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116-632: 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

232-518: A beast they took nor slew, and where they went he never knew". Shippey comments that Tolkien took many suggestions from this passage, including the horns and the hunt of the Elves in Mirkwood ; the proud but honourable Elf-king; and the placing of his elves in wild nature. Tolkien might only have had broken fragments to work on, but, Shippey writes, the more one explores how Tolkien used the ancient texts,

348-601: A commentary on the texts themselves or their actual influence on his writing, and cites evidence to this effect in her essay "'Mad' Elves and 'elusive beauty': some Celtic strands of Tolkien's mythology". Fimi proposes that some of the stories Tolkien wrote as elven history are directly influenced by Celtic mythology. For example, "Flight of The Noldoli " she argues, is based on the Tuatha Dé Danann and Lebor Gabála Érenn , and their migratory nature comes from early Irish/Celtic history. John Garth states that with

464-668: A common ancestor, called the proto-language. 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: Tolkien worked out much of the etymological background of his Elvish languages during the 1930s, resulting in The Etymologies . Tolkien based Quenya pronunciation more on Latin than on Finnish , though it has elements derived from both languages. Thus, Quenya lacks

580-549: A great and mighty people, and that as Men took over the world, these Elves had "diminished" themselves. This theme is shared especially by the god-like and human-sized Ljósálfar of Norse mythology , and medieval works such as Sir Orfeo , the Welsh Mabinogion , Arthurian romances and the legends of the Tuatha Dé Danann . The name Inwe or Ingwë (in the first draft Ing ), given by Tolkien to

696-417: A green axe-wielding giant, an aluisch mon ("elvish man", translated by Shippey as "uncanny creature"). Christian sources from Iceland knew and disapproved of the tradition of offering sacrifices to the elves, álfa-blót . Elves were directly dangerous, too: the medical condition " elf-shot ", described in the spell Gif hors ofscoten sie , "if a horse is elf-shot", meaning some kind of internal injury,

812-436: A language with "no connection whatever with any other known language". Being a skilled calligrapher , Tolkien invented scripts for his languages. The scripts included Sarati , Cirth , and Tengwar . 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

928-810: A long life in Middle-earth, Elves yearn for the Earthly Paradise of Valinor , and can sail there from the Grey Havens. They feature in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings . Their history is described in detail in The Silmarillion . Tolkien derived Elves from mentions in the ancient poetry and languages of Northern Europe, especially Old English . These suggested to him that Elves were large, dangerous, beautiful, lived in wild natural places, and practised archery. He invented languages for

1044-501: A nit-picking classicist" and only the "technical research into languages and families". In The Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis , the main character, Elwin Ransom, is a philologist – as was Lewis' close friend J. R. R. Tolkien . Dr. Edward Morbius, one of the main characters in the science fiction film Forbidden Planet , is a philologist. Philip, the main character of Christopher Hampton 's 'bourgeois comedy' The Philanthropist ,

1160-513: 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". Finnish morphology, particularly its rich system of inflection , in part gave rise to Quenya. Another of Tolkien's favourites was Welsh , and features of Welsh phonology found their way into Sindarin. When writing The Lord of

1276-509: A people", "king" or "prince". As with other descriptive names in his legendarium, Tolkien uses this name to create the impression that the text is "'historical' , 'real' or 'archaic'". 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

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1392-545: A philanthropist to brighten servicemen's quarters, and Faery was used in other contexts as an image of " Old England " to inspire patriotism. By 1915, when Tolkien was writing his first elven poems, the words elf , fairy and gnome had many divergent and contradictory associations. Tolkien had been gently warned against the term 'fairy', which John Garth supposes may have been due to its growing association with homosexuality , but Tolkien continued to use it. According to Marjorie Burns , Tolkien eventually but hesitantly chose

1508-501: A product that resembles Italian in many respects, which was Tolkien's favourite modern Romance language. 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

1624-477: A production of J. M. Barrie 's Peter Pan in Birmingham in 1910, and his familiarity with the work of Catholic mystic poet, Francis Thompson which Tolkien had acquired in 1914. O! I hear the tiny horns Of enchanted leprechauns And the padded feet of many gnomes a-coming! In his The Book of Lost Tales , Tolkien develops a theme that the diminutive fairy-like race of Elves had once been

1740-473: A reconstructed text accompanied by a " critical apparatus ", i.e., footnotes that listed the various manuscript variants available, enabling scholars to gain insight into the entire manuscript tradition and argue about the variants. A related study method known as higher criticism studies the authorship, date, and provenance of text to place such text in a historical context. As these philological issues are often inseparable from issues of interpretation, there

