Building on Tolkien: Dáinic Lenition

[Pedant]

So here’s the thing. I have enjoyed Lord of the Rings since I was quite young, and have even tried teaching myself a bit of Quenya. (Enough time write with if not speak with, anyway.) And one of the things I started as a tribute to Middle-Earth was to start working on languages for other parts of the world, not just the comfortable realms of the Shire or Valinor. These currently include:

• An Avari language, spoken by the Kindi, who live closest to Cuiviénen and have been an inspiration for local human cultures
• A language for the Oliphaunt-riders from the southern desert past Harondor, combining Semitic and Bantu elements; samples of the work found here and here
• A language for the Variags, agglutinative and ergative-absolutive, written using a Mongolian-esque version of Cirth runes
• A language for the people of the Land of the First Sun (ie Hildórien), isolating and yet melodious, the literary language of all those who praise best the Trinity-as-One (Aulë, Oromë, and Ulmo)
• A language for the people of the Eastern Seas, who love Ulmo best and hold his conches as symbols of power against the dark; a sample of the work found here
• A language for the people of the Far South of the world, smiths on the equator prospering in the shadow of the Grey Mountains; a sample of the work found here

Look at it like this: I’m not trying to rip Tolkien off and I don’t think of any of this as canon, I just want to add a little complexity to an already-beautiful world. Painting another leaf on Niggle’s tree, as it were.
Anyone interested?

[Vardelm]

Personally, I don't see why not. I've done some expansion work like this myself with Khuzdul, but never far enough to really post much. There are people who find this objectionable, but if you make it clear that you don't see this as canon (which would be dumb if you did), not much will be said. There are many Sindarin & Quenya ripoffs out there that don't state where most of the language came from, so if you just start with being honest about the source, you're already in good shape.

EDIT: 1 more item, which is that it would be best to clearly label anything that does specifically come from the source material so that you can be accused of taking credit for even 1 little bit of it.

[Pedant]

Personally, I don't see why not. I've done some expansion work like this myself with Khuzdul, but never far enough to really post much. There are people who find this objectionable, but if you make it clear that you don't see this as canon (which would be dumb if you did), not much will be said. There are many Sindarin & Quenya ripoffs out there that don't state where most of the language came from, so if you just start with being honest about the source, you're already in good shape.

EDIT: 1 more item, which is that it would be best to clearly label anything that does specifically come from the source material so that you can be accused of taking credit for even 1 little bit of it.

Thanks for the advice! I'll try my best to keep to it!

[elemtilas]

What you'd be making here is a "fanlang". I think this is entirely reasonable. And you won't be the first fan of LotR to work within JRRT's vision of Middle Earth! It's been a long while now, but Steg Belsky over on Conlang-L was working on Rokbeigalm, a language of Middle Earth, 20 years ago or more. Our own WeepingElf worked for a while on Nur-Ellen, a descendant of Sindarn.


I think, as regards the Tolkien Estate's release-the-hounds approach to anyone they think is trying to profit from anything Tolkien ever wrote, it seems like you'd probably be safe working on some out of the way part of ME that Tolkien never touched. Vardelm's advice is sage; just tread lightly when it comes to obvious Tolkien names (like Cuivienen, etc) and you should be okay!

[dewrad]

As I recall, one of the “big” conlangs from back in the day was Amman-Îar, which is expressly based on this premise.

For my own part, I once tinkered with the concept of “Sindarin but Goidelic”, based on something I read in Parma Eldalamberon 17 (I think it was) It never really went anywhere, but it was enjoyable at the time. An example:

Cíad nain anach:
láima aras;
níche srí;
á·dele laer;

Fáe chán chelc;
tomm i·anár;
stíad sén rath;
belc úire i·ngaer;

Áccairn rámal;
ascáile chád;
amáe stain;
úam i·fáun.

Amáe celc;
ráim i n·áe;
clechna lú;
sin nen chíad.

To be honest, I derive more pleasure from playing in my own world, rather than Tolkien’s. However, I freely admit that his methods of conlanging are a major inspiration to me.

