A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien, First Edition. Edited by Stuart D. Lee.© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Invented Languages and Writing Systems

Arden R. Smith

14

Tolkien’s “Secret Vice” and Linguistic Aesthetic

An important element in J. R. R. Tolkien’s legendarium is the complex of strange languages that appear in the stories, either in names of characters, places, and things, or in snippets of poetry and dialogue. These languages, some of which are genuine, historical languages, but most of which are Tolkien’s own creations, add a certain flavor to the stories and a consistency to the nomenclature. Furthermore, many readers of Tolkien’s works feel the aesthetic appeal of these languages, and the scripts used to write them, as artistic creations in their own right.

Tolkien did not create these languages merely as set dressing for his fiction, to give it color, detail, and depth. In a 1955 letter to the Houghton Mifflin Company, Tolkien describes his work as “all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration,” explaining further:

The invention of languages is the foundation. The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows. . . . [The Lord of the Rings] is to me, anyway, largely an essay in ‘linguistic aes-thetic’, as I sometimes say to people who ask me ‘what is it all about?’ (Letters 219–220)

In addition to letters such as the one cited above, the primary source for Tolkien’s thoughts on language invention and his linguistic aesthetic is an essay from 1931,

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entitled “A Secret Vice” (MC 198–223). Here Tolkien discusses the “hobby” of creat-ing what he calls “art-languages”: languages devised for one’s own pleasure as an expression of one’s own personal aesthetic, providing specimens of his own creations, none of which had yet been published, or even intended for publication. He also expresses his view that “for perfect construction of an art-language it is found neces-sary to construct at least in outline a mythology concomitant. . . . The converse indeed is true, your language construction will breed a mythology” (MC 210–211).

In this essay Tolkien also tells of his earliest attempts at language creation: Ani-malic, a word-substitution code created by Tolkien and his cousins, comprised pri-marily of English animal names; Nevbosh, another simple code with a vocabulary derived unsystematically from English, Latin, and French; and Naffarin, which was influenced by Latin and Spanish. As Tolkien discovered other languages that appealed to him, these also influenced his linguistic inventions. Gothic, for example, inspired Tolkien to “attempt to invent an ‘unrecorded’ Germanic language” (Letters 214), which may be what Tolkien elsewhere calls Gautisk (Tolkien 1998b, iv, x–xi; see Smith 2006, 274–277). Years later, Gothic would also serve as the stylistic basis for Tolkien’s Taliska language (Tolkien 2010d, 22).

Tolkien’s discovery of a Finnish grammar led to the creation of a language that “became heavily Finnicized in phonetic pattern and structure” (Letters 214). Tolkien described this language, originally called Qenya but later rendered as Quenya, as “composed on a Latin basis with two other (main) ingredients that happen to give me ‘phonaesthetic’ pleasure: Finnish and Greek” (Letters 176). This was the language that first sparked the creation of Tolkien’s Elvish mythology.

The other main language (or series of languages) in Tolkien’s legendarium began as Goldogrin or Gnomish, later called Noldorin, and ultimately became the language known as Sindarin or Grey-elven. “This is derived from an origin common to it and Quenya,” Tolkien explains, “but the changes have been deliberately devised to give it a linguistic character very like (though not identical with) British-Welsh” (Letters 176).

Tolkien’s Method

As the previous quotation demonstrates, a key component of Tolkien’s linguistic crea-tion is the illusion of historical development. Tolkien not only devised Elvish lan-guages, but also elaborated in great detail the historical relationships between them and the changes, phonological or otherwise, peculiar to the individual languages and distinguishing them from one another. For example, Tolkien tells us that the Primi-tive Quendian name of the Elves was *kwendı, which developed into Quendi in Quenya and Pendi in Telerin. The word was not found in Sindarin, except in the compounds Celbin (plural of Calben) and Moerbin, Morbin (plural of Morben), corresponding to Quenya Kalaquendi “Light-elves” and Moriquendi “Dark-elves” (Jewels 360–362). These correspondences of Primitive Quendian *kw to Quenya qu, Telerin p, and Sindarin p (mutated to b in certain environments, as above) are completely regular

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within Tolkien’s system, as we see also in Quenya quetta and Sindarin peth “word,” the latter appearing in mutated form in Gandalf’s “lasto beth lammen” “listen to the words of my tongue” (FR, II, iv, 400; Tolkien 2007c, 46). Even the non-Elvish languages connect with the Elvish tongues to varying degrees, as shown by Quenya Kasar and Sindarin Hadhod “Dwarf,” both of which Tolkien devised as loanwords from the Dwarves’ own name for themselves in Khuzdul, Khazad (Jewels 387–388).