1856-531: A script used in the ancient Aegean, was deciphered in 1952 by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick , who demonstrated that it recorded an early form of Greek, now known as Mycenaean Greek . Linear A , the writing system that records the still-unknown language of the Minoans , resists deciphering, despite many attempts. Work continues on scripts such as the Maya , with great progress since the initial breakthroughs of

1972-490: A true invented language called Naffarin. 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 . 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

2088-520: A weird way, quite unlike the elves in any other adaptation, not even resembling the film's depiction of Elrond. Gilkeson describes them as "like Troll dolls that have been left out in the rain too long, and a little like Yzma from The Emperor's New Groove . They have gray skin, pug faces, and blond hair. It’s frankly bizarre". In Peter Jackson 's Lord of the Rings film series (2001–2003), Elves are shown as physically superior to Men in eyesight, balance, and aim, but their superiority in other ways

2204-567: Is "never really made clear". Fimi compared Jackson's handling of Elves with Tolkien's. Tolkien's Elves are rooted as firmly as possible in Anglo-Saxon , Middle English , and Norse tradition, but influenced also by Celtic fairies in the Tuatha Dé Danann . Jackson's Elves are however "Celtic" in the romanticised sense of the Celtic Revival . She compares Jackson's representation of Gildor Inglorion's party of Elves riding through

2320-588: Is a professor of philology in an English university town . Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld , the main character in Alexander McCall Smith 's 1997 comic novel Portuguese Irregular Verbs is a philologist, educated at Cambridge. The main character in the Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012, Footnote , is a Hebrew philologist, and a significant part of the film deals with his work. The main character of

2436-423: Is dangerous to mortals because time there is distorted , as in Tolkien's Lothlórien . Shippey comments that it is a strength of Tolkien's "re-creations", his imagined worlds, that they incorporate all the available evidence to create a many-layered impression of depth , making use of "both good and bad sides of popular story; the sense of inquiry, prejudice, hearsay and conflicting opinion". Shippey suggests that

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2552-527: Is derived from the Greek φιλολογία ( philología ), from the terms φίλος ( phílos ) 'love, affection, loved, beloved, dear, friend' and λόγος ( lógos ) 'word, articulation, reason', describing a love of learning, of literature, as well as of argument and reasoning, reflecting the range of activities included under the notion of λόγος . The term changed little with the Latin philologia , and later entered

2668-658: 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. Tolkien called the language of Rohan "Rohanese". He only gave a few actual Rohirric words: Only one proper name is given, Tûrac , an old word for King, the Rohirric for Théoden . That in turn is the Old English word þéoden , meaning "leader of

2784-622: 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 . Sindarin forms plurals in multiple ways. Tolkien devised Adûnaic (or Númenórean),

2900-516: Is no clear-cut boundary between philology and hermeneutics . When text has a significant political or religious influence (such as the reconstruction of Biblical texts), scholars have difficulty reaching objective conclusions. Some scholars avoid all critical methods of textual philology, especially in historical linguistics, where it is important to study the actual recorded materials. The movement known as new philology has rejected textual criticism because it injects editorial interpretations into

3016-544: 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

3132-763: 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". 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. In The Lost Road and Other Writings , it

3248-586: Is to me, anyway, largely an essay in 'linguistic aesthetic', as I sometimes say to people who ask me 'what is it all about'. 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,

3364-417: Is treated amongst other scholars, as noted by both the philologists R.D Fulk and Leonard Neidorf who have been quoted saying "This field "philology's commitment to falsification renders it "at odds with what many literary scholars believe because the purpose of philology is to narrow the range of possible interpretations rather than to treat all reasonable ones as equal". This use of falsification can be seen in

3480-411: Is unthinkable. Betrothal, with the exchange of rings, lasts at least a year, and is revocable by the return of the rings, but is rarely broken. Marriage is by words exchanged by the bride and groom (including the speaking of the name of Eru Ilúvatar) and consummation; it is celebrated with a feast. Wedding rings are worn on the index fingers. The bride's mother gives the groom a jewel to wear. Elves view

3596-568: The South English Legendary from c. 1250, describes elves much as Tolkien does: Some of Tolkien's Elves are in the "undying lands" of Valinor , home of the godlike Valar , while others are in Middle-earth. The Elf-queen Galadriel indeed has been expelled from Valinor, much like the fallen Melkor , though she is clearly good, and much like an angel. Similarly, some of the Legendary ' s Eluene are on Earth, others in

