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Sindarin - The Noble Tongue
Sindarin - The Noble Tongue
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INTERNAL HISTORY
Designations of the language
EXTERNAL HISTORY
ELEMENTARY PHONOLOGY
THE CORPUS
THE STRUCTURE OF SINDARIN
1. THE ARTICLES
2. THE NOUN
Sindarin plural patterns
The vowel A
The vowel E
The vowel I
The vowel O
The vowel U
The vowel Y
The diphthong au
Other diphthongs
Special ai-plurals
Monosyllables later becoming polysyllables
Expanded plurals
Plurals in -in
Singulars derived from plurals
The first element in compounds
The Class plural
The uninflected cases
3. THE CONSONANT MUTATIONS
I. Soft mutation
II. Nasal mutation
III. Mixed mutation
IV. Stop mutation
V. Liquid mutation
Special cases: The development of nasalized stops
Summary
4. THE ADJECTIVE
5. VERBS
I. Derived verbs
II. Basic verbs
III. The mixed conjugation
IV. Irregular and special verbs
6. PRONOUNS
INTERNAL HISTORY
Sindarin was the main Eldarin tongue in Middle-earth, the living vernacular of the Grey-elves or Sindar. It
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was the most prominent descendant of Common Telerin, Common Telerin itself branching off from Common
Eldarin, the ancestor of Quenya, Telerin, Sindarin and Nandorin. "The Grey-elven was in origin akin to
Quenya," Tolkien explains, "for it was the language of those Eldar who, coming to the shores of Middle-earth,
had not passed over the Sea but had lingered on the coasts in the country of Beleriand. There Thingol
Greycloak of Doriath was their king, and in the long twilight their tongue...had become far estranged from the
speech of the Eldar from beyond the Sea" (LotR Appendix F). Though Sindarin is said to be the best
preserved of the Eldarin tongues of Middle-earth (PM:305), it is nonetheless the most radically changed
Elvish language we have any extensive knowledge of: "The language of the Sindar had changed much, even
in unheeded growth as a tree may imperceptibly change its shape: as much maybe as an unwritten mortal
tongue might change in five hundred years or more. It was already ere the Rising of the Sun a speech greatly
different to the ear from [Quenya], and after that Rising all change was swift, for a while in the second Spring
of Arda very swift indeed" (WJ:20). The development from Common Eldarin to Sindarin involves much more
radical changes than the development from CE to Quenya, or to the Telerin of Aman. Tolkien suggested that
Sindarin "had changed with the changefulness of mortal lands" (LotR Appendix F). This is not to say that the
changes were chaotic and unsystematic; they were definitely regular - but they dramatically changed the
general sound and "music" of the language. Some prominent changes include the final vowels being dropped,
the unvoiced stops p, t, k becoming voiced b, d, g following a vowel, the voiced stops becoming spirants in
the same position (except g, that disappeared altogether) and many vowels being altered, often by assimilation
to other vowels. According to PM:401, "the development of Sindarin had become, long before the arrival of
the Ñoldorin exiles, mainly the product of unheeded change like the tongues of Men". Commenting on the
great changes, PM:78 remarks that "it was a fair tongue still, well fitted to the forests, the hills, and the shores
where it had taken shape".
By the time the Noldor returned to Middle-earth, nearly three and a half millennia after their separation
from the Sindar, the classical Sindarin language was fully developed. (Indeed it seems to have entered a more
stable phase, despite Tolkien's statement that change was swift after the rising of the Sun: the changes that
occurred during the next seven thousand years, until Frodo's day, were small indeed compared to the swift
development in the previous three thousand years.) In the First Age, there were various dialects of Sindarin -
the archaic language of Doriath, the western dialect of the Falathrim or "Shore-people" and the Northern
dialect of the Mithrim. Which of these was the basis of the Sindarin spoken in later Ages is not known with
certainty, but the tongue of the Falathrim seems the best candidate, since Doriath was destroyed and what
very little we know about North Sindarin suggests that it differed from the Sindarin of Frodo's day. (The name
Hithlum is North Sindarin; see WJ:400.)
The Noldor and the Sindar were not at first able to understand one another, their languages having
drawn too far apart during their long separation. The Noldor learnt Sindarin quickly and even started to render
their Quenya names into Grey-elven, for "they felt it absurd and distasteful to call living persons who spoke
Sindarin in daily life by names in quite a different linguistic mode" (PM:341). Sometimes the names were
adapted with great care, as when Altariel must have been tracked back to its (hypothetical) Common Eldarin
form *Ñalatârigellê; starting with this "reconstruction" the Noldor then derived the Sindarin form that would
have appeared in Sindarin if there had actually been an ancient name *Ñalatârigellê: Galadriel. The names
were not always converted with such care. The prominent name Fëanor is in fact a compromise between pure
Quenya Fëanáro and the "correct" Sindarin form Faenor ("correct" in the sense that this is what primitive
*Phayanâro would have become in Sindarin, if this name had actually occurred in Common Eldarin in
ancient times). Some names, like Turukáno or Aikanáro, were simply Sindarized in sound, though the
resulting forms Turgon and Aegnor were pretty meaningless in Grey-elven (PM:345). Many of the
name-translations took place very early, before the Noldor had sorted out all the subtleties of Sindarin -
therefore the resulting names "were often inaccurate: that is, they did not always precisely correspond in
sense; nor were the equated elements always actually the nearest Sindarin forms of the Quenya elements"
(PM:342).
But the Noldor, ever ready linguists, soon achieved full mastery of the Sindarin language and sorted out
its precise relationship to Quenya. Twenty years after the coming of the Noldor to Middle-earth, during the
Mereth Aderthad or Feast of Reuniting, "the tongue of the Grey-elves was most spoken even by the Noldor,
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for they learned swiftly the speech of Beleriand, whereas the Sindar were slow to master the tongue of
Valinor" (Silmarillion ch. 13). Quenya as a spoken tongue was finally abolished by Thingol when he learnt
that the Noldor had killed many Teleri and stolen their ships to get back to Middle-earth: "Never again in my
ears shall be heard the tongue of those who slew my kin in Alqualondë! Nor in all my realm shall it be openly
spoken." Consequently "the Exiles took the Sindarin tongue in all their daily uses" (Silm. ch. 15). It seems that
Thingol's edict merely accelerated the process; as noted, many of the Noldor spoke Sindarin already.
Later, mortal Men appeared in Beleriand. Appendix F in LotR (and UT:216) informs us that "the
Dúnedain alone of all races of Men knew and spoke an Elvish tongue; for their forefathers had learned the
Sindarin tongue, and this they handed on to their children as a matter of lore, changing little with the passing
of the years". Perhaps it was the Dúnedain that stabilized the Sindarin language, at least as used among
themselves (UT:216 states that Sindarin spoken by mortal Men otherwise "tended to become divergent and
dialectal"). Whatever the standard of Mannish Sindarin might have been in later ages, back in the First Age
"the most part of [the Edain] soon learned the Grey-elven tongue, both as a common speech among
themselves and because many were eager to learn the lore of the Elves" (Silmarillion ch. 17). Eventually,
some Men knew and spoke Sindarin just as well as the Elves. The famous lay Narn i Chîn Húrin (as it is
properly spelt) was made by a Mannish poet by the name of Dírhavel, "but it was prized by the Eldar, for
Dírhavel used the Grey-elven tongue, in which he had great skill" (UT:146. On the other hand, the people of
Haleth did not learn Sindarin well or with enthusiasm; see UT:378). Túrin learnt Sindarin in Doriath; one
Nellas "taught him to speak the Sindarin tongue after the manner of the ancient realm, older, and more
courteous, and richer in beautiful words" (UT:76).
The Elves themselves continued to use Sindarin throughout the First Age. In a Noldo-colony like
Gondolin one might have thought that the Noldor would have revived Quenya as their spoken language, but
this appears not to have been the case, except in the royal house: "For most of the people of Gondolin
[Quenya] had become a language of books, and as the other Noldor they used Sindarin in daily speech"
(UT:55). Tuor heard the Guard of Gondolin speak first in Quenya and then "in the tongue of Beleriand
[Sindarin], though in a manner somewhat strange to his ears, as of a people long sundered from their kin"
(UT:44). Even the Quenya name of the city, Ondolindë, always appears in its Sindarized form Gondolin
(though this is a mere adaptation and not "real" Sindarin; primitive *Gondolindê should have produced
**Gonglin, if the word was inherited).
Many speakers of Sindarin perished in the wars of Beleriand, but by the intervention of the Valar,
Morgoth was finally overthrown in the War of Wrath. Many Elves went to Eressëa when the First Age was
ended, and from now on Sindarin evidently became a spoken tongue in the Blessed Realm as well as in
Middle-earth (a passage in the Akallabêth, quoted below, indicates that the Númenóreans held converse with
the Eressëans in Sindarin). The Valar wanted to reward the Edain for their sufferings in the war against
Morgoth and raised an island out of the sea, and Men, following the Star of Eärendil to their new home,
founded the realm of Númenor.
Sindarin was widely used in Númenor: "Though this people used still their own speech, their kings and
lords knew and spoke also the Elven tongue, which they had learned in the days of their alliance, and thus
they held converse still with the Eldar, whether of Eressëa or of the westlands of Middle-earth" (Akallabêth).
The descendants of the people of Bëor even used Sindarin as their daily speech (UT:215). Though Adûnaic
was the vernacular for most of the Númenórean population, Sindarin was "known in some degree to nearly
all" (UT:216). But times later changed. The Númenóreans started to envy the immortality of the Elves, and
eventually they turned away from their ancient friendship with Aman and the Valar. When Ar-Gimilzôr
"forbade utterly the use of the Eldarin tongues" in the 3100s of the Second Age, we must assume that even the
Bëorians dropped Sindarin and took up Adûnaic instead (UT:223). The story of the folly of Ar-Pharazôn,
Sauron's cunning "surrender", the total corruption of the Númenóreans and the Downfall of Númenor is well
known from the Akallabêth. After the Downfall, the surviving Elf-friends set up the Realms in Exile, Arnor
and Gondor, in Middle-earth. PM:315 states: "The Faithful [after the Downfall]...used Sindarin, and in that
tongue devised all names of places that they gave anew in Middle-earth. Adûnaic was abandoned to unheeded
change and corruption as the language of daily life, and the only tongue of the unlettered. All men of high
lineage and all those who were taught to read and write used Sindarin, even as a daily tongue among
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themselves. In some families, it is said, Sindarin became the native tongue, and the vulgar tongue of Adûnaic
was only learned casually as it was needed. The Sindarin was not however taught to aliens, both because it
was held a mark of Númenórean descent and because it proved difficult to acquire - far more so than the
'vulgar tongue'." In accordance with this, Sindarin is stated to have been "the normal spoken language of
Elendil's people" (UT:282).
Among the Elves themselves, Sindarin crept eastwards in the Second and Third Age and eventually
displaced some of the Silvan (Nandorin, Danian) tongues. "By the end of the Third Age, the Silvan tongues
had probably ceased to be spoken in the two regions that had importance at the time of the War of the Ring:
Lórien and the realm of Thranduil in northern Mirkwood" (UT:257). Silvan was out, Sindarin was in. True,
we get the impression from LotR1/II ch. 6 that the language used in Lórien was some strange Wood-elven
tongue, but Frodo, the author of the Red Book, got it wrong. A footnote in LotR Appendix F explains that in
Frodo's day, Sindarin was indeed spoken in Lórien, "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)". UT:257 elaborates on this: "In Lórien, where many of the
people were Sindar in origin, or Noldor, survivors from Eregion, Sindarin had become the language of all the
people. In what way their Sindarin differed from the forms of Beleriand - see [LotR1] II 6, where Frodo
reports that the speech of the Silvan folk that they used among themselves was unlike that of the West - is not
of course now known. It probably differed in little more than what would now be popularly called 'accent':
mainly differences of vowel-sounds and intonation sufficient to mislead one who, like Frodo, was not well
acquainted with purer Sindarin. There may of course also have been some local words and other features
ultimately due to the influence of the former Silvan tongue." Standard Sindarin, with no "accent", was
evidently spoken in Rivendell and among Círdan's people in the Havens.
But by the end of the Third Age, the Elves were fading away in Middle-earth, no matter what tongue
they spoke. The rule of Mortal Men, the Second-born of Ilúvatar, was about to begin. Tolkien notes that at the
end of the Third Age there were more Men who spoke Sindarin or knew Quenya than there were Elves who
did either (Letters:425). When Frodo and Sam met Faramir's men in Ithilien, they heard them speak first in the
Common Tongue (Westron), but then they changed to "another language of their own. To his amazement, as
he listened Frodo became aware that it was the Elven-tongue that they spoke, or one but little different; and he
looked at them with wonder, for he knew then that they must be Dúnedain of the South, men of the line of the
Lords of Westernesse" (LotR2/IV ch. 4). In Gondor, "Sindarin was an acquired polite language and used by
those of more pure N[úmenórean] descent" (Letters:425). The talkative herb-master of the Houses of Healing
referred to Sindarin as the "noble tongue" (LotR3/V ch. 8: "Your lordship asked for kingsfoil, as the rustics
name it, or athelas in the noble tongue, or to those who know somewhat of the Valinorean [= Quenya]...").
How Sindarin fared in the Fourth Age we shall never know. Like Quenya, it must have been
remembered as long as the realm of Gondor endured.