Such philological detail was a hallmark of Tolkien’s complex of art-languages, as it was in his professional work in Old and Middle English and the older Germanic dialects. In fact, it is the core of his invention, since his languages might be better described as outlines of historical development than as languages per se. The fact of the matter is that many of the “languages” created by Tolkien consist of no more than a handful of words and a few grammatical devices, and in the case of the minor Elvish dialects, detailed material on the sound shifts that distinguish them from their sister dialects. The Danian language of the Green-elves, for example, consists of some two dozen attested words and some material on its phonological development, but this is enough to demonstrate clearly that the development of its sound structure was based on that of Old English (see Smith 1999). Documentation of Quenya and Sindarin is far more extensive, of course, but even so, it is still somewhat limited in scope.

A considerable amount of work on the grammars of these languages survives (examples can be found in Tolkien 1995c, 1998b, 2003a, 2009b, and 2010d). These manuscripts clearly reflect Tolkien’s philological interests. He generally began with very detailed material on historical phonology, after which he would move on to the morphology section, before the end of which the manuscript would generally degener-ate into a mass of incomplete notes in a virtually illegible scrawl. He rarely got around to writing anything about syntax. By that time he would have already started revising everything from the beginning.

Much of what is known of the vocabularies of these languages has been gleaned from names and brief snippets of text in Tolkien’s fiction, as well as from illustrative words in the grammatical texts mentioned above. A number of brief word-lists also exist, but extensive dictionaries are rare. Two of these date from the inception of the Elvish tongues: “Qenyaqetsa,” also known as the “Qenya Lexicon,” from circa 1915 (Tolkien 1998b), and “I‧Lam na‧Ngoldathon,” a 1917 dictionary of Goldogrin also known as the Gnomish Lexicon (Tolkien 1995c). The most valuable source of Elvish vocabulary, however, is an etymological dictionary from the late 1930s, known simply as “The Etymologies,” which contains specimens from about a dozen different Elvish languages (Lost Road 339–400, with addenda and corrigenda in Hostetter and Wynne 2003 and 2004).

Unfortunately, all this material does not fit together into one coherent whole. Tolkien was constantly tinkering with his linguistic invention and changing his mind about words, their meanings, their etymologies, and various linguistic processes. In the case of the change of Noldorin to Sindarin, he overhauled the entire historical framework. This causes difficulties for the practical use of the Elvish languages, since a word or grammatical device from one phase of invention may not be a viable sub-

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stitute for a word or grammatical device missing from the documentation of another phase. Although the Goldogrin of the Lost Tales eventually developed into the Sindarin of The Lord of the Rings, for example, a Goldogrin word like cweth “word” does not conform to the phonological constraints of Sindarin, even though a considerable amount of Goldogrin vocabulary did survive into Sindarin (see Gilson 2000).

Tolkien constructed his languages in such a way that someone versed in the meth-odology of linguistic reconstruction can reasonably postulate a missing word in one Elvish language based on the form of that word in another Elvish language. Recon-struction and extrapolation are necessary to fill in the gaps in Tolkien’s descriptions of these languages in order to make them adequate for practical use, and enthusiasts desiring to write and speak in Elvish have used such methods for decades.

It should be stressed, however, that even the best of the solutions arrived at by these methods may not necessarily match what Tolkien has written in yet unpublished documents or what he would have written, and many of the non-Tolkienian attempts at Elvish poetry and prose employ paraphrases that would certainly never pass for genuine Elvish. Indeed, Hostetter characterizes the circumlocutions often used in this sort of “Neo-Elvish” as “clumsy and alien when compared with Tolkien’s own com-positions and derivational techniques” (2006, 248). Similarly, reference works that have attempted to fill in the gaps in the current knowledge of Elvish grammar, such as Noel (1980) and Salo (2004), should be approached with caution, since they often fail to distinguish their authors’ hypothetical reconstructions from forms actually attested in Tolkien’s writing (see Gates 2000 and Hostetter 2006 for more detailed criticisms of these works).

The Linguistic World of The Lord of the Rings

In Appendices E and F of The Lord of the Rings (RK 1461–1496), Tolkien describes the complex of languages spoken in Middle-earth, according to the conception current when that work was published (see ch. 9). The general information in this section derives from that source.