Languages constructed by Tolkien - Misplaced Pages Continue

3712-419: The daoine-sithe , and the tylwyth-teg ." Tolkien, a philologist , knew of the many seemingly contradictory traditions about elves. The Old English Beowulf -poet spoke of the strange eotenas ond ylfe ond orcn éas , " ettens [giants] and elves and demon-corpses", a grouping which Shippey calls "a very stern view of all non-human and un-Christian species". The Middle English Sir Gawain meets

3828-704: The Celtic substratum in England, he used Old Welsh names to render the Dunlendish names of Buckland Hobbits (e.g., Meriadoc for Kalimac ). 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

3944-647: The Common Speech . According to Shippey, the theme of diminishment from semi-divine Elf to diminutive Fairy resurfaces in The Lord of the Rings in the dialogue of Galadriel. "Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlórien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten." Writing in 1954, part way through proofreading The Lord of

4060-661: The Library of Pergamum and the Library of Alexandria around the fourth century BC, continued by Greeks and Romans throughout the Roman and Byzantine Empire . It was eventually resumed by European scholars of the Renaissance , where it was soon joined by philologies of other European ( Romance , Germanic , Celtic ), Eurasian ( Slavic , etc.), Asian ( Arabic , Persian , Sanskrit , Chinese , etc.), and African ( Egyptian , Nubian , etc.) languages. Indo-European studies involve

4176-460: The Solosimpi and Tinúviel . Alongside the idea of the greater Elves, Tolkien toyed with the idea of children visiting Valinor, the island-homeland of the Elves in their sleep. Elves would also visit children at night and comfort them if they had been chided or were upset. This was abandoned in Tolkien's later writing. Douglas Anderson shows that in The Hobbit , Tolkien again includes both

4292-512: 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. The first published monograph dedicated to the Elvish languages

4408-492: 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. The combination of a Latin basis with Finnish phonological rules resulted in

4524-583: The " Earthly Paradise ". So, did they have souls, Shippey asks? Since they could not leave the world, the answer was no; but given that they didn't disappear completely on death, the answer had to have been yes. In Shippey's view, the Silmarillion resolved the Middle English puzzle, letting Elves go not to Heaven but to the halfway house of the Halls of Mandos on Valinor. By the late 19th century,

4640-451: The "fusion or kindling-point" of Tolkien's thinking about elves came from the Middle English lay Sir Orfeo , which transposes the classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice into a wild and wooded Elfland, and makes the quest successful. In Tolkien's translation the elves appear and disappear: "the king of Faerie with his rout / came hunting in the woods about / with blowing far and crying dim, and barking hounds that were with him; yet never

4756-619: The Anglo-Saxons might call a very fair woman ælfscýne , "elf-beautiful". Some aspects can readily be reconciled, Shippey writes, since "Beauty is itself dangerous". But there is more: Tolkien brought in the Old English usage of descriptions like wuduælfen "wood-elf, dryad ", wæterælfen "water-elf", and sǣælfen "sea-elf, naiad ", giving his elves strong links with wild nature. Yet another strand of legend holds that Elfland , as in Elvehøj ("Elf Hill") and other traditional stories,

Languages constructed by Tolkien - Misplaced Pages Continue

4872-726: The Avari, The Unwilling . The others were called Eldar, the People of the Stars by Oromë, and they took Ingwë, Finwë and Elwë as their leaders, and became respectively the Vanyar, Noldor and Teleri (who spoke Vanyarin Quenya, Noldorin Quenya, and Telerin, respectively). On their journey, some of the Teleri feared the Misty Mountains and dared not cross them. They turned back and stayed in

4988-404: 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

5104-580: The Dwarves and the Jews are intentional. 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

5220-600: The Elves to Valinor rather than leaving them where they were first awakened, near the Cuiviénen lake in the eastern extremity of Middle-earth. They sent Oromë, who took Ingwë, Finwë and Elwë as ambassadors to Valinor. Returning to Middle-earth, Ingwë, Finwë and Elwë convinced many of the Elves to take the Great Journey (also called the Great March) to Valinor. Those who did not accept the summons became known as

5336-460: The Elves who never went to see the light of the Two Trees of Valinor . Tolkien developed his conception of elves over the years, from his earliest writings through to The Hobbit , The Silmarillion , and The Lord of the Rings . Traditional Victorian dancing fairies and elves appear in much of Tolkien's early poetry, and have influence upon his later works, in part due to the influence of

