Sukkit
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Posts posted by Sukkit
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Naurwen,
Ah, yes, I recall having seen "Goidelic" in several books on Indo-European compared philology. Thanks for the enlightenment
If you could post more about Gaeilge grammar (and ideally about its relations with Scottish-Gaelic, but that's asking for too much
)... simple sentences, weird yet cool grammatical features... I don't know. I like that stuff.Does Gaeilge have consonantal mutations and lenitions like Welsh? I seem to recall reading somewhere that they were common in the Celtic family, even though Welsh probably takes those mutations to an extreme.
But I will be grateful if you could post here a summary of the develoopment/derivation process followed to coin terms in thes Neo-Nandorin. You know, consonantal changes, any different to Sindarin/Quenya ones but how? Why?Haha, you're basically asking for the core of the (soon to be revealed) Nandorin document
But alright. Where Sindarin has Th and Quenya has S, you will find D in Nandorin (I already mentioned this when explaining the name "Dórond").
In many ways, Nandorin is very similar to Sindarin. Contrary to Quenya, they both turned Ñg- to G- (S golodh, N golda), Nd- to D- (N Danas, which is an obsolete word even within the Nandorin context, but it's still valid to illustrate this switch), and logically Mb- to B- (although we don't have any Nandorin example of this). They both lost final vowels, as a general rule. Except for the early Sindarin "oe", "ö" (which became "e" in the TA), I think they share the same vocalic sounds (and I say think because I haven't taken a close look at it... it just came to my mind right now), being a, æ, e, i, y, o, u. Probably both short and long.
P.S. I replied to your message... I think. I got an error message but I believe it went through.Yeah, I got it. It's a pity, but anyway if you ever change your mind about that you know where you can find me
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The conjugations aren't hard in every-day conversation once you're so used to them you can say them without thinking. How do you think the Romans effectively used their case declensions? Not to talk about the Finnish.
However, for some strange reason the irregular verb "andar" is too hard for me. I've grown accostumed to wrong forms like the subjunctive 'pretérito imperfecto' **andara (instead of anduviera), and I often say that out loud, even though I studied Latin for 3 years and I know perfectly well it comes from Latin anduvieram. Or a similar word - I'm not sure so maybe 'perfectly well' was an overstatement.
Written French and Spanish are close enough, but once actual sounds come into the equation, French is too different to understand for Spanish speakers. Unlike Portuguese and Italian, for example.
What year are you guys in?I'm just beginning my 22nd year.
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Be careful not to make it too obvious. That's something we mortals are not supposed to know
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Heh. Some of the names I posted haven't survived a revision. (For example, I'm undecided as to what happened to the -wê ending in names such as Finwë, Ingwë, Elwë when final vowels were lost. Did the -w survive? Did it become -u like in Sindarin? Was this -u lost too? Beon [corrected form], Eong and Eol, or Beonu, Eongu and Eolu?)
Bin < Banjâ (Vanya). I'm afraid "Ben" did not survive the revision. The singular and plural forms are the same, since both forms had a semivowel j that triggered the same mutation. The development went something like Banjâ > Benjâ > Benia > Bin; Banjâi > Banjai > Benji > Benî > Bin.
Dórond < Thaurondô (Sauron). Nandorin does not seem to have any fricatives, except for s and h. Therefore, the original aspirated consonants couldn't evolve like they did in Quendya and Sindarin (Vanyarin Quendya; because in Quenya Th turned to S).
Tórond < Taurondô (Tauron, Oromë)
Gyld < Ñgolodôi (Noldor). The singular form is golda; this is an irregular plural, and it is explained because the ld cluster prevented final vowels from disappearing (those that survived became -a), but final -i is always lost (causing yod-inflection) unless there's already an i (or possibly y) in the adjacent syllable, as we see in the example of Lindi, that kept the ancient plural mark.
Kwendî would become Pind, I think. Singular Pend (<Kwende).
Man, this is nerdy fun.
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Look for Brittons, they happen to have a language close to Welsh. (I am Britton descent, but knows nothing about either Brezhoneg or Britanny)
As NaurwenT has said, Welsh should be much easier. If I recall correctly, currently Welsh is the Celtic language that has more fluent native speakers.
Besides, if it comes down to it I already know of someone we could ask about Welsh (he helped our 0 A.D. mates, I think)
The linguistic situation in France is very sad. Especially since I always thought the basic division between the langue d'Oi and langue d'Oc that we were taught in school was pretty cool
NaurwenT, I always heard that "Gaelic" is the name of the branch, and "Scottish-Gaelic" and "Irish-Gaelic" were the languages belonging to that branch of the Celtic family. What are the basic differences between them?