[Richard W]

For my own part, I once tinkered with the concept of “Sindarin but Goidelic”, based on something I read in Parma Eldalamberon 17 (I think it was) It never really went anywhere, but it was enjoyable at the time. An example:

What does this make Quenya? Insular Celtic or old Ogham Q-Celtic? I've generally thought of Quenya as Q-Celtic compared to the rather Brythonic Sindarin.

[dewrad]

For my own part, I once tinkered with the concept of “Sindarin but Goidelic”, based on something I read in Parma Eldalamberon 17 (I think it was) It never really went anywhere, but it was enjoyable at the time. An example:

What does this make Quenya? Insular Celtic or old Ogham Q-Celtic? I've generally thought of Quenya as Q-Celtic compared to the rather Brythonic Sindarin.

Fenno-Latin, according to the man himself.

[Jonlang]

For my own part, I once tinkered with the concept of “Sindarin but Goidelic”, based on something I read in Parma Eldalamberon 17 (I think it was) It never really went anywhere, but it was enjoyable at the time. An example:

What does this make Quenya? Insular Celtic or old Ogham Q-Celtic? I've generally thought of Quenya as Q-Celtic compared to the rather Brythonic Sindarin.

Why? Quenya has no features which can be seen as being Celtic. It has the /kʷ/ remaining (maybe /kʷ/ > /k/ too) rather than /kʷ/ > /p/ of Sindarin (a Brythonic change). Quenya shares features from Finnish, Latin and Ancient Greek as far as I know. I mean some of its words may appear Goidelic but I would think that's more to do with the fact that they're cognates with Sindarin which was very much supposed to reflect Welsh, and so cognates will have similarities, like Celeb and Tyelep, but the latter doesn't seem particularly Irish to me. Or Pent and Quenta - the former sounds somewhat Welsh but to me the latter sounds like Italian if anything. And the vast number of noun inflections in Quenya are definitely straight from Finnish. I wouldn't see Quenya as being Goidelic to Sindarin's being Brythonic.

Also, a notable feature of Goidelic was that /nt/ > /d/; /mp/ > /b/ and /ŋk/ > /g/ (I think – it's been a while since I looked into Goidelic sound changes). Quenya has no isolated voiced plosives – they may only appear after /l/, /r/, /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/ I believe.

[masako]

I say go for it. Hopefully you can maintain the flavor of his work. Good luck.

[alice]

Also, a notable feature of Goidelic was that /nt/ > /d/; /mp/ > /b/ and /ŋk/ > /g/ (I think – it's been a while since I looked into Goidelic sound changes). Quenya has no isolated voiced plosives – they may only appear after /l/, /r/, /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/ I believe.

Specifically, only in /mb nd ld rd ŋg/, and the hapax Aldúdenie.

[Pabappa]

i think the GOidelic reflexes of proto-Celtic /nt ŋk/ are just /t k/. As for /mp/, it wouldnt have existed in proto-Celtic to begin with but there was a condiitonal shift of /p/ > /b/ in some environments so /mp/ mayeb have ended up as /b/ in some words.

[alice]

i think the GOidelic reflexes of proto-Celtic /nt ŋk/ are just /t k/.

No; definitely /d g/. That's how the nasal part of eclipsis developed.

[WeepingElf]

As others have said here, there's nothing wrong with making Middle-earth fanlangs. As Elemtilas has observed, I once made one myself: Nur-ellen, a descendant of Sindarin, spoken by Elves still around in the Sixth Age (i.e., the modern world viewed as an age of Arda - I know, a dubious concept). I also intended to make two more: Hwentian, an Avarin language with "Grimm's Law" (Hwenti was one of the six Avarin tribe names I found on Ardalambion, and it seems to have undergone a Germanic-like sound shift), and a "Caucasian-style" Variag language; but then, I lost interest in the latter two. And when my Elves ceased to be Tolkienian Elves, Nur-ellen (briefly considered for inclusion in Ill Bethisad, an idea soon recognized as ill-adviced) was due to a complete revision, and the result was the Albic project, which is not a Tolkien fanlang any more - neither in idea (its setting has no connection to Middle-earth) nor in substance (the languages do not draw on Tolkien's, though the diachronic developments still show a few parallels).

