Sindarin


Sindarin is one of the fictional languages devised by J. R. R. Tolkien for use in his fantasy stories set in Arda, primarily in Middle-earth. Sindarin is one of the many languages spoken by the Elves, called the Eledhrim or Edhellim in Sindarin. The word Sindarin is itself a Quenya form, as the Sindar, or "Grey Elves" themselves did not have a name for it, likely simply calling it "Edhellen".
Called in English "Grey-Elvish" or "Grey-Elven", it was the language of the Grey Elves of Beleriand. These were Elves of the Third Clan who remained behind in Beleriand after the Great Journey. Their language became estranged from that of their kin who sailed over sea. Sindarin derives from an earlier language called Common Telerin, which evolved from Common Eldarin, the tongue of the Eldar before their divisions, e.g., those Elves who decided to follow the Vala Oromë and undertook the Great March to Valinor. Even before that the Eldar Elves spoke the original speech of all Elves, or Primitive Quendian.
In the Third Age, Sindarin was the language most commonly spoken by most Elves in the Western part of Middle-earth. Sindarin is the language usually referred to as the Elf-Tongue or Elven-Tongue in The Lord of the Rings. When the Quenya-speaking Noldor returned to Middle-earth, they adopted the Sindarin language. Quenya and Sindarin were related, with many cognate words but differing greatly in grammar and structure. Sindarin is said to be more changeful than Quenya, and there were during the First Age a number of regional dialects. The tongue used in Doriath, known as Doriathrin, was said by many Grey-elves to be the highest and most noble form of the language.
In the Second Age, many Men of Númenor spoke Sindarin fluently. Their descendants, the Dúnedain of Gondor and Arnor, continued to speak Sindarin in the Third Age. Sindarin was first written using the Cirth, an Elvish runic alphabet. Later, it was usually written in the Tengwar - a script invented by the elf Fëanor. Tolkien based the phonology and some of the grammar of Sindarin on Welsh, and Sindarin displays some of the consonant mutations that characterize the Celtic languages. The language was also influenced to a lesser degree by Old English and Old Norse.
The Dwarves rarely taught their language to others, so they learned both Quenya and Sindarin in order to communicate with the Elves, most notably the Noldor and Sindar. By the Third Age, however, the Dwarves were estranged from the Elves and no longer routinely learned their language, preferring to use Westron.

Two timelines

For Tolkien's constructed languages we must distinguish two timelines of development:
Tolkien was interested in languages from an early age, and developed several constructed languages while still a teen. Eventually, as a young adult, he created an entire family of constructed languages spoken by Elves and a secondary world where these could evolve.
One of these languages was created c. 1915 and it was inspired by the Celtic languages, particularly Literary Welsh. Tolkien called it Goldogrin or "Gnomish" in English. He wrote a substantial dictionary of Gnomish and a grammar. This is the first conceptual stage of the Sindarin language. At the same time Tolkien conceived a History of the Elves and wrote it in the Book of Lost Tales. Gnomish was spoken by the Gnomes or Noldoli, the Second Clan of Elves, and Elfin was the other tongue spoken by the great majority of the Elves of the Lonely Isle.
The beginning of the "Name-list of the Fall of Gondolin", one of the Lost Tales, gives a good example of both languages :
A few years later, c. 1925, Tolkien began anew the grammar and lexicon of the tongue of his Gnomes. He abandoned the words Goldogrin and lam Goldrin in favour of Noldorin. This is the second conceptual stage of Sindarin. Tolkien composed then a grammar of this new Noldorin, the Lam na Ngoluith.
In the early 1930s Tolkien wrote a new grammar of Noldorin. This is the "late conceptual Noldorin". At the same time, Tolkien was developing the Ilkorin tongues of the Elves of the Third Clan who remained in Beleriand.
Noldorin was at that time conceived as having evolved from Old Noldorin spoken in Valinor. The Noldorin Elves wanted to speak a distinct tongue from the First Clan Elves who also lived with them and spoke Quenya, and so they developed Old Noldorin from what Tolkien called Koreldarin: "the tongue of those who left Middle-earth, and came to Kór, the hill of the Elves in Valinor."
When the Noldor went into exile to Beleriand, Old Noldorin evolved into Noldorin, a Welsh-style language with many dialects.
The Ilkorin tongues of Beleriand did not resemble Welsh. Later on Tolkien conceived the name Lemberin for them.
Tolkien created Sindarin c. 1944. He used much of Noldorin and blended it with "Ilkorin Doriathrin" and added in some new features. On that matter, he wrote a side note on his "Comparative Tables": "Doriath, etc. = Noldorin ". The Ilkorin tongues of 1930–50 spoken in Beleriand, e.g. Doriathrin and the other dialects, were not as much based on Welsh as Noldorin was, and Tolkien wanted his new "tongue of Beleriand" to be a Welsh-type language.
Tolkien did not provide a detailed description of the language in published works such as The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien wrote many pieces in Sindarin. He made an effort to give to his Elvish languages the feel and taste of natural languages. He wanted to infuse in them a kind of life, while fitting them to a very personal aesthetic taste. He wanted to build languages primarily to satisfy his personal urge and not because he had some universal design in mind.
Two magazines—Vinyar Tengwar, from issue 39, and Parma Eldalamberon, from issue 11 —are today exclusively devoted to the editing and publishing of J.R.R. Tolkien's gigantic mass of unpublished linguistic papers. These are published at a slow pace and the editors have not published a comprehensive catalogue of these unpublished linguistic papers. Access to the original documents is severely limited as these papers were not published by Christopher Tolkien in the volumes of his "The History of Middle-earth". Almost each year, new-found words of Sindarin, Noldorin and Ilkorin are published and the grammar rules of these languages are disclosed.

