The Great Tolkien Legendarium Thread

[malloc]

So here's what bugs me about Quenya and Sindarin. Where's the sound change come from? Sound change in human languages presumably comes from generational shift. My kids hear and say words subtly different from me and generation on generation as we live and die that changes the sounds of English. But elves are immortal. The elves still knocking around Valinor presumably speak Quenya the same way they did tens of thousands of years ago. Galadriel, still knocking about in RotK, came over with the Noldor in the First Age to get the Silmarils back. I cannot imagine she spoke either Quenya or Sindarin any differently to she did the thick end of 8000 years (?) previously. So how did Sindarin get to be different? How did anybody start to speak differently?

Perhaps there are differences in human and Elf psychology that make the Elves more likely to produce and acquire sound changes even after childhood.

[/ˌnɐˈɾɛndɚduːd/]

I like the idea of a stubborn old-timer type elf who refuses to adopt changes in language even as others do and thus speaks an entirely different language.

[Raphael]

I like the idea of a stubborn old-timer type elf who refuses to adopt changes in language even as others do and thus speaks an entirely different language.

Hah!

[WeepingElf]

So here's what bugs me about Quenya and Sindarin. Where's the sound change come from? Sound change in human languages presumably comes from generational shift. My kids hear and say words subtly different from me and generation on generation as we live and die that changes the sounds of English. But elves are immortal. The elves still knocking around Valinor presumably speak Quenya the same way they did tens of thousands of years ago. Galadriel, still knocking about in RotK, came over with the Noldor in the First Age to get the Silmarils back. I cannot imagine she spoke either Quenya or Sindarin any differently to she did the thick end of 8000 years (?) previously. So how did Sindarin get to be different? How did anybody start to speak differently?

Perhaps there are differences in human and Elf psychology that make the Elves more likely to produce and acquire sound changes even after childhood.

I think the point is that slow, gradual changes tend to go unnoticed, at least in a way that when you look back, you can tell that things are no longer as you remember them to once have been like but cannot tell when exactly the change happened. At least, this has happened to me several times. And the Elves are perhaps not that different from us in that point.

[Glenn]

Reviving this thread, at least temporarily...

Perhaps there are differences in human and Elf psychology that make the Elves more likely to produce and acquire sound changes even after childhood.

In at least one of Tolkien's posthumously published writings, he says exactly that, describing the Elves as "natural conlangers" who are conscious of the features of their language, and enjoy playing with them.


When this thread first appeared, there were several posts that I wanted to respond to, as someone with an interest in Tolkien's writings and what other people have written about him, but I did not have either the time or the opportunity to do so. I have a bit more time now, as I am currently recovering from surgery, but I am not sure whether it would be appropriate to resurrect the thread in order to do so.

[alice]

... describing the Elves as "natural conlangers" who are conscious of the features of their language, and enjoy playing with them.

Just who invented the word "conlanger", anyway?

[Glenn]

... describing the Elves as "natural conlangers" who are conscious of the features of their language, and enjoy playing with them.

Just who invented the word "conlanger", anyway?

Please note that Tolkien did not use the word "conlanger"; that was my paraphrase.

Etymonline gives the word "conlang" as being in existence in 1991, but does not give an origin or initial citation. According to another source that I found, the Oxford English Dictionary traces "con lang" (initially spelled as two words) to a Usenet post about Loglan in 1991, and cites "conlang" (one word) in a Toronto newspaper article about online conlanging in 1999. "Conlanger" was presumably coined by analogy somewhere along the way.

The full phrase "constructed language" goes back further; apparently it was first used by the linguist Otto Jespersen in 1928, although I was not able to confirm the details.

[WeepingElf]

... describing the Elves as "natural conlangers" who are conscious of the features of their language, and enjoy playing with them.

Just who invented the word "conlanger", anyway?

Please note that Tolkien did not use the word "conlanger"; that was my paraphrase.

Etymonline gives the word "conlang" as being in existence in 1991, but does not give an origin or initial citation. According to another source that I found, the Oxford English Dictionary traces "con lang" (initially spelled as two words) to a Usenet post about Loglan in 1991, and cites "conlang" (one word) in a Toronto newspaper article about online conlanging in 1999. "Conlanger" was presumably coined by analogy somewhere along the way.

Conlang originally was the name of an Internet mailing list founded in 1991 which still exists today - the list server had a 7-letter limit for list names in those times. It was, of course, an abbreviation for constructed language, and came to be used on that list in the sense we know today. Conlanger, conworld, auxlang etc. also originated on the Conlang Mailing List, and they were of course analogically derived from conlang. I can't tell you when that happened; it all was way before I joined the Conlang Mailing List, which was in the year 2000.

[Raphael]

Conlang originally was the name of an Internet mailing list founded in 1991 which still exists today

Wow, wouldn't have guessed that!

[Nortaneous]

Sound change is often deliberate and sociolinguistically driven, in mass adoption if not in origin. A reasonably well-traveled and socially aware American is likely able to competently perform at least two accents (native and standard), maybe more (e.g. if they moved across the Mason-Dixon line in their early twenties), and although grammar isn't fully invariant across accents, they're primarily distinguished by sound change and prosody. Why shouldn't the elves have it?

