Loremaster: n. A wise person with knowledge of history, genealogy, ancient poetry, and possibly magic as well.
J. R. R. Tolkien is quite possibly one of the best linguists and authors of all time. Over the course of his life, he published over forty-four works, and numerous others that have yet to be released to the public. These books, short stories, and literary analyses have sparked other creative inspirations and scholarly studies. Tolkien is also the creator of one of the widest reaching fantasy series in history, which blossomed into a widespread cultural movement. However, Tolkien did not create the world of Middle Earth to provoke such a following; instead, he wrote his books to provide a fictional history for the languages and scripts that he invented over the course of his life. His scripts and languages have a complex history to them; they evolve, change, and have roots that can be traced back to different Germanic and Gothic languages. Tolkien’s linguistic creations can be studied just like historical languages, and their connections to historical tongues and scripts can be seen even through a brief study.
Tolkien was a linguist and a philologist, first and foremost. The difference between the two terms is that linguists study language and its structure scientifically, and philologists study the etymology and relationships between words (New Oxford American Dictionary, 2005). Tolkien wrote definitions for the Oxford Dictionary in his early career, but he was also fascinated with linguistics and its complexity (Burns, 23). He especially enjoyed linguistic puzzles and making sense of shifts in the meaning and form of words. This sparked his interest in creating his own languages. It was his philological work, however, that inspired him to create his Elvish etymologies that gave us the majority of our understanding of the most well-developed of Tolkien’s languages (Gilliver et al, 52). Everything in those etymologies was created by Tolkien himself, but using the same apparatus that he saw in actual historical languages (53). Tolkien’s languages derive from a common root language, known as Quenya, and have an evolutionary matrix that shows how they have changed during Tolkien’s work on them.
Tolkien believed that language should have aesthetic appeal (Gilliver et al, 54). He upheld the importance of the sound of words being a value in language, and insisted that it was just as important for communication to involve pleasurable sounds and formations of words in the mouth as it was to deliver a message. This view was extremely controversial in that time period, and still is today, because many linguists believe that the communicative aspect of a language should be the dominant factor in its development and analysis (55). Proof of this belief can be seen in which languages are more complete, and which aren’t. For example, the Black Speech of Mordor is the most incomplete of Tolkien’s languages that appear in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In Tolkien’s words, Black Speech “… jars on the ears like an articulation of hate” (Burns, 6). It is the most incomplete simply because Tolkien did not like writing or speaking it, as it was greatly lacking in aesthetic appeal. By contrast, Quenya, an Elvish dialect, is the most complete of Tolkien’s languages, and it is used most often in the books. Quenya is based on Finnish, which Tolkien liked because of its romantic sound and style (Fauskanger, 6).
Tolkien first began developing Quenya when he was finishing his college degree, and further developed it during his service in the first World War (Doughan, “J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biographical Sketch”). He based it very closely on Finnish, and its speakers, the elves, on the ancient Celtic peoples (Burns, 6). Quenya is not a garbled version of Finnish, however, and only a few words in Tolkien’s created language resemble Finnish words (Fauskanger, 6). Quenya is the earliest elven language, both in Tolkien’s own timeline of his creations and his fictional history of Middle Earth (Gilliver et al, 4). It has its own vocabulary, though only of a few thousand words, grammar, and linguistic history, which can be explored in Tolkien’s novels, especially in The Lost Road (published in 1987).
Quenya’s history is as detailed and complex as any other language spoken in our own world. It is archaic, preserving the main features of the original elvish languages, which were invented by the Elves when they awoke at the mere of Cuiviénen (Fauskanger, “Quenya-The Ancient Tongue”). The Silmarillion refers to Quenya as “… the ancient tongue, common to all Elves, in the form it took in Valinor…”, which may distinguish an even earlier form of Elvish from Quenya, but the two forms are so similar that the distinction is not important. Originally, Quenya was only used by the Valar, who were angelic powers that guarded the earth. Once the High Elven were created, however, the Valar encouraged them to adopt Quenya as their own, coming up with new words and changing the language structure to their advantage, as any other culture might do when adopting a language from another.