"Sindarin" is the Quenya name of this language, derived from Sindar *"Grey ones" = Grey-elves; it may be
(and is) translated Grey-elven. What Sindarin was called by its own term is not known with certainty. It is said
of the Elves in Beleriand that "their own language was the only one that they ever heard; and they needed no
word to distinguish it" (WJ:376). The Sindar probably referred to their own tongue simply as Edhellen,
"Elvish". As noted above, the herb-master of the Houses of Healing referred to Sindarin as the "noble tongue"
(while "the noblest tongue in the world" remains Quenya, UT:218). Throughout LotR, the term usually
employed is simply "the Elven-tongue", since Sindarin was the living vernacular of the Elves.
EXTERNAL HISTORY
In 1954, in Letters:176, Tolkien stated that "the living language of the Western Elves (Sindarin or
Grey-elven) is the one usually met [in LotR], especially in names. This is derived from an origin common to it
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and Quenya, but the changes have been deliberately devised to give it a linguistic character very like (though
not identical with) British-Welsh: because that character is one I find, in some linguistic moods, very
attractive; and because it seems to fit the rather 'Celtic' type of legends and stories told of its speakers". Later,
he found that "this element in the tale has given perhaps more pleasure to more readers than anything else in
it" (MC:197).
A Welsh- or Celtic-sounding language was present in Tolkien's mythos from the beginning. This
language was originally called Gnomish or I·Lam na·Ngoldathon, "the tongue of the Gnomes (Noldor)".
Tolkien's original Gnomish dictionary, dating from about 1917, was published in Parma Eldalamberon #11
and turns out to be a very comprehensive document, with thousands of words. Many Gnomish words are also
found in the appendices to LT1 and LT2. Parma also published a (never completed) Gnomish grammar. But
though Tolkien put much work into this language, it was in effect rejected later. In PM:379, in a late
document, Tolkien refers to Gnomish as "the Elvish language that ultimately became that of the type called
Sindarin" and notes that it "was in a primitive and unorganized form". Some of the central concepts of
Gnomish grammar, in particular certain consonant mutations, were later recycled in Sindarin. A number of
Gnomish vocabulary items also survived into Sindarin, unchanged or in recognizable forms. Even so,
Gnomish was really a wholly different language, though it had a phonetic style somewhat similar to that of
Sindarin (lots of ch's and th's, and most words end in a consonant!) An important feature of Sindarin, the
umlaut or affection of vowels, reportedly first appears in grammars written by Tolkien in the twenties. But
only in the thirties, with the Etymologies, did a language really close to LotR-style Sindarin emerge in
Tolkien's notes. This was however called "Noldorin", for like its predecessor Gnomish it was conceived as the
language, not of the Sindar, but of the Noldor - developed in Valinor. At this stage, Quenya was thought of as
the language of the "Lindar" (later: Vanyar) only. Only as late as when the appendices to LotR were being
written did Tolkien abandon this idea, and turned Noldorin into Sindarin. Quenya now became the original
language of both the Vanyar and the Noldor - the latter simply adopted Sindarin when they arrived in
Middle-earth. It "turned out" that the Celtic-sounding language of Tolkien's mythos was not, after all, their
own tongue (though in the annals of Middle-earth, they certainly came to be the most prominent users of it). It
did not originate in the Blessed Realm of Valinor, but was an indigenous tongue of Middle-earth.
In the former conception, the native Elves of Beleriand spoke a language called Ilkorin, that Sindarin in
effect displaced when Tolkien made this revision (Edward Kloczko has argued that some elements of Ilkorin
were maintained as the northern dialect of Sindarin; his article is appended to my own treatise about Ilkorin).
Tolkien's decision to fundamentally revise the history of the Celtic-sounding language of his mythos was
probably a happy one, making the linguistic scenario much more plausible: Surely it was difficult to imagine
that the Vanyar and the Noldor could have developed two languages as markedly different as Quenya and
"Noldorin" when they lived side by side in Valinor. Turning "Noldorin" into Sindarin took care of that
problem; now the two branches of Elvish could develop wholly independently during the long ages their
speakers lived in absolute separation from one another.
The "Noldorin" of the Etymologies is not entirely identical to Sindarin as it appears in LotR, since
Tolkien never stopped refining and altering his invented languages. But many of the differences that separate
"Noldorin" from LotR-style Sindarin are happily regular, Tolkien adjusting some details of the evolution
from Primitive Elvish. Therefore, most of the "Noldorin" material can quite easily be updated to agree with
the linguistic scenario of LotR. A number of words must be subtly altered; for instance, the "Noldorin"
diphthong oe should rather be ae in Sindarin. One example involves Belegoer as a name of the Great Ocean
(LR:349, 352); this form Tolkien later changed to Belegaer - so on the map of the published Silmarillion.
Another change has to do with the consonants lh- and rh-; where they occurred in "Noldorin" many examples
show that Sindarin should have simple l- and r- instead. Thus, we can deduce that a "Noldorin" word like
rhoeg ("wrong", LR:383) should rather be raeg in Sindarin - though the latter form is nowhere explicitly
attested. It has been suggested that the "Noldorin" of the Etymologies, with its various peculiarities, can be
equated with the "somewhat strange" dialect of Sindarin that the Noldor spoke in Gondolin (UT:44). In this
way we could even account for its being called Noldorin rather than Sindarin. However, it is also possible that
Tolkien would have considered "Noldorin" wholly obsolete to the extent it differs from his later vision of
Sindarin.
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ELEMENTARY PHONOLOGY
Sindarin phonology is less restrictive than that of Quenya. Many consonant clusters are allowed in all
positions, while initial and final clusters are virtually absent in Quenya. The sounds ch (German ach-Laut,
NOT "tsh" as in English church) and th, dh ("th" as in think and this, respectively) are frequent. Tolkien
sometimes used the special letter eth (ð) to spell dh, and occasionally we also see the letter thorn (þ) instead
of th. However, we will here use the digraphs, as in LotR. The unvoiced plosives p, t, c never occur following
a vowel, but are lenited (see below) to b, d, g. Note that as in Quenya, c is always pronounced k (standard
example: Celeborn = "Keleborn", not "Seleborn"). At the end of words, f is pronounced v, as in English of.
(In Tengwar spelling, a word like nef is actually spelt nev.) R should be trilled, as in Spanish, Russian etc.
The digraphs rh and lh represent unvoiced r and l (but sometimes these combinations may actually mean r +
h or l + h, as in Edhelharn - not surprisingly, our alphabet cannot represent Sindarin quite adequately).
Sindarin has six vowels, a, e, i, o, u and y, the last of which corresponds to German ü or French u as in Lune
(pronounce ee as in English see with rounded lips as when you pronounce oo, and you've got it). Long vowels
are marked with an accent (á, é etc.), but in the case of stressed monosyllables the vowels tended to become
especially long and are marked with a circumflex: â, ê etc. In HTML one unfortunately cannot place a
circumflex above the vowel y. To avoid ugly spellings like my^l ("gulls", WJ:418), we here use an accent
instead (the relevant words occurring in this article are býr, thýn, fýr, rýn, mrýg, mýl, 'lýg and hýn - ideally
these should have had a circumflex instead). This is not very critical: In Tengwar writing, no distinction is
made between long and super-long vowels; the use of circumflexes instead of accents in monosyllables is
merely an extra complication Tolkien introduced in his Roman orthography for Sindarin (evidently to make it
abundantly clear how the words are to be pronounced).
The Sindarin diphthongs include ai (as in English aisle, NOT as in mail), ei, ui (as "ooy" in too young)
and au (as in German Haus, or as "ow" in English cow). At the end of words, au is spelt aw. There are also
the diphthongs ae and oe, with no English counterparts; Tolkien actually suggests substituting ai and oi if you
don't care about such details (indeed he sometimes anglicized Maedhros as "Maidros", but anyone reading
this document probably does care about the details). Ae and oe are simply the vowels a, o pronounced in one
syllable with the vowel e (as in English pet), just like ai and oi are a and o pronounced together with i.
Somewhat confusingly, in Tolkien's writings the digraph oe is sometimes also used to signify umlauted o,
apparently the same sound as German ö (actually we often prefer the spelling ö in this article, to avoid
confusion). By the end of the Third Age, ö had merged with e (that's why the Grey Mountains appear as Ered
Mithrin and not Öröd Mithrin on the Map to LotR!), but we still need to refer to this sound when discussing
archaic Sindarin.
THE CORPUS
Important samples of Sindarin in LotR include:
Glorfindel's greeting to Aragorn: Ai na vedui Dúnadan! Mae govannen! (LotR1/I ch. 12). The first words
are not translated, but probably mean *"Ah, at last, Westman!" Mae govannen means "well met"
(Letters:308).
Glorfindel's cry to his horse: Noro lim, noro lim, Asfaloth! (same chapter). Untranslated; evidently
meaning *"run fast, run fast, Asfaloth!" (Variants of this line have been transferred to Arwen in the Peter
Jackson movie, since the movie-makers dropped the Glorfindel character.) The name of the horse cannot be
interpreted, but seems to include loth "flower".
Gandalf's fire-spell: Naur an edraith ammen! Naur dan i ngaurhoth! The first part literally means,
according to TI:175, "fire be for saving of us". (Actually there seems to be no word meaning "be".) The
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second part must mean *"fire against the werewolf-host!" (Cf. Gandalf's remark the morning after the
wolf-attack: "It is as I feared. These were no ordinary wolves.") (LotR1/II ch. 4)
Gandalf's invocation before the Moria Gate: Annon edhellen, edro hi ammen! Fennas nogothrim, lasto
beth lammen! "Elvish gate open now for us; doorway of the Dwarf-folk listen to the word of my tongue"
(LotR1/II ch. 4, translated in RS:463). An earlier variant of the invocation is found in RS:451.
The inscription on the Moria Gate itself: Ennyn Durin Aran Moria: pedo mellon a minno. Im Narvi
hain echant: Celebrimbor o Eregion teithant i thiw hin. "The Doors of Durin, Lord of Moria. Speak,
friend, and enter. I, Narvi, made them. Celebrimbor of Hollin [Eregion] drew these signs."
The song A Elbereth Gilthoniel / silivren penna míriel / o menel aglar elenath! / Na-chaered
palan-díriel / o galadhremmin ennorath, / Fanuilos le linnathon / nef aear, sí nef aearon (LotR1/II ch. 1).
It is translated in RGEO:72 and means roughly, "O Elbereth Starkindler, white-glittering, sparkling like
jewels, the glory of the starry host slants down. Having gazed far away from the tree-woven lands of
Middle-earth, to thee, Everwhite, I will sing, on this side of the Sea, here on this side of the Ocean" (my
translation based on Tolkien's interlinear rendering). An earlier variant of the song is found in RS:394. (The
hymn is quite similar to Lúthien's Song [untranslated] in The Lays of Beleriand p. 354: Ir Ithil ammen
Eruchîn / menel-vîr síla díriel / si loth a galadh lasto dîn! / A Hîr Annûn gilthoniel, le linnon im
Tinúviel.)
Sam's "inspired" cry in Cirith Ungol: A Elbereth Gilthoniel o menel palan-diriel, le nallon sí
di-nguruthos! A tiro nin, Fanuilos! "O Elbereth Star-kindler, from heaven gazing afar, to thee I cry now in
[lit. beneath] the shadow of death. O look towards me, Everwhite!" (translated in Letters:278 and RGEO:72).
The praise received by the Ringbearers on the Fields of Cormallen (LotR3/VI ch. 4): Cuio i Pheriain
anann! Aglar'ni Pheriannath! ... Daur a Berhael, Conin en Annûn, eglerio! ... Eglerio! This is translated
in Letters:308 and means "may the Halflings live long, glory to the Halflings... Frodo and Sam, princes of the
west, glorify (them)! ... Glorify (them)!"
Gilraen's linnod to Aragorn in LotR Appendix A: Ónen i-Estel Edain, ú-chebin estel anim, translated "I
gave Hope to the Dúnedain; I have kept no hope for myself".
Outside LotR, the most important source - indeed the longest Sindarin text we have, and the longest prose text
in any Elvish tongue - is the King's Letter, a part of the Epilogue to LotR, that Tolkien later dropped. It was
finally published in SD:128-9: Elessar Telcontar: Aragorn Arathornion Edhelharn, aran Gondor ar Hîr
i Mbair Annui, anglennatha i Varanduiniant erin dolothen Ethuil, egor ben genediad Drannail erin
Gwirith edwen. Ar e aníra ennas suilannad mhellyn în phain: edregol e aníra tírad i Cherdir Perhael (i
sennui Panthael estathar aen) Condir i Drann, ar Meril bess dîn; ar Elanor, Meril, Glorfinniel, ar Eirien
sellath dîn; ar Iorhael, Gelir, Cordof, ar Baravorn, ionnath dîn. A Pherhael ar am Meril suilad uin aran
o Minas Tirith nelchaenen uin Echuir. (The names Elessar Telcontar are Quenya; the Sindarin translation
of Elessar, Edhelharn [Elfstone], occurs in the text.) This translation is given in SD:128: "Aragorn Strider the
Elfstone [but the Elvish text reads "Elessar Telcontar: Aragorn Arathornson Elfstone"], King of Gondor and
Lord of the Westlands, will approach the Bridge of Baranduin on the eighth day of Spring, or in the
Shire-reckoning the second day of April. And he desires to greet there all his friends. In especial he desires to
see Master Samwise (who ought to be called Fullwise), Mayor of the Shire, and Rose his wife; and Elanor,
Rose, Goldilocks, and Daisy his daughters; and Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Hamfast, his sons. To Samwise and
Rose the King's greeting from Minas Tirith, the thirty-first day of the Stirring [not in the Elvish text:], being
the twenty-third of February in their reckoning." The words in the parenthesis ("who ought to...") are omitted
from the translation in SD:128, but cf. SD:126.
