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How Can I Start to Learn 🧝Elvish?

Balin Fundinul

New Member
Joined
Jan 14, 2019
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Hello. I love Tolkien's Middle Earth. And I want to learn everything about his universe. I'm still trying to learn the history, races and languages of Arda. As a person who loves languages and knows Turkish (as native language), English, a little bit Persian, German and Arabic; I want to learn wonderful languages of Arda as well. I know there are so many languages in Arda, but they have few resources. However, as I know, Quenya and Sindarin have more resources than other languages. There is my first question: Should I learn Quenya or Sindarin? According to my researches, Sindarin is more common than Quenya and most of the Elvish words in the novels are sindarin, but Quenya is like Latin. And there is my second question: How to learn one of these languages? I think the most efficient way to learn Elvish is studying phrases in Tolkien's books, but I want to know what do you think. Thank you!
 
I'm guessing some might not like this answer, but for myself, I think it's best to begin by reading the following FAQ from The Elvish Linguistic Fellowship.

http://www.elvish.org/FAQ.html

I think this should in no way deter anyone wishing to write/speak in what I would call Neo-elvish, and certainly learning about Tolkien's languages (with their internal histories) is both fun and rewarding!
 
I'm guessing some might not like this answer, but for myself, I think it's best to begin by reading the following FAQ from The Elvish Linguistic Fellowship.

http://www.elvish.org/FAQ.html

I think this should in no way deter anyone wishing to write/speak in what I would call Neo-elvish, and certainly learning about Tolkien's languages (with their internal histories) is both fun and rewarding!

Thank you for your answer! Can I count on the site you've posted? Is it true according to Tolkien's Elvish?
 
I can vouch for http://www.elvish.org/FAQ.html - the website looks utterly archaic but the editors are well-respected academics and scholars. After the FAQ, though (which does a good job of explaining the limitations involved in learning Quenya or Sindarin - the tl;dr is that Tolkien himself changed his mind quite a lot about how the languages ought to work, and thus there are sometimes multiple competing variants; there is no one, authoritative, guide to all of Quenya grammar, for example), you may still want to check out some of the courses that are available online.

These vary greatly in quality (some are rubbish), but two that I can recommend:
Helge Fauskanger is a Norwegian linguist, and a very good one, who maintains a website on Tolkien's languages here: https://folk.uib.no/hnohf/ He has a free (Neo)-Quenya course which is available here: https://folk.uib.no/hnohf/qcourse.htm

There is also this website, maintained by Thorsten Renk, a German linguist: http://www.science-and-fiction.org/elvish/index.html There is both a (Neo)-Sindarin course (http://www.science-and-fiction.org/elvish/index.html#course_sindarin) and a (Neo)-Quenya course (http://www.science-and-fiction.org/elvish/index.html#course_quenya)

To be clear, both of these websites present a 'reconstructed-by-academics-from-available-evidence' and thus inevitably artificial form of the languages. (When Tolkien has not specified how a particular point of grammar works, for instance, some educated guesswork is required! And Fauskanger and Renk do not always agree in their interpretations.) However, they are both respected scholars who have worked very closely with the available sources and if you are looking for help, I would start with them.

There are also some books available, but most of them are now out-of-date: Ruth S. Noel's The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth is painfully dated and frequently just plain wrong. David Salo's A Gateway to Sindarin might be helpful, though, if you would like to study Sindarin as it is presented in the Jackson films (which is also a reconstruction, by Salo).
 
I like the ending:

"(…) However, if that is what you are interested in, then these aren’t the droids you are looking for."

:D
 
Thanks for asking the question Balin Fundinul as I'm interested too if I ever have any spare time. Good luck to you in your quest! And welcome.

And thanks to all who posted links and suggestions.
 

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