Sindarin


Sindarin is one of the constructed 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.
The word Sindarin is Quenya for Grey-elven, since 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 Literary Welsh, and Sindarin displays some of the consonant mutations that characterize the Celtic languages.
The Dwarves rarely taught their language to others, so they learned both Quenya and Sindarin in order to communicate with the Elves, especially 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 one must distinguish two timelines of development:

Goldogrin and other early languages

Tolkien was interested in languages from an early age, and developed several constructed languages while still a teenager. 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 in around 1915, 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 :

Noldorin

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 the Old Noldorin spoken in Valinor to the many dialects, later called Lemberin, that were spoken in Beleriand. 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."

From Noldorin and Welsh

Tolkien created Sindarin in around 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. In Tolkien's words, "The changes worked on Sindarin very closely resemble those which produced the modern and medieval Welsh from ancient Celtic, so that in the result Sindarin has a marked Welsh style, and the relations between it and Quenya closely resemble those between Welsh and Latin."
Tolkien did not provide a detailed description of the language in published works such as The Lord of the Rings, but he did say that
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.

Internal timeline

In Tolkien's words:

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:
  • Sindarin
  • * Southern group
  • ** Doriathrin, the language of Doriath;
  • ** Falathrin or "West Sindarin", the language of the Falas;
  • * Northern group
  • ** North-Western dialect, spoken in Hithlum, Mithrim, and Dor-lómin;
  • ** North-Eastern dialect, spoken in Ard-galen, and the highlands of Dorthonion.

    Doriathrin

Doriathrin preserved many archaic features. Unlike the other dialects, it 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." Tolkien set out much about Doriathrin morphology, and how it contrasts with the other Sindarin dialects, 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 owing to the adoption of Quenya features, and partially because of 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 the safety of the Elvish stronghold of Rivendell, spoke it fluently.

Phonology

Sindarin was designed with a Welsh-like phonology.
Stress is as in Latin: on the penult if that is heavy and on the antepenult if the penult is light.

Consonants

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.