[Pedant]

Thanks for all the encouragement, guys. Well, here goes…

THE LANDS TO THE EAST AND SOUTH: A BRIEF OVERVIEW

It should not be forgotten, in spite of the focus of most of the material available in the Red Book, that the world of Arda stretched much further east than there was West to fill it, and both Men and Elves began in the east of the world. The Elves, according to the collection of lore known by its most popular tale, the Quenta Silmarillion, first woke in Cuiviénen; Men woke in Hildórien, on the coast and not far to the south of their forerunners. The Light Elves and Atani may be known for travelling west to seek the light of Valinor, but there are still thousands of years of history--over seven thousand, in fact--that happened between the Elves awakening and the end of the Third Age. The lands of the East--or rather the Centre and the East, for they are not the same, although in the West it is difficult to tell--are the home of many cultures and stories, and legendary beings too, though less in touch with the light of the West.
Likewise, the South, although reached later and with a clime less hospitable to the elves (who prefer the cool), is full of many civilizations. Some are connected to the stories of Middle-Earth, colonies of Númenor at its dark heights, or else servants of Sauron; many more have kept to themselves, with all manner of Men who have formed kingdoms of their own.
Perhaps, then, a quick tour of the lands passed through by Gandalf, Saruman, and the Blue Wizards on their journeys beyond Eriador:

• Iflak, which the Men of Gondor called Harad, built up by Black Númenóreans (who called it Êphalak "far away") and held by their priesthood, though the political leaders are from the locals. It has three main divisions: Ngakhar (Far Harad), woodland and grassland where the great mûmakil live; Manhir, the great desert that makes up the bulk of Harad, dotted with isolated oases; and Nûtap, part of Near Harad to the east, where there are forests and mountains and winding rivers. Worship of Mulhir (Melkor) is predominant, and Sauron as His emissary on Middle-Earth--but there is no more killing of sacrifices, but instead the taking of slaves, some of whom are treated better than others. A return, perhaps, to the old ways would be best, when the Great Oliphaunts to whom the mûmakil are as dwarves were revered as lesser servants of Irmo. Or to new ways, where He Who Rises In Might speaks not through the Númenoreans in Anakkhêth, but through the words of each tribal leader, to be discussed at length with the added bonus that back-taxes to the capital might as well be forgotten about…
• Khand, the empire in the grass and the ancestral home of Khamûl, the second in command of the Ringwraiths. There is a great plain that stretches from the sea of Nûrnen to the Sea of Rhûn, and for thousands of years humans have migrated across that plain, first on foot, then riding on horseback, and finally in wagons and chariots. Worship of Molkhîr is present, certainly, and a natural deference to the living divinity that is Khamûl is expected (he gets to ride around the place on dragon-back on his days off from patrolling Dol Guldur). But the older ways are not completely forgotten; a love of the sky and stars, learned rather than taught, and a love of Oromë the first rider (called Arom in their tongue). And in recent years new stories have arisen, of old men who are the sons of Arom, and whose magic and communion with the spirits of the land far surpass the powers promised of Molkhîr and Khamûl…
• Dayajharta, a deeply forested land, almost untouched by the affairs of the West, and paying no heed to Sauron's call. Instead, the great Panocracy rules not through kings but through councils of lords (although there often are kings, they're very much bound by the will of the councils). The kindi are bright beings here, and the majority of those with "noble" blood are half-elven in some manner. But there are dozens of lesser maiar who never left, and who are given small shrines as thanks for the gifts they leave for humanity. And, of course, there is the great Trinity, a triple-deity representing all the races and eras of the world: Aulë the Creator, Oromë the Protector, and Ulmo the Collector. While you're there, visit the place they call Lanti, the forest glade where (according to legend) the Kindi first awoke, and were first met by Aromir (Oromë).
• Pra-Khyaor, furthest east and occupying what the Elves called Hildórien, is a funny place indeed. The worship of the maiar is still in play, but the rulers are Avarin elves, although here they call themselves the Kinn-Lai. As they see it, the land is theirs; humans may choose to live there should they wish to, but the Kinn-Lai roamed those woods first, and it is only through the elves that they gained any understanding of the world. The Trinity is still respected, as are the local maiar--but the main temples in the Third Age are shrines to the great dragons (thuy-gueh). Once bitter enemies, these water-guardians made a turn to the light thanks to the dayashilmi (locally dai-sil-ma), the golden pearls they wear on their necks. (There's one heck of a story behind that, involving the Light of the Lamps, a half-elf called Bhuravigu, and a shapeshifting maia who took the form of a white monkey.) Try taking a look in the Grass Palace if you can, a perfect garden tended by the Kinn-Lai, where the As sits on a throne of living bamboo and bards sing long songs of the land's history without needing to write anything down. Try also to visit the Great Raimentry, where elves and humans alike weave words into the knots of cloaks.
• The Four Houses of the Dwarves, ranged along the Red Mountains. Their language is Khûzdul, and unlike the dwarves of the west they are more open with their speech--but not with their names, which they hold secret. The occasional "genetic reincarnation" (a perfect copy of a legendary dwarf appearing) has led the humans in the snow-covered valleys to strange thoughts about the nature of the soul. (Nothing changes, of course, humans can't reincarnate--but dwarves can.) As in the west, humans provide food and supplies, while dwarves provide metal, tools, weapons, and toys. The Kinn-Lai are found in these parts as well, but have no true association with Men or Dwarves; they live in the wilds, and are considered holy messengers of the one they call Gal-Er, the single formless deity whom the dwarves call Mahal.