5452-526: The Elves, including Sindarin and Quenya . Tolkien-style Elves have become a staple of fantasy literature . They have appeared, too, in film and role-playing game adaptations of Tolkien's works. The framework for J. R. R. Tolkien 's conception of his Elves, and many points of detail in his portrayal of them, is thought by Haukur Þorgeirsson to have come from the survey of folklore and early modern scholarship about elves ( álfar ) in Icelandic tradition in

5568-465: The Elves, master linguists , could not learn Entish, nor did they attempt to record it because of its complex sound structure: ... 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 To illustrate these properties, Tolkien provides

5684-899: The English language in the 16th century, from the Middle French philologie , in the sense of 'love of literature'. The adjective φιλόλογος ( philólogos ) meant 'fond of discussion or argument, talkative', in Hellenistic Greek , also implying an excessive (" sophistic ") preference of argument over the love of true wisdom, φιλόσοφος ( philósophos ). As an allegory of literary erudition, philologia appears in fifth-century postclassical literature ( Martianus Capella , De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii ), an idea revived in Late Medieval literature ( Chaucer , Lydgate ). The meaning of "love of learning and literature"

5800-618: The First Age. The Lhammas exists in three versions, the shortest one being called the Lammasathen . 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: Internally, in the fiction, the Elvish language family is a group of languages related by descent from

5916-556: The Grey Havens, where Círdan the Shipwright dwells with his folk. Eventually, any Elves that remain in Middle-earth undergo a process of "fading", in which their immortal spirits overwhelm and "consume" their bodies. This renders their bodily forms invisible to mortal eyes, except to those to whom they wish to manifest themselves. The 1977 Rankin-Bass version of The Hobbit depicts the wood-elves in what Austin Gilkeson calls

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6032-595: The Númenóreans, were killed. During the Second and Third Ages , they held some protected realms with the aid of the Three Rings of Power : Lothlorien, ruled by Galadriel and Celeborn; Rivendell , ruled by Elrond and home to the Elf-lord Glorfindel; and the Grey Havens, ruled by Círdan the shipwright. Círdan and his Elves built the ships on which Elves departed for Valinor. After the destruction of

6148-684: The One Ring , the power of the Three Rings of the Elves ended and the Fourth Age , the Age of Men, began. Most Elves left for Valinor; those that remained in Middle-earth were doomed to a slow decline until, in the words of Galadriel , they faded and became a "rustic folk of dell and cave". The fading played out over thousands of years, until in the modern world, occasional glimpses of rustic Elves would fuel folktales and fantasies. Elladan and Elrohir,

6264-489: 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: Furthermore, to parallel

6380-454: The Rings , Tolkien claimed that the Elvish language Sindarin had a character very like British-Welsh "because it seems to fit the rather 'Celtic' type of legends and stories told of its speakers". In the same letter, Tolkien goes on to say that the elves had very little in common with elves or fairies of Europe, and that they really represent men with greater artistic ability, beauty and a longer life span. In his writings, an Elven bloodline

6496-852: The Shire "moving slowly and gracefully towards the West, accompanied by ethereal music" with John Duncan 's 1911 painting The Riders of the Sidhe . She notes that Jackson's conceptual designer, the illustrator Alan Lee , had made use of the painting in the 1978 book Faeries . Tolkien-style Elves have influenced the depiction of elves in the fantasy genre from the 1960s and afterwards. Elves speaking an elvish language similar to those in Tolkien's novels became staple non-human characters in high fantasy works and in fantasy role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons . They are often portrayed as being mentally sharp and lovers of nature, art, and song, as well as wiser and more beautiful than humans. They usually fit

6612-785: The Silmarils back, and led a large army of the Noldor to Beleriand. In Beleriand, Elwë was eventually found, and married Melian the Maia . He became the overlord of Beleriand, naming himself Thingol (Sindarin: Grey-cloak ). After the First Battle of Beleriand , during the first rising of the Moon, the Noldor arrived in Beleriand. They laid a siege around Morgoth's fortress of Angband , but were eventually defeated. The Elves never regained

6728-417: The Teleri took his brother Olwë as their leader and were ferried to Valinor. Some Teleri stayed behind though, still looking for Elwë, and others stayed on the shores, being called by Ossë. They took Círdan as their leader and became the Falathrim . The Teleri who stayed in Beleriand later became known as the Sindar. Matthew Dickerson notes the "very complicated changes, with shifting meanings assigned to