One of the two main Elvish tongues appearing in The Lord of the Rings is Quenya (High-elven), which Tolkien describes as having become by the time of the War of the Ring “an ‘Elven-latin’, still used for ceremony, and for high matters of lore and song, by the High Elves, who had returned in exile to Middle-earth” (RK, Appendix F, 1481). The names of most of the Kings of Númenor are Quenya in form, as are those of the Kings of Arnor and Gondor (RK, Appendix A, 1354–1355, 1358–1359). Brief passages of Quenya appear in The Lord of the Rings in Frodo’s greeting to Gildor (FR, I, iii, 105), Aragorn’s farewell to Arwen (FR, II, vi, 458), Treebeard’s descriptions of Lothlórien and Fangorn Forest (TT, III, iv, 608), Frodo’s exclamation in Shelob’s Lair (TT, IV, ix, 942), some of the praises on the Field of Cormallen (RK, VI, iv, 1248), Elessar’s coronation oath (RK, VI, v, 1268), Elessar’s exclamation upon finding the sapling of the White Tree (RK, VI, v, 1273), and Treebeard’s farewell to Galadriel

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(RK, VI, vi, 1285). The most extensive passage in Quenya is the poem “Namárië,” also known as “Galadriel’s Lament” (FR, II, viii, 492; detailed analysis in Tolkien and Swann 2002, 66–70).

The other main Elvish tongue in The Lord of the Rings is Sindarin (Grey-elven), originally the language of the Eldar of Beleriand in the First Age, ruled by Thingol of Doriath. The Noldorin Exiles adopted Sindarin for daily use, and it remained the usual tongue of the High Elves of Middle-earth through the Third Age. As a result of this, nearly all of the Elves mentioned in The Lord of the Rings have Sindarin (or Sindarized) names, as do the Kings of Arthedain, the Chieftains of the Dúnedain, and the Ruling Stewards of Gondor after Mardil (RK, Appendix A, 1360). Sindarin also appears in The Lord of the Rings in Glorfindel’s greeting to Strider and his cry to Asfaloth (FR, I, xii, 273, 278), Gandalf’s spells on Caradhras and at the West-gate of Moria (FR, II, iv, 389, 400, 401), the inscription on the West-gate of Moria (398), Sam’s invocation to Elbereth (TT, IV, x, 954), some of the praises on the Field of Cormallen (see above), Gilraen’s linnod (RK, Appendix A, 1392), and especially the hymn to Elbereth in Rivendell, “A Elbereth Gilthoniel” (FR, II, i, 309; detailed analysis in Tolkien and Swann 2002, 71–75).

In Appendix F, Tolkien describes the Elves of Middle-earth as belonging to two groups, the West-elves (Eldar) and the East-elves. Most of the Elves of Mirkwood and Lórien were Silvan Elves of the latter category, though their rulers were Eldar. Sindarin was spoken in Lórien at the time of the War of the Ring, but many of its people spoke it with a Silvan accent, and the names “Lórien, Caras Galadhon, Amroth, Nimrodel are probably of Silvan origin, adapted to Sindarin” (RK, Appendix F, 1481).

The main Mannish language at the time of the War of the Ring is the Westron, which is represented by modern English in the text of The Lord of the Rings. Derived from the tongue of the Edain, which later became the language of Númenor, and enriched with words from the Elven-tongues, the Westron became the “Common Speech” of the West-lands of Middle-earth. In the Third Age it was “the native lan-guage of nearly all the speaking-peoples (save the Elves) who dwelt within the bounds of the old kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor” and was used as a second language by all races living in that region and beyond (RK, Appendix F, 1480). The Hobbits of the Shire and Bree used it “freely and carelessly” (1484), whereas in Gondor “the Westron kept still a more gracious and antique style” (1484).

The language of the Mark of Rohan, usually called Rohirric in the secondary lit-erature, though Tolkien never uses this name, was closely related to the Westron. In order to preserve a semblance of relationship between the two, the language of Rohan is represented by Old English. Tolkien has extended this fictional translation scheme even further, so that the names of early chieftains of the Northmen are Gothic in form (UT 402–403), and the outer names of the Dwarves, purportedly in the language of Dale, are taken from the Old Norse Völuspá (Peoples 70–71).

In Appendix F II, and even more in the published drafts of “The Appendix on Language” (Peoples 19–84), Tolkien provides numerous examples of the “untranslated” versions of these languages. The speakers of the Common Speech, for example, called

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their language Soval Pharë (Peoples 32). The word that the Hobbits used to refer to themselves was kuduk, and the more ancient form of the word used by Théoden, given as holbytla in the main text, was kûd-dûkan in “authentic” Rohirric (RK, Appendix F, 1496).