Use of Sindarin

Attempts by fans to write in Sindarin began in the 1970s, when the total corpus of published Elvish was only a few hundred words. Since then, usage of Elvish has flourished in poems and texts, phrases and names, and tattoos. But Tolkien himself never intended to make his languages complete enough for conversation; as a result, newly invented Elvish texts, such as dialogue written by David Salo for the films directed by Peter Jackson, require conjecture and sometimes coinage of new words.

Internal history

Sindarin developed from Old Sindarin, itself from Common Telerin under the "shadow" of Middle-earth and not in the holy light of the Two Trees of Valinor. The Kingdom of Doriath became an isolated land after the return of the evil Vala Melkor to his stronghold of Angband. So from that time it remained conservative, and later resisted the Noldorin influence almost entirely. Until then, owing to the nomadic life of the Grey Elves, their tongue had remained practically uniform, with one notable exception. In the North-West region of Beleriand there were settlements of Elves who seldom went far abroad. Their language, although generally of Sindarin kind in many linguistic aspects, early diverged from that of the other Sindar. It was usually called Mithrimin.

Dialects

The divergence of Sindarin begun first into a Northern or Mithrimin group and a Southern group.
The Southern group had a much larger territory, and included Doriathrin or "Central Sindarin".
So during the First Age, before the return of the Noldor, there were four dialects of Sindarin:
Doriathrin preserved many archaic features. Unlike the other dialects Doriathrin remained free from Quenya influences. The "accent" of Doriath was also quite recognisable, so that after Túrin had left Doriath he kept a Doriathrin accent until his death, which immediately pinpointed his origin to speakers of other dialects of Sindarin.
"The post-war 'Beleriandic' as lingua franca and as a language of Noldor was strongly influenced by Doriath."
Much about Doriathrin morphology, and how it contrasts with the other Sindarin dialects, has been set out by J.R.R. Tolkien in his linguistic writings:

Falathrin

The language of the followers of the Elf Círdan, called Falathrin, is the other dialect of the Southern Sindarin group. It remained close to the tongue of Doriath because there was great trade between the two groups up to the time of the Wars of Beleriand.

North Sindarin

North Sindarin was spoken by the Mithrim, the northernmost group of the Grey-elves. It differed from the Central Sindarin of Beleriand in many aspects. Originally spoken in Dorthonion and Hithlum, it contained many unique words and was not fully intelligible to the other Elves.
The Northern dialect was in many ways more conservative, and later divided itself into a North-Western dialect and a North-Eastern dialect.
This language was at first adopted by the exiled Noldor after their return to Middle-earth at Losgar. Later Noldorin Sindarin changed, much due to the adoption of Quenya features, and partially due to the love of the Noldor for making linguistic changes. Beren's heritage was clear to Thingol of Doriath as he spoke the North Sindarin of his homeland.

Noldorin Sindarin

With the exception of Doriathrin, Sindarin adopted some Quenya features after the return of the Noldor, as well as unique sound changes devised by the Noldor.
In the hidden city of Gondolin, an isolated land, a peculiar dialect developed: "This differed from the standard in having Western and some Northern elements, and in incorporating a good many Noldorin-Quenya words in more a less Sindarized forms. Thus the city was usually called Gondolin with simple replacement of g-, not Goenlin or Goenglin ".