[zompist]

Responding to the original question, my answer is that of course you can set your own stuff in Tolkien's world, especially as he's been gone for half a century. Your plan is very ambitious, though, and if you're going to create half a dozen languages, I wonder if you won't wish later that all that energy hadn't gone into your own world.

I do like the idea of lands where, so to speak, Sauron is seen as the rightful king and god, not least because I think it'll have to confront the too-blatant moral dichotomy of Tolkien. I wonder if Tolkien thought that a normal Haradite should somehow owe allegiance to Gondor, or worship his version of God.

I also like the idea of eastern lands which simply do not care about the war of the Ring. I'm a bit troubled by their apparent acceptance of orthodox elven theology, though. I know it fits Tolkien's mythology, where Creation and the first elven civilizations are only a few thousand years ago, and God and magic are pretty overt in the world. But even in that mythology, Middle-Earth is supposed to be a precursor to our own world. For a Christian doing mythology, it's really tempting to have humanity start out, well, all being good para-Christians. But actual history doesn't look like that in the least. Tolkien largely avoids this problem by not thinking about it, but it may not be a good idea to fully commit to the idea that the ancestors of the South and East Asian peoples were lapsed Christians.

(I felt the temptation itself, as seen in my Count of Years. But it's explicitly a religious document from one particular nation. I have some ideas on "what really happened", and suffice it to say that they're not very Tolkienian.)

[Vardelm]

I wonder if you won't wish later that all that energy hadn't gone into your own world.

That's where I eventually arrived. Even just working on Khuzdul (although mostly without anywhere near as much knowledge as I've gained on the ZBB, and also not finishing it), I got to a point where I had various ideas and wanted to start creating my own stuff. Making new languages, stories, etc. is hard enough without also trying to shoehorn it into someone else's work.

[Pabappa]

And thats part of why I have never made a serious attempt at an a posteriori conlang ... I've tried a couple of times, once with PIE, and once with proto-Germanic, but it was just too difficult to square everything with the reconstructions. So I stick to a priori.

I've long been an a priori worldbuilder too, though not for the same reason ... up until I was 12 years old or so, I wrote fanfics of video games and comics ... one of my very earliest creations was a book that was set to be published simultaneously on Earth and in Hyrule, for example ...but without ever consciously making a decision to do so, I gradually dropped all of the fanfic ideas and worked on what was left.