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Voronwë's uttering when he saw the Encircling Mountains around the realm of Turgon: Alae! Ered en
Echoriath, ered e·mbar nín! "Alae [= ?behold]! [The] mountains of Echoriath, [the] mountains of my
home!" (UT:40, translated in UT:54 note 19.)
Gurth an Glamhoth!, "death to [the] din-horde", Tuor cursing the Orcs in UT:39 (cf. UT:54).
The battle-cry of the Edain of the North, given in UT:65: Lacho calad! Drego morn! "Flame Light! Flee
Night!"
An exclamation of Húrin's: Tôl acharn, "Vengeance comes", also in the form Tûl acharn (WJ:254, 301).
The Sindarin names of the certain Great Tales in the Silmarillion, the Nern in Edenedair or *"Tales of the
Fathers of Men", given in MR:373: 1) Narn Beren ion Barahir, "Tale of Beren son of Barahir", also called
Narn e·Dinúviel, "Tale of the Nightingale". 2) Narn e·mbar Hador *"Tale of the house of Hador" including
Narn i·Chîn Hurin "Tale of the Children of Hurin" (also called Narn e·'Rach Morgoth "Tale of the Curse
of Morgoth") and Narn en·Êl "Tale of the Star" (or Narn e·Dant Gondolin ar Orthad en·Êl, *"Tale of the
Fall of Gondolin and the Rising of the Star").
A sentence published in VT41:11: Guren bêd enni "my heart (inner mind) tells me".
An incomplete translation of the Lord's Prayer, published in VT44:21, 22: Ae Adar nín i vi Menel / no
aer i eneth lín / tolo i arnad lín / caro den i innas lin / bo Ceven sui vi Menel. / Anno ammen sír i mbas
ilaurui vín / ar díheno ammen i úgerth vin / sui mín i gohenam di ai gerir úgerth ammen. In a
more-or-less literal translation, this is apparently: "O my [sic!] father who [is] in heaven, / be holy your name /
let your kingdom come / make ?it [happen,] your will / on Earth as in Heaven. / Give to us today our daily
bread / and forgive us our wrong-doing / like us who forgive those who do wrong-doing to us."
A sentence from the so-called "Túrin Wrapper": Arphent Rían Tuorna, Man agorech?, probably
meaning *"And Rían said to Tuor, What did you do?" (Compare agor "did" in WJ:415. The full contents of
the Túrin Wrapper will "soon" be published and discussed in Vinyar Tengwar...or so Carl F. Hostetter wrote
in TolkLang message 21.09 back in 1996.)
1. THE ARTICLES
Like Quenya, Sindarin has no indefinite article like English "a, an"; the absence of a definite article indicates
that the noun is indefinite: Edhel = "Elf" or "an Elf".
The definite article, "the", is i in the singular: aran "king", i aran "the king". These examples might just as
well be Quenya. In an untranslated text in The Lays of Beleriand p. 354 we find the phrase ir Ithil. If this
means *"the moon", it would seem to indicate that the article takes the form ir before a word in i- (to avoid
two identical vowels in hiatus). However, since this theory was first advanced a new relevant example has
been published. The Sindarin Lord's Prayer includes the phrase i innas lin "your will" or literally *"the will of
yours". Here we do have i, not ir, even though the next word begins in i-. Moreover, the word for "Moon",
Ithil, seems to count as a proper name in Sindarin, so we would not expect it to take any article at all. Some
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therefore think the ir of the phrase ir Ithil is not a variant of the definite article "the", but has another
meaning.
Unlike Quenya (and English), Sindarin has a special plural form of the article, in. "Kings" is erain (formed
from aran by vocalic umlauts, see below); "the kings" is in erain.
In both the singular and the plural, the article may appear as a suffix appended to prepositions. This suffix has
the form -n or -in. Thus the preposition na "to" becomes nan "to the". Ben "in the" or more literally
*"according to the", a word occurring in the King's Letter, seems to be a preposition be "according to" - not
attested by itself - with the suffix -n for "the". (This be would be the Sindarin cognate of Quenya ve "like,
as".) The preposition nu (or no) "under" becomes nuin "under the" (as in Dagor-nuin-Giliath "Battle under
the Stars", a name occurring in the Silmarillion, chapter 13). When the article occurs in the form -in, it may
trigger phonological changes in the word it is appended to. Or "over, on" turns into erin "on the", the vowel i
umlauting o to e (via ö; "on the" must have been örin at an earlier stage). The preposition o "from, of" appears
as uin when the article is suffixed, since in Sindarin earlier oi becomes ui (cf. Uilos as the cognate of Quenya
Oiolossë). One might think that the ending -in added to prepositions corresponded to the independent article
in for plural "the", so that words like erin or uin would be used in conjunction with plural words only. But
the King's Letter demonstrates that this is not the case; here we find these words used together with singulars:
erin dolothen Ethuil "on the eighth [day] of Spring", uin Echuir "of the Stirring" (month-name).
Presumably -n, -in suffixed to prepositions represents an oblique form of the article that is used both in the
singular and the plural. - In some cases, the normal, independent article is used following an independent
preposition, just as in English: cf. naur dan i ngaurhoth *"fire against the werewolf-host" in one of
Gandalf's firespells. Dan i "against the" is not replaced by a single word, sc. some form of dan "against" with
the article suffixed. Perhaps some prepositions just can't receive a suffixed article, or perhaps it is optional
whether one wants to say nan or na i(n) for "to the", erin or or i(n) for "on/over the", uin or o i(n) for
"of/from the". We don't know.
The genitival article: Sindarin often expresses genitival relationships by word order alone, like Ennyn Durin
"Doors (of) Durin" and Aran Moria "Lord (of) Moria" in the Moria Gate inscription. However, if the second
word of the construction is a common noun and not a name as in these examples, the genitival article en "of
the" is used if the noun is definite. Cf. names like Haudh-en-Elleth "Mound of the Elf-maid" (Silmarillion
ch. 21), Cabed-en-Aras "Deer's Leap", *"Leap of the Deer" (UT:140), Methed-en-Glad "End of the Wood"
(UT:153) or the phrase orthad en·Êl "Rising of the Star" in MR:373. Cf. also Frodo and Sam being called
Conin en Annûn "princes of the West" on the Field of Cormallen. (This genitival article sometimes takes the
shorter form e; cf. Narn e·Dinúviel "Tale of the Nightingale", MR:373. See below, in the section about
consonant mutations, concerning the various incarnations of this article and the environments in which they
occur.) Only infrequently does the normal sg. article i replace e(n)- in genitival phrases, but in the King's
Letter we have Condir i Drann for "Mayor of the Shire". But in the plural, the normal pl. article in is
normally used even in a genitival construction, cf. Annon-in-Gelydh "Gate (of) the Noldor" (UT:18),
Aerlinn in Edhil *"Hymn (of) the Elves" (RGEO:70, in Tengwar writing). However, there are examples of
the explicitly genitival article en being used in the plural as well: Bar-en-Nibin-Noeg, "Home of the
Petty-dwarves" (UT:100), Haudh-en-Ndengin "Hill of Slain", or *"of the Slain Ones" (Silmarillion ch. 20).
This seems to be less usual, though.
In many cases, the articles cause the initial consonant of the following word to change. These phonological
intricacies are described below, in the section about consonant mutations. The article i triggers lenition or soft
mutation of the following noun; see below. The final n of the article in is often swallowed up in a process
called nasal mutation; the n disappears and the initial consonant of the noun is changed instead. On the other
hand, the nasal of the suffix -n or -in, "the" appended to prepositions, apparently persists - though it seems to
trigger what we tentatively call mixed mutation in the following word.
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The articles are also used as relative pronouns; cf. Perhael (i sennui Panthael estathar aen) "Samwise (who
ought to be called Panthael)" in the King's Letter, or the name Dor Gyrth i chuinar "Land of the Dead that
Live" (Letters:417 - this represents *Dor Gyrth in cuinar, an example of nasal mutation. Dor Firn i Guinar
in the Silmarillion ch. 20 employs singular i as a relative pronoun even though Firn is plural; the reading Dor
Gyrth i chuinar from a very late letter (1972) is to be preferred).
It will be noted that Tolkien sometimes, but not always, connects the Sindarin articles to the next word by
means of a hyphen or a dot. This is apparently optional. In this work, when not quoting the sources directly,
we connect the genitival article e, en "of the" to the next word by means of a hyphen (since it would otherwise
often be hard to tell apart from the preposition ed, e "out of"), but we do not hyphenate the other articles.
2. THE NOUN
In the fictional timeline, the Sindarin noun originally had three numbers: singular, plural and dual. However,
we are told that the dual form early became obsolete except in written works (Letters:427). On the other hand,
a so-called class plural developed, coexisting with the "normal" plural; see below.
As in most languages, the singular is the basic, uninflected form of the noun. Tolkien noted that the Sindarin
plurals "were mostly made with vowel-changes" (RGEO:74). For instance, amon "hill" becomes emyn
"hills"; aran "king" becomes erain "kings". The consonants remain the same, but the vowels change. There
are a few English nouns that form their plurals in a similar way: man pl. men, woman pl. women (pronounced
"wimen"), goose pl. geese, mouse pl. mice etc. Yet English usually relies on the plural ending -s. In Sindarin,
the situation is the opposite: the trick of changing the vowels is the usual way of forming the plurals, and only
a few words display some kind of ending in the plural. The rules for these vowel-changes are the same for
both nouns and adjectives (the latter agree in number), so we will also quote adjectives among the examples
as we explore the Sindarin plural patterns. Ultimately, the vowel-changes go back on so-called umlaut
phenomena. Umlaut (in origin a German term literally meaning something like "changed sound") is an
important feature of Sindarin phonology; the Sindarin term for this phenomenon is prestanneth, meaning
disturbance or affection. It has to do with one vowel "affecting" another vowel in the same word, making it
more like itself, in linguistic terms assimilating it. The umlaut relevant for the plural formation Tolkien
referred to as "i-affection" (WJ:376), since it was a vowel i that originally triggered it. Tolkien imagined that
the primitive Elvish language had a plural ending *-î, still present in Quenya as -i (as in Quendi, Atani, Teleri
etc). This ending as such did not survive into Sindarin, but there are clear traces of its former presence, and
these "traces" have themselves become the indicator of plurality in Grey-elven. When the plural form of, say,
fang "beard" (as in Fangorn "Treebeard") is feng, this is because the a was affected by the old plural ending
*-î, -i while the latter was still present. In the most primitive form of Elvish, the word for "beard" appeared as
spangâ, plural spangâi; by the stage we call Old Sindarin, this had become sphanga pl. sphangi. The former
yielded "Classical" Sindarin fang, but the plural sphangi became feng, the original vowel a drifting towards
the quality of the plural ending -i before the ending was lost - and so in the later plural form feng we have e as
a kind of compromise between (the original vowel) a and (the lost ending) i. (It may be that there was an
intermediate stage that had ei, hence ?feing.)
When "affected" or "umlauted", the various vowels and diphthongs undergo different changes. The precise
environment and the phonological history must sometimes be taken into account to determine how the word
would appear in the plural. We will list the vowels by their "normal" or unaffected forms.
The vowel A: An a occurring in the final syllable of a word usually turns into ai in the plural. This also
applies when the final syllable is also the only syllable, sc. the word is monosyllabic (in such words we often
see long â). The example we used above, fang pl. feng instead of **faing, is somewhat atypical (see below);
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tâl "foot", pl. tail (singular in LR:390 s.v. TAL; the plural tail is attested in lenited form -dail in the
compound tad-dail "bipeds" in WJ:388)
cant "shape", pl. caint (singular in LR:362 s.v. KAT; for the pl. form cf. morchaint = "dark shapes,
shadows" in the Silmarillion Appendix [entry gwath, wath]; this is mor "dark" + caint "shapes", c here
becoming ch for phonological reasons)
rach "wagon, wain", pl. raich (cf. Imrath Gondraich "Stonewain Valley" in UT:465)
barad "tower", pl. beraid (Silmarillion Appendix, entry barad)
lavan "animal", pl. levain (WJ:416)
aran "king", pl. erain (LR:360 s.v. 3AR)
NOTE: In the "Noldorin" of the Etymologies, a in a final syllable often comes out as ei instead. Hence we have adar
"father" pl. edeir (entry ATA), Balan "Vala" pl. Belein (BAL), habad "shore" pl. hebeid (SKYAP), nawag "dwarf" pl.
neweig (NAUK), talaf "ground, floor" pl. teleif (TAL). Same thing in monosyllables: Dân "Nandorin elf", pl. Dein
(NDAN), mâl "pollen" pl. meil (SMAL), pân "plank" pl. pein (PAN), tâl "foot" pl. teil (TAL). But as demonstrated above,
the plural form of tâl had become tail in Tolkien's later Sindarin (lenited form -dail in tad-dail in WJ:388). Likewise, the
Sindarin plural of adar is seen to be, not edeir as in the Etymologies, but edair (as in Edenedair "Fathers of Men",
MR:373 - this is a post-LotR source). The Silmarillion Appendix, entry val-, also confirms that in Sindarin the plural form
of Balan "Vala" is Belain, not Belein as in the Etymologies. It seems that in all the examples just listed, we should read
Sindarin ai for "Noldorin" ei in the plural forms. In one case at least, evidence from the Etymologies agrees with the
patterns observed in later Sindarin: the already-quoted example aran "king" pl. erain (not *erein) in the entry 3AR. (For
erain as the Sindarin plural, compare the name Fornost Erain "Norbury of the Kings" occurring in LotR3/VI ch. 7.)