When the Alphabet of Rúmil was invented, Quenya became the first Middle-Earthen language to be recorded in writing by the Noldor (the High Elves), partially because it was the first spoken language. However, if the Noldor had not rebelled during the First Age and been exiled to Middle-Earth, Quenya would not have spread, nor changed much more than that. Middle Earth was populated by the Grey Elves, who spoke Sindarin.[1] The Sindarin tongue had long-forgotten inflections that were preserved in Quenya. Quenya was more vocalic than Sindarin, and did not use the voiced stops b, d, and g that the language of the Grey Elves frequented. Eventually, the Noldor mastered Sindarin, but since the Sindar were slow to learn the Valinor tongue, Quenya died out of common speech. Quenya was officially forbidden by King Thingol of Doraith when he learned that the Noldor had killed many of his people among the Teleri (another Elven race). At that point, Quenya was only spoken by the lords of Noldor, but it was used in documents intended to preserve laws, lore, and lineages.
There is more to the story of Quenya’s evolution and use, but from that brief history alone similarities to historical languages can be seen. For example, Sanskrit, the language of Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism, is a literary language, but only because it dropped out of use in speech (Gnanadesikan, 78). Another real historical similarity to Quenya is the development of the Greek alphabet from Phoenician script (208). The Phoenicians, like the Valar, had their own script, and when they shared it with the Greeks, they adapted it to fit their own needs. In Tolkien’s case, the example is strictly literary and fictional, of course, but the comparisons can illustrate the ways in which Tolkien imports processes at work in historic languages and scripts into his fictional universe.
Quenya is a fictional language, and so primarily exists on paper, in writing. To clarify, Quenya is the spoken form of Elvish, and tengwar, which will be explained shortly, is the actual script that Quenian is written in. However, all that we know about Quenya comes from texts, not spoken word. Of course, there are no elves nor living creatures who actually speak Quenian, and so students of Tolkien’s works can only use his written notes and grainy recordings to try and piece together pronunciations of words. Much of what we know about Elvish comes not from actual written phrases of it, but what Tolkien wrote about it (Fauskanger, 11). If someone wanted to learn Quenian, they would learn it for the purpose of writing it, not speaking it. There are just too many gaps in Tolkien’s construction of the language that have not been discovered and may never be (7). One cannot become fluent in Quenya with the material we have at present, but it is possible to write long passages, both in Quenya using the Roman alphabet, and in tengwar, the script Tolkien created for his language.
The fact that Quenya is based so much in writing only adds to its uniqueness. Hardly any other languages (and in fact, there may be none) have evolved from writing into speaking; it is typically the other way around. Cultures begin by communicating orally, and from there, they form a method of written communication, be it by ideograms, runes, pictograms, or alphabets. Tolkien’s languages, however, were born in writing. He wrote about them and constructed them on the page; it was not until much later in the development of Middle Earth that Tolkien provided pronunciations and recorded fragments of Quenya, and much of the knowledge of actually speaking Quenian comes from what others have pieced together.
Much of Quenya is not exclusively original to Tolkien (Fauskanger, 14). As was stated earlier in this paper, Quenya is based on Finnish, and Tolkien did say that his languages were reminiscent of already existing ones (Peoples of Middle Earth, 368). There are clear traces of Indo-European languages and even Semitic ones in Tolkien’s vocabularies, and Tolkien did not try and avoid this. He notes in a letter that “… it is impossible in constructing imaginary languages from a limited number of component sounds to avoid such resemblances” (Letters, 384-385). In addition, it is virtually impossible to copyright names, nouns, adjectives, verbs, or prepositions. The word robot originally appeared in a science fiction piece, yet it is used in technological applications, fiction, and informational presentations alike today (Fauskanger, 15). With the way the English language evolves and assimilates words, it cannot be claimed that “fictional” words are to be treated the same way that copyrighted characters are, in that they cannot be used without the permission of the creator. For the most part, constructed languages and their vocabularies are in the public domain, which makes their influence even greater. Because of this, it is possible to separate Tolkien’s fictional languages from the worlds built for them, and apply them to one’s own purpose (to a certain extent, of course).
Quenya works in a way similar to French, in that many of the endings in Quenian can be translated into common words in English (Fauskanger, 18). In French, many short words such as I or your or a/an are often strung onto the longer words, especially if the following words begin with a vowel. I love you in French is j’taime; je, meaning I, the t at the beginning of the word standing for tu, which means you, and aimer, which means to love. In English, this phrase is three words long, but in French, it is only one. The same is true with Quenya. A common example is the phrase “the sun shall shine upon your path”, which is an Elvish salutation. In Quenya, this is Anar caluva tielyanna. In English, the phrase is seven words; in Quenian, it is only three. Tielyanna, in particular, is made up of three English words; “upon your path”. “Upon” and “your” can be found in the ending of the word; -lyanna, with “your” being –lya, and “upon” being –nna. This is a fairly straightforward concept, and it remains consistent across Tolkien’s explanations of Quenya, making the language relatively simple to learn (19).