The language of Númenor, from which the Westron was derived, does not receive the same “translation” treatment, however. Adûnaic names, such as those of the later Kings of Númenor (RK, Appendix A, 1355), always appear in Adûnaic form. Further specimens of the language appear in writings more intimately concerned with Númenor, such as “Aldarion and Erendis” (UT 223–280), “The Drowning of Anadûnê” (Sauron 331–413), and Tolkien’s unfinished novel, “The Notion Club Papers” (Sauron 145–327). Connected with the last two is the most detailed exposition of the language and its grammar, “Lowdham’s Report on the Adunaic [sic] Language” (Sauron 413–440).

Tolkien mentions other Mannish languages, unrelated to Adûnaic, but virtually nothing appears of them in the books. One of these is the tongue of the Woses, the Wild Men of Drúadan Forest. Related to this were the original language of the Men of Bree, long since abandoned for the Common Speech, and that of the Dunlendings.

Khuzdul is the secret tongue of the Dwarves, which they used among themselves and rarely taught to any of alien race. Examples in The Lord of the Rings are found mainly in place-names such as Khazad-dûm, but part of Balin’s tomb inscription is in Khuzdul (FR, II, iv, 416), as is the Dwarvish battle-cry: “Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd aimênu!” “Axes of the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!” (TT, III, vii, 697; RK, Appendix F, 1488). Small amounts of etymological and grammatical information have been published elsewhere (e.g., Treason 174; Tolkien 2007c, 35–37, 47), and as Tolkien explains: “It is Semitic in cast, leaning phonetically to Hebrew (as suits the Dwarvish character), but it evidently has some ‘broken’ plurals, more in Arabic style,” such as Khazâd, the plural of Khuzd “Dwarf” (Tolkien 2007c, 85).

Tolkien describes the language of the Ents as “slow, sonorous, agglomerated, repeti-tive, indeed long-winded; formed of a multiplicity of vowel-shades and distinctions of tone and quantity” (RK, Appendix F, 1485). As Treebeard states, “It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it” (TT, III, iv, 606). Tree-beard’s a-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lindor-burúme, part of the name of a certain hill, is described as a “probably very inaccurate” attempt to represent a sample of actual Entish (RK, Appendix F, 1486).

The Black Speech was devised by Sauron to be the language of all his servants, and words from it, such as ghâsh “fire,” were widely used by the Orcs. Ancient Black Speech appears in the inscription on the One Ring (FR, I, ii, 66; II, ii, 331). The more debased form of the language used by Sauron’s soldiers is exemplified by the Mordor-orc’s curse (TT, III, iii, 579; see Tolkien 2007c, 78–79 for Tolkien’s various translations).

The language of the Valar is not mentioned in The Lord of the Rings, but it is nev-ertheless clear that it exists in that linguistic conception. The linguistic essay entitled

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“Quendi and Eldar,” dating from 1959–1960, ends with a “Note on the ‘Language of the Valar’ ” (Jewels 397–407). Here Pengolodh comments:

‘Plainly the effect of Valarin upon Elvish ears was not pleasing.’ It was, he adds, as may be seen or guessed from what survives, filled with many consonants unfamiliar to the Eldar and alien to their system of speech. (Jewels 398)

As examples of what survives, Pengolodh provides lists of Valarin words and names used by the Eldar, Valarin words and names known to but not adopted by the Eldar, and Eldarin names that are translations of Valarin forms.

The Linguistic World of the Lexicons and The Book of Lost Tales

In contrast to the elaborate linguistic milieu of The Lord of the Rings, we find far fewer languages represented in the earliest version of Tolkien’s mythology. As in the later works, two Elvish languages are the main linguistic representatives in The Book of Lost Tales, but here they are virtually the only representatives. That is to say, they are virtually the only languages for which we see actual specimens; conceptually, the linguistic world is just as complex. As the sage Rúmil complains to the mariner Eriol:

Know you that the Noldoli grow old astounding slow, and yet have I grey hairs in the study of all the tongues of the Valar and of Eldar. . . . I lightened my thraldom under Melko in learning the speech of all monsters and goblins – have I not conned even the speeches of beasts ..? Nay, I have worried at whiles even over the tongues of Men, but Melko take them! they shift and change, change and shift, and when you have them are but a hard stuff whereof to labour songs or tales. (Lost Tales I 47)

Rúmil explains that the “Gnome-speech” of the Noldoli is related to the “Elfin of the Eldar,” and that the Teleri, the Solosimpi, and the Inwir formerly spoke distinct dia-lects. He also tells of “the secret tongue in which the Eldar wrote many poesies and books of wisdom and histories of old and earliest things,” which the Valar also use (Lost Tales I 48).