6844-420: The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey 's suggestion that the "real root" of The Silmarillion lay in the linguistic relationship, complete with sound-changes and differences of semantics, between these two languages of the divided elves. Shippey writes, too, that the elves are separated not by colour, despite names like light and dark, but by history, including their migrations. In Valinor, Fëanor, son of Finwë, and

6960-426: The Valar tried to summon the Elves back to Valinor. Many complied, but some stayed. During the Second Age they founded the Realms of Lindon (all that was left of Beleriand after the cataclysm), Eregion , and Rhovanion (Mirkwood). Sauron , Morgoth's former servant, made war upon them, but with the aid of the Númenóreans they defeated him, though both the king of the Noldorin Elves, Gil-galad, and Elendil, king of

7076-455: The West Germanic concept appears to have come to differ from the Scandinavian notion in the early Middle Ages, and the Anglo-Saxon concept diverged even further, possibly under Celtic influence. J. R. R. Tolkien made it clear in a letter that his Elves differed from those "of the better known lore" of Scandinavian mythology . The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey notes that one Middle English source which he presumes Tolkien must have read,

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7192-447: 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) Rohirric is represented in The Lord of the Rings by Old English because Tolkien chose to make

7308-412: The ancient languages of the Near East progressed rapidly. In the mid-19th century, Henry Rawlinson and others deciphered the Behistun Inscription , which records the same text in Old Persian , Elamite , and Akkadian , using a variation of cuneiform for each language. The elucidation of cuneiform led to the decipherment of Sumerian . Hittite was deciphered in 1915 by Bedřich Hrozný . Linear B ,

7424-528: The arts. Elves, particularly the Noldor, spend their time on smithwork, sculpture, music and other arts, and on preparing food. Males and females are equal, but females often specialize in the arts of healing while the males go to war. This is because they believe that taking life interferes with the ability to preserve life. However, females can defend themselves at need as well as males, and many males such as Elrond are skilled healers. Elves are skilful horse-riders, riding without saddle or bridle, though Tolkien

7540-420: The bay of Cuiviénen during the Years of the Trees . This event marked the beginning of the First Age . They awoke under the starlit sky, as the Sun and Moon had yet to be created. The first Elves to awaken were three pairs: Imin ("First") and his wife Iminyë, Tata ("Second") and Tatië, and Enel ("Third") and Enelyë. They walked through the forests, finding other pairs of Elves, who became their folk. They lived by

7656-430: The book's use of Modern English as representing Westron. 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: The language represented in this history by English was the Westron or 'Common Speech' of

7772-485: The comparative philology of all Indo-European languages . Philology, with its focus on historical development ( diachronic analysis), is contrasted with linguistics due to Ferdinand de Saussure 's insistence on the importance of synchronic analysis . While the contrast continued with the emergence of structuralism and the emphasis of Noam Chomsky on syntax , research in historical linguistics often relies on philological materials and findings. The term philology

7888-423: The debate surrounding the etymology of the Old English character Unferth from the heroic epic poem Beowulf . James Turner further disagrees with how the use of the term is dismissed in the academic world, stating that due to its branding as a "simpleminded approach to their subject" the term has become unknown to college-educated students, furthering the stereotypes of "scrutiny of ancient Greek or Roman texts of

8004-426: The early 2000s from among the 3000 pages of linguistic material held by the team of editors including Carl F. Hostetter , Tolkien's constructed languages have become much more accessible. David Salo 's 2007 A Gateway to Sindarin presents Sindarin's grammar concisely. Elizabeth Solopova 's 2009 Languages, Myth and History gives an overview of the linguistic traits of the various languages invented by Tolkien and

8120-474: The eldest of the elves and his clan, is similar to the name of the god Ingwi-Freyr in Norse mythology, a god who is gifted the elf-world Álfheimr . Terry Gunnell finds the relationship between beautiful ships and the Elves reminiscent of the god Njörðr and the god Freyr's ship Skíðblaðnir . He also retains the usage of the French derived term "fairy" for the same creatures. The larger Elves are inspired by Tolkien's personal Catholic theology , representing

8236-437: 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

8352-535: The famous decipherment and translation of the Rosetta Stone by Jean-François Champollion in 1822, some individuals attempted to decipher the writing systems of the Ancient Near East and Aegean . In the case of Old Persian and Mycenaean Greek , decipherment yielded older records of languages already known from slightly more recent traditions ( Middle Persian and Alphabetic Greek ). Work on

8468-560: 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. 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. Tolkien developed