Because of Tolkien’s love of ancient peoples, languages, and mythology, it is easy to trace the resemblances. His races, like Elves, Hobbits, and Dwarves, all have characteristics similar to the ancient peoples that Tolkien based them on. Elves are Celtic; when he first published the Quenta Silmarillion, a book largely about the elvish people, he was critiqued for including extremely Celtic-looking names, and Celtic art (Lyman-Thomas, 272). Sindarin, the spoken elvish language, is based heavily on Welsh, a Celtic language, and the stories about his elves hold similarities to Celtic mythology. For example, Rivendell and Lothlórien are parallels to the Celtic Otherworld, and entrances into many elvish realms are shown by water crossings, forest archways, or descents into valleys (Burns, 52). Hobbits represent England; this is shown in the comfortable way Sam speaks, the use of Common Speech throughout the Shire and Hobbiton, and the metaphors of World War One that can be alluded to in The Lord of the Rings (27). Dwarves are based on the Old Norse; it’s easy to see the similarities to Vikings, in their axes, battle helmets, and lust for gold and treasure (6). Many Dwarvish words are taken from Old Norse, such as the names of the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain in The Hobbit, and some words are intentionally semitic-based. Norse mythology has an influence on settings and characters throughout the book as well; Gandalf bears a resemblance to Odin, the One Ring has similarities to Andvari’s cursed gold, and Frodo seems to represent Hermod, son of Odin and messenger to the Norse gods (Birkett, 254).
As with Tolkien’s spoken languages, his written ones are also based off of historical contexts. In The Lord of the Rings, the languages of Middle Earth are mainly written in runes, and spoken as incantations or invocations (Burns, 48). Germanic runes can be found specifically in The Hobbit, on Thror’s map[2] and as decorations for the title pages and book covers, before Tolkien had had much time to develop his own scripts (Gilliver, 182). He merely took the Germanic runes, modified them to work with the English language, and added a few characters for specific unique phrases (“Certhas, Skirditalia, Futhark”, 106). From there, however, he used the historic runes as examples and inspiration for his own. In The Fellowship of the Ring, there are runes engraved on Balin’s tomb in Moria. While these runes look very similar to the Germanic ones, they have clearly different values. The first word in the tomb inscription is Balin, but if we were to translate the runes into English based on their Germanic counterparts, the word would be runix (Gilliver, 183). An important feature of these runes specifically is that the shapes are related to each other phonetically; the shapes of the letters look similar to the shape of the human mouth when they are spoken. The symbol for “B” reversed makes “V”, without a stem it is “P”, that reversed makes “F”, and so on and so forth. By contrast, Germanic runes are like the Roman alphabet, and are arbitrary in nature.
Tolkien’s own runic alphabets were developed soon after, starting with the Alphabet of Dairon and followed by the Angerthas. Both of these alphabets were arranged according to phonological relationships (“Certhas, Skirditalia, Futhark”, 108). There are clear similarities between Germanic runes and the cirth of the Angerthas, which Tolkien attributes to the method used to write them; both scripts were meant to be carved into stone or wood, which explains their angular appearance. The most striking similarity, however, is that the characters that represent vowels in the Angerthas also represent vowels in Germanic runes (109). It is unclear whether Tolkien developed his Angerthas script to be a mythological source for Germanic runes, or if they simply provided him a historical basis for his creations (110).
The most recognizable Elvish script is tengwar, which means letters in Quenya, a calligraphic script designed to be written with a brush or pen (“Invented Languages and Writing Systems”, 212). Like Germanic runes, tengwar is made up of an alphabet of twenty-four primary letters. These tengwa are then arranged in a grid of four series of columns (témar), which indicates a point of articulation, and six rows (tyeller), which indicate the method of articulation. The témar are headed by basic signs composed by a single stem that descends below the line, and one bow (C. Tolkien, 6). These signs represent the voiceless stop consonants; in Quenya, t, p, k, and kw. Each primary letter after these four in the grid is made up of a stem, or telco, and at least one bow, or lúva. These stems and bows hold a primary use in the way tengwar is pronounced if read (C. Tolkien, 8). If you double the lúva, a voiceless consonant becomes a voiced one. Raising the stem turns a letter into its corresponding fricative, and shortening it creates a corresponding nasal sound.
