Reddit reviews The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth: A Complete Guide to All Fourteen of the Languages Tolkien Invented

There's a way, sort of, J.R.R.Tolkien has left all his linguistic writings on the Elvish Languages in 7 big boxes, (thousands of pages per box) and Christopher Tolkien has later referred to them naming as Quenya A, B, up to Quenya G, for they can be specifically identified. Yes, not a couple of boxes, but even 7, my mellyn (PE: 22, p. 141).

Be aware, though, that if you do not have a particular background, these pages will be likely not understandable, sadly...

Regarding what you can hear/read online:

In real life it is simple. If you do not follow the rules of English grammar you are not writing or speaking in English. If you don't follow Tolkien's rules you are not writing his elf! Anyone who visits the websites dedicated to Elvish languages (Eldalie, Quenya.101, Ardalambion, etc.) or reads the books dedicated to them (those of David Salo, Ruth S. Noel, Pesch, Comastri, etc.) trying to learn Quenya or Sindarin, will be baffled by the array of many different and conflicting grammar rules. These sites and books never agree with each other. Why?

Because every author has invented his own rules.

We read from many writers (Drout, Pesch) and on the net that there are many “neo-elvish” languages: the neo-quenya and neo-sindarin. But it is not correct, neo-elvish languages do not exist or rather are not languages. Writing: Something wure mi expectatione [sic] does not mean that whoever wrote it is the creator of a neo-english language, the same with: Alaghioru saranno alboro dormirenene [sic] won’t make you the creator of a new neo-italian language. To create a neo-language one must first of all be a linguist, know the rules of a Tolkien elven language well and from there build a new elven language. What a job! Those who build what they call neo-Sindarin and neo-quenya only rarely mention Tolkien's grammars and almost never explain what they do (for example, I change this thing written by Tolkien, because I invented a certain new rule). What they build are not languages. They distort the little of what they understand about Tolkien's logopoeia at will.

Are the underlined th and sh meant to be vocalized, like dh and zh?

edit: Also, if you don't already own it, I recommend this book. It looks like something you might enjoy.

There's a book about it The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth. It's an interesting read and it includes a pretty cool dicitonary and stuff.

It should be noted that the laguages spoken in the movies are modernized attempts at a complete laguage with proper grammar and everything, seeing as Tolkien never got around to fully fleshing out his languages.

Is it this book?. I seem to remember that book saying stuff like that. It's very wrong.

Sindarin has a thing called consonant mutation where the initial consonant changes depending on preceding words or other syntax related things. Perian is the base word, as in hobbit or a hobbit. I is the in Sindarin, which would change perian to i berian, the hobbit.

-ath is a collective plural suffix, e is a genitive singular article which confusingly is also i in the plural form which gives a different mutation changing p to ph as in Ernil i Pheriannath, Prince of the Halflings. Just Halflings would be Periannath.

(major, major grain of salt on this, I'm at work and can't thoroughly back myself up on all the specifics right now, but most of it should be right.)

This book along with careful readings of the book and watching of scenes in Elvish is how I learned. With a few other sites that I cannot remember the names of at the moment >.<

Yes, more or less. It's actually a kind of fiddly matter sometimes. There are some English sounds that just aren't perfectly represented in either the Quenya or Sindarin modes of pronunciation for the Tengwar.

If you look at the title page of LotR, you can actually see an example of the Cirth (a runic alphabet similar in appearance to the Furthork) across the top and Tengwar across the bottom which collectively spell out an English phrase. These give some good hints at Tolkien's preferred mode for English, but there are still some omissions. (I have a copy that I worked on way back in high school. Please excuse the quality of the images. The bit that is left undone on the one page was from the Silmarillion, I believe.)

A good example of something that looks a bit off to most English speakers when just directly transliterated based on the consonant values given in Ruth S. Noel's book The Langauges of Tolkien's Middle Earth, the word "the" is represented just as "dh", because "dh" is commonly used to represent the voiced dental fricative (as opposed to the voiceless dental fricative, such as in the word "thing" or "thin"). So it's still the right sound patterns, just not represented in latin letters the way we're used to it. (At least according to the equivalents she gives.)

There are some other writing samples, too, as well as a multitude of posts on the internet proposing best-fit solutions for an English mode of writing for Tengwar based on evidence and some interpolation and guesswork.

More information can be found by reading the excellent book I mentioned (and linked) above or by reading Appendix E of Lord of the Rings.

TL;DR: YES

Those are common suffixes and prefixes. Nothing in that rule saying there aren't other suffixes or prefixes, or that some common suffixes can be uncommon prefixes and vice versa. Don't read too much into this.

Unless you have a desire to be super strict about naming conventions, just do something that sounds about right. My Rohirrim Cappie has the name of "Eorsplittr Addldottr". If, on the other hand, you wish to be absolutely faithful to the lore, grab a copy of Ruth Noel's "The Languages of Middle-Earth". (Crazy prices for new copies, but cheap for used).

https://www.amazon.com/Languages-Tolkiens-Middle-Earth-Complete-Fourteen/dp/0395291305

Awesome, thanks for the info and props for including the Tolkien! I'm ashamed I didn't recognize it, I actually spent a few years learning Elvish from this book when I was a kid.

From what I have seen, there are many dictionaries out there you can use. I would recommend going here and checking out the resources. Pretty useful.

Here's another, I find, useful resource for sale on Amazon.

I hope this helped!

"Hey buy me that book you lost, you can probably find it on ebay or amazon."

That might work.

Here you go!
http://www.amazon.com/Languages-Tolkiens-Middle-Earth-Ruth-Noel/dp/0395291305

It's on sale too!

https://www.amazon.com/Languages-Tolkiens-Middle-Earth-Complete-Fourteen/dp/0395291305

I had this book years ago and it's really good! Very comprehensive.

http://www.amazon.com/Languages-Tolkiens-Middle-earth-Ruth-Noel/dp/0395291305
This is the one she highly recommended. I have yet to look it over.

I got The Languages of Tolkein's Middle Earth for Christmas a few years ago. Its not a teaching book per se, but it has all the vocabulary and grammatical rules that can be found or determined from context for Elvish, plus some stuff on Khudzul and a bunch of other languages.

Oh no, sorry, I wrote the wrong book. It's The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0395291305/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_eo9TzbDEFDE21

This book Is quite good and covers several of Tolkens languages, it's not a comprehensive guide but is a brilliant starting point.

I think this is the (or one of the) go to resource, or at least it was for me 30-some years ago...

https://www.amazon.com/Languages-Tolkiens-Middle-Earth-Complete-Fourteen/dp/0395291305/ref=sr_1_1?crid=25CX7M0NEA1JH&keywords=languages+of+tolkiens+middle+earth&qid=1568950805&sprefix=languages+of+tol%2Caps%2C134&sr=8-1

For the sake of some differentiation on the list:

The Languages of Middle-Earth" for the Scifi leaning people or vaguely interested folks who enjoyed the movies. Tolkien was a language fiend and created some extensive lexicons, syntactic systems, and phonology for every language in his universe.

"In the Land of Invented Languages" All on manufactured languages and the weird people who make them. Klingon, Elvish, Esperanto, etc.

William S Burroughs "Electronic Revolution" (a bit occult, though) on the power of language as a transmittable virus