Tolkien Elvish

Marissa Brodbeck  Eng 125.032 Batia Snir  Fake language of the Day: Tolkien Elvish

While there are many different types of Elvish languages around today, one of the first was created by J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien was a very interesting man; he had a love for languages. For his books, he didn’t write the story and then create a language but the exact opposite. In a letter, Tolkien wrote, “The “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.” He created the Elvish language and then thought of the history of that language. In doing so, this expanded the language more. He made different dialects and even separate languages for Elvish. The first, or original, Elvish he created is called “Primitive “Primitive Quendian.”This language then  branched off into Eldarin and Avarin. The more famous and elaborate elvish languages used stem from Eldarin: Sindarin and and Quenya. Tolkien spent spent the most time on Sindarin and Quenya. Quenya. They are the most known and have have the most words. He was inspired by many different different languages when he created Elvish, but was most most influenced by Welsh and Finnish. Finnish. Many Welsh similarities similarities are seen in Sindarin and Finish in Quenya. Sindarin and Quenya aren’t the only branches Tolkien imaged and created, below is a chart of how he imaged Elvish expanded over thousands thousands of years.

Tolkien created about 2,500 Quenya words and 1,500 Sindarin words. He also made grammar rules to go with this as well as exceptions just like any other language. While this is a l ot, we really can only read/translate elvish because Tolkien didn’t make the language to be spoken. Creating Elvish was just a hobby of his that he did in his free time, he wasn’t trying to create a new, fully functioning language. The elvish heard in the movies is made up by linguistic fans who have made educated guesses as to what Tolkien would have wanted or used.

Side Fact: Tolkien wrote his books as if he was translating them from another language. Also they have websites dedicated to showing you how to write in Elvish. This is how my name Marissa would  be written:

Marissa Brodbeck  Eng 125.032 Batia Snir  Work Cited "Elvish: A Few Hundred Words? A Few Thousand?" Lord of the Rings Fanatics Archive. First Age, Oct. 2004. Web. 03 Feb. 2014. http://www.lotrplaza.com/archives/index.php?Archive=First%20Age&TID=155163 Gulley, Ned. "Write Your Name in Elvish in Ten Minutes." Star Chamber . N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Feb. 2014. http://www.starchamber.com/paracelsus/elvish/elvish-in-ten-minutes.html "Languages." Tolkien Gateway: Wiki. Vesa Piittinen, 17 Dec. 2013. Web. 03 Feb. 2014. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Languages#cite_note-1 McWhorter, John. "Are Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki and Na’vi Real Languages?" TED-Ed . TED Conference, Sept. 2013. Web. 03 Feb. 2014 http://ed.ted.com/lessons/are-elvish-klingondothraki-and-na-vi-real-languages-john-mcwhorter#watch