The tehta, or vowels, are written using diacritical marks over the primary letters. They are mainly used to indicate a change in pronunciation. The most common tehta is a single line placed underneath the lúva, which represents a long or double consonant (Björkman, 1999-2014). Tehta are used in this way to provide a more compact form of the script. If there is no tengwa for a tehta to be placed on, a carrier stem is used; this basically a shorter version of a telco that just holds the diacritical mark for that vowel. Punctuation too was something of Tolkien’s invention, though it was not quite as developed as the alphabet itself. These punctuation marks represented a pause in the text, and were given by different arrangements of dots; the more dots in a punctuation mark, the longer the pause. A single dot at mid-height on the page represented a comma (•), and two dots could represent either a semicolon or a period (:). Three or four dots usually mark the end of a phrase or clause, and the end of a text was represented by a single or double wavy line. However, these punctuation marks can also be interchanged with the standard punctuation of the Roman alphabet, such as periods, commas, exclamation points, and question marks, to avoid confusion by readers.
Tengwar is typically written from left to right, but since Elves are ambidextrous, they often wrote right to left in their private records. In doing this, however, they had to use their left hand and mirror the letters so that the letters would be facing in the direction of the line (Björkman, 1999-2014).[3] Tengwar could also be written differently depending on the language of the user, as it was the prominent script throughout Middle Earth. Each language had a separate mode of tengwar writing, and while these modes did not differ greatly from each other, each mode might have different words, punctuation marks, or phrasing. The phonology of the text did not differ, though, mainly because Tolkien was working from an English language base, so much of his texts have Latin roots and English phonemes.
Tolkien’s scripts are the very essence of writing. They were created to communicate a language, even if it was one that was created in the mind of a single human being. Critics argue that Tolkien’s languages and scripts cannot be considered “real”, because they do not have as many irregularities as “real” languages do, and they are used by people who only exist in a world of fiction. Even though the languages have a fictional internal history, they are every bit as real as another language that has been or is spoken (Fauskanger, 10). In its own world, Quenya and tengwar very much do exist, and they have literature, as well as the fact that they can be understood by any others who know the language. They have a grammatical structure, and syntax, and there are even exceptions to the rules laid out in their framework (McWhorter).
During the course of his life, J. R. R. Tolkien created something that very few others have ever done. He developed his own languages, complete with the complexities of languages created by different groups of people throughout history. Once these were augmented, he invented a script to write them with, just as many oral cultures throughout history have done. To many, this could be seen as a type of magic, and indeed, that is how Tolkien viewed language. He emphasized the use of magic through words in The Lord of the Rings, such as Arwen’s spoken spell to summon the spirits of the waters of the Misty Mountain, and Gandalf’s reluctance to use Black Speech in the Shire, for fear of the Dark Lord Sauron noticing. In Tolkien’s books, and other sources, language is used as both a catalyst and an indicator (Burns, 48). It brings about change and also shows that change has already occurred.
In the words of Mary Zimmer, Tolkien’s use of magic in the books was linguistic in inspiration, as is all magic: “Magicians merely strive to realize the possible worlds implied in the structure of language.” Magic is not only inspired by the structure of language, but it is also effected through the physical use of language (Zimmer, 50). This is why verbal magic is so powerful, both in Tolkien’s books and other works of fantasy. Tolkien used language to weave his own magic in his work, by using writing, speech, and pacing to fully integrate readers into the world he was creating.
This creation can accurately be described using a Middle English term for poetic creation; making (Burns, 48). In Tolkien’s lore, this refers to language and magical transference working together to generate a better and more beautiful result. Tolkien’s linguistic creations, the result of his making, are a form of magic in and of themselves. They have given the world the most famous and well-loved fantasy novels of all time, and evolved into a new form of pleasure, the study of a language not for the purpose of communicating, but to gain a better understanding of both Tolkien’s world and our own.
[1] While Tolkien developed Sindarin from Quenyan, the languages’ mythology and etymology state that the two languages existed at the same time, and that Sindarin eventually became the more widely spoken language, simply for its ease of use.
Bibliography
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