J. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings

The representation of the sounds here is the same as that employed in transcription and described above, except that here ch represents the ch in English church; j represents the sound of English j, and zh the sound heard in azure and occasion.

The inscription on the West — gate of Moria gives an example of a mode, used for the spelling of Sindarin, in which Grade 6 represented the simple nasals, but Grade 5 represented the double or long nasals much used in Sindarin: 17 =nn, but 21=n.

In Quenya in which a was very frequent, its vowel sign was often omitted altogether. Thus for calma ‘lamp’ clm could be written. This would naturally read as calma, since cl was not in Quenya a possible initial combination, and m never occurred finally. A possible reading was calama, but no such word existed.

For breath h Quenya originally used a simple raised stem without bow, called halla ‘tall’. This could be placed before a consonant to indicate that it was unvoiced and breathed; voiceless r and l were usually so expressed and are transcribed hr, hl. Later 33 was used for independent h, and the value of hy (its older value) was represented by adding the tehta for following y.

Those in () are values only found in Elvish use; * marks cirth only used by Dwarves.

In Lórien at this period Sindarin was spoken, though with an ‘accent’, since most of its folk were of Silvan origin. This ‘accent’ and his own limited acquaintance with Sindarin misled Frodo (as is pointed out in The Thain’s Book by a commentator of Gondor). All the Elvish words cited in Book Two chs 6, 7, 8are in fact Sindarin, and so are most of the names of places and persons. But Lorien, Caras Galadhon, Amroth, Nimrodel are probably of Silvan origin, adapted to Sindarin.

Quenya, for example, are the names Númenor (or in full Númenore), and Elendil, Isildur, and Anárion, and all the royal names of Gondor, including Elessar ‘Elfstone’. Most of the names of the other men and women of the Dúnedain, such as Aragorn, Denethor, Gilraen are of Sindarin form, being often the names of Elves or Men remembered in the songs and histories of the First Age (as Beren, Húrin). Some few are of mixed forms, as Boromir.

The Stoors of the Angle, who returned to Wilderland, had already adopted the Common Speech; but Déagol and Sméagol are names in the Mannish language of the region near the Gladden.

Except where the Hobbits seem to have made some attempts to represent shorter murmurs and calls made by the Ents; a — lalla — lalla — rumba — kamanda — lindor — burúme also is not Elvish, and is the only extant (probably very inaccurate) attempt to represent a fragment of actual Entish.

In one or two places an attempt has been made to hint at these distinctions by an inconsistent use of thou . Since this pronoun is now unusual and archaic it is employed mainly to represent the use of ceremonious language; but a change from you to thou, thee is sometimes meant to show, there being no other means of doing this, a significant change from the deferential, or between men and women normal, forms to the familiar.

This linguistic procedure does not imply that the Rohirrim closely resembled the ancient English otherwise, in culture or art, in weapons or modes of warfare, except in a general way due to their circumstances: a simpler and more primitive people living in contact with a higher and more venerable culture, and occupying lands that had once been part of its domain.

[These words describing characters of face and hair in fact applied only to the Noldor: see The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, p. 44.]