Lord of the Rings on Film

Lesson 8: The Extended Versions and Wrap Up

Introduction to Elvish

Mae govannen! Welcome to Elvish101.

The main Elvish languages or dialects are Quenya, used by the "High Elves" (those in Valinor), and Sindarin. Sindarin is much more commonly used than Quenya, which is rarely used outside Valinor except sometimes by the Noldor. It is used by elves in Middle-earth as well as those who left Valinor after the stealing of the Simarils. Sindarin is based on Welsh, while Quenya’s roots are in Finnish and Latin.

Elvish can be written in different alphabets, the most commonly used by Tolkien being Tengwar. There are different "modes" of Tengwar – mainly Quenyan, Sindarin and English, meaning that Tengwar can be used to write words in all three languages. See Tengwar letter and numbers at http://www.omniglot.com/writing/tengwar.... This site also gives several links to sources where you can download Tengwar fonts – quite popular for those wanting Elvish script tattoos!

Readers becoming interested in the extent of Tolkien’s invented world sometimes want to know whether it is possible to learn an Elvish language. While the languages are fairly extensive, Tolkien did not create a full grammar. Appendices E and F of the Lord of the Rings give an introduction to Elvish and are a good place to start, and there are dozens of websites where the scripts can be downloaded and where readers can find glossaries and dictionaries of Elvish words and phrases.

Elvish is too broad a subject to write about in any detail here, and as everyone approaches it with their own agenda (to learn as much as possible, to read a few phrases, to know the Elvish used in the films), it is best to explore it individually from the many resources on the internet. Here are a few to get you started:

http://www.elvish.org – an academic site looking at Tolkien’s invented languages. For the enthusiast only.

http://www.geocities.com/tengwar2001/ind... -- explains how to write using Tengwar.

http://www.geocities.com/fontmaster.geo/... -- Middle-earth alphabets.

http://www.arwen-undomiel.com/elvish.html – a good Elvish dictionary and introduction to the languages, plus names in Elvish to saddle your kids with. J

http://www.grey-company.org/Circle/langu... -- criticised by the Arwen Undomiel site, but otherwise a good introduction into Elvish grammar and how to make your own sentences in Elvish.

http://www.rialian.com/quenya-english.htm - Quenya-English dictionary.

http://www.nevrast.net/dictionary.html -- Elvish dictionary.

Elvish tattoos – as a lot of these sites offer paid tattoo design, I don’t want to recommend/endorse any specific site. Entering ‘elvish tattoo’ into a search engine should yield plenty of results.

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