In the Second and Third Age

'Beleriandic' Sindarin as a lingua franca of all Elves and many Men, and as the language of the Noldor in exile, was based on Western Sindarin but was strongly influenced by Doriathrin. During the Second Age Sindarin was a lingua franca for all Elves and their friends, until it was displaced for Men by Westron, which arose in the Third Age as a language heavily influenced by Sindarin.
In Gondor at the end of the Third Age, Sindarin was still spoken daily by a few noble Men in the city Minas Tirith. Aragorn, raised in Imladris, spoke it fluently.

Phonology

Sindarin was designed with a Welsh-like phonology. It has most of the same sounds and a similar sound structure, or phonotactics. The phonologies of Old English, Old Norse and Icelandic are also fairly close to Sindarin and, along with Welsh, certainly did have an influence on some of the language's grammatical features, especially the plurals.

Consonants

  1. written and respectively
  2. written initially and medially
  3. written
  4. written
  5. written
  6. written
  7. written
The phoneme is voiced to when final or before, but remains written as. The sound is written when final or when used to spell a lenited which becomes.
Old Sindarin, like Common Brittonic and Old Irish, also had a spirant m or nasal v, which was transcribed as mh. This merged with in later Sindarin.
Phonemically, Sindarin aligns with the other velar consonants like,,, etc. but is phonetically the voiceless uvular fricative.

Orthographic conventions

Vowels

Monophthongs

An accent signifies a long vowel. In a monosyllabic word, a circumflex is used. However, for practical reasons, users of the ISO Latin-1 character set often substitute ý for ŷ, as ISO Latin-1 does not have a character for ŷ, only ý and ÿ.
In Old Sindarin, there was a vowel similar to German ö, which Tolkien mostly transcribed as œ. Although this was meant to be distinct from the diphthong oe, it was often simply printed oe in publications like The Silmarillion, e.g. Nírnaeth Arnoediad, Goelydh. This vowel later came to be pronounced and is therefore transcribed as such.

Diphthongs

Diphthongs are ai, ei, ui, and au. If the last diphthong finishes a word, it is spelt aw. There are also diphthongs ae and oe with no English counterparts, similar to pronouncing a or o respectively in the same syllable as one pronounces an e ; IPA. Tolkien had described dialects and variations in pronunciations, and other pronunciations of ae and oe undoubtedly existed.

Grammar

It is almost impossible to extrapolate the morphological rules of Sindarin from published material due to lack of material and the fact that no full grammar has been published.
Unlike the largely agglutinative Quenya, Sindarin 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 : S. Adan, pl. Edain, S. Orch, pl. Yrch.
Sindarin has also a 2nd plural of nouns formed with a suffix: S. êl 'star', 1st pl. elin 'stars', 2nd pl. elenath 'all the stars'; Ennor 'Middle-earth', 2nd pl. Ennorath ' the Middle-lands'.

Nouns

While Sindarin does not have a grammatical gender, it has just like Welsh two systems of grammatical number. Singular/plural nouns correspond to the singular/plural number system just as of English. Sindarin noun plurals are unpredictable and formed in several ways. If Tolkien did not provide us with the plural form of a Sindarin noun we have no certain way of inferring it.
Some Sindarin nouns form the plural with an ending, e.g. Drû, pl. Drúin "wild men, Woses, Púkel-Men". Others form the plural through vowel change, e.g. golodh and gelydh, "lore master, sage" ; Moredhel, pl. Moredhil, "Dark-Elves". Still others form their plurals through some combination of the two, and a few do not change in the plural: Belair, "Beleriandic-Elf/Elves" is singular and plural.
The other system of number was called by Tolkien 2nd plural or collective number. The nouns in this system form it usually by adding a suffix to the plural ; for example -ath, as in elenath, "all the stars ", but not always as in Drúath. Another ending of the 2nd pl. is -rim, used especially to indicate a race-group: Nogothrim "the race of the Dwarves", from pl. Nogoth. There exist another such ending -lir, as in Nogothlir. The ending -hoth, a full Sindarin word meaning 'host', is added to a singular noun to form the 2nd plural. It has a strong unfriendly sense, e. g. Gaurhoth "the Werewolf-horde" from Gaur "Were-wolf"; or as in Gornhoth a derogative name for the Dwarves, the "Hard-host/people". Most nouns in this system are frequently found in groups.

Plural forms

Most Sindarin plurals are formed by apophony and are characterised by i-mutation. The Noldorin term for this is prestanneth "affection of vowels". In an earlier stage of the language, plurals were marked by the suffix -ī, to which the root vowel assimilated, becoming fronted ; later the final -ī was lost, leaving the changed root vowel as the sole marker of the plural. The resulting plural patterns are:
Vowels not listed do not undergo any change, such as remains as, meaning that it is possible for some words to have the same form in the singular and plural.