One High German Consonant Shift was enough...

It's also been making its way into Danish.

Australian English also has [tʰ] > [tsʰ], it should be noted.

I don't think this is true as a blanket statement, but this affrication is common in certain sociolinguistic strata in the US.

[Travis B.]

Sound change is often deliberate and sociolinguistically driven, in mass adoption if not in origin. A reasonably well-traveled and socially aware American is likely able to competently perform at least two accents (native and standard), maybe more (e.g. if they moved across the Mason-Dixon line in their early twenties), and although grammar isn't fully invariant across accents, they're primarily distinguished by sound change and prosody. Why shouldn't the elves have it?

I consciously switch between multiple registers, with there being marked differentiation between my low and high registers, but I perceive them to be variations on the same dialect rather that as distinct varieties (particularly as they share important differences from GA).

It's also been making its way into Danish.

Australian English also has [tʰ] > [tsʰ], it should be noted.

I don't think this is true as a blanket statement, but this affrication is common in certain sociolinguistic strata in the US.

I affricate aspirated /t/ in certain words like two/too/stressed to, particular when followed by [y] where it is also labiopalatalized.

[Raphael]

Just saw this in a sub-discussion dealing with Middle-earth over in the comments section of Bret Devereaux's blog, by a commenter going as "ajay":

Of course, Elrond is called half-elven but that isn’t strictly speaking true. He is the son of Earendil, the son of Tuor and Idril (Earendil is therefore half-elf, half-human) and Dior, daughter of Beren and Luthien (Dior is half-human, quarter-elf, quarter-Maia).

Elrond is therefore half-human, three-eighths elf and one-eighth Maia.

[quoting another commenter]

“As far as I know in Tolkien, Elrond “Half-elven” does not have children.”

He is Arwen’s father (her mother is Galadriel’s daughter Celebrian), and he also (in the books) has twin sons, Elladan and Elrohir.

Arwen of course marries Aragorn, and their children would be, let me see, five-eighths human, eleven-thirty-secondths elf and one-thirty-secondth Maia.

Is that the canon? It's making me feel like Avril Lavigne.

(https://acoup.blog/2026/08/07/collectio ... -together/)

[Glenn]

Is that the canon? It's making me feel like Avril Lavigne.

This is mostly canon as far as Elrond’s ancestry and family are concerned, with one major error: Elrond’s mother is Elwing, not Dior. Dior is Elwing’s father, and the son of Beren and Luthien, so the poster above skipped a generation on that side of the family. Elwing’s mother was an Elf, so Elwing herself is five-eighths elven, one-quarter human, and one-eighth Maia, which (I think) makes Elrond nine-sixteenths elven, six-sixteenths human, and one-sixteenth Maia. (Elrond’s wife Celebrian, much more simply, is a full Elf.)

Aragorn himself is a distant descendant of Elrond’s brother Elros, so he and Arwen are technically cousins ~62 times removed, although after so many generations, his ancestry is almost entirely human.

I should note that Tolkien does not, as far as I know, attempt anywhere to break Elrond’s ancestry down into fractions in this fashion. It should also be noted that much of this information is contained in The Silmarillion and other writings that Tolkien’s son Christopher edited and published after his death.

(I’m afraid that I don’t get the Avril Lavigne reference, but then again, I am not very familiar with Avril Lavigne.)

(P.S. As I mentioned upthread, I had intended to respond to some of the earlier posts in this thread, but never managed to do so. I may yet give it a shot.)

[Raphael]

(I’m afraid that I don’t get the Avril Lavigne reference, but then again, I am not very familiar with Avril Lavigne.)

Why do they have to make things so complicated?

[Richard W]

Why do they have to make things so complicated?

That's what you get with intermarriage. For example, I looked up the ancestry of American VP Charles Curtis, and found that despite being an enrolled member of the Kaw tribe, he was only three eighths American Indian. More parochially, on my Welsh side, I have an ancestor from Norfolk.

On a longer term, introgression happens. Eventually, not only will all humans (and probably hobbits) have elven ancestry, but all elves will have human ancestry.

[hwhatting]

Why do they have to make things so complicated?

(Detailed reponse)

I think that was not a real question, but Raphael supplying the Avril Lavigne reference

[Travis B.]

Why do they have to make things so complicated?

(Detailed reponse)

I think that was not a real question, but Raphael supplying the Avril Lavigne reference

Ich habe die Avril-Lavigne-Referenz nicht verstanden.

[Glenn]

@Raphael and hwhatting: I found the lyrics to Avril Lavigne’s song “Complicated” online, so I get the reference now. Thanks!

[Raphael]

(Detailed reponse)

I think that was not a real question, but Raphael supplying the Avril Lavigne reference

Ich habe die Avril-Lavigne-Referenz nicht verstanden.

In this context, I'd translate "reference" as "Anspielung" rather than "Referenz".

[Man in Space]

Elrond Hubbard, meanwhile, remained in Middle-Earth and founded the Council of Thetanar. Tom “Crews” Bombadil was a notable convert.