The “Elfin of the Eldar,” which Littleheart calls Eldarissa (Lost Tales II 148), is the Qenya language described in “Qenyaqetsa: The Qenya Phonology and Lexicon” (Tolkien 1998b), also known as the Qenya Lexicon, written around 1915. The vocab-ulary of the language already bears a close affinity to that of later Quenya; the use of q instead of qu and k instead of c is merely a matter of transcription. The grammar appears to differ in some respects, however. For example, the extensive declensional system of later Quenya, one of the elements often cited as a mark of Finnish influence, is not yet in evidence. Whereas the declensions of nouns in Book Quenya from circa 1966 list ten case-forms (nominative, accusative, genitive, instrumental,

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allative, locative, and ablative, as well as short forms of the allative and locative and an unlabeled case employing a suffix identified elsewhere as “adjectival”), the earliest extant Qenya poem, “Narqelion,” has very few signs of case inflection at all, with most nouns appearing in the unmarked nominative (Gilson and Wynne 1995; see also Jewels 368).

Gnomish, the tongue of the Noldoli (later called Noldor), is also referred to as Goldogrin and Noldorissa, these being the Goldogrin and Qenya names respectively. This is the language described in “I‧Lam na‧Ngoldathon: The Grammar and Lexicon of the Gnomish Tongue” of 1917, also known as the Gnomish Lexicon (Tolkien 1995c). Although much of Goldogrin survived into later Sindarin (see Gilson 2000), the two languages differ significantly more than the Lost Tales’ Qenya and The Lord of the Rings’ Quenya. One particularly salient example of this is the large number of words beginning in cw- in the Gnomish Lexicon. Such forms are impossible in Sindarin, where initial Primitive Quendian *kw- became p-, mirroring the develop-ment of Proto-Indo-European *kw to p in Welsh.

According to one of the outlines for The Book of Lost Tales, an Ilkorin Elf named Nuin awakened Ermon and Elmir, two of the sleeping mortals at Murmenalda, and “taught them much of the Ilkorin tongue” (Lost Tales I 236). This idea that Men first learned language from the Ilkorin/Avarin Elves survived into the later Silmarillion:

It is said also that these Men had long had dealings with the Dark Elves east of the mountains, and from them had learned much of their speech; and since all the languages of the Quendi were of one origin, the language of Bëor and his folk resembled the Elven-tongue in many words and devices. (S 163)

The Linguistic World of “The Etymologies” and “The Lhammas”

Moving forward about 20 years from the Lexicons and The Book of Lost Tales, we come to substantial descriptions of the linguistic world of Tolkien’s legendarium as it stood in the late 1930s. The relevant texts from this period include “The Etymologies,” an extensive etymological dictionary of the Elvish dialects (see above); three versions of the “Lhammas” (“Lhammas A,” “Lhammas B,” and a shorter version called “Lam-masethen”), a prose account of the languages of Valinor and Middle-earth and how they are related to one another (Lost Road 167–198); and associated with these texts are three versions of “The Tree of Tongues,” a genealogical chart illustrating these relationships (Lost Road 169–170 and 196). In these documents we find a conception elaborated in greater detail than the vague statements of The Book of Lost Tales, but still substantially different from the conception outlined in the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings.

At the top of each version of “The Tree of Tongues” we find Valarin, the language of the Valar and the ultimate source of all languages of Valinor and Middle-earth.

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According to the “Lhammas,” the Vala Oromë found the Qendi (Elves) after they had awakened beside Kuiviénen, “and of him they learned after their capacity the speech of the Valar; and all the tongues that have been derived thence may be called Oromian or Quendian.” Quendian then diverged from Valarin, for the language of the Valar changes little, whereas the Elves “softened” the sounds of the language and “added many words to it of their own liking.” Anticipating the question of why the languages of the virtually immortal Elves should change so much, Tolkien (through Pengoloð, the fictional author of the “Lhammas”) states that it is their love for creating new words that “has ever been the chief cause of the change and variety of their tongues” (Lost Road 168).