Now, about Nandorin... I don't know where to start. You'll have to make a specific question because I'm totally lost here.
For the fun of it, I "translated" some names from the Silmarillion to pseudo-Nandorin (i.e. I applied the reconstructed set of phonological switches to the primitive forms of those nouns). Hence, it seems that in the beginning the Edil lived peacefully in Cuiwinen until the servants of Beolcor, maybe even Dórond himself, found them. But fortunately for them Tórond found them too, and they chose Eong, Bin and Eol as their kings, and agreed with Tórond to go to Balidor. The Ben and the Gyld parted, but many Lindi decided to live near the Hidaigliri, and Leon was their leader.
Cookie for the first one who correctly identifies these names.
Just one thing. Nandorin seems to use mutations by influence of the ancient -î of the plural mark (what's usually called yod-inflection in linguistics). We see that inflection in urc, pl. yrc. Apparently this inflection didn't happen when there was an i in the stem, and thus we see Lindi, "the Lindar". It makes sense if this yod-inflection happens not only because of the plural mark, but because of any other i (and indeed we get lygn from *lugni). But if I'm not mistaken this yod-inflection would act in any other position, and thus my Balidor (*Balîndôrê) should probably be Belidor. But this is a relatively new idea and I still have to see whether it agrees with our known Nandorin lexicon.
Whoa, I got myself started after all.
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Why would I know Welsh?
Because we desperately need Welsh speakers
About Gaeilge, you'll heard from us
I don't have time now, will reply tomorrow.
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In Japanese, they use genetive with locative postpositions
darn!
Anyway, in Ardalambion it is said that mênu is an accusative form. I don't know where Fauskanger got that from, though.
Sukkit, would you be so kind to post here a bit of your reconstruction theories and process regarding Nandorin?Well, it's not that simple. As you know, Nandorin only exists in some 30 words from the 1930s. There's absolutely no grammar, not a single sentence. Because of this, all the grammar had to be invented, and therefore there's nothing really to debate. Or very little.
What part of the reconstruction would you be interested on? Phonology? Grammar?
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Yesterday I went to the library and tried to check out a book on Norse mythology. Nothing. Everything was either checked out already or in a different branch. The library claimed to have several of the HoME series, but I looked and couldn't find them. Bleh. I hate that library
All the names I posted come from the Völuspá and/or from the Edda Islandorum, and they're all Dwarven names. I could post more if you want and don't like the ones I already posted.
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No wonder those Elves found it hard to learn Khuzdul.
Those Elves locked inside their own tiny world
I forgot the single most important reason to treat -u as an accusative mark: the Dwarvish battlecry "Khazâd ai-mênu!". Ai-mênu means "upon you": ai- is an attached preposition (much like Hebrew min, mi- "from") and so we have mênu. Now, what's that -u? I interpreted it as the same accusative suffix I saw in Felakgundu, and imagined the preposition ai- is used with the accusative, much like in Latin. Of course, a noun following a preposition can be in any grammatical case that particular preposition needs, so genitive is not impossible; but I think it less probable than the accusative.
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Yes, the nerdiness is definately sufficient. The only thing is that personally prefer the -u suffix to the construct state, because of how badly the latter is understood (well, so is the former. But it's always easier to extrapolate a suffix when the regular form is attested then to try to figure out the costruct state when we don't know the regular form with certainty). I don't necessarilly think that the accusative and genitive need not be the same. I also think that Felakgundu could be interpreted as Carve®-cave-genetive or Carver of Caves.
Actually, I interpreted -u as a construct state mark too, but (in my imagination) it would be used in a different way to the accusative suffix. My interpretation of the construct state comes mostly from "Bundushathûr", *Bundu-Shathûr, of course.
However, the distinction between those two u's makes sense to me because of the following reasons:
1. A word that is used in construct state is often reduced. Now, *bundu isn't shorter than the absolute state form *bund, but the stress would be displaced to the first syllable (a secondary stress, I think), and thus Bundu-Shathûr would be read as a single word: bund-u-sha-THÛR. In this case, *bundu would be effectively shorter than bund, for the sole reason that it would not receive a primary stress. Now, what does this have to do with anything? In Uzbad Khazaddûmu, the second element -dûmu can hardly be a construct state with this logic, since it has a long vowel (the example of Khazâd vs Khazad-dûm suggests that long vowels were shortened when they were unstressed).
2. In Hebrew, the construct noun always precedes the absolute noun. In a language that has a mainly acute stress (i.e. the stress usually falls in the last syllable), this construction makes more sense, since the last element will be more strongly stressed, signifying its higher importance (that's why that noun is in absolute state form, and not construct). That's why I don't think Felakgundu contains a construct state.
