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.