The further development of the Quendian tongues is complex, and the various versions of the “Lhammas” and “The Tree of Tongues” differ in a number of specifics, not all of which are taken into account in the following summary. The Elves who refused the westward march and remained in Middle-earth, mostly of Telerian race, were called the Lembi “those that lingered,” and their language, which later split into many dialects, was called Lemberin or Lembian. Those Elves who made the journey westward were called the Eldar “star-folk” and their language Eldarin. A group of Noldorin Elves called the Danas or Laiqendi (Green-elves) became separated from the Eldar on the westward march and centuries later came into eastern Beleriand. Among the dialects of their Danian language are Ossiriandic (or Ossiriandeb) and Leikvian (East Danian).

The Eldarin tongue split into three branches, corresponding to the three tribes of the Elves: Lindarin, Noldorin, and Telerin. According to the “Lhammas,” from the first of these branches came the Lindarin language as it was spoken in Valinor, but an ancient form of Lindarin “became early fixed . . . as a language of high speech and of writing” and was called Qenya (Elf-latin), or Ingwiqenya, “especially in its purest and highest form” (Lost Road 172). The “Lammasethen,” however, derives Ingwiqenya and Qenya from Valinorian, a separate offshoot from Valarin, which the Lindar “took afresh from the Valar themselves in Valmar” (Lost Road 193).

From the Noldorin branch of Eldarin came the Korolambë or Kornoldorin, the language of the Gnomes of Kôr, the Old Noldorin of “The Etymologies”. Derived from this was the Noldorin spoken by the Exiles in Beleriand, also called Exilic Noldorin or Goloðrin, which split into several dialects, from the archaic speech of Gondolin to the mólanoldorin of the thralls of Morgoth. Noldorin underwent extensive changes, for “in the invention of language the Noldor were the chief” (Lost Road 174).

Telerin (Telerian, Telerya) split into two main branches, one spoken by the Teleri in Toleressea and Valinor and the other by the Ilkorindi in Beleriand. The latter branch is represented by Doriathrin, spoken in the realm of Thingol, and Falassian (Falathrin), spoken by the Elves of Brithombar and Eglorest.

A number of Elvish dialects are marked in the second version of the “The Tree of Tongues” as being yet spoken in the time of Pengoloð. In addition to Qenya, we find Eldarin and Telerin as spoken in Valinor, with the Eldarin dialect being a merger of Lindarin and the speech of the Noldorin folk of Finrod (Finarfin in the later

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conception). Derived from the Ancient Goloðrin of Gondolin are “Noldorin as it is yet spoken in Toleressea” and the “Gnome-tongue of those that linger in Middle-Earth.” There is also the “Speech of the few descendants of the Teleri & Laiqendi on Earth,” influenced by Doriathrin and Ossiriandeb (Lost Road 170).

It is worth noting that this general conception of the Elvish dialects was still largely valid while Tolkien was writing The Lord of the Rings. Noldorin was still called Noldorin until 1951, when Tolkien reworked the linguistic conception and turned Noldorin into Sindarin. This can be seen, for example, in the drafts of “The Appendix on Languages” (e.g., Peoples 30–31, but contrast 78–79).

Specific details about the languages of Men at this stage of Tolkien’s invention differ in the various sources, but according to the “Lhammas”:

The languages of Men were from their beginning diverse and various; yet they were for the most part derived remotely from the language of the Valar. For the Dark-elves, various folk of the Lembi, befriended wandering Men in sundry times and places in the most ancient days, and taught them such things as they knew. But other Men learned also wholly or in part of the Orcs and of the Dwarves. (Lost Road 179)

This text goes on to say that the language of the people of Bëor, Haleth, and Hádor, which had been greatly influenced by the tongue of the Green-elves, was called Taliska. Though the Men of the Three Houses eventually abandoned this language in favor of Noldorin, their kin east of Eredlindon retained their speech, “and from this, closely akin to Taliska, are come after many ages of change languages that live still in the North of the earth” (Lost Road 179). There is not yet any trace of either the Westron of Middle-earth or the Adûnaic of Númenor in this conception; Tolkien states in later writings that Adûnaic was derived from the tongue of the House of Hador (S 172; Peoples 368).

In addition to Oromian, two other main branches of linguistic development from Valian are present in this conception, though neither is discussed in detail. One of these is the Aulian or Nauglian branch, consisting of the language that Aulë invented for the Dwarves, as well as its descendants “surviving yet here & there in the moun-tains” (Lost Road 169). Although Dwarvish is already characterized here as “harsh and intricate” (Lost Road 178), the name Khuzdul has not yet been invented. The other main branch is Melkian or Orquian, consisting of the tongues of Orcs, Balrogs, and other creatures of Morgoth. These languages Morgoth derived from the Valian but “perverted to evil, as he did all things, and the language of the Orcs was hideous and foul and utterly unlike the languages of the Qendi” (Lost Road 178).

