Question for the Sindarin experts: is Meril still valid?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I'm afraid that what you're asking, here and in the parallel post, is for something that hasn't yet been written: a comparative philology of BoLT-era Gnomish and Qenya relative to post-LR Sindarin and Quenya. One would really have to have available a full set of linguistic "laws" covering the evolution of the Elvish tongues in Tolkien's mind over some six decades.

This much at least we do know: nearly all of the names and words in BoLT are Qenya except for those (relatively) few which are explicitly Gnomish, as in the Fall of Gondolin.

[Arvegil145]

Well...why not start a forum-offshoot concerned primarily with linguistic material (not now of course, 27th century would do )


I don't know how well-versed are you in the languages (certainly better than I), but if you are indeed, could you be so kind to propose some changes in a thread I started not while ago.http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=18935

Thank you in advance!

[jallanite]

Tolkien was a writer of fiction. His Elvish languages were fictional. They were at first a private invention as a hobby, and then developed, so far as they were developed, as background material for the fiction he wrote.

There is no way in which any fictional language can be automatically updated. Forms in any fictional language depend on whatever the author of the language invents and on whatever rules the inventor creates. Tolkien never set down anything like a complete grammar of either Quenya or Sindarin. And Tolkien might at any time change any of his rules, or invent a new rule.

In letter 347 in Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien occurs:

The names in the line of Arthedain are peculiar in several ways; and several though S. in form, are not readily interpretable. But it would need more historical records and linguistic records of S. than exist (sc. than I have found time or need to invent!) to explain them.

The same is true for many other oddities of the Elvish languages.
Arvegil145 asks, “meril (rose) is valid in Sindarin, but what would be the Quenya equivalent?”

I see no reason to believe that the Quenya cognate would not also be *meril, but see no reason to think that such a Quenya form existed, or necessarily had the same meaning as its Sindarin cognate. Tolkien gives several cases where a supposed cognate form does not exist in the other Eldarin language or exists with a different meaning.

Arvegil145 asks, “But what about the hyphens before and after "i" in the name of Meril-i-Turinqi?”

Hyphens are elsewhere used by Tolkien to indicate that the hyphenated form is a single name in the form presented. The form i is in later Quenya translated ‘the’ in the poem Namárië in the phrase i falmalinnar ‘the foaming waves-many-upon (pl.)’ So Meril-i-Turinqi might be literally translated as ‘Flowers, the Queen of’. Again, this is only a guess.

Read the essay http://www.elvish.org/articles/EASIS.pdf for the disgust that such guesses have raised in one commentator on Tolkien’s Elvish.

[Arvegil145]

Originally Posted by jallanite

Tolkien was a writer of fiction. His Elvish languages were fictional. They were a first a private invention as a hobby, and then developed, so far as they were developed, as background material for the fiction he wrote.

There is no way in which any fictional language can be automatically updated. Forms in any fictional language depend on whatever the author of the language invents and on whatever rules the inventor creates. Tolkien never set down anything like a complete grammar of either Quenya or Sindarin. And Tolkien might at any time change any of his rules, or invent a new rule.

In letter 347 in Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien occurs:

The names in the line of Arthedain are peculiar in several ways; and several though S. in form, are not readily interpretable. But it would need more historical records and linguistic records of S. than exist (sc. than I have found time or need to invent!) to explain them.

The same is true for many other oddities of the Elvish languages.
Arvegil145 asks, “meril (rose) is valid in Sindarin, but what would be the Quenya equivalent?”

I see no reason to believe that the Quenya cognate would not also be *meril, but see no reason to think that such a Quenya form existed, or necessarily had the same meaning as its Sindarin cognate. Tolkien gives several cases where a supposed cognate form does not exist in the other Eldarin language or exists with a different meaning.

Arvegil145 asks, “But what about the hyphens before and after "i" in the name of Meril-i-Turinqi?”

Hyphens are elsewhere used by Tolkien to indicate that the hyphenated form is a single name in the form presented. The form i is in later Quenya translated ‘the’ in the poem Namárië in the phrase i falmalinnar ‘the foaming waves-many-upon (pl.)’ So Meril-i-Turinqi might be literally translated as ‘Flowers, the Queen of’. Again, this is only a guess.

Read the essay http://www.elvish.org/articles/EASIS.pdf for the disgust that such guesses have raised in one commentator on Tolkien’s Elvish.

Thanks for the input - but what, for example, would be an "updated" version of, say, "Tavrobel" (I have been tempted to replace with "Taurobel"), or Gereth and Evranin (and Evromord), and such from the "Lost Tales"

One more question - what would be a Quenya translation of "Queen of Roses" (like, for example, Elentári translates as "Queen of Stars")

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Arvegil145

Thanks for the input - but what, for example, would be an "updated" version of, say, "Tavrobel" (I have been tempted to replace with "Taurobel"), or Gereth and Evranin (and Evromord), and such from the "Lost Tales"?

Where will you replace Tolkien’s forms, and why do you call it “updating”? How does what appears to me to only be random, and somewhat ignorant, changes, now valid? The only person who has the legal right to make such changes is the author, Tolkien, and his son Christopher, to whom he gave the right in his will.

In The Lost Road and Other Writings (HoME 5), in the section “The Etymologies”, Christopher Tolkien gives in part his father’s comments under the entry PELL(ES)-:

Q peler; opele walled house or village, ‘town’; N gobel, cf. Tavrobel (village of Túrin in the forest of Brethil, and name of village in Tol Eressea) [ᴛᴀᴍ];

Under the entry TAM- Christopher Tolkien writes in part:

(cf. ɴᴅᴀᴍ) knock. *tamrō ‘woodpecker’ (= knocker): Q tambaro; N tafr (= tavr), tavor, cf. Tavr-obel [ᴘᴇʟʟ(ᴇꜱ)].

Christopher Tolkien on pages 412-3 discusses Tavrobel further, pointing out that in accounts written following The Lord of the Rings in his father’s writing on Túrin this Tavrobel in Brethil is replaced by Ephel Brandir on Amon Obel. He also notes that in writings of this period the town on Tol Eressea where Ælfwine visits Pengolodh is sometimes named by his father as Tathrobel.

One more question - what would be a Quenya translation of "Queen of Roses" (like, for example, Elentári translates as "Queen of Stars")

We have probably no extant Quenya translation of ‘rose’ in Tolkien’s writing following his writing of The Book of Lost Tales. If indeed Tolkien had decided that the form Qenya Meril still existed in Quenya and Tolkien now intended it to mean ‘rose’ in Quenya as it did in Sindarin, then the obvious translation would be Meriltári.

[Arvegil145]

What I was talking about is the etymology of names, not the names themselves - for example, in Croatian prozor means window - I was thinking of taking the etymology of, say, a certain Qenya name and see how would it be translated into Quenya or Sindarin.

[jallanite]

I don’t have a clue what you are talking about.