An Appendage to the Appendices

So I broke out my copy of Return of the King last night in order to look through the appendix that talks about pronunciation in preparation to do my own little summary to go in my section of Elvish tutorials, and I find some parts that… how shall I put this? Are… misleading? I won’t go so far as to say wrong.

I realise that sounds more than a little conceited, but let me hasten to assure you I’m not saying that I know better than Tolkien. What I’m saying is that some of what’s written in the appendices, particularly in regards to Sindarin, he later contradicted himself about, and we generally tend to favour the later interpretations when it comes to correctness.

With regards to the diphthongs of ae, ai, ei and oe (for those who do not know, a diphthong is two or more vowels that together make only one sound – such as the ‘ai’ in the English word ‘fair’ where the ‘ia’ in the middle of the word ‘trial’ has both vowels pronounced separately), there seems to be some blurred lines when it comes to their pronunciations.

Ai is universally accepted as being pronounced like the English word ‘eye,’ with the last syllable of Dúnedain sounding like English dine rather than deign. Ei is described as being pronounced like in ‘rein,’ and he states that basically there’s nothing in English that sounds properly like ae and oe should be pronounced, but that you’ll get away with pronouncing them like ai and oi without being laughed at too much, probably.

Which, firstly – way to vowel-shame English there, guy – and secondly… you’d think he could have tried to explain, at least. And the pronunciation of ae in particular is made exceptionally confusing when you realise that his description of ei was later revised.

Even though chronologically in the Tolkienverse Noldorin came about much earlier than Sindarin, conceptually Noldorin as the bridge between Quenya and Sindarin is the youngest of the Elvish languages, with a lot of Tolkien’s thoughts about it coming after the publication The Lord of the Rings (and thus its appendices).

Ei was primarily a Noldorin diphthong in Tolkien’s later descriptions, being almost entirely replaced in Sindarin by ai, by means of being basically the same sound spelt differently. So why then is it labelled as being pronounced differently while the diphthong ae (which occurs frequently in Sindarin even sometimes alongside ai) is noted as the same as ai, when we know the Sindarin saw ai and ei as interchangeable? Are they all pronounced the same and it’s only his notes on early ei that were later corrected? Or did ae later replace ei in his mind as the diphthong that took the “ay” sound in “May?”

Unfortunately, we’ll basically never know. My curiosity piqued, I dug out my DVD copy of Fellowship of the Ring, and both Galadriel and Arwen used words I knew off the top of my head that contained ae (the first line in the entire movie in Galadriel’s case, i amar prestar aen, and the first part of Arwen’s incantation to the Bruinen river Nin o Hithaeglir) pronounced the same as ai. So there’s where David Salo (who I have mentioned before was the Sindarist for the movies and is a total genius) stands on the matter.

Still sheds no light on the ei/ai conundrum, but thankfully it’s so rare in Sindarin that it almost doesn’t matter. It’s probably best to assume that in later Sindarin Tolkien’s notes about the pronunciation are correct and that it was changed from the ai pronunciation used in Noldorin – Ereinion (Nol. scion of kings, the birth name of Gil-Galad ) would be pronounced with the ei like the English word ‘eye,’ but the Mitheithel river (Sin. grey-well) would have the ei pronounced like “ay.”

So for the first time I really understood the thing that people have said to me (often), that the appendices to Return of the King can be confusing, though for presumably vastly different reasons than most people.

As a sidenote, doing some research into what other people who know about Elvish think about the whole thing, I now feel vastly inferior and unknowledgeable, to the point where… I don’t know. I may just stop writing about Elvish from now on. There are far better sources from much smarter people out there…

(SINDARIN) PRONUNCIATION GUIDE FOLLOWS

Elvish: A Delineation

Now, I’m not one to assume that my rather peculiar interests are shared by a large number of people. I know very few people who enjoy Korean music, the Mass Effect games, Blizzard lore and the Tolkien universe as much as I do, and none of them span the entire spectrum. But when I was watching a Youtube video by an author I follow, I realised I might actually have something non-writing-related to offer people – though a Tolkien fanatic, he knew next to nothing about Elvish, and lamented that there was no Elvish for Dummies book (to our knowledge).

Often, and this is something many people might have experienced during school, if you like something passionately enough, you become known in your group of friends as “the Tolkien person” or “the Star Wars person,” and so on and so forth. If you are foolish enough to tell said high school friends that you know about Elvish, you then become “that person who can speak Elvish.” Which is fine, albeit somewhat embarrassing, because they feel the need to tell everyone about you.

Then, when they meet other people, who also have an Elvish person, they take it upon themselves to introduce the two Elvish people, as though they must automatically be soulmates, and although I can see the logic, the following scenario has happened to me multiple times as a result:

New Elvish person: So, you speak Quenya, too, then?

Me: Ha! No, I speak Sindarin.

Them: Oh.

Me: …yeah.

(WARNING: do not read beyond this point unless you want to read about the history of the Elves from The Lord of the Rings and their languages!)