8584-680: The golden house of Finarfin." The Vanyar were called "The Fair" for their golden hair. Maeglin is said to have been "tall and black-haired" and "his skin was white." Túrin, a Man, was called Elf-man due to his appearance and speech, and described as "dark-haired and pale-skinned, with grey eyes." Elves, at least the Eldar, have a pregnancy that lasts about a year. By the age of 1, Elves can speak, walk and dance. Puberty and full height are attained at around their fiftieth to one hundredth year, when they stop aging physically. Elves marry freely, monogamously, only once, and for love early in life; adultery

8700-631: The greatest of the Elves, created the Silmarils in which he stored a part of the light of the Two Trees that were lighting Valinor. After three ages in the Halls of Mandos, Melkor was released, feigning reform. He however spread his evil and started to poison the minds of the Elves against the Valar. Eventually he killed Finwë and stole the Silmarils. Fëanor then named him Morgoth (Sindarin: The Black Enemy ). Fëanor and his seven sons then swore to take

8816-891: The history of their creation. A few fanzines were dedicated to the subject, like Tyalië Tyelelliéva published by Lisa Star, and Quettar , the Bulletin of the Linguistic Fellowship of The Tolkien Society , published by Julian C. Bradfield. Tengwestië is an online publication of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship . Internet mailing lists and forums that have been dedicated to Tolkien's constructed languages include Tolklang, Elfling and Lambengolmor. Since 2005, there has been an International Conference on J.R.R. Tolkien's Invented Languages. Philologist Classical philology studies classical languages . Classical philology principally originated from

8932-496: The introduction to Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri ('Icelandic legends and fairy tales'). It covered stories from the 17th century onwards, noting that elves are the firstborn race; that they could marry humans; and that they lack an immortal soul. The modern English word Elf derives from the Old English word ælf (with cognates in all other Germanic languages ). Numerous types of elves appear in Germanic mythology ;

9048-657: 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". Its development began with The Notion Club Papers (written in 1945). It

9164-722: 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

9280-608: The more one sees "how easy it was for him to feel that a consistency and a sense lay beneath the chaotic ruin of the old poetry of the North". Tolkien's Sundering of the Elves allowed him to explain the existence of Norse mythology 's Light Elves, who live in Alfheim ("Elfhome") and correspond to his Calaquendi, and Dark Elves, who live underground in Svartalfheim ("Black Elfhome") and whom he "rehabilitates" as his Moriquendi,

9396-429: The more serious 'medieval' type of elves, such as Elrond and the wood-elf king, Thranduil , and frivolous elves, such as the elvish guards at Rivendell . In 1937, having had his manuscript for The Silmarillion rejected by a publisher who disparaged all the "eye-splitting Celtic names" that Tolkien had given his Elves, Tolkien denied the names had a Celtic origin: Needless to say they are not Celtic! Neither are

9512-733: The most complete of Tolkien's constructed languages. Elves are also credited with creating the Tengwar (by Fëanor) and Cirth (Daeron) scripts. Elves are immortal, and remain unwearied with age . They can recover from wounds which would be fatal to a Man, but can be killed in battle. Spirits of dead Elves go to the Halls of Mandos in Valinor. After a certain period of time and rest that serves as "cleansing", their spirits are clothed in bodies identical to their old ones. If they do not die in battle or accident, Elves eventually grow weary of Middle-earth and desire to go to Valinor; they often sail from

9628-466: 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

9744-446: The noun they modify in case and number; in later Quenya, this agreement disappears. The basic word order is subject–verb–object . A Elbereth Gilthoniel silivren penna míriel o menel aglar elenath! 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". Unlike Quenya, Sindarin

9860-515: The original principles of textual criticism have been improved and applied to other widely distributed texts such as the Bible . Scholars have tried to reconstruct the original readings of the Bible from the manuscript variants. This method was applied to classical studies and medieval texts as a way to reconstruct the author's original work. The method produced so-called "critical editions", which provided

9976-524: The origins of older texts. Philology also includes the study of texts and their history. It includes elements of textual criticism , trying to reconstruct an author's original text based on variant copies of manuscripts. This branch of research arose among ancient scholars in the Greek-speaking world of the 4th century BC, who desired to establish a standard text of popular authors for both sound interpretation and secure transmission. Since that time,

10092-615: The phonetic approach championed by Yuri Knorozov and others in the 1950s. Since the late 20th century, the Maya code has been almost completely deciphered, and the Mayan languages are among the most documented and studied in Mesoamerica . The code is described as a logosyllabic style of writing. In English-speaking countries, usage of the term "philology" to describe work on languages and works of literature, which had become synonymous with