Interestingly, Christopher Tolkien notes that in the Etymologies, the group of entries that 3AR belongs to was "struck out
and replaced more legibly" (LR:360). Perhaps this was after his father had revised the plural patterns that otherwise persist
in Etym. PM:31, reproducing a draft for a LotR Appendix, shows Tolkien changing the plural of Dúnadan from Dúnedein
to Dúnedain. It seems that the older "Noldorin" plurals in ei are not conceptually obsolete; they may be seen as archaic
Sindarin: In certain environments, the change ei > ai occurred also within the imagined history, so Dúnedain could indeed
have been Dúnedein at an earlier stage. It seems that Tolkien decided that ei in the final syllable of a word (this also goes
for monosyllables) became ai, but otherwise remained ei. Hence we have teithant for "drew" (or *"wrote") in the Moria
Gate inscription, and this teith- is related to the second element -deith of the word andeith "longmark" (a symbol used to
mark long vowels in writing, LR:391 s.v. TEK). Yet the word andeith from the Etymologies instead appears as andaith in
LotR Appendix E, since ei was here in a final syllable. Teithant could not become **taithant because ei here is not in a
final syllable. Other words confirm this pattern. As indicated above, the normal plural of aran is erain, but erein- is seen in
the name Ereinion "Scion of Kings" (a name of Gil-galad, PM:347/UT:436). Evidently the plural form was erein in archaic
Sindarin, later becoming erain because ei changed to ai in final syllables, but in a compound like Ereinion the diphthong
ei was not in a final syllable and therefore remained unchanged.
In words of a particular shape, a in the final (or only) syllable becomes e instead of ai. In the plural forms, a
may first have become ei as usual, but then the final element of the diphthong was evidently lost (before ei
turned into ai) leaving only e that simply remained unchanged later. MR:373 indicates that the plural form of
narn "tale" is nern, not **nairn or **neirn, though the latter may have occurred at an earlier stage. It seems
that we have e rather than ei/ai before ng as well; the Etymologies provides the example Anfang pl. Enfeng
(not **Enfaing) for "Longbeards", one of the tribes of the Dwarves (LR:387 s.v. SPÁNAG). WJ:10,
reproducing a post-LotR source, confirms that the plural Enfeng was still valid in Tolkien's later Sindarin.
Following the example of fang "beard" pl. feng it would seem that the plural of words like lang "cutlass,
sword" (for "Noldorin" lhang, LR:367), tang "bowstring" or thang "need" should be leng, teng, theng.
NOTE: In the Etymologies, there are further examples of "Noldorin" plurals where a in a final syllable becomes e instead of
ai or ei. We have adab "construction, building" pl. edeb (TAK), adar "father" pl. eder besides edeir (ATA), Balan "Vala"
pl. Belen besides Belein (BAL), falas "beach, shore" pl. feles (PHAL/PHALAS), nawag "dwarf" pl. neweg besides neweig
(NAUK), rhofal "pinion" pl. rhofel (RAM) and salab "herb" pl. seleb (SALÂK-WÊ). However, in the case of these words
there seems to be little reason to believe that the e-plurals would still be valid in Tolkien's later Sindarin. At least two of
these "Noldorin" plurals - eder and Belen - clash with the attested Sindarin plurals edair and Belain. It seems, then, that we
can feel free to replace also edeb, feles, neweg, rhofel, seleb with Sindarin edaib, felais, newaig, rovail, selaib, though the
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latter forms are not directly attested (notice that "Noldorin" rhofal "pinion", pl. rhofel, must become roval pl. rovail if we
introduce Sindarin phonology and spelling). - Another "Noldorin" case of an a > e plural is rhanc "arm" pl. rhenc (RAK).
The singular must become ranc if we update it to LotR-style Sindarin, but should the plural be renc or rainc? The Sindarin
example cant "shape" pl. caint (see above) seems to indicate that a before a cluster consisting of n + an unvoiced stop
becomes ai in the plural; hence "arms" should probably be rainc in Sindarin.
In one word at least, earlier ei stays unchanged and does not turn into ai even though it occurs in a final
syllable. According to UT:265, the plural form of alph "swan" is eilph; it would seem that ei is unchanged
before a consonant cluster beginning in l. (Earlier, in the "Noldorin" of the Etymologies, the word for "swan"
was spelt alf, and its plural was given as elf: LR:348 s.v. ÁLAK; for the plural form, cf. hobas in Elf *"Haven
of Swans" in LR:364 s.v. KHOP.) In accordance with the example eilph, the Sindarin plural of lalf "elm-tree"
should probably be leilf, though the "Noldorin" plural listed in the Etymologies was lelf (LR:348 s.v. ÁLAM).
In a non-final syllable, a becomes e in plural forms, as is seen in some of the examples already quoted: aran
"king", pl. erain; amon "hill", pl. emyn; lavan "animal", pl. levain. This does not only go for the vowel in a
second-to-last syllable as in these examples; it can be carried through a longer word as well, a in any non-final
syllable turning into e. This goes even if a occurs several times: According to WJ:387, the word Aphadon
"Follower" becomes Ephedyn in the plural. LR:391 s.v. TÁWAR indicates that the adjective tawaren
"wooden" has the plural form tewerin. In MR:373 we have Edenedair for "Fathers of Men", the plural of a
compound Adanadar "Man-father" (adan "man" + adar "father"). Here we see a in the final syllable
becoming ai, but in all three non-final syllables, a becomes e. Of course, the plural of adan would be edain
(well attested) if the word occurred by itself, since the second a would then be in the final syllable. But in the
compound Adanadar it is not, and so we see Eden- in the plural.
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The vowel E: Concerning this vowel, there happily seems to be agreement between Tolkien's mature
Sindarin and most of the earlier material from the Etymologies. The behavior of this vowel is quite simple. In
the final syllable of a word, e turns into i:
edhel "Elf", pl. edhil (WJ:364, 377; cf. "Noldorin" eledh pl. elidh in LR:356 s.v. ELED)
ereg "holly-tree", pl. erig (LR:356 s.v. ERÉK)
Laegel "Green-elf", pl. Laegil (WJ:385)
lalven "elm-tree", pl. lelvin (LR:348 s.v. ÁLAM)
malen "yellow", pl. melin (LR:386 s.v. SMAL)
This also goes for monosyllables, where the final syllable is also the only syllable:
LR:363 s.v. KEM lists a word cef "soil", pl. ceif; both forms are somewhat weird. If we regularize this from
"Noldorin" to Sindarin it would probably be best to read cêf (with a long vowel), pl. cîf.
If there is another i immediately before the e in the final syllable, this group ie simply becomes i in the plural:
Miniel "Minya" (Elf of the First Clan), pl. Mínil (WJ:383 - perhaps the i in the first syllable is
lengthened to í to somehow compensate for the fact that the word is reduced from three to two syllables in the
plural? This does not happen in comparable cases in the "Noldorin" of the Etymologies, though - e.g. Mirion
"Silmaril" pl. Miruin, not ?Míruin, in LR:373 s.v. MIR)
In non-final syllables, e is unchanged in the plural, as can be seen from the examples eledh pl. elidh and ereg
pl. erig quoted above.
The vowel I: There is only one thing to say about this vowel: in the plural it does not change at all, whether
it occurs in a final or a non-final syllable. (For examples of the latter, cf. Ithron "Wizard" pl. Ithryn in
UT:388, 390, or Glinnel "Elf of the Third Clan" pl. Glinnil in WJ:378.) After all, the vowel-shifts seen in
Sindarin plurals are ultimately due to i-umlaut, the Old Sindarin plural ending -i making the vowels of the
noun it was added to more like itself before the ending was lost. But where one of the vowels of such a word
is i, it obviously cannot become more like the -i that constituted the plural ending simply because it was 100
% i to begin with. The Sindarin form of Silmaril, Silevril, is seen to cover both singular and plural: The
singular is listed in LR:383 s.v. RIL, but in LR:202 and MR:200 we have Pennas Silevril as the equivalent of
Quenya Quenta Silmarillion, the History of the Silmarils (plural!) Another apparent example of a word that is
unchanged in the plural is found in WJ:149, where we have Amon Ethir for "Hill of Spies". The word ethir
"spies" is undoubtedly derived from the stem TIR- "watch" (LR:394, though this word as such is not
mentioned there). We can be quite certain that the singular "spy" is also ethir. Only the context can determine
whether this word is singular or plural, as would also be the case with a number of other Sindarin words (e.g.
dîs "bride" or sigil "dagger"). However, since Sindarin possesses distinct singular and plural definite articles,
you can tell (for instance) "the spy" apart from "the spies" - evidently i ethir vs. in ethir. Furthermore, you
can add the collective plural ending -ath to any noun, and it would perhaps be used more frequently in the
case of words that otherwise would not have distinct plural forms.
The vowel O: In the final syllable of a word (whether or not that is also the only syllable), o becomes y in
the plural; long ó likewise become long ý:
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In the case of amon, the Etymologies also lists emuin as a possible plural form; we are evidently to assume
that this is an older form, the diphthong ui turning into y at a later stage. (We can also conclude that when
LR:152 mentions "Peringiul" as the pl. of Peringol "half-Gnome", this is certainly a misreading for Peringuil
- Christopher Tolkien describes the passage in question as "hastily pencilled", prone to be misread. The later
form, not attested, would be Peringyl.)
If there is an i before the o in the final syllable, what would be "iy" in the plural is simplified to y: hence we
have thelyn as the pl. of thalion "hero" (LR:388 s.v. STÁLAG). Miruin as the pl. of Mirion "Silmaril"
(LR:373 s.v. MIR) must be seen as an archaic form. We may assume that thelyn was at an earlier stage
theluin and that Miruin later became Miryn; the y-plurals are to be preferred in LotR-style Sindarin.
NOTE: All the examples above are excerpted from the Etymologies, but the plurals yrch, emyn, ennyn are also attested in
LotR. For a thoroughly Sindarin example, cf. ithron "wizard" pl. ithryn (UT:388, 390, reproducing a post-LotR source).
However, in the "Noldorin" of the Etymologies, there are also examples of o in a final syllable behaving in a quite different
manner, namely becoming öi (in Etym spelt "oei") in the plural. This öi in turn became ei when all ö's turned into e's. Hence
in the entry ÑGOL the pl. of golodh "Noldo" is listed as both gölöidh ("goeloeidh") and geleidh - evidently intended as an
earlier and a later form. In other cases only the later form in ei is listed: gwador "sworn brother" pl. gwedeir (TOR), orod
"mountain" pl. ereid (ÓROT), thoron "eagle" pl. therein (THOR/THORON). However, there seems to be little reason to
assume that these forms would be valid in LotR-style Sindarin: In two of these cases, ereid and gölöidh/geleidh, the
corresponding Sindarin plurals are attested, showing y instead of ei: namely eryd "mountains" and gelydh "Noldor" (cf.
Eryd Engrin "Iron Mountains" in WJ:6 and Annon-in-Gelydh "Gate of the Noldor" in the Silmarillion Index, entry
Golodhrim - in WJ:364 the pl. of Golodh is given as "Goelydh" = Gölydh, but this is merely an archaic form of Gelydh).
In light of these examples, we can feel free to update the "Noldorin" plurals gwedeir "brothers" and therein "eagles" to
Sindarin gwedyr, theryn (archaic thöryn). In the Etymologies there are also two examples of o in the final syllable of
words becoming e rather than y in the plural: doron "oak" pl. deren (DÓRON) and orod "mountain" pl. ered besides ereid
(ÓROT). The plural ered is still valid in later Sindarin, competing with eryd (see the many variants listed in the index to
The War of the Jewels, e.g. Eryd Engrin besides Ered Engrin, WJ:440). It seems that ered is not normally used as an
independent word for "mountains" - that should probably be eryd only - but ered may be used when the word is the first
element in a name of several parts, hence Ered Engrin is a valid alternative to Eryd Engrin. In Letters:224, Tolkien gives
enyd as the pl. of onod "Ent", but also notices that ened might be a form used in Gondor. Perhaps, then, the Gondorians
would also tend to use ered rather than eryd as the pl. of orod, but there can be no doubt that eryd is the regular Sindarin
form. Deren as the pl. of doron "oak" may be seen in the same light; though the regular Sindarin plural deryn is not
attested, it is perhaps to be preferred.
In a non-final syllable, the vowel o normally becomes e in the plural: Alchoron "Ilkorin Elf", pl. Elcheryn
(LR:367 s.v. LA). Such an e was in archaic Sindarin ö instead (e.g. Golodh "Noldo", pl. Gelydh for earlier
Gölydh; see references in the note above). Another example is nogoth "dwarf"; in WJ:388 the plural is given
as nögyth ("noegyth"), but in WJ:338 we have Athrad-i-Negyth for "Ford of the Dwarves". There is no real
discrepancy; nögyth is simply the archaic form that later became negyth. In LotR-style Sindarin, we would
prefer the plurals negyth and Gelydh; cf. also Tolkien mentioning Enyd as the plural of Onod "Ent" in
Letters:224. (The archaic plural, nowhere mentioned, would be Önyd.)
There are, however, a few words where o or ó in a non-final syllable does not become (ö >) e in the plural
forms. This is when o represents earlier A; the development is roughly â > au > o. One example is Rodon
"Vala" pl. Rodyn instead of **Rödyn > **Redin (MR:200 has Dor-Rodyn for Quenya Valinor = "Land of
the Valar"; it would seem that Rodyn is an alternative to Belain as the Sindarin word for "Valar"; it has even
been suggested that Rodyn replaced Belain in Tolkien's conception). The first syllable of Rodyn evidently
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has the same origin as the middle syllable -rat- in Aratar, the Quenya term for some of the supreme Valar. An
o representing earlier A is not subject to i-umlaut. Compare Ódhel "Elf that departed from Middle-earth" pl.