Initial consonant mutations

Sindarin has a series of consonant mutations, which are not yet fully understood because no Sindarin grammar written by Prof. Tolkien has been published. The corpus of published Sindarin sentences is yet very small, and Sindarin has many dialects each with its own set of mutation rules.

Mutations found in Noldorin

The only complete explanation is of the mutations of "early conceptual Noldorin" from Tolkien's Lam na Ngoluith, Early Noldorin Grammar.
Mutation is triggered in various ways:
Initial mutations must not be confused with assimilations that may occur in compound words.
The following table outlines how different consonants are affected by the three mutations.
RadicalSoftHardNasal
bv bm
ddhdn
g’gng
gw’wgwngw
pbff
tdthth
cgchch
cwgwchwchw

The apostrophe ’ indicates elision, and is not necessarily written. Those forms of lenited p that are pronounced f are written ph as mentioned above. The mutations do not work exactly the same as they do in Welsh; the nasal mutations of the voiceless stops are the same as the hard mutations rather than forming the expected hm, hn, hng, hngw.
Noldorin words beginning in b-, d-, or g-, which descend from older mb-, nd-, or ng- are affected differently by the mutations:
RadicalSoftHardNasal
bmbm
dndn
gnggng

Noldorin words beginning in n, m, l, r, s are not affected by mutation.
For example, the deictic singular article i triggers soft mutation in Noldorin. When added to a word like tî, "line" it becomes i dî, "the line". In Noldorin's phonological history, t became d in the middle of a word. With the preposition no, 'to', tî becomes no thî, 'to the line'. With the plural article, i, tî becomes i thiath "the lines".
Many of the mutations of Noldorin appear to be taken into Sindarin a few years later. The Sindarin word gwath "shadow" becomes i 'wath, "the shadow".

Mutations found in Salo's grammar

In David Salo's A Gateway to Sindarin he proposes a more complex set of mutations by studying the Sindarin corpus and extrapolating the information. The mutations proposed by Salo are as follows :
RadicalSoftNasalStopLiquidMixed
t /t/d /d/th /θ/th /θ/th /θ/d /d/
p /p/b /b/ph /f/ph /f/ph /f/b /b/
c /k/g /g/ch /χ/ch /χ/ch /χ/g /g/
d /d/dh /ð/n /n/dh /ð/
b /b/v /v/m /m/v /v/
g /g/ng /ŋ/
m /m/v /v/v /v/
d /d/n /n/nd /nd/nd /nd/d /d/nd /nd/
b /b/m /m/mb /mb/mb /mb/b /b/mb /mb/
g /g/ng /ŋ/ng /ŋg/n-g /ŋg/g /g/ng /ŋg/
lh /ɬ/l /l/l /l/l /l/l /l/l /l/
rh /r̥/r /r/r /r/r /r/r /r/r /r/
s /s/h /h/h /h/
h /h/ch /χ/ch /χ/ch /χ/ch /χ/ch /χ/
hw /ʍ/chw /χw/chw /χw/chw /χw/chw /χw/chw /χw/

The nasal mutation however does not affect 'd' and 'g' when found in the clusters 'dr', 'gr', 'gl' or 'gw'.

Pronouns

One source is used for the Sindarin pronouns, another for the possessive suffixes.
PronounPossessive suffix
1st person singular-n-en
2nd pers. imperious/familiar sg.-g-eg
2nd pers. formal/polite sg.-dh-el
3rd person singularnil-ed
1st pers. pl. inclusive-m-em
1st pers. pl. exclusive-nc-enc
2nd person imperious/familiar plural-g, -gir-eg, -egir
2nd person formal/polite plural-dh, -dhir-el, -elir
3rd person plural-r-ent
Dual --
1st pers. dual inclusive-m, -mmid?
1st pers. dual exclusive-nc, -ngid?
2nd person imperious/familiar dual-ch?
2nd person formal/polite dual-dh, -dhid?
3rd person dual-st?

These are subjective forms used in conjugation. Sindarin used objective detached forms, like dhe.
Sindarin pronouns are known to combine with prepositions as in Celtic languages, Welsh: inni "to/for us" from i 'to/for' and ni 'we/us'. Irish: ammen. annin "for/to me". But they are not well documented in the published Corpus. Personal pronoun suffixes can also combine with nouns, as in Hungarian: Lamm, "tongue" > lammen "my tongue".