There are probably more reasons I already forgot, but these two are the main ones.
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OK, but there is guessing and guessing...
I know what you mean. As an example of the type of 'guessing' we've been using, in order to fill in the gaps in our Khuzdul vocabulary, we used some Adûnaic stems, picturing them as ancient loan words from Khuzdul. Of course, we know many loans entered the Human tongues from Khuzdul, but we cannot know whether Adûnaic batân is actually a Khuzdul loan; and furthermore, we have no real reason to think it is. But that's the necessary evil, and it's better to fill in the gaps with Adûnaic rather than making up new words out of nothing. Still, we had to make up new words out of nothing, but we tried to make sure the invented stems shared the same distribution of phonemes we see in the attested vocabulary.
As for David Salo, I don't know him so I have nothing to say.
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our corpus, while lacking basicly all other grammar, seems to offer us 3 ways of doing this!
Okay, I *need* to reply to this
I guess the three genitive constructions you're referring to are:
- Baruk Khazâd!
- Uzbad Khazaddûmu
- Fundinul
Is that correct?
Well, in my reconstruction, only the first one is a real genitive (or rather, it's a construct state implying subordination of the first element to the second one, like in Hebrew). The -u ending in Khazaddûmu would be simply an accusative suffix, like we see in Felakgundu, "Carve-cave-accusative", "Cave-carver". This would be explained because "Uzbad" would be derived from a stem Z-B-D, "authority", following a pattern with agentive and personal connotations.
The suffix -ul would just be used to form adjectives, "related to X", and in patronimics.
Does this sound coherent and, most importantly, nerdy enough?
EDIT
I do indeed expect most material to be "confidential" at this stage, but I would love to learn moew about the reconstruction of languages such as Khuzdul, Avarin, to know what materials these reconstructions are being based on, what theories, who is involved as consultant (perhaps someone along the lines of Salo, of Fauksner, of Carl H...). You know, that kind of stuff. I'm a philologist myself, so all the information pertaining ME languages is always of great interest for me.The materials I used can almost entirely be found in Ardalambion and in 'The Lost Road' (more specifically, in the Etymologies). Of course, there's a vast amount of guessing, and even of sheer invention, but that's a necessary evil.
As for the consultants... the only consultants are my fellow team members (those of them who are interested on linguistics themselves, to some degree). I wish we could count on David Salo or Helge Fauskanger, especially for Sindarin, but I don't think that's possible right now.
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That's not a *big* problem, and I rather suspected it from the start.
Yeah, I don't mention it as a problem, but rather as an "internal fact", because there has been some talk about the possibility of that dwarf belonging to one of the Eastern mansions in this thread.
By the way, the Norse names of the Dwarves represented the original Northern names of Dale. Tolkien the 'Translator' used names from the Völuspá as a quick way to translate those Dalish names. Therefore, it makes sense if your name comes from the Völuspá or other Norse mythologic texts as well. For example: Andvari, Litur, Vitur, Nar, Munin, Dulin, Olin, Alfur or the beautiful cardinal names: Nordri, Sudri, Austri and Vestri.
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Hola y bienvenido a The Last Alliance!
What do you want to know? A lot of linguistic material is almost ready to be "published", but we still have to revise it. Until then, much of it is confidential - but if you have any specific question just ask.
I must say, though, that my Sindarin is very weak.
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One thing, about the name "Pundin": you're obviously modelling it after "Fundin" and other similar Dwarvish names, but those were not Dwarvish (Khuzdul) name: they were Mannish names (Nordic), taken by the dwarves of Erebor from the Men of Dale, Esgaroth and surrounding lands (Northmen). Therefore, if you use "Pundin", you'll be implying that your dwarf belongs to Durin's folk.
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Tolkien described ME until Rhûn, the most eastern known realm of ME. Is it true east, or only superficial east? It is deep east, but still, as we can imply from the map, there is something east to Rhûn. So, you could settle for an even more eastern place. But this is a matter of imagination. To me, Rhûn is still west to me, as I imagine ME as way bigger than what we see on the LotR maps.
You're right, Hildórien and Cuiviénen (when it existed) were supposed to be farther in the East.
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He was originally a different person, Tolkien simply recycled his names from the Elder Days into LoT
I'm not sure he was originally a different person. In one of the early drafts of LotR (found, I think, in The Return of the Shadow), Tolkien writes something like: "Glorfindel talks about his previous life in Gondolin". Interesting, isn't it?