Ódhil in WJ:364, this long ó representing earlier aw (the primitive form of Ódhel is quoted as aw(a)delo,
literally "away-goer"). The later form Gódhel (influenced by Golodh "Noldo") likewise had the plural form
Gódhil: despite the influence from Golodh pl. Gelydh, no form **Gédhil arose. These examples come from
post-LotR Sindarin, but the same thing is found already in the "Noldorin" of the Etymologies. The example
rhofal "pinion" pl. rhofel in the entry RAM (LR:382), where the primitive sg. form is given as râmalê,
confirms that o from â (via au) is not subject to i-umlaut. As mentioned above, "Noldorin" rhofal pl. rhofel
must become Sindarin roval pl. rovail if we update the forms to LotR-style spelling and phonology - roval is
actually attested in LotR as part of the eagle-name Landroval - but this o still should not become e in the
plural (**revail being impossible because of the phonological history).
The vowel U: Short u, whether in a final or a non-final syllable, in the plural becomes y, as indicated by the
example tulus "poplar", pl. tylys (LR:395 s.v. TYUL). However, long û in a final syllable (or in a
monosyllable) becomes ui instead; hence the adjective dûr "dark" (as in Barad-dûr "Dark Tower") appears
as duir when modifying a plural word in a phrase like Emyn Duir "Dark Mountains" (UT:434).
NOTE: The plural of the word cû "bow" would probably be cui, apparently in accordance with the pattern sketched above.
But actually cui would represent the older plural ku3i (or kuhi), since the stem is KU3 (LR:365). The primitive sound
Tolkien variously reconstructed as h or 3 (the latter = spirant g) had disappeared in Classical Sindarin, so older uhi would
become ui.
The vowel Y: As far as we can imagine, this vowel (long or short) cannot change in the plural. A word like
ylf "drinking-vessel" (WJ:416) in all likelihood covers plural "drinking-vessels" as well; there simply isn't
anything the umlaut can "do" with such a vowel, just like it cannot change the vowel i. We lack any explicit
example of a word with the vowel y occurring both in the singular and the plural, but in WJ:418 we find
Bar-i(n)-Mýl for "Home of the Gulls". Likely the word for "gull" is mýl in the singular as well (this would be
the case if it is derived from the stem MIW "whine" in LR:373, though a quite different "Noldorin" word for
"gull" is there given - quite different because the forms listed there, Quenya maiwë and "Noldorin" maew,
clearly reflect an a-infixed stem *MAIW-).
The diphthong AU: In the "Noldorin" of the Etymologies, words containing this diphthong are seen to have
plural forms in ui:
However, it seems that this is one feature of "Noldorin" that did not survive into Tolkien's later Sindarin: In
UT:148 we have Nibin-noeg as a name of the Petty-dwarves, and the final element is obviously a plural form
of naug (cf. Naugrim as a name of the Dwarvish race, found in the Silmarillion). So in Sindarin, au turns
into oe in the plural. In the plural forms of the "Noldorin" words listed above, we should apparently read oe
instead of ui if we update them to later Sindarin. ("Noldorin" rhaw pl. rhui would become Sindarin raw pl.
roe, but thaun "pine-tree" Tolkien apparently changed to Sindarin thôn; cf. Treebeard singing about
Dorthonion and Orod-na-Thôn in LotR2/III ch. 4; the Silmarillion Index explains that Dorthonion means
"Land of Pines". In the Etymologies, thôn had been an "Ilkorin" word. The pl. of thôn as a Sindarin word is
presumably thýn.)
NOTE: The diphthong au, when occurring in an unstressed syllable in the second element of a compound, is often reduced
to o, but presumably it would still become oe in the plural. Hence the plural form of a word like balrog "demon of might"
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(where the -rog part represents raug "demon") is presumably belroeg - unless analogy prevailed to produce ?belryg.
Other diphthongs: For the most part we lack wholly good examples, but if our understanding of general
Sindarin phonology holds water, the diphthongs ae, ai, ei, ui do not normally change in the plural (except that
ai in one special category of words normally becomes plural î; see below). As in the case of the vowels i and
y, there just isn't much the umlaut can "do" to these diphthongs, so a word like aew "bird" probably covers
"birds" as well. For the diphthong ui, at least, we have attested examples: The adjective "blue" is seen to be
luin both in the singular and the plural (see note below). The numerous adjectives in -ui also seem to be
unchanged in the plural; in the King's Letter we have i Mbair Annui for "the Westlands" or literally *"the
Lands Western", where the adjective annui "western" must be plural to agree with "lands". Unfortunately this
adjective is not otherwise attested, but there is no reason whatsoever for believing that its singular form would
be any different (compare annûn "west" - and as noted above, there are many other adjectives in -ui).
NOTE: In a phrase like Ithryn Luin "Blue Wizards" (UT:390) the adjective luin "blue" must be plural to agree with
"wizards". It might be thought that luin is the plural form of lûn, which is what we would get if we were to make a Sindarin
update of the "Noldorin" word for "blue", namely lhûn (LR:370 s.v. LUG2). As indicated above, long û in a final syllable
becomes ui in the plural, so everything seems to fit: luin could be the plural form of lûn. What kills this seductively
promising theory is the name of the mountain Mindolluin, "Towering Blue-head" (translated in the Silmarillion Index).
Here, there is no reason for the adjective "blue" to be plural, so luin has to be the singular/basic form as well. There is also
Luindirien "Blue Towers" in WJ:193; at the beginning of a compound, the word for "blue" would be expected to appear in
its more or less basic form, not inflected for plural. It should also be noted that the same entry in the Etymologies that gives
"Noldorin" lhûn (> Sindarin ?lûn) as the word for "blue", also gives lúne as the corresponding Quenya word. In Namárië in
LotR, the adjective "blue" is luini instead (this is a plural form, from the phrase "blue vaults"; the singular is probably
luinë). So while in the Etymologies the words for "blue" had been derived from a primitive form lugni (stem LUG2,
LR:370) producing Quenya lúne and "Noldorin" lhûn, Tolkien must later have decided that the primitive form was
something like *luini yielding Quenya luinë and Sindarin luin. Bottom line is that luin "blue" seems to cover both singular
and plural, indicating that the diphthong ui undergoes no change in the plural. The fact that the adjective annui "western" is
both sg. and pl. points in the same direction.
Special ai-plurals
As indicated above, it seems that the diphthong ai is normally unchanged in the plural. However, in one small
group of words, ai becomes either i (usually long î) or more rarely ý in the plural. For instance, the plural
form of the noun fair "mortal man" is given as fîr (WJ:387, where the sg. fair is quoted in archaic form feir).
The plural forms in î (i) occur where ai in the singular forms ultimately arises from i or e being influenced by
y later in the word. The example just quoted, fair or archaic feir, comes from an Old Sindarin form similar to
the Quenya cognate firya (in late OS perhaps firia; see skhalia- in the wordlist appended to the Old Sindarin
article). We must assume that other words sharing a similar phonological history would form their plurals in a
similar way, though in most cases these plurals are not explicitly mentioned in Tolkien's published material.
The nouns and adjectives in question are cai "fence" (pl. cî), cair "ship" (pl. cîr), fair "mortal man" (pl. fîr),
gwain "new" (pl. gwîn), lhain "lean, thin, meager" (pl. lhîn), mail "dear" (pl. mîl) and paich "juice, syrup"
(pl. pich, notice short i). The "Noldorin" word sein "new" pl. sîn (LR:385 s.v. SI) could become Sindarin sain
pl. sîn, but it seems that Tolkien changed the Sindarin word for "new" to gwain pl. gwîn as just listed (notice
that the same entry in the Etymologies that provides Noldorin sein also gives sinya as the corresponding
Quenya word for "new", but in later sources, the Quenya adjective "new" is vinya - apparently the cognate of
gwain).
NOTE: In "Noldorin", lhain pl. lhîn appeared as thlein pl. thlîn, the primitive (sg.) form being quoted as slinyâ (LR:386
s.v. SLIN). One revision separating "Noldorin" from Sindarin is that while primitive initial sl- became thl- in N, it becomes
lh- in S. We alter the word in accordance with Tolkien's revised phonology. Thlein can be more directly adapted as lhein,
but such a form would be archaic in Frodo's day, the current form being lhain instead. Similarly, paich "juice, syrup"
actually appears as peich in the Etymologies (LR: 382 s.v. PIS); this "Noldorin" form is not conceptually obsolete, but can
be seen as archaic Sindarin. This is also the case with ceir "ship" (LR:365 s.v. KIR); the form cair in LotR-style Sindarin is
attested (cf. the footnote in LotR Appendix A explaining that Cair Andros means "Ship of Longfoam"; see also PM:371). -
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The word cair provides an example of another peculiar property of this group of words: when they occur as the first
element in compounds, ai is reduced to í-, as in the name Círdan "Shipwright". However, ai remains unchanged if such a
word is the final element of a compound; hence gwain "new" appears as -wain in the Sindarin name of the month of
January, Narwain (evidently meaning "New Sun" or "New Fire"; compare Quenya Narvinyë).
In three words, where ai represents ei from even older öi (spelt "oei" by Tolkien), the plural forms should
probably show the vowel y, ý, though we lack explicit confirmation in Tolkien's published papers. This theory
is based on the fact that the first part of the archaic diphthong öi represents o or u in the original stem, and the
umlaut product of these vowels is y, just as in cases where the older vowel-sound still survives in Sindarin (as
in orch "Orc" pl. yrch). The words in question are 1) fair adj. "right" or noun "right hand" (pl. fýr, stem
PHOR, cf. Quenya forya), 2) rain "slot, spoor, tract, footprint" (pl. rýn, stem RUN, cf. Quenya runya) and 3)
the related word tellain "sole of foot" (pl. tellyn, since the final element -lain is actually assimilated from
rain < runya, cf. the archaic form talrunya quoted in LR:390 s.v. TAL, TALAM). In the "Noldorin" of the
Etymologies, these words appear as feir (the older form "foeir" = föir is also mentioned), rein (older röin) and
tellein (older form tellöin not mentioned but clearly intended). Notice that while fair can mean both "right
(hand)" and "mortal man", the different derivations make for distinct plurals: fýr in the former case and fîr in
the latter.
One important change that occurred in the evolution of Sindarin was that final vowels were lost. Hence an old
word like ndakro "battle" later became ndakr. In early Sindarin, this word appeared as dagr. Another example
is makla "sword" later appearing as makl, early Sindarin magl. We must assume that the plural of words like
dagr, magl was formed after the same pattern as other monosyllables of comparable shape, like alph "swan",
pl. eilph. So the plurals "battles" and "swords" would presumably be deigr, meigl (this would be before ei in
a final syllable normally become ai).
What complicates matters is that words like dagr and magl were eventually changed. The final r, l came to
constitute a separate syllable, so that for instance magl was pronounced mag-l just like English "eagle" is
pronounced eeg-l. Later, these syllabic consonants turned into full-fledged normal syllables as a vowel o
developed before them: Dagr (dag-r) turned into dagor and magl (mag-l) became magol. (Incidentally, the
latter word was apparently often replaced by megil, which must be an adapted form of the Quenya word for
"sword", namely macil.) The plurals deigr, meigl would presumably undergo the same process to become
deigor, meigol (and the late change ei > ai in final syllables would never occur simply because ei was no
longer in the final syllable). From a synchronic point of view, this results in what looks like irregularities:
Normally, singular words like dagor and magol would be expected to have plural forms degyr, megyl, since
o in the final syllable normally becomes y in the plural (e.g. amon "hill" vs. emyn "hills"). But in cases like
dagor or magol, the o intruded relatively late and seems to be younger than the umlaut o > y; hence such
newly developed o's would - presumably - remain untouched by the umlaut. If Tolkien did not imagine that
analogical leveling bulldozed these "irregularities" out of existence, all two-syllable words where the second
syllable contains a secondarily developed o must still be treated as monosyllables as far as plural formation is
concerned. The o must be left alone and the vowel in the "second-to-last" syllable must be treated as if it were
the vowel in the final syllable, which is precisely what it used to be.
The adjectives and nouns in question are: badhor "judge" (pl. beidhor if the theory holds - otherwise it
would be analogical bedhyr), bragol "sudden, violent" (pl. breigol; this adjective also appears as bregol, pl.
presumably brigol), dagor "battle" (pl. deigor), glamor "echo" (pl. gleimor), hador "thrower, hurler" (pl.
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heidor), hathol "axe" (pl. heithol), idhor "thoughtfulness" (unchanged in the pl.; luckily a noun with this
meaning normally will not require a pl. form), ivor ?"crystal" (unchanged in the pl.), lagor "swift" (pl.
leigor), maethor "warrior" (unchanged in the pl.), magol "sword" (pl. meigol), magor "swordsman" (pl.
meigor), nadhor "pasture" (pl. neidhor), nagol "tooth" (pl. neigol), naugol "dwarf" (pl. noegol), tadol
"double" (pl. teidol), tathor "willow" (pl. teithor), tavor "knocker, woodpecker" (pl. teivor), tegol "pen" (pl.
tigol). Perhaps gollor "magician" also belongs on this list (pl. gyllor rather than ?gellyr).