10208-632: The practices of German scholars, was abandoned as a consequence of anti-German feelings following World War I . Most continental European countries still maintain the term to designate departments, colleges, position titles, and journals. J. R. R. Tolkien opposed the nationalist reaction against philological practices, claiming that "the philological instinct" was "universal as is the use of language". In British English usage, and British academia, philology remains largely synonymous with "historical linguistics", while in US English , and US academia,

10324-534: 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". 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",

10440-536: The relationship between Rohirric and the Common Speech similar to that of Old English and Modern English . 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

10556-449: The relationship between languages. Similarities between Sanskrit and European languages were first noted in the early 16th century and led to speculation of a common ancestor language from which all these descended. It is now named Proto-Indo-European . Philology's interest in ancient languages led to the study of what was, in the 18th century, "exotic" languages, for the light they could cast on problems in understanding and deciphering

10672-525: The rest of his life. 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

10788-508: The results of human mental processes. This science compares the results of textual science with the results of experimental research of both psychology and artificial intelligence production systems. In the case of Bronze Age literature , philology includes the prior decipherment of the language under study. This has notably been the case with the Egyptian , Sumerian , Assyrian , Hittite , Ugaritic , and Luwian languages. Beginning with

10904-490: The rivers, and invented poetry and music in Middle-earth . Journeying further, they came across tall and dark-haired elves, the fathers of most of the Noldor. They invented many new words. Continuing their journey, they found elves singing without language, the ancestors of most of the Teleri. The elves were discovered by the Vala Oromë , who brought the news of their awakening to Valinor. The Valar decided to summon

11020-468: The same names" as Tolkien worked on his conception of the elves and their divisions and migrations. He states that the sundering of the elves allowed Tolkien, a professional philologist , to develop two languages, distinct but related, Quenya for the Eldar and Sindarin for the Sindar, citing Tolkien's own statement that the stories were made to create a world for the languages, not the reverse. Dickerson cites

11136-461: The science fiction TV show Stargate SG-1 , Dr. Daniel Jackson , is mentioned as having a PhD in philology. Elves (Middle-earth) In J. R. R. Tolkien 's writings, Elves are the first fictional race to appear in Middle-earth . Unlike Men and Dwarves , Elves do not die of disease or old age. Should they die in battle or of grief, their souls go to the Halls of Mandos in Aman . After

11252-403: The sexual act as special and intimate, for it leads to the birth of children. Elves who are married cannot be forced by other Elves to have sex; before that they will lose the will to endure and go to Mandos . Elves have few children, and there are long intervals between each child. They are soon preoccupied with other pleasures; their libido wanes and they focus their interests elsewhere, like

11368-815: The shores of the Anduin. After Elessar's death, Legolas built a ship and sailed to Valinor and, eventually, all the elves in Ithilien followed him. In " The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen " in Appendix A, most Elves have already left, barring some in Mirkwood and a few in Lindon; the garden of Elrond in Rivendell is empty. Arwen flees to an abandoned Lothlórien, where she dies. Tolkien describes elves as "tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in

11484-623: The sons of Elrond, did not accompany their father when the White Ship bearing the Ring-bearer and the chief Noldorin leaders sailed from the Grey Havens to Valinor; they remained in Lindon. Celeborn and other elves of the Grey Havens remained for a while before leaving for Valinor. Legolas founded an elf colony in Ithilien during King Elessar 's reign; the elves there helped to rebuild Gondor , living mainly in southern Ithilien, along

11600-627: The state of Men in Eden who have not yet fallen , like humans but fairer and wiser, with greater spiritual powers, keener senses, and a closer empathy with nature. Tolkien wrote of them: "They are made by man in his own image and likeness; but freed from those limitations which he feels most to press upon him. They are immortal, and their will is directly effective for the achievement of imagination and desire." In The Book of Lost Tales , Tolkien includes both more serious "medieval" elves such as Fëanor and Turgon alongside frivolous, Jacobean elves such as

11716-452: The steps that led to his first attempt at the mythology, the 1917 draft of The Book of Lost Tales , involving the character of Earendel in its first story, did not involve his invented languages. 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), and stayed that way for

11832-422: The tales. I do know Celtic things (many in their original languages Irish and Welsh), and feel for them a certain distaste: largely for their fundamental unreason. They have bright colour, but are like a broken stained glass window reassembled without design. They are in fact "mad" as your reader says – but I don't believe I am. Dimitra Fimi proposes that these comments are a product of his Anglophilia rather than