And IIRC, isn't it stardand Elf naming convention NOT to name an Elf after someone else?I don't know if that's possible (how many Elves lived in the First Age? It's hard to keep track of all those "plebeian" names), but at least the names of famous and great Elf lords wouldn't be used on someone else. Besides, "Glorfindel" is a strange name, and is not easily analyzed in mature Sindarin. It's one of those old names that was transferred to Sindarin and that were quite hard to explain - see Tolkien's theories and explanations about the Sindarin names of the sons of Fëanor, Fingolfin and Finarfin in PoME, for example.
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I still have to get RotK, and then I'll do it (but no EEs, only the normal versions).
Last sunday I watched FotR and TTT, so it was a good warm-up. I noticed how Viggo Mortensen is the one who pronounces everything the best - it's clear he's very good at Spanish and Spanish vowels
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Long story short - the flaming eye was Sauron's avatar
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Jesus never said, "you shouldn't follow the old Jewish laws and here's why..."?
Are you kidding? That would have got him killed!
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What's your favorite thing about Hebrew, Rober? Share an linguistic insight with us.
I'd say it's the verbal binyanim. It's a very logical and functional structure, and I like that. If anything, the mutations caused by the gutteral consonants are slightly annoying, but irregularities are fun anyway - and languages are too cold without them, aren't they?
Unfortunately, since I'm not attending university I have neglected my Hebrew - I used to go to the philology faculty library to check their Hebrew grammar books and courses, because I could pick them and take them home but I could not do the same with their dictionaries.
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Maybe one more ... where about in Spain are you?
From Madrid. Well, I live in a relatively small city near Madrid. I have all the advantages of a big capital without having to bear the nuisances of overcrowded streets every day
Aztec_Brave, as you say, there is so little evidence that trying to reconstruct Khuzdul as Tolkien intended it is impossible. What I have done should more properly be referred to as pseudo-Khuzdul (you'll see more of it in time
)Remember how in Jurassic Park they used frog DNA or whatever to fill in the gaps in the true dinosaur DNA? Well, I sort of used Hebrew as my frog DNA. That's as much as can be said by now...
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Why the hell is the Silmarilion considered so purist?!?!?!
I wouldn't say it's considered purist, but rather that few people know it and appreciate it, compared to the hordes of readers LotR has always enjoyed
The book itself is not even pure Tolkien, there was considerable editing work done by Christopher Tolkien and we have no idea how compliant it was with what Tolkien would have wantedThanks to the HoME series, that's not entirely true. Actually I think the way Christopher Tolkien presented the Quenta Silmarillion was the best option at the time, and especially considering the HoME series came in later to fill in the gaps.
I think that in some ways it's great that, in the end, Tolkien's legends became sort of real mythology because he never finished them, and as a result we have several versions of any story and we cannot really know which one is "real".
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I know this was from a while ago but I just recently discovered this topic and I wanted to say that Christians don't use the same Bible Catholics use and that a true Christian would not pick and choose from the bible.
Please, don't use 'Christian' and 'Catholic' in such a way, implying Catholics aren't Christians, because it can be offensive.
Secondly, about picking and choosing from the Bible, what do you think happened when mortal men like you and me (bishops, archbishops and the like, but men none the less) chose which books where God's word, and which weren't?
I was thinking of something ... if the Catholics were not worshipping the Saints and making images of Jesus et all, and Mary, etc ... what would tourists come and see in Catholic countries (mainly France and Italy) ???I agree with Adam. I think Muslim architecture is attractive enough without human paintings and scultures, for example.
Languages
in The Green Dragon
Posted
Well, we have no examples of Nandorin grammar at all, except for the corrupter/distorted/newly coined (at any rate, not pure Nandorin) name "Caras Galadhon", which seems to suggest Nandorin kept a genitive ending -on (from *-3ôm) like Quenya.
(3 is a voiced velar fricative, i.e. the Orkish/Black Speech gh or the Spanish and Gothic intervocalic g)
Aside from that, we have nothing. It is also quite hard to reconstruct the Primitive Quendian original case endings, except for a few of them that are listed more or less explicitly by Tolkien himself (the above-mentioned genitive, an alative in -da, the accusative in -3). Because of that, I chose to give Nandorin only two cases, a genitive (attested, as I said) and an accusative (not attested; it would not come from the ancient accusative but from the alative, which originally implied movement towards something). Most grammatical relations would be expressed by prepositions.
As I say, only the genitive -on is really attested (and even then, we cannot know whether it was used in singular or plural words - I chose to use it in both), the rest is pretty much invented. There's little to debate here, really.
They're two separate documents.