NOTE: Some other peculiarities about this group of words may also be noted here. In (older?) compounds, the
newly-developed o does not appear, and the final vowel that has otherwise disappeared, is sometimes preserved. Hence
magol, that descends from primitive makla, may appear as magla- in a compound. LR:371 s.v. MAK lists Magladhûr for
"Black Sword" (magol "sword" + dûr [lenited dhûr] "black, dark"). If one of these words is prefixed to an element
beginning in a vowel, the original final vowel does not reappear, but the newly-developed o is not found: LR:398 s.v. TAM
indicates that tavr (also spelt tafr) "woodpecker" retains that form in the compound Tavr-obel, Tavrobel
*"Woodpecker-town" - though tavr became tavor as an independent word. Similarly, LR:361 s.v. ID indicates that the
word "idher" (misreading for idhor?) "thoughtfulness" appears as idhr- in the name Idhril. - It is possible that in late
Sindarin, analogy to some extent prevailed, this group of words being treated like any other. Before the collective plural
ending -ath (see below), we would not expect to see the subsequently developed vowel o. For instance, we would expect
the collective plural of dagr "battle" to be dagrath (not attested), unaffected by the fact that dagr had later become dagor
when it occurred as a simplex (by itself). Yet in UT:395, 396 we find, not dagrath, but dagorath, though there can be little
doubt that the latter is a historically unjustified form: R was not final or syllabic in dagrath, so no o would develop in front
of it, and dagorath must be formed on analogy with the simplex dagor. This is all the more surprising when another
attested form, the collective plural of nagol "tooth", is what we would expect: Naglath (WR:122). A form ?nagolath
paralleling dagorath is not found. (The simplex nagol is not attested, but Tolkien undoubtedly imagined a primitive word
*nakla "instrument for biting" = "tooth" [cf. the stem NAK "bite", LR:374], this *nakla becoming *nakl and then *nagl >
*nagol in Sindarin.) There is also Eglath "The Forsaken" as the name of the Sindar, this collective plural reflecting the
primitive (singular) form hekla or heklô (WJ:361; we don't know whether this also yielded an independent sg. form in
Sindarin; if so it would be egol for earlier egl, the normal pl. being igl and later igol). A form ?Egolath nowhere occurs
(and would be just as surprising as if the attested compound Eglamar "Land of the Forsaken Elves" suddenly were to
appear as *Egolmar instead). Are we to assume, then, that Tolkien forgot his own rules when he (twice) wrote dagorath
instead of dagrath in UT:395, 396? Rather we may imagine that there were several variants of Sindarin around. In a
"purer" or more "classical" style, the collective plurals of words like dagor, nagol would perhaps be the historically correct
forms dagrath, naglath, but in a more "colloquial" or "informal" style, forms like dagorath, nagolath may have come into
use by analogy. We may speculate that in the form of Sindarin that preferred dagorath to dagrath, the historically justified
plural deigor would also be altered to degyr, the umlauts following the more normal pattern. Interestingly, the name
Dagorlad "Battle Plain" occurring in LotR gives away that dagor does not become ?dagro- as the first part of a compound,
reflecting the earlier form ndakro (contrast examples quoted above: magol "sword" becoming magla- reflecting primitive
makla in the compound Magladhûr, and tavor "wood-pecker" occurring in archaic form tavr in the compound Tavrobel).
So again, analogy with the simplex form is at work. Perhaps Dagorlad would have been ?Dagrolad if the compound had
been older, coined already in the really good old days when the Elves still said something like * Ndakro-lata (final vowel
uncertain). Instead Dagorlad was clearly pieced together from dagor "battle" and -lad "plain" later. A late compound
"Sword-Black" would presumably be, not Magladhûr, but simply Magoldhûr, and "Woodpecker-village" as a late
compound could well be Tavorobel rather than the attested form Tavrobel.
Certain other cases of monosyllables turning into polysyllables involves, not a new vowel intruding before a
consonant as in dagr > dagor, but a consonant turning into a vowel. Most of the examples involve older -w
becoming -u. Before the stage where the final vowels were lost, some words ended in -wa (typically
adjectives) or -we (typically abstracts). When the final vowels disappeared, only -w was left of these endings.
For instance, the word for "craft" or "skill" that appears in Quenya as kurwe (curwë), which would also be the
Old Sindarin form of the word, came out as curw in early Sindarin. We must assume that in the plural this
would become cyrw, a perfectly regular form according to the rules set out above. But as indicated in LR:366
s.v. KUR, curw later became curu: Final -w following another consonant turned into a vowel -u, the
semi-vowel becoming a full vowel. Again, the appearance of a new vowel would presumably result in
apparent irregularities: Presented with a noun like curu, it would be tempting to let it go like tulus
"poplar-tree", pl. tylys - hence curu pl. ?cyry. But the latter, if it occurred at all, would be an analogical form.
The historically justified plural of curu can only be cyru, the older pl. cyrw turning into cyru just like the
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Here are the words affected, with suggested plurals: anu "a male" (plural form einu), celu "spring, source"
(pl. cilu), coru adj. "cunning, wily" (pl. cyru), curu "skill, cunning device, craft" (pl. again cyru), galu "good
fortune" (pl. geilu), gwanu "death, act of dying" (pl. gweinu), haru "wound" (pl. heiru), hethu "foggy,
obscure, vague" (pl. hithu), hithu "fog" (unchanged in the pl. and not to be confused with the pl. form of the
adjective hethu), inu "a female" (unchanged in the pl.), malu "fallow, pale" (pl. meilu), naru "red" (pl.
neiru), nedhu "bolster, cushion" (pl. nidhu), pathu "level space, sward" (pl. peithu), talu "flat" (pl. teilu),
tinu "spark, small star" (unchanged in the pl.) We let words with the stem-vowel a have plural forms in ei
rather than ai, again assuming that these words became disyllabic before ei turned into ai in final syllables
(that is, when this change occurred, the syllable in which ei was found was no longer final because -w had
already become -u, constituting a new final syllable). Hence anu : einu, gwanu : gweinu, haru : heiru, malu
: meilu, naru : neiru, pathu : peithu, talu : teilu. If the change ei > ai in final syllables predated these words
becoming polysyllabic, we should read ai instead of ei in the plural forms - except in the case of haru and
naru, the plural forms of which should then probably be heru and neru for earlier herw, nerw. (Cf. the pl. of
narn "tale" being nern, presumably from earlier ?neirn, ei apparently being simplified to e before a
consonant cluster beginning in r-. If the pl. of naru is neru, this would imply that ei was simplified to e
before the cluster rw of the earlier forms narw pl. ?neirw ceased being a cluster at all because the final
consonant w turned into a vowel. Otherwise, as assumed above, the rule that ei became e before a cluster in r-
would not apply: The original cluster had turned into a single consonant + a vowel instead.)
NOTE: In the Etymologies, the later stage where final -w became -u is often not explicitly recorded. There is curu besides
older curw (entry KUR) and naru besides older narw (NAR1), but otherwise only the older forms where -w still persists are
listed: Thus we find anw (3AN), celw (KEL), corw (KUR), galw (GALA), gwanw (WAN), harw (SKAR), hethw / hithw
(KHITH), inw (INI), malw (SMAL), nedhw (NID), pathw (PATH) and tinw (TIN) instead of anu, celu, coru etc. as above.
These later forms are not directly attested in Tolkien's papers. It may be that as far as the "Noldorin" of the Etymologies is
concerned, Tolkien still had not decided once and for all that - w in this position did become -u; this idea just pops up in a
couple of places. Yet we needn't hesitate to introduce the later forms in -u if we are aiming for the kind of Sindarin
exemplified in LotR and the Silmarillion. Notice that in Etym, it is said that the "Noldorin" form of the Quenya name Elwë
would have been *Elw, marked with an asterisk since it was not actually used in "Exilic" in this form (LR:398 s.v. WEG).
However, in Chapter 4 of the published Silmarillion the scenario is another. "Noldorin" has now become Sindarin, and not
only is there a Sindarin form of Elwë, but it is also Elu rather than "Elw" as in the Etymologies: "Elwë's folk who sought
him found him not... In after days he became a king renowned... King Greymantle was he, Elu Thingol in the tongue of that
land [Beleriand]." Here we are clearly to assume a development Elwë > Elw > Elu. It seems wholly justified, then, to alter
(say) celw "spring, source" to its later form celu (to go with Elu), even though the form celu as such is not explicitly
attested. A parallel case is provided by the name Finwë; again the Etymologies states that the "Noldorin" form would be
*Finw, but that no such form was in use (LR:398 s.v. WEG). A much later, post-LotR source agrees that there was no
Sindarin form of Finwë, but if this name "had been treated as a word of this form would have been, had it occurred
anciently in Sindarin, it would have been [not Finw, but] Finu" (PM:344). If "Noldorin" Finw would have corresponded to
Sindarin Finu, we can also conclude that "Noldorin" gwanw would correspond to Sindarin gwanu. - The word talu "flat"
listed above actually appears as dalw (not **talw) in the Etymologies, but listed immediately after dalw is dalath "flat
surface, plane, plain" (LR:353 s.v. DAL), occurring in the name Dalath Dirnen "Guarded Plain" (LR:394 s.v. TIR).
However, Tolkien later changed dalath to talath; in the published Silmarillion, the "Guarded Plain" in Beleriand is called
Talath Dirnen instead. In accordance with this revision, we also alter the related "Noldorin" word dalw "flat" to Sindarin
talw > talu. We may still accept (dalw >) dalu - and for that matter dalath - as valid side-forms.
There are also a few cases of final -gh (spirant g) turning into a vowel. One example is provided by LR:381
s.v. PHÉLEG, where a word fela "cave" is derived from Old Sindarin (or "Old Noldorin") phelga. Since final
vowels were lost following the Old Sindarin stage, fela is not a case of an original final -a surviving into later
Sindarin. What Tolkien imagined seems to be this: Old Sindarin phelga naturally became phelg when the final
vowels went. Then stops turned into spirants following the liquids l, r (UT:265), so that phelg became phelgh
(or felgh, since the shift ph > f occurred at about the same stage). However, gh in no case survived into the
Sindarin of Frodo's day; initially it was lost with no trace, but in this position it was vocalized: Felgh turned
into fela. The plural of felgh had evidently been filgh formed according to the normal rules (cf. e.g. telch
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"stem", pl. tilch - LR:391 s.v. TÉLEK). The plural form filgh then became fili, the vocalization of earlier gh
here being i rather than a (perhaps g > gh was somehow palatalized by the lost Old Sindarin plural ending -i
that also caused the umlaut, biasing the subsequent vocalization towards i). It matters little precisely how we
imagine the development: in any case, the end result is the peculiar pair fela pl. fili, for older felgh pl. filgh.
Fela pl. fili is the only known case of Tolkien explicitly mentioning both the singular and the plural of such a
pair. There are, however, two or three other words that share a similar phonological development. The word
thela "point (of spear)" derives from a stem STELEG (LR:388), and while Tolkien lists no primitive forms,
we are probably to assume a Primitive Elvish form stelgâ (final vowel uncertain) turning into Old Sindarin
sthelga and later (s)thelgh, the plural form of which would be (s)thilgh. The singular then yields the attested
Sindarin form thela (wholly parallel to fela); the unattested plural "spear-points" must be thili (to go with the
attested plural fili).
There are also a very few adjectives. An adjective thala "stalwart, steady, firm" is in LR:388 s.v. STÁLAG is
derived from Old Sindarin/"Noldorin" sthalga. The unattested intermediate form would be (s)thalgh pl.
(s)theilgh, following the normal pattern of (say) alph "swan", pl. eilph. We must assume that the plural form
of thala is theili. A similar case would be tara "tough, still", stated to represent Old "Noldorin"/Sindarin
targa (LR:390); again the unattested intermediate form would be targh. The plural form of this adjective
could be teirgh, which would presumably produce Sindarin teiri. There is one other possibility: As already
mentioned, it seems that ei was at one stage simplified to e before a consonant cluster beginning in r (hence
we have nern rather than neirn > nairn as the plural form of narn "tale"). If this happened before the final gh
of the plural adjective teirgh became a vowel so that the cluster disappeared, the form would turn into tergh,
in later Sindarin teri. Presently we cannot say for sure whether teri or teiri is the best plural form of tara,
since we do not know in what exact sequence Tolkien imagined the sound-shifts involved to have taken place;
I would probably use teiri.
Expanded plurals
This is a group of words that seem to be longer in the plural than in the singular. Historically speaking it
would be more accurate to turn the perspective around and speak of "reduced singulars", for in this case, the
shape of the word that underlies the plural form gives a better impression of the primitive word than the
current singular form does.
In WJ:363, êl is said to be an (archaic) Sindarin word for "star". According to the rules set out above, based
on patterns like hên "child" pl. hîn (WJ:403), we would expect the plural form to be **îl. However, WJ:363
also informs us that the actual plural of êl is elin. Here it might seem that a plural ending -in is present. This,
however, is not really the case. By comparing these words to their Quenya cognates elen pl. eleni one may
begin to suspect what is really going on. Eleni would also be the plural form used in Old Sindarin, eventually
yielding Sindarin elin: the plural ending being lost like all final vowels, but leaving its mark on the word by
umlauting the second e to i. But one thing that occasionally happened in Old Sindarin was that consonants at
the end of words might drop out. The n of the plural form eleni was "safe" because it was shielded by the
plural ending following it, but the singular form elen was apparently reduced to ele, though this form is not
explicitly mentioned by Tolkien. Later, final vowels were lost, leaving just el, and later still, the vowel of a
monosyllable of this shape was lengthened, producing Sindarin êl. Hence we are left with the curious couple
êl pl. elin in Third Age Sindarin. In the case of another, similar couple, nêl "tooth" pl. nelig, the Etymologies
lists the Old "Noldorin"/Sindarin forms nele pl. neleki, confirming that the explanation sketched above is
correct: By comparing the singular nele to the stem NÉL-EK (LR:376) we understand that the final consonant
has dropped out. (In Common Eldarin, nele had evidently still been *nelek, which form directly underlies
Quenya nelet listed in the same place - High-Elven phonology doesn't permit final -k, so it became -t instead.)
