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Kyrstiel
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Posts: 4
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Post Welcome
on: May 13, 2017 02:16
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? !

[Edited on 05/13/2017 by Kyrstiel]
Lokyt
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Posts: 44
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on: May 13, 2017 06:59
A tricky one indeed.

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.

[Edited on 05/13/2017 by Lokyt]
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