovers of stone and craftsmanship.
Adûnaic is one of the fictional languages devised by J. R. R. Tolkien for his fantasy works.
The Black Speech is one of the fictional languages constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien for his legendarium, where it was spoken in the evil realm of Mordor. In the fiction, Tolkien describes the language as created by Sauron as a constructed language to be the sole language of all the servants of Mordor.
Westron, Adûni, or Sôval Phârë, is the constructed language that was supposedly the Common Speech used in J. R. R. Tolkien's world of Middle-earth in the Third Age, at the time of The Lord of the Rings. It supposedly developed from Adûnaic, the ancient language of Númenor. In practice in the novel, Westron is nearly always represented by modern English, in a process of pseudo-translation which also sees Rohirric represented by Old English. That process allowed Tolkien not to develop Westron or Rohirric in any detail. In the Appendices of the novel, Tolkien gives some examples of Westron words.
The Lhammas, Noldorin for "account of tongues", is a work of fictional sociolinguistics, written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1937, and published in the 1987 The Lost Road and Other Writings, volume five of The History of Middle-earth series.
David Salo is an American linguist who worked on the languages of J. R. R. Tolkien for the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies, expanding the languages by building on vocabulary already known from published works, and defining some languages that previously had a very small published vocabulary.
The Elvish Linguistic Fellowship is a "Special Interest Group" of the Mythopoeic Society devoted to the study of J. R. R. Tolkien's constructed languages, headed by the computer scientist Carl F. Hostetter. It was founded by Jorge Quiñónez in 1988.
The works of J. R. R. Tolkien have generated a body of research covering many aspects of his fantasy writings. These encompass The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, along with his legendarium that remained unpublished until after his death, and his constructed languages, especially the Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin. Scholars from different disciplines have examined the linguistic and literary origins of Middle-earth, and have explored many aspects of his writings from Christianity to feminism and race.
Quenya is a constructed language, one of those devised by J. R. R. Tolkien for the Elves in his Middle-earth fiction.
Sindarin is one of the constructed languages devised by J. R. R. Tolkien for use in his fantasy stories set in Arda, primarily in Middle-earth. Sindarin is one of the many languages spoken by the Elves.
Khuzdul is a fictional language created by J. R. R. Tolkien, one of the languages of Middle-earth, specifically the secret and private language of the Dwarves. He based its structure and phonology on Semitic languages, primarily Hebrew, with triconsonantal roots of words. Very little is known of the grammar.
Tolkien's scripts are the writing systems invented by the philologist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien. The best-known are Cirth, Sarati, and Tengwar.
Anthony Appleyard worked at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, and was known as a Tolkien scholar specialising in Tolkien's constructed languages. His 1995 description of the Elvish language Quenya was the first to use the information published in The History of Middle-earth. This was criticised by the Tolkien scholar Carl F. Hostetter as trying to construct a single consistent language rather than accepting that Quenya changed over time, both in the real world as Tolkien continued to invent linguistic structures, and in the fictional history of Middle-earth as the Elvish languages changed and fragmented.
J. R. R. Tolkien derived the characters, stories, places, and languages of Middle-earth from many sources. Among these are the Celtic legends and languages, which for Tolkien were principally Irish and Welsh. He gave multiple conflicting reasons for his liking for Welsh. Tolkien stated directly that he had made use of Welsh phonology and grammar for his constructed Elvish language Sindarin. Scholars have identified multiple legends, both Irish and Welsh, as likely sources of some of Tolkien's stories and characters; thus for example the Noldorin Elves resemble the Irish Tuatha Dé Danann, while the tale of Beren and Lúthien parallels that of the Welsh Culhwch and Olwen. Tolkien chose Celtic names for the isolated settlement of Bree-land, to distinguish it from the Shire with its English names.
Philology, the study of comparative and historical linguistics, especially of the medieval period, had a major influence on J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-earth. He was a professional philologist, and made use of his knowledge of medieval literature and language to create families of Elvish languages and many details of the invented world.
A pseudotranslation is a text written as if it had been translated from a foreign language. J. R. R. Tolkien made use of pseudotranslation in The Lord of the Rings for two reasons: to help resolve the linguistic puzzle he had accidentally created by using real-world languages within his legendarium, and to lend realism by supporting a found manuscript conceit to frame his story.
The Etymologies is J. R. R. Tolkien's etymological dictionary of his constructed Elvish languages, written during the 1930s. As a philologist, he was professionally interested in the structure of languages, the relationships between languages, and in particular the processes by which languages evolve. He applied this skill to the construction of the languages of Middle-earth, especially the Elvish languages. The Etymologies reflects this knowledge and enthusiasm: he constantly changed the etymological relationships of his "bases", the roots of his Elvish words. The list of words covers several of his minor languages as well as the two major ones, greatly extending the vocabularies known before it was published in The Lost Road and Other Writings in 1987.
'the chief of a :þeod (a nation, people)'.