Hence we have singular *nelek > nele > *nel > Sindarin nêl, but plural neleki (still used in Quenya) >
umlauted *neliki > later *nelik with loss of final vowel > Sindarin nelig.
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ael "pool, mere", pl. aelin (updated from "Noldorin" oel pl. oelin, LR:349 s.v. AY; we have Aelin-Uial
for "Meres of Twilight" in the Silmarillion)
âr "king", pl. erain (but the full singular aran seems to be more usual than shortened âr)
bór (or better bôr) "steadfast, trusty man; faithful vassal", pl. beryn (LR:353 s.v. BOR, where the
pl. occurs in "Noldorin" form berein, beren; we update it to its probable Sindarin form. Cf. the "Noldorin"
plural geleidh "Noldor" corresponding to Sindarin gelydh. - The entry BOR indicates that the plural of bór
later became býr, formed on analogy with the reduced singular; writers should probably use býr.)
fêr "beech-tree", pl. ferin (LR:352 s.v. BERÉTH, cf. LR:381 s.v. PHER; the latter source indicates that
this word for "beech-tree" was later replaced by brethil - which word would be unchanged in the pl.)
ôr "mountain", pl. eryd or irregular ered (but as in the case of âr above, the full singular orod is
apparently more common than reduced ôr; LR:379 s.v. ÓROT lists two "Old Noldorin" singulars, full oroto
or reduced oro; in the later language these would come out as orod and ôr, respectively, but actually the only
singular listed is orod - descended from unreduced oroto.)
tôr "brother", pl. teryn (LR:394 s.v. TOR; we update the plural form from "Noldorin" terein. However,
the same entry in the Etymologies indicates that this word for "brother" was normally replaced by muindor
pl. muindyr, or - when "brother" is used in the wider sense of "male associate" - gwador, the "Noldorin"
plural of which was gwedeir; read gwedyr in Sindarin.)
thôr "eagle", pl. theryn (LR:392 s.v. THOR; again we update the plural from "Noldorin" therein. - This
entry in the Etymologies indicates that the unreduced singular thoron was also in use)
In addition to the above, there are a few words that belong to the same category even though the plural forms
have no final consonant; pêl "fenced field" pl. peli, ôl "dream" pl. ely and thêl "sister" pl. theli. What has
happened is simply that an original final consonant h, lenited from s at the Old Sindarin stage, has dropped
out in the plural forms: The relevant stems are given as PEL(ES), ÓLOS and THELES in the Etymologies. In
the first of these entries, pêl "fenced field" is demonstrated to come from pele (LR:380), which given the
stem-form PEL(ES) is understood to be a reduced from of *peles (cf. the Quenya cognate peler, clearly meant
to come from *pelez < *peles). The plural of the old form pele is given as pelesi, and it is further stated that
this became pelehi ("peleki" in LR:380 is a transparent misreading of Tolkien's manuscript; for s becoming h
like this, cf. barasa > baraha in LR:351 s.v. BARÁS). Just as in one case referred to above, neleki becoming
nelig, the plural pelehi became *pelih - but in this case the now final consonant was so weak that it was lost
to produce the plural form peli, creating the false impression that Sindarin occasionally employs a plural
ending similar to Quenya -i.
NOTE: Several of forms quoted above are somewhat regularized. Pêl "fenced field" actually appears as pel in LR:380 s.v.
PEL(ES); according to the phonology we can reconstruct from many other examples, the vowel definitely ought to be long.
The omission of the circumflex in the form pel must be a mere mistake, whether Tolkien himself or the transcriber is to be
blamed (perhaps the singular was confused with the plural peli, in which form the e should be short). - The plural form of
ôl "dream" is given as elei in LR:379 s.v. ÓLOS; in Sindarin we should evidently read ely, as suggested above. This is a
case wholly parallel to "Noldorin" geleidh corresponding to Sindarin gelydh as the word for Noldor (sg. golodh): In both
cases "Noldorin" ei derived from o in the singular corresponds to Sindarin y (cf. also the corrected/updated plurals
suggested above: Sindarin beryn, teryn, theryn where the "Noldorin" of the Etymologies actually has berein, terein,
therein). - One other form is also regularized: In the Etymologies, the plural of thêl is not theli as suggested above, but
thelei (LR:392 s.v. THEL, THELES). Why a word thêl derived from a stem THELES should behave any differently in the
plural than a word pêl derived from PELES is difficult to understand, so if the plural is peli in the latter case, we may feel
free to emend the plural of thêl from thelei to theli. The plurals theli and attested peli fit the general system better: The
plurals represent the full stems THELES and PELES, except for the detail that the final -s was later lost (after becoming -h),
and as usual, e in a final syllable becomes i in the plural (as in Edhel "Elf" pl. Edhil, WJ:377). Hence the pl. of *peles
ought to be *pelis, and removing the lost final consonant we arrive at the attested plural peli; in light of this, the pl. of
*theles ought to be *thelis > theli rather than "thelei". If we were to keep the plural thelei (in which case we would have to
alter peli to pelei for the sake of consistency), we must take into account Tolkien's post-Etym discovery that ei in a final
syllable eventually became ai, which would land us on thelai, pelai as the rather outlandish plurals of thêl, pêl in late Third
Age Sindarin. So all things considered, it seems better to regularize thelei to theli in accordance with the attested example
peli rather than going the other way. (In the case of thelei/theli "sisters" writers can happily avoid the problem; LR:392 s.v.
THEL indicates that the more normal word for "sister" was muinthel pl. muinthil, or - where "sister" is used in the wider
sense of "female associate" - gwathel pl. gwethil.) - Another plural in -ei is "Noldorin" tele "end, rear, hindmost part", pl.
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telei (LR:392 s.v. TELES). As far as the singular is concerned, the development differs somewhat from that which produced
thêl from the stem THELES; notice that in tele, the last vowel of TELES is still in place (it has not become **têl to parallel
thêl). The primitive form of tele is given as télesâ (the accent marks stress only). In "Old Noldorin", this would have
become telesa > teleha (not explicitly given in Etym but compare primitive barasâ "hot, burning" producing "ON" barasa
> baraha, LR:351 s.v. BARÁS). Later the final vowels were lost, hence teleha > teleh, but eventually the weak final
consonant -h also dropped out, leaving tele only (and the new final vowel was not lost; the stage where such loss occurred
had already passed). But what about the plural form telei? It is difficult to tell precisely what kind of development Tolkien
envisioned. The "Old Noldorin" plural of teleha is not mentioned but should have been telehi (cf. for instance poto
"animal's foot", pl. poti, LR:384 s.v. POTÔ). Later, we would expect the final i to umlaut the e in the second-to-last
syllable, telehi becoming telihi; then final vowels and later final h are lost, which ought to leave us with teli as the plural
form. So how did Tolkien come up with telei instead? Are we to assume that at the telehi-stage, h dropped out so that the
vowels e and i came into direct contact and formed a diphthong telei? But this would be inconsistent with the example
referred to above: the plural form pelehi becoming peli instead of **pelei. It seems that when updating "Noldorin" tele pl.
telei to Sindarin, it is best to read tele pl. teli. Again, the plural form telei cannot be kept as it is in any case, since in
Sindarin ei in a final syllable becomes ai.
Plurals in -in
There are a few words that seem to display a genuine plural ending -in, though the origin of this ending would
be unclear; conceivably Tolkien imagined it to be invented on the analogy of such examples as êl pl. elin,
where (as demonstrated above) no genuine ending is present.
What may be the best example involves a loan-word, Drû "Wose", the name of one of the Drúedain or "Wild
Men"; the Sindarin term was based on their native word Drughu. According to UT:385, one Sindarin plural of
Drû was Drúin. Perhaps this extraordinary plural somehow marks the word as a loan; it is not inflected
according to the normal pattern (that would have landed us on **Drui as the plural form).
On the fields of Cormallen (LotR3/VI ch. 4), the Ring-bearers were hailed as Conin en Annûn, and
according to Letters:308, this means "Princes of the West". Assuming that Conin "princes" contains the plural
ending -in, it could be the plural form of ?caun (since by adding -in, constituting a new syllable, au becomes
o in the polysyllabic environment thereby arising). This ?caun could in turn be a Sindarized form of Quenya
cáno "commander" (PM:345), which would again be a loan-word rather than a "native" Sindarin word
(PM:362 mentions a quite distinct inherited word caun, meaning outcry or clamour). If conin "princes" is not
the plural of *caun, it could be the plural of an otherwise unknown word *conen, but this looks like an
adjective rather than a noun.
The name Dor-Lómin occurring in the Silmarillion is interpreted "Land of Echoes" in LR:406. The
Silmarillion Appendix lists a word lóm "echo", though nothing is said about what language this is supposed to
be. Is lómin the plural form of lóm? We must carefully distinguish various stages in Tolkien's conception.
The Etymologies lists a word lóm "echo" (LR:367 s.v. LAM), but this is Doriathrin, not "Noldorin" >
Sindarin. In Doriathrin (one dialect of the Ilkorin language whose place in the mythos would later be usurped
by Sindarin), there is indeed a plural ending -in, so lómin could be Doriathrin for "echoes". Yet in the entry in
the Etymologies just referred to, the name obviously corresponding to Dor-Lómin in the Silmarillion appears
as Dorlómen instead. Dorlómen is said to be, not Doriathrin, but a "Noldorinized" form of the true Doriathrin
name Lómendor. The first element is not a plural form at all, but a Doriathrin adjective lómen "echoing".
This may provide a clue to how Tolkien would later have interpreted the name. When he had made Sindarin
the language of Beleriand, dropping "Ilkorin", he still made references to the peculiar North Sindarin dialect,
and the name Dor-Lómin seems to fit what little is known about it (m is not opened to mh > v following a
vowel; cf. the North Sindarin name of Oromë being Arum rather than Araw [for *Arauv] as in standard
Sindarin: WJ:400). One educated guess may be that in the post-LotR period, Tolkien interpreted Dor-Lómin
as meaning literally "Echoing Land", lómin being the North Sindarin adjective descending from older
*lâmina. In standard Sindarin, the adjectival ending would be -en in the singular and -in only in the plural,
but this may not be true of this dialectal form of the language. If lómin is really an adjective, it is of course
irrelevant for a discussion of Sindarin plural formation.
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NOTE: The endings -od, -ig, -og used to form singulars from plurals can also be used to form so-called nomina unitatis,
words denoting one distinct part of something larger, or words denoting a single entity within a collective. Indeed this is
probably their proper function. WJ:391 provides a good example. There was a Sindarin word glam "din, uproar, the
confused yelling and bellowing of beasts". Since bands of Orcs could be very noisy, the word glam "alone could be used of
any body of Orcs, and a singular form was made from it, glamog". Hence we have glamog as a word for "Orc", an
individual member of a glam or body of Orcs as a collective. In such a case one cannot well say that glam is really the
plural form of glamog (it would be like asserting that "troop" is the plural form of "trooper"); perhaps glamog could itself
be the basis of a plural form ?glemyg. Another, similar case is the word linnod, nowhere explicitly explained but used in
LotR Appendix A: "[Gilraen] answered only with this linnod: Onen i-Estel Edain, ú-chebin estel anim [I gave Hope to the
Dúnedain, I have kept no hope for myself]." So what, really, is a linnod? Knowing that -od is an ending used to form
nomina unitatis, as in filigod from filig above, linnod can be recognized as such a formation, transparently based of lind
"song" (*lindod naturally becoming linnod since Sindarin phonology does not permit intervocalic -nd- in unitary words;
this group can only occur in compounds, such as Gondor "Stoneland"). So a linnod is some kind of unit within a song, and
the example provided indicates that it means a verse, a single line in a song. Again it makes little sense to say that linnod is
the "singular" form of lind (as if this word for "song" must be considered a plural just because a song is made up of verses).
Rather we must see linnod as a derived noun, an independent word for "verse" that can probably have its own plural linnyd
"verses". (In the case of Gilraen's linnod it seems clear that her particular "verse" was not part of a longer song; it was just a
verse or very short poem in its own right.) Nouns in -ig seem to denote specifically one out of a pair, as in the examples
quoted above: gwanunig "a twin" from gwanûn "pair of twins", or lhewig "an ear" besides lhaw "pair of ears". Again one
may discuss whether gwanûn, lhaw are really the "plural" forms of gwanunig, lhewig; the latter forms simply denote one
out of a couple.
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final element -ben "person", while roch "horse" is unchanged. (The implication is that the plural of orodben
"mountaineer" could similarly be orodbin with orod "mountain" in its normal form, though the form orodbin
is not mentioned in WJ:376.) In the compound Edenedair the first element has not been restored, but as
already mentioned, a form ?Adanedair would probably have been equally permissible.
