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Ithileth
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Post New to elvish, need help
on: January 05, 2005 04:39
here goes, i've been hanging around here for about a year now but i haven't started on elvish because I'm not sure how to go about it, and I have school which cuts into my potential learning time. Which is easier, Sindarin or Quenya, whats the difference. I want to learn elvish but I'm at a loss for what to do, Is there anybody who is more advanced who can help me? I've got school but I will try really hard!
:hug:



[Edited on 5/1/2005 by Ithileth]
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Post RE: New to elvish, need help
on: January 05, 2005 07:31
If you click on 'Languages' in the Main Menu, then go to 'Studying Elvish Tools', you'll find a guide for beginners which is pretty good
passionelf
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Post RE: New to elvish, need help
on: January 05, 2005 01:15
I'm Fairly new myself but from what ive learned quenya is possibly a bit easier than sindarin hence there is more material known in quenya than sindarin.But dont go for the easier one go for wich one you like more cause they both will take great time to learn
Ithileth
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Post RE: New to elvish, need help
on: January 06, 2005 04:24
thanks for all the tips everyone! I dug around in the elvish data base and found a bunch of stuff so I will get cracking right away.
Tugann
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Post RE: New to elvish, need help
on: January 06, 2005 04:28
I have a question too. I didn't know where else I could post this. I was checking out the "useful sayings" in Sindarin and I saw that "Thank you" was "le hannon" however in Return of the King when Aragorn thanks Legolas he says "Hannon le". What's the deal?
Fíriel
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Post RE: New to elvish, need help
on: January 06, 2005 04:51
I have a question too. I didn't know where else I could post this. I was checking out the "useful sayings" in Sindarin and I saw that "Thank you" was "le hannon" however in Return of the King when Aragorn thanks Legolas he says "Hannon le". What's the deal?


While hannon le occurs predominantly in the movies, most people studying Sindarin prefer to use le hannon -- many occurences of le in the Sindarin corpus have it placed before the verb, and David Salo himself has said that he now believes hannon le to be incorrect:

AaronShaw asks: Can you explan your reasoning for the phrase "Hannon Le" and the placement of the pronominal form? Also could you comment upon your use of pronominal forms in general? And will A Gateway to Sindarin ever be available as an online free version?
Thanks, Aaron.
To the first question, I think that "hannon le" is a mistake. I think it should have been "le hannon".
My chapter on syntax reflects that judgment;
And it's something that I've told every Sindarin class that I've taught over the past year.
Aside: Can the creator of a languange make a mistake?
Well, we're talking about a couple of different things here, Demos.
Hannon le is *my* mistake; I hadn't thought deeply enough about Sindarin syntax at the time I let that one get by.
ah, right.
"Hannon le" never appears in Tolkien's own words! (...)


[Edited on 7/1/2005 by Fíriel]
Uialdil_i_degilbor
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Post RE: New to elvish, need help
on: January 06, 2005 07:37
To be quite honest, there is no verb hanna- in Sindarin. It is a reconstruction based on Quenta hantalë, and in a Sindarin cognate, there would be no initial h. Since that would yield anna-, it is invalid since there is already a verb anna- meaning 'give'. So what is the true Sindarin word for 'thank'? Not a clue because we don't have the word from Tolkien in anything yet published.
Uialdil_i_degilbor
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Post RE: New to elvish, need help
on: January 07, 2005 05:06
David Salo has a book?? Gateway to Sindarin? Buy where? Does he answer the question if it will ever be free online?

I ordered A Gateway To Sindarin from amazon.com. I doubt that David will give up the royalties he receives in favour of publishing it free online. We are, after all, talking about a $49.95 book. Be warned: the book is David's theory and much he wrote contradicts what Tolkien himself wrote. He does a major no-no: rather than forming a conclusion based on the evidence, he often drew his conclusion and then 'forced' the actually attested examples to support his reasoning. Still, there is a lot of useful and interesting material in the book.

It might be a slang way of using Thank You. Spoken languages are usually not as correct in grammar as language in a book. Just look at the way you speak English. Language can vary from state to state as well as culture to culture.

The question is not whether *hanna- is colloquial as opposed to formal, but whether *hanna- is a possible Sindarin word corresponding to Q. hanta; simply put, it's not. It violates rules governing Eldarin etymology. David invented the word; Tolkien did not. If Tolkien didn't invent the word, it's not Sindarin.

And I thought Q was an older form of S?

Not at all. They are two separate languages. Think of them like French and Spanish. Both of them descended from Vulgar Latin (just as both Quenya and Sindarin descended from Common Eldarin), but they are separate languages that are not mutually intelligible. The distinction is not merely a question of dialect.
Fíriel
Enethdan Edhellen
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Post RE: New to elvish, need help
on: January 07, 2005 12:54
David Salo has a book?? Gateway to Sindarin? Buy where? Does he answer the question if it will ever be free online?


To borrow from the chat log once again... in his own words:

I believe there was a third question, about whether Gateway would ever be available online
yes
and free.
The answer is that I don't know. That would be something that the publishers would have to agree to.
okay
next question?
But I'm quite happy to share information that's in the book
And if you don't want to buy it,
oh, we want the folks to buy it!!
the best suggestion I can make is that you suggest that your local library,
academic or public, get a copy.
You wouldn't be able to stick it on your shelf, but you could still consult it
If there is a time in the future, by the way,
When the full rights to the book revert to me (e.g. if/when it is definitively out of print)
then I would definitely make efforts to make it freely available.
The only problem is that by that time I expect -- I HOPE anyway --
that it will be out of date.
That is so generous of you, Thank you
If A Gateway is still the most comprehensive book on Sindarin in 20 years I shall be extremely disappointed.


As for purchasing the book, you can buy it from Amazon, or direct from the publisher, the University of Utah Press.
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