11948-406: The term elf over fairy . In his 1939 essay On Fairy-Stories , Tolkien wrote that "English words such as elf have long been influenced by French (from which fay and faërie , fairy are derived); but in later times, through their use in translation, fairy and elf have acquired much of the atmosphere of German, Scandinavian, and Celtic tales, and many characteristics of the huldu-fólk ,

12064-539: The term 'fairy' had been taken up as a utopian theme, and was used to critique social and religious values, a tradition which Tolkien and T. H. White continued. One of the last of the Victorian Fairy-paintings , The Piper of Dreams by Estella Canziani , sold 250,000 copies and was well known within the trenches of World War I where Tolkien saw active service. Illustrated posters of Robert Louis Stevenson 's poem Land of Nod had been sent out by

12180-404: The text and destroys the integrity of the individual manuscript, hence damaging the reliability of the data. Supporters of new philology insist on a strict "diplomatic" approach: a faithful rendering of the text exactly as found in the manuscript, without emendations. Another branch of philology, cognitive philology, studies written and oral texts. Cognitive philology considers these oral texts as

12296-670: The underground enslavement of the Noldoli to Melkor, Tolkien was essentially rewriting Irish myth regarding the Tuatha Dé Danann into a Christian eschatology . In The Lord of the Rings Tolkien pretends to be merely the translator of Bilbo and Frodo 's memoirs, collectively known as the Red Book of Westmarch . He says that those names and terms that appear in English are meant to be his purported translations from

12412-611: The upper hand, finally losing the hidden kingdoms Nargothrond , Doriath , and Gondolin near the culmination of the war. When the Elves had been forced to the furthest southern reaches of Beleriand, Eärendil the Mariner , a half-elf from the House of Finwë , sailed to Valinor to ask the Valar for help. The Valar started the War of Wrath , finally defeating Morgoth. After the War of Wrath,

12528-606: The vales of the Anduin , and, led by Lenwë, became the Nandor, who spoke Nandorin. Oromë led the others over the Misty Mountains and Ered Lindon into Beleriand . There Elwë became lost, and the Teleri stayed behind looking for him. The Vanyar and the Noldor moved onto a floating island, Tol Eressëa, that was moved by Ulmo to Valinor. After years, Ulmo returned to Beleriand to seek out the remaining Teleri. Without Elwë, many of

12644-401: The wider meaning of "study of a language's grammar, history and literary tradition" remains more widespread. Based on the harsh critique of Friedrich Nietzsche, some US scholars since the 1980s have viewed philology as responsible for a narrowly scientistic study of language and literature. Disagreements in the modern day of this branch of study are followed with the likes of how the method

12760-474: The word a-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lindor-burúme , meaning hill . He described it as a "probably very inaccurate" sampling of the language. 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 ; it has been likened to the extinct Hurrian language of northern Mesopotamia . In

12876-553: 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. 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

12992-458: 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. At a little over 13, he helped construct a sound substitution cypher known as Nevbosh , 'new nonsense', which grew to include some elements of actual invented language. Tolkien stated that this was not his first effort in invented languages. Shortly thereafter, he developed

13108-424: Was associated both with neolithic flint arrowheads and the temptations of the devil. Tolkien takes "elf-shot" as a hint to make his elves skilful in archery. Another danger was wæterælfádl , " water-elf disease ", perhaps meaning dropsy , while a third condition was ælfsogoða , "elf-pain", glossed by Shippey as "lunacy". All the same, an Icelandic woman could be frið sem álfkona , "fair as an elf-woman", while

13224-401: Was inconsistent on this point. Tolkien created many languages for his Elves . His interest was primarily philological , and he said his stories grew out of his languages. Indeed, the languages were the first thing Tolkien ever created for his mythos, starting with what he originally called "Elfin" or "Qenya" [sic]. This was later spelled Quenya (High-elven); it and Sindarin (Grey-elven) are

13340-413: Was narrowed to "the study of the historical development of languages" ( historical linguistics ) in 19th-century usage of the term. Due to the rapid progress made in understanding sound laws and language change , the "golden age of philology" lasted throughout the 19th century, or "from Giacomo Leopardi and Friedrich Schlegel to Nietzsche ". The comparative linguistics branch of philology studies

13456-465: Was the only real claim to 'nobility' that the Men of Middle-earth could have. Tolkien wrote that the elves are primarily to blame for many of the ills of Middle-earth in The Lord of the Rings , having independently created the Three Rings to stop their domains in mortal-lands from ' fading ' and attempting to prevent inevitable change and new growth. The first Elves were awakened by Eru Ilúvatar near

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