I would say that, if I were to make a Tolkien fanfic, I would prioritize my ideas over his, meaning that if I discovered something I had come up with was impossible according to Middle-Earth canon, I would keep it anyway, and I would still consider my writing to be an extension of Tolkien's. This would eliminate the problem of needing to rectify ideas of my own with ideas that I cant change. It would also make it easier to work with if I should later on decide I wanted a freestanding world all along. Many would probably say that it's no longer Middle-Earth canon at this point, or even a fanfic, but to me, so long as it's intended as a tribute to Tolkien rather than an appropriation of his work, I would be happy with it.

[Bob]

As others have said here, there's nothing wrong with making Middle-earth fanlangs. As Elemtilas has observed, I once made one myself ...

Is there some place we can find these complete online? I'm very interested in them.

[elemtilas]

Thanks for all the encouragement, guys. Well, here goes…

THE LANDS TO THE EAST AND SOUTH: A BRIEF OVERVIEW

Now, this is beautiful! I love how you weave in what is known from the West and from Tolkien's work into your own new tapestry of the East. The Elves that remained in the East, the perspective of Melkor worshippers, the existence of those who were never touched by the troubles away to the west and north.

So: when are we going to see these places on a map of Middle Earth?

And when are we going to read some stories set in the East and South?

[Pedant]

…well, this took something of an odd turn. Hopefully that can resolve itself. In the meantime:

MANHIRI: INTRODUCTION AND NOUN CLASSES

Manhiri is the Haradrimic language spoken in Manhir, the nearest portion of Harad to Gondor. The Men of Harad are swarthy, to be sure, and their soldiers clad in strange mail. But this description is lacking. For starters, there is no mention of the Nayfam and Ngashti Rivers (together the Harnen River), running southwest from the Ephel Duath across the desert, meeting at the Shama and pouring out at the Delta (mupar, older *umpar), making the hot sands fertile through their flooding. Nor of the ancient worship, before the Black Númenoreans came, of Imbi the Guiding Star (that is, Eärendil), or Ukwar the Mother of Life (Yavanna, most like), or Ihful the Creator-In-Darkness (a figure who may have been Melkor or may have been Eru). The rich riverside fields, the scrolls of reeds inscribed with colourful writing in Adûnaic cursive, the copses of once-great groves of cedar and oak, pistachio and almond…none of these are written of by the authors of the Red Book, because none could ever have seen them.
And yet they are there, and have had a rich and complex society for six thousand years. All agriculture started in Númenor, they say, and yet it did not truly thrive until it came to the Nayfam and Ngashti. (In those days they were the *anyaφam and *aŋçiθiʔ, and these are reflected in their Adûnaic names, Anyapha and Ankhêth.) Here was where humans first built stone structures, they say: great steppe-pyramids of brick and mortar, with hidden aqueducts and fountains creating waterfall gardens that seem to have been open for public use. Great libraries, too, were filled with fired tablets of clay, hieroglyphs impressed and then inlaid with red or white slip, so the words shine bright against the black background. The cities were not often at war with each other, it seems, but kept torches burning bright against the creatures in the dark--and the darkness did come to them, in the form of orcs. For a time the cities were largely abandoned, and it has been long since any lived in the land who could read the ancient words. Then came the Black Númenoreans, who "rebuilt" the "savage people", giving them a new hope--and a new, single deity to worship, Mulhir, a worship which united the clans not along the rivers but with a capital at the delta, in Umbar. And so the fate of the Haradrim was to lose their land to the Kingdom of Umbar, and then under the rule of Gondor, until they were able to reclaim it--with the aid of the very Corsairs who had given them their new faith to begin with.
The First Stage
Back in the Second Age, it seems as though the formation of words in Proto-Haradrimic was through prefixes with rough equivalencies. The linguist Pedant of Gondor (yes, I know, but that's actually what I had in mind) suggests the following:

That the Men of Harad had some knowledge of sounds, either from the Elves or from the earlier Númenóreans; for their prefixes were crudely placed, but made to mimic in sound the following consonant. Thus, what we deem as a só [*s] in a prefix might well have been an oha before one of the quessë-series, or a sound like that of a whí before a letter of the parma-series [transcriber's note: *[s] became *[ç] before gutturals and *[ʍ] before labials]. This would have been disguised by the transformation of oha to shé and whí to alo [transcriber's note: [ç] to [ʃ] and [ʍ] to [l]] by the the 23rd Century of the Second Age.

