The invention of a new language
Introduction
Tolkien’s not so secret vice. On a certain summer day exactly a hundred years ago, the teenager Tolkien felt baffled when he listened to a couple of children to communicate in Animalic. This was a primitive language that consisted mainly of assigning words in English to animals. Animalic’s inventors did not try to keep it a secret, and young Tolkien soon learned some language. In his “A Secret Vice” essay he gives an example of Animalic: Dog Nightingale Woodpecker Forty, which translates as ‘You are a moron’. Animalic soon became a dead language, but some of the children continued with their linguistic games.
Developing
They invented a language called Nevbosh, which was mainly a mixture of very distorted words in English, French and Latin. More than twenty years after it became a dead language, Tolkien could still remember at least one coherent fragment, which he calls ‘idiotic’: rhymes can actually be kept in translation. But for Tolkien, simply distort existing words (like Woc = ‘cow’!) In the long run it was not enough. Already among the children of Nevbosh, something more sophisticated emerged: words that could not be traced to any specific source, but also appeared because they seemed to adjust to their meaning.
Because the combination of sound and meaning gave pleasure to children. Tolkien mentions a word, ‘lunt’, which means ‘fast, intelligent’. Tolkien never forgot this word: forty years later, Galadriel sang how the years in Middle-earth had passed ‘VE Lissë-Miruvóreva’, like the rapid blurs of Dulce Aguamiel. Arda’s languages: Quenya: "The ancient language". Quenyya or ‘high elphical’ is the most prominent language of the amanya branch of the elphic languages. Compared to many other elphic languages, Quenya was archaic. It retained the main characteristics of the original elphical language.
Invented by the elves when they woke up for the first time by the will to cuivienen, a language with ‘many beautiful words and many cunning devices of speech’. Quenya, originally written ‘Qenya’, goes back to at least 1915. It seems that this year, Tolkien, 23, compiled the ‘Qenya Lexicon’, one of the first words lists in the elophous language. Innumerable reviews that affect both grammar and vocabulary separate the oldest ‘qenya’ in the more or less final way that is exemplified in the lord of the rings, but the general phonetic style was present from the beginning.
Quenya’s longest sample in the Lord of the Rings is the lament of Galadriel, known as ‘Namarië’ near the end of the chapter ‘Farewell to Lórien’. Grammar and elementary phonology: Quenya has five vowels, a, e, i, o, u, short and long;Long vowels are marked with an accent: á, é, í, or, or. This language, like Latin, has declines: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, possessive, locative, adlative, ablative, instrumental and respective, which, for the good of the reader’s mental health are not described here, sinceThis does not seek to be an exhaustive Quenya course (notice the fact that they exist). It has a defined article "I" and does not have indefinite articles.
It also has two categories of verbs, primitive and derivatives, with 5 forms aorist, present, past, perfect and future. The majority of adjectives end in "A" or "-ë" and for the participles, the equivalent of the "-ing" of English is "-la". Example of Quenya (first 2 verses of Namarië): ai! Laurië lantar lassi súrinen yéni únótimë see rámar aldaron! (Ah! As gold fall in the wind, long innumerable years like trees wings!). Sandarin: "The noble language". Also called: Gray elphic, the Language of Beleriand, the noble language;In ESDLA, it often refers as ‘the language of the elves’.
It is sometimes called ‘Noldorin’ in the previous documents to Esdla de Tolkien, but this is incorrect according to its mature or ‘classic’ vision of the history of this language. Sindarin was the main language of the Eldarin in the Middle -earth, the living vernacular language of the gray or sinndar. It was the most prominent descendant of the common Telerin, which branches from the common eldarin, the Quenya, Telerin, Sindarin and Nandorin ancestor. ‘The gray elphical had an origin similar to Quenya,’ explains Tolkien, ‘because it was the language of those Eldar that, when arriving at the banks of the Middle Earth, the sea had not passed, but had remained on the coasts of the countryof Beleriand.
There Thingol Graycloak of Doriath was his king, and in the long twilight his tongue. He had moved away much from the Eldar’s speech beyond the sea ‘(Esdla, appendix f). A Welsh or Celtic sound language was present in Tolkien’s myths from the beginning. This language was originally called Gnomish or "I Lam Nagoldathon", ‘The language of the Gnomes (Noldor)’ ’. Tolkien’s original Gnomish Dictionary, dating from approximately 1917, was published in the Eldalamberon # 11 and turns out to be a very complete document, with thousands of words. The morphology and grammar of this language is extremely confusing and complex.
Has suffered many reviews over the years, especially the way to generate plurals, so it will not be described here. Example (the registration of the doors of Moria): Ennyn Durin Aran Moria: Pedo Mellon to Minno. Im narvi hain echant: celebrimobor or eregion teithant i thiw hin (the doors of Durin, lord of Moria. Speak, friend, and enter. I, Narvi, I did them. Hollin Celebrimborn [Eregion] drew these signs). Mordor’s black language: ‘It is said that the black language was devised by Sauron in the dark years,’ the Appendix F, ‘informs us’ and that he had wished to turn it into the language of all who served him, but failed in thatpurpose.
After Sauron’s first overthrow, he was forgotten by all except for the Nazgûl. When Sauron got up again, he became again the language of Barad-Dûr and Mordor’s captains ’. There is only a pure example of the black tongue, the registration of the ring, which says: Ash Naz Durbatulûk, Ash Naz Gimbatul, Ash Naz Thrakatulûk Agh Burzum -ishi Krimpatul “A ring to govern them all, a ring to find them, a ring forbring them all and in the dark to tie them ‘. Nazg is ‘Ring’, it is also seen in Nazgûl ‘Ring-spectrum’. Ash is the number ‘one’, AGH is the conjunction ‘Y’, disturbingly similar to Scandinavian “OG”, “Och”. Burzum is ‘darkness’, which incorporates the same buno element, burz- ‘dark’ as in Lugbúrz ‘Dark Tower’.
Therefore, the -um of Burzum must be an abstract suffix such as the ‘-ness’ of the corresponding English word ‘Darkness’. Burzum has a suffix -ishi ‘in’. In the transcription it is separated from Burzum by a script, but there is nothing corresponding in the registration of Tengwar in the ring, so this can be considered a postposition or a locative end. Although Burzum-ishi translates ’in the dark‘, there seems to be nothing corresponding to the article ’‘, unless it is somehow incorporated into ISHI. But the evidence is that in the black language does not mark the distinction between defined and indefinite nouns. How many languages did Tolkien really? The question of how many languages built Tolkien is much more difficult to answer than could imagine a naive interlocutor.
conclusion
Everything is reduced to definitions. According to the strictest definition, Tolkien did not make a single language. According to the most liberal definition, he made a virtually indefinite number of languages, greedsword shine) and of course the primitive elphical, where it all started. We also have the primitive Animalic, NewBosh, and Naffarin. All these languages have their history and characteristics, but for spaces of space it would be impossible to talk about everyone in this article. Therefore, and without more to say, a server says goodbye here.
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