"Master betrayed us. Wicked, tricksey, false. We ought to wring his filthy little neck. Kill him. Kill him. Kill them both, and then we take the Precious and we be the master."
Good Morning... I have been struggling with a very simply phrase and the word I have the most difficulty with you would think to be very simple. It is the word welcome"
In context what I wish to say is:
Welcome to Riders of Middle-earth
So far I have....
nan Rechyn Ennoruin (to the Riders of Middle-earth/my Kinship name in LoTro)
I have not seen any direct translation for Welcome in the CoE dictionary though. The only notes I found on this were a part of phrase sites and the word Nathlo was used a one site. and Mae tollen (well + come... but come is tolo not tollen?) I of course don't trust in the accuracy of every site out there !
And so.... what would be the correct way to express this? !
Tolkien never created "welcome" in Sindarin directly, so we can only try to deduce from analogies and akin words. There are generally two options:
1) To create a direct Sindarin counterpart of Quenya alatulya- "to (be) welcome" and at the same time a construction analogical (and semantically opposite) to attested Sindarin adjective rhudol "unwelcome" (literally "evil-come, evilly arrived" ). That would bring us to the verb *aldol- "well-come, prosperously-arrive", imperative *aldolo "welcome!, be welcome (by us)".
2) To make use of attested Primitive Elvish verb root NATH- "welcome (someone), be kind to (someone)". Its Sindarin form would be the same (i.e. nath-). And now we need "we welcome you" (not just "welcome!" in this case, because that would in fact be "be the ones who welcome others" ) - so we end up with le nathim or nathim len.
This option is also supported by the fact that in Goldogrin (the real-world predecessor of Sindarin), there really was a simple verb of this meaning, used exactly this way; so the idea of such a verb being part of the Welsh-like elvish language wasn't strange to Tolkien.