Although this linguistic scheme seems to differ greatly from that of The Lord of the Rings, many of the differences between the “Lhammas” and Appendix F are not due to differences in conception, but rather differences in focus. These earlier works examine the linguistic world of the “Quenta Silmarillion” in what would later be called the First Age, whereas Appendix F is concerned with the languages of Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age. When Tolkien wrote the “Lhammas,” the links

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between The Hobbit and the unpublished Elvish mythology were still quite tenuous, and the Third Age per se did not yet exist.

Writing Systems

Tolkien also created a variety of writing systems for the representation of his lan-guages. As with the languages themselves, the scripts are for the most part associated with the Elves, and even those used for the representation of other Middle-earth lan-guages are of Eldarin origin within the fictional history. Tolkien discusses the two main script types in Appendix E II (RK 1467–1479); more in-depth analyses of their multifarious varieties may be found in Allan (1978, 231–289) and Björkman (2012).

The letters of the older type of script are called Tengwar in Quenya and Tîw in Sindarin. The Tengwar were invented by Fëanor in Valinor and brought to Middle-earth by the exiled Noldor. Their use spread to other races, and they came to be used over much the same area where the Common Speech was spoken (RK 1467).

The Tengwar were designed to be written with brush or pen. Tolkien writes that the script was originally “a system of consonantal signs, of similar shapes and style, which could be adapted at choice or convenience to represent the consonants of lan-guages observed (or devised) by the Eldar” (RK 1468–1469). The system contains 24 primary letters, arranged in a grid of four columns (témar “series”) and six rows (tyeller “grades”). Each of these primary letters is comprised of a stem (telco) and at least one bow (lúva) attached to the stem. Whether the bow is attached to the left or the right of the stem and whether it is open or closed depends upon the series. Whether the bow is doubled or not and whether the stem is raised, lowered, or reduced depends upon the grade.

Roughly speaking, the series and the grades correspond to certain phonetic features of the sounds represented by the letters in a specific application of the script, which Tolkien calls a mode. For example, Series I, in which an open lúva is attached to the right of the telco, is used in all known modes for the representation of dental consonants (consonants pronounced with the tongue against the teeth). Grade 1, in which the telco extends below the line of writing and the lúva is not doubled, is universally used for the representation of voiceless stops and affricates (combinations of a stop and a fricative). Thus the letter in Series I, Grade 1 represents the voiceless dental stop [t] in all known modes. The specific application of the témar and tyeller, however, may vary from mode to mode, depending on the phonology of the language being repre-sented, so a letter with the value [mp] in a mode for Quenya, for example, may have the value [v] in a mode for Sindarin. In addition to the primary letters, the system also makes use of a variable number of additional letters, in origin mostly modifica-tions of the primary letters, as well as a number of tehtar “signs,” diacritical marks with various functions.

The Tengwar inscriptions in and associated with The Lord of the Rings demonstrate a variety of modes and will serve to illustrate some of the differences between them.

Invented Languages and Writing Systems 213

The calligraphic text of “Namárie” (Tolkien and Swann 2002, 65) exhibits a mode for Quenya, in which consonants are represented by tengwar and vowels by tehtar placed above the preceding consonant. In the modes used for the Black Speech inscrip-tion on the One Ring (FR, I, ii, 66) and the English inscription on the title page of The Lord of The Rings, however, the vowel tehtar are placed above the following conso-nant. The “Mode of Beleriand,” used for the representation of Sindarin on the West-gate of Moria (FR, II, iv, 398) and in the text of “A Elbereth Gilthoniel” (Tolkien and Swann 2002, 70), uses full tengwar rather than tehtar for vowels. Ori’s page of the Book of Mazarbul is written in English “in the later or Westron convention, in its northern variety,” which likewise uses full letters for vowels, but with the tengwar applied quite differently (Tolkien 1992b, no. 24).

The letters of the other main type of script are called Cirth in Sindarin, Certar in Quenya, and translated as “runes.” They were invented by the Sindar of Beleriand, and in their older form spread to Men, Dwarves, and even Orcs. The Angerthas Daeron “Long Rune-rows of Daeron” was the fullest elaboration of the alphabet among the Elves, attributed by tradition to Daeron, the minstrel of King Thingol of Doriath. The Dwarves of Moria learned the alphabet from the Elves of Eregion, and their modified version was called the Angerthas Moria. The Dwarves of Erebor made further changes to the system (RK, Appendix E, 1468ff.).