Pedant goes on to suggest that further obscuring came about through a metathesis of prefix-initial vowels within the word--*uN became *Nu and so forth. (There appears to be some evidence for this in studies of the related Tunayb language closer to Khand, where it appears the entire noun class prefix turned into an infix.) A few points of comparison cross-linguistically:

English Gloss	Manhiri	Tunayb	Umphaka
"oliphaunt"	mumak	mumak	ombaka
"river"	ngushwu	shungu	ongoshu
"ent"	lapthut	pavzod	awapudho
"Melkor/Eru"	Ihful	Ikhofu	Ehofu

Noun Classes
Proto-Haradrimic has been reconstructed with no fewer than twelve noun classes, with several variations in plural numbers. In Manhiri these have (thankfully) been reduced to nine, from classes 10 through 12 largely being absorbed into Classes 2, 6, and 8.

No.	Usage	Singular	Example	Plural	Example
1	"human" males solo predators	i-	itap "gift-giver, host" ifit "lion" Ingkanush "North-Spy (aka Gandalf)"	a-ROOT-(y)il a-ROOT-(h)ar	atapil "hosts" afitar "lions"
2	human females, pack animals gerunds (from Class 10)	u-	umpa "huntress" ufit "lioness"	Fi-ROOT-(y)il Fi-ROOT-(h)ar	fimpayil "huntresses" fifitar "lionesses"
3	spirits, gods elves, ents	Sa-	shashwi "reed-spirit" shaknar "elf, Avar"	u-ROOT-(w)us u-ROOT-(y)il	ushwiwus "reed-spirits" uknaril "elves"
4	intelligent animals, rivers	Nu-	mumak "oliphaunt"	Nu-ROOT-(y)il	mumakil "oliphaunts"
5	unintelligent animals	Fa-	hahnap "hyrax, rabbit"	Na-ROOT-(sh)ar	ngahnapar "hyraxes, rabbits"
6	plants diminutives (from Class 12)	Fu/i-	hushwi "reed" fiput "shrub" fipin "'little woman'; girl who underwent menarche" fimmar "short rest, siesta"	Su-ROOT-(sh)as i-ROOT-(w)ul i-ROOT-(sh)ar i-ROOT-(y)is	shushwishas "reeds" iputul "shrubs" ipinar "little women" immaris "siestas"
7	places, augmentatives	Na-	Nangka "The North; Gondor" maput "cedar tree" ngaknil "big donkey; old nag"	Na-ROOT-(y)is Na-ROOT-(w)ul Na-ROOT-(sh)ar	maputul "cedar trees" ngaknilar "old nags"
8	body parts, tools dirt-objects (from Class 11)	Su-	lupak "leg" lumir "sand"	Sa-ROOT-(sh)al Sa-ROOT-(w)ul	lapakal "legs" lumirul "sands"
9	actions, times	a-	Adak "Time of Great Music; Ainulindalië" ahap "hyrax-movement, hop" ahul "night, nighttime"	Si-ROOT-(w)ul Si-ROOT-(y)is	lihapul "hops, hopping" lihulis "nights, periods of nighttime"

It should be noted that in transcribing Manhiri words to the Common Speech, several alterations were made based on locale. Gandalf's local name Ingkanush "northern spy" was rendered Incánus, representing the standard Anakkêthi accentuation of the first syllable of the root as opposed to the nominal prefix. (Note also that Ingkanush gives us the opportunity to see how compounding works in Manhiric: [class1]+[noun2]+[noun1], normally, the second noun effectively acting as an infix.) On the other hand, mumak "oliphaunt" went not through Minharic but through Variagi, which (given proximity to Tunyab) rendered is with a long first syllable: mûmak. This passed into Gondor through the arrival of the Wainriders in the mid-19th Century TA, and from there remained in common parlance among the people of the south. The Westron equivalent in the north was annabun, from Sindarin annabon (the difference is minimal but reflected in the local pronunciation "oliphaunt" compared to Gandalf's "elephant").