Verbs

While Tolkien wrote that Quenya inflections were pretty regular, he also wrote: "Sindarin verbal history is complicated." The number of attested verbs in Sindarin is actually small. The Sindarin verb system remains imperfectly known until the grammars and treatise of Sindarin conjugation that Tolkien wrote are published.
About -ant, the 3rd person past tense ending of Sindarin, he wrote: "it is rather like that of Medieval Welsh -as, or modern Welsh -odd." So with teith- "make marks of signs, write, inscribe", teithant is the 3rd person singular past tense. Cf. Welsh chwaraeodd ef, "he played".

Basic verbs

Basic verbs, though fewer than derived verbs, have a complex conjugation that arises from Sindarin's phonological history.
Basic verbs form the infinitive by adding -i: giri from gir-. This ending causes an a or o in the stem to umlaut to e: blebi from blab-. Sindarin does not use infinitive forms very often, and rather uses the gerund to achieve the same meaning.
For all persons except the third person singular, the present tense is formed by the insertion of -i, and the proper enclitic pronominal ending: girin, girim, girir. As with the infinitive, -i causes an a or o in the stem to umlaut to e: pedin, pedim, pedir, from pad-. The third person singular, because it has a zero-ending, does not require the insertion of -i. This leaves the bare stem, which, because of Sindarin's phonological history, causes the vowel of the stem to become long: gîr, blâb, pâd.
The past tense of basic verbs is very complicated and poorly attested. One common reconstructed system is to use -n: darn. However, the only time this -n actually remains is after a stem in -r. After a stem ending in -l, -n becomes -ll: toll. After -b, -d, -g, -v, or -dh, it is metathesized and then assimilated to the same place of articulation as the consonant it now follows. The consonant then experiences what could be called a "backwards mutation": -b, -d, and -g become -p, -t, and -c, and -v and -dh become -m and -d. The matter is complicated even further when pronominal endings are added. Because -mp, -mb, -nt, -nd, and -nc did not survive medially, they become -mm-, -mm-, -nn-, -nn-, and -ng. In addition, past tense stems in -m would have -mm- before any pronominal endings. Because this all may seem rather overwhelming, look at these examples which show step-by-step transformations:
The future tense is formed by the addition of -tha. An -i is also inserted between the stem and -tha, which again causes a and o to umlaut to e. Endings for all persons except for the first person singular can be added without any further modification: giritham, blebithar. The first person singular ending -n causes the -a in -tha to become -o: girithon, blebithon, pedithon.
The imperative is formed with the addition of -o to the stem: giro!, pado!, blabo!.

Derived verbs

Derived verbs have a much less complex conjugation, because they have a thematic vowel, which reduces the number of consonant combinations.
The infinitive is formed with -o, which replaces the -a of the stem, e. g. lacho from lacha-.
The present tense is formed without modification to the stem. Pronominal endings are added without any change, except with the first person singular enclitic -n, where the final vowel becomes an o, e.g. renion < renia - I wander.
The past tense is formed with the ending -nt, which becomes -nne with any pronominal endings, e. g. erthant, erthanner.
The future tense is formed with -tha. With the addition of the first person singular -n, this becomes -tho.

Vocabulary

It is very difficult to know how many Elvish words J.R.R. Tolkien imagined, as much of his writings on Elvish languages are still unpublished. As of 2008, about 25 thousand Elvish words have been published.
MeaningSindarinPronunciationQuenya equivalent
earthamar, ceven ambar, cemen
skymenelmenel
waternennén
firenaurnár
man bennnér
femalebessnís
eatmad-mat-
drinksog-suc-
big, greatbeleg, daer alta, halla
race, tribenossnóre
nightdûlóme
dayauraure, ré

The Lexicons of Gnomish, Noldorin and Sindarin lack modern vocabulary.

Numerals

According to Tolkien, the elves preferred duodecimal counting to the decimal system, though both systems seem to have coexisted. The numbers 1–12 are presented below, as well as a few other known higher numbers.
The form *nelchaen appears in the King's Letter, but at the time the roots for ten were KAYAN and KAYAR, resulting in Sindarin *caen, caer. This was later changed to KWAYA, KWAY-AM, resulting in Sindarin pae, so that this older form must be updated. The word *meneg is extracted from the name Menegroth, "the Thousand Caves", although this could technically be a base-12 "thousand".

Corpus

Chronology of publications of Elvish texts

In Tolkien's lifetime

See also Douglas A. Anderson, Carl F. Hostetter: A Checklist, Tolkien Studies 4.