Like the runes of Germanic antiquity, cirth are angular in shape, as they were devised for inscriptions incised into wood or stone. As in the Fëanorian system, certain structural features reflect certain phonological features: “(1) adding a stroke to a branch added ‘voice’; (2) reversing the certh indicated opening to a ‘spirant’; (3) placing the branch on both sides of the stem added voice and nasality” (RK, Appendix E, 1475–1476).

Inscriptions in Angerthas Moria appear on the title page to The Lord of the Rings and on Balin’s tomb (FR, II, iv, 416), but the usage of the runes deviates slightly from the table in Appendix E II (RK 1478–1479). The runic texts in the Book of Mazarbul (Tolkien 1992b, no. 24) are written in the Mode of Erebor, making use of several cirth that are not listed in Appendix E II. Earlier versions of the cirth, including pen-written forms, have been published in the “Appendix on Runes” (Treason 452–465). The runes used in The Hobbit, however, are not cirth, but rather an adaptation of the historical runes used in Anglo-Saxon England (see Allan 1978, 280–282).

In 1919 Tolkien invented the earliest Elvish writing system, the Alphabet of Rúmil, as a code in which to write his diary, but it soon became associated with his Elvish mythology. Several characteristics of the Tengwar are already present in Rúmil-ian, such as structural similarities reflecting phonological similarities and vowels represented by diacritics, but unlike the later Elvish scripts, Rúmilian could be written vertically. Although Tolkien stopped writing specimens of Rúmilian in the mid-1920s, the idea of the script as a predecessor to the Tengwar survives in Appendix E (RK 1467). The available Rúmilian corpus was published in Tolkien 2001b.

Unlike Rúmilian, such scripts as Valmaric, Qenyatic, Falassin, Noriac, Banyaric, and Sinyatic did not survive into the later conception, but they and others do show

214 Arden R. Smith

the real-world evolution of the Tengwar during the 1920s (see Tolkien 2003b, 2006, 2009c, and 2012). Like Rúmilian, Tolkien created at least some of these other pred-ecessors of the Tengwar primarily to encode his private diary (see especially Tolkien 2012, 52). Tolkien did not originally intend to publish either his invented alphabets or his invented languages, but today his “secret vice” is known throughout the world.

References

Allan, Jim, ed. 1978. An Introduction to Elvish. Frome, Somerset: Bran’s Head.

Björkman, Måns. 2012. “Amanye Tenceli: The Writing Systems of Aman.” http://at.mansb jorkman.net/, accessed November 29, 2013.

Gates, Irene. 2000. “Ruth S. Noel’s The Languages of Tolkien’s Middle Earth.” http://www.elvish.org/articles/LRH.html, accessed November 29, 2013.

Gilson, Christopher. 2000. “Gnomish Is Sindarin: The Conceptual Evolution of an Elvish Language.” In Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter, 95–104. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Gilson, Christopher and Patrick Wynne. 1995. “The Growth of Grammar in the Elven Tongues.” In Proceedings of the J. R. R. Tolkien Centenary Conference, edited by Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight, 187–194. (Mallorn 33 and Mythlore 80.) Milton Keynes and Alta-dena, CA: Tolkien Society/Mythopoeic Press.

Hostetter, Carl F. 2006. “Elvish as She Is Spoke.” In The Lord of the Rings 1954–2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder, edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, 231–255. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press.

Hostetter, Carl F. and Patrick H. Wynne. 2003. “Addenda and Corrigenda to the Etymologies – Part One.” Vinyar Tengwar, 45: 3–38.

Hostetter, Carl F. and Patrick H. Wynne. 2004. “Addenda and Corrigenda to the Etymologies – Part Two.” Vinyar Tengwar, 46: 3–34.

Noel, Ruth S. 1980. The Languages of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Salo, David. 2004. A Gateway to Sindarin: A Grammar of an Elvish Language from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Salt Lake City: Uni-versity of Utah Press.

Smith, Arden R. 1999. “Old English Influence on the Danian Language of J. R. R. Tolkien.” In Interdigitations: Essays for Irmengard Rauch, edited by Gerald F. Carr, Wayne Harbert, and Lihua Zhang, 231–237. New York: Peter Lang.

Smith, Arden R. 2006. “Tolkienian Gothic.” In The Lord of the Rings 1954–2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder, edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, 267–281. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press.

Tolkien, J. R. R. and Donald Swann. 2002. The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle. 3rd edn. London: HarperCollins.