Beside the normal plural, Sindarin also has a so-called Class plural, or a collective plural. In RGEO:74,
Tolkien states that "the suffix -ath (originally a collective noun-suffix) was used as a group plural, embracing
all things of the same name, or those associated in some special arrangement or organization. So elenath (as
plural of êl, [irregular] pl. elin) meant 'the host of the stars': sc. (all) the (visible) stars of the firmament. Cf.
ennorath, the group of central lands, making up Middle-earth. Note also Argonath, 'the pair of royal stones,' at
the entrance to Gondor; Periannath, "the Hobbits (as a race)," as collective pl. of perian, 'halfling' (pl.
periain)." The King's Letter provides more examples: sellath dîn "his daughters" and ionnath dîn "his sons",
referring to all of Sam's sons and daughters as groups. In some cases, -ath seems to have a longer form -iath.
WJ:387 gives firiath as the class plural of feir "a mortal" (normal plural fîr); cf. also the "collective pl." form
giliath "stars" in LR:358 s.v. GIL (as in Osgiliath, "Citadel of the Stars"). In earlier versions of this article,
we explained this i intruding before -ath is a remnant of an earlier y that is here preserved (earlier firya
"mortal", gilya "star"). This may be correct in the case of the words firiath and giliath, but it may seem that
the longer ending -iath appears whenever the Class Plural ending is to be added to a word that has the stem
vowel i: This vowel is echoed in the ending.
If the ending -ath is added to a noun ending in -nc or -m, they would for phonological reasons change
to -ng- and double -mm-, respectively, whereas final -nt and -nd would both become -nn-: The class plurals
of words like ranc "arm", lam "tongue", cant "shape" and thond "root" would evidently be rangath,
lammath, cannath, thonnath, respectively. Also remember that since the sound [v] is spelt f only finally, it
would be spelt as it is pronounced - simply v - if any ending is appended. Hence the class-plural of a word
like ylf "drinking-vessel" must be written ylvath.
In some cases, other endings than -ath seem to be used, such as -rim "people"; in WJ:388, Nogothrim
is said to be the class plural of Nogoth "Dwarf". Yet another ending is -hoth "folk, host, horde", cf.
Dornhoth "the Thrawn Folk", another Elvish term for Dwarves. The Silmarillion Appendix (entry hoth)
states that this ending is "nearly always used in a bad sense" and mentions the example Glamhoth
"Din-horde", an Elvish kenning of Orcs. The one who first called the Snowmen of Forochel Lossoth (for
*Loss-hoth, loss = "snow") evidently did not like them. In Letters:178, Tolkien explains that while the normal
plural of orch "Orc" is yrch, "the Orcs, as a race, or the whole of a group previously mentioned would have
been orchoth" (for *orch-hoth, evidently). It could be discussed whether forms like Nogothrim and Lossoth
are really "plural" forms or simply compounds: Dwarf-folk, Snow-horde. Words with the "collective" ending
-ath are seen to take the plural article in, so they are evidently considered plurals. Words in -rim and -hoth
seem to behave in the same way; cf. the name Tol-in-Gaurhoth "Isle (of) the Werewolves"(Silmarillion ch.
18, where the name is translated simply "Isle of Werewolves"). In Letters:178, Tolkien does state that "the
general plurals [italics mine] were very frequently made by adding to a name (or a place-name) some word
meaning 'tribe, host, horde, people' " - namely the endings we have been discussing here. So it would seem
that from a grammatical point of view, the forms employing these endings really are to be considered plurals,
not compounds.
As far as we can tell from what has been published, the Sindarin noun is not inflected for a great number of
cases, as in Quenya. Their common ancestral tongue of Quenya and Sindarin was apparently a case language,
but in Sindarin the relevant endings have been lost (though traces of them may be found in some words - for
instance, ennas "there" must once have ended in a locative ending similar to Quenya -ssë). Grey-elven
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depends on prepositions instead of case endings. It is noteworthy, though, that Sindarin nouns can be used as
genitives without changing their form. We have already quoted the Moria Gate inscription as an example of
this: Ennyn Durin Aran Moria, "Doors of Durin, King of Moria", the names Durin and Moria functioning as
uninflected genitives: of Durin (or Durin's), of Moria (or Moria's). To say "X of Y" or "Y's X" you simply
juxtapose the words: X Y. The King's Letter provides more examples: Aran Gondor "King (of) Gondor",
Hîr i Mbair Annui "Lord (of) the Western Lands", Condir i Drann "Mayor (of) the Shire". Tolkien noted
that these uninflected genitives probably descended from "inflexional forms" (WJ:370). At an earlier stage,
Sindarin probably had the same genitive ending -o as in Quenya, but it was lost together with the other final
vowels. (Doriathrin Sindarin sometimes shows a genitive ending -a, as in Túrin's epithet Dagnir Glaurunga
"Glaurung's Bane"; cf. also Bar Bëora for "the House of Bëor" in WJ:230. The origin of this ending is very
unclear, and it is apparently not used in standard Sindarin.)
Sometimes one or both of the nouns in a genitive phrase is somewhat shortened: Double consonants
may be simplified; compare toll "isle" with tol in a name like Tol Morwen "Morwen's Isle" (WJ:296). Long
vowels may be shortened; compare dôr "land" with dor in Dor Caranthir "Caranthir's Land" (WJ:183). But
such shortening is not necessary to produce correct Sindarin; cf. Hîr rather than Hir in the phrase Hîr i
Mbair Annui "Lord (of) the Western Lands" in the King's Letter.
Not only the genitive, but also the dative can be expressed by a Sindarin noun that does not in any way
change its form. This is evident from the first part of Gilraen's linnod in LotR Appendix A: Onen i-Estel
Edain, "I gave Hope to the [Dún]edain". The indirect object, or dative object, is clearly Edain - but it shows
no inflectional ending, nor is there anything corresponding to the preposition "to" in Tolkien's English
translation. The dative is apparently expressed by word order alone. This construction may be compared to
English "I gave the Edain Hope", again with no preposition or inflectional ending - but while English in such
a case inserts the indirect object before the direct object, Sindarin has the indirect object following the direct
object.
---
The Sindarin noun, as well as other parts of speech, is often subjected to certain regular changes of the initial
consonants. To these we must now turn our attention.
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Salo), but future publications may well prove it wrong in some respects. However, the most frequent
mutations (soft and nasal) are relatively well attested, so that we can reconstruct the rules with some
confidence.
I. SOFT MUTATION
The most frequent mutation, it is also known as lenition (= "softening"). The name reflects the fact that by this
mutation, "hard" or unvoiced sounds like p or t become "softened" (or lenited) to voiced b, d, while original b,
d are further "softened" to spirants: v, dh. We will describe the effects of the soft mutation before discussing
in detail where it occurs, but it may be noted that lenition typically occurs after particles ending in a vowel
when such a particle immediately precedes a word and is closely associated with it, such as the definite article
i (singular "the"). In Letters:279, Tolkien comments upon the lenition c > g and notes that it is used "after
closely connected particles (like the article)". The phonological background for this phenomenon is not very
difficult to understand. In the evolution of Sindarin, many consonants changed following a vowel; for
instance, c became g and t became d (compare Sindarin adar "father" with the primitive word atar, still
preserved in Quenya). What happened was that particles like prepositions and articles immediately preceding
a word became so closely associated with the word itself that the whole phrase of particle + main word was
perceived as a kind of unity. Hence a word like tâl "foot", when occurring in a phrase like i tâl "the foot", was
subjected to the same rule that turned a unified word like atar into adar: There is a vowel preceding the t, so
it has to turn into d - and while tâl remained as the word for "foot", "the foot" is henceforth i dâl instead (see
LR:298 concerning this example). See below concerning the various uses of the soft mutation; while
describing the mutations themselves, we will use the changes occurring after the definite article i as examples.
The soft mutation turns the plosives p, t, c into voiced b, d, g; original b, d become v, dh, while g disappears
altogether. (It should be noted that the mutations here described for b, d, g only apply when these sounds are
derived from primitive b, d, g. Sindarin initial b, d, g may also derive from mb, nd, ñg, and in such cases, the
lenited forms differ. See the section "The development of nasalized stops" below.)
Note: G originally turned into the back spirant gh, but this sound later disappeared (i ghaw becoming i 'aw). To indicate
that a g has been lenited to zero, one may use an apostrophe ' as in this example, but Tolkien's writings are inconsistent on
this point. In UT:390 we have Curunír 'Lân for "Saruman the White", the apostrophe evidently indicating that the second
word (the adjective "white") is glân when not mutated. Cf. also galadh "tree" > i 'aladh "the tree" in LR:298 (there spelt
galað, i·'alað). But in the Silmarillion we have names like Ered Wethrin "shadowy mountains", wethrin being a lenited
form of gwethrin, the plural form of the adjective gwathren "shadowy" (compare gwath "shadow", LR:396 s.v. WATH).
Perhaps a spelling equivalent of Ered 'Wethrin would actually be used in Tengwar writing, Tolkien sometimes dropping
the apostrophe in names occurring in his narratives.
These consonants evidently undergo the same mutations if they form part of clusters:
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It will be noticed that b and m both become v when lenited. In a few cases, ambiguity may arise. Consider
two adjectives like bell "strong" and mell "dear"; only context can decide whether i vess vell means "the
strong woman" or "the dear woman". (In Sindarin, an adjective normally follows the noun it describes, and in
this position, the adjective is lenited.) The mutation product of m is sometimes spelt mh instead (as in the
King's Letter, SD:128-9: e aníra ennas suilannad mhellyn în, "he wishes there to great his friends"). It seems
that in Third Age Sindarin, this mh was no longer pronounced any differently from v, though the distinction
may have been upheld in Tengwar writing. Earlier, mh was evidently a distinctly nasal variant of v, that may
also be termed "spirant m". Compare LotR Appendix E, in the discussion of the Runes: "For (archaic)
Sindarin a sign for a spirant m (or nasal v) was required."
The sound hw (unvoiced w, like English wh in dialects where it is still kept distinct from w) probably
becomes chw in mutation position:
(In the "Noldorin" of the Etymologies, this sound is chw in all positions, also where the word is not lenited,
but it seems that Tolkien revised this.)
The unvoiced spirants f, th, the nasal n and the liquids r, l are unaffected by the soft mutation:
The behavior of the unvoiced liquids rh, lh in mutation position is somewhat uncertain. The view presented in
earlier versions of this article was that they turn into normal voiced r, l. This was based primarily on the
example rhass "precipice", with article i rass (LR:363 s.v. KHARÁS). However, this is probably "Noldorin"
rather than Sindarin. One of the revisions Tolkien did when he turned "Noldorin" into Sindarin affected the
sounds rh, lh. In "Noldorin", they were descended from normal r, l in the primitive language, where these
sounds occurred initially. However, Tolkien later decided that primitive initial r, l were unchanged in
Sindarin, a primitive word like lambâ "tongue" yielding Sindarin lam (WJ:394; contrast earlier "Noldorin",
where this word had been lham instead: LR:367 s.v. LAB). The sounds rh, lh still occur initially in Sindarin,
but in this language they are derived from primitive initial sr-, sl- (e.g. srawê > Sindarin rhaw, MR:350), not
simple r-, l-. This new derivation must be taken into consideration when we make our educated guess about
how Sindarin rh, lh behave in mutation position. Basically, the soft mutation corresponds to how certain
consonants develop following vowels. Medial primitive sr, sl became thr, thl, e.g. "Noldorin" lhathron
"listener, eavesdropper" (Sindarin lathron?) from primitive la(n)sro-ndo (LR:368 s.v. LAS2). So perhaps this
is also what the soft mutation of rh-, lh- would produce, though we lack examples:
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The uses of the soft mutation: The soft mutation has a variety of uses. It occurs after a series of particles,
prepositions and prefixes, the example we have used so far - the definite article i - being only one of these
particles. Typically, we are talking about particles that either end in a vowel or did end in a vowel at an earlier
stage. A preposition like na "to" triggers the same mutations as the article i, for instance na venn "to a man"
(unmutated benn). In the hymn to Elbereth (A Elbereth Gilthoniel) we have the phrase na-chaered
"to-remote distance" (see RGEO:72 for translation), haered "remote distance, the remote" undergoing soft
mutation to become chaered. (For haered as the unmutated form, compare the name Haerast "Far Shore"
mentioned in the Silmarillion Index; see the entry Nevrast.)
We know or deduce that soft mutation occurs after the following particles and prefixes:
- the prefix and preposition (?) ab "after, behind, following, later" (since this was earlier apa, as in
Quenya)
- the preposition adel "behind, in the rear (of)" (since this was probably *atele in Old Sindarin)
- the preposition and prefix am "up, above, over" (cf. Quenya amba); the soft mutation is attested in
compounds like ambenn "uphill" (am + a lenited form of pend, penn "declivity")
- the prefix ath- "on both sides, across" (older *attha)
- the prefix athra- "across" (cf. a word like athrabeth, "debate", the second element being a lenited
form of peth "word")
- the preposition be "according to" (perhaps also "as, like", since it must correspond to Quenya ve)
- the adverb/prefix dad "down" (cf. dadbenn "downslope", which is dad + a lenited form of pend,
penn "declivity")
- the preposition di "under, beneath"
- the prefix go-, gwa- "together" (possibly also used as an independent preposition "with")
- the preposition na "to, towards; at; of; with, by"
- the preposition nu (no) "under"
- the preposition trî "through" and the corresponding prefix tre-
- the negative element ú-, u- "not" or "without", used as a prefix, e.g. ú-chebin *"I do not keep" in
Gilraen's linnod (compare unmutated hebin "I keep"). Cf. also such a word as ubed "denial" (u + ped, the
latter being the stem of the verb "say", hence ubed = "no-saying").
The sentence guren bêd enni "my heart tells me" (VT41:11) incorporates a lenited form of the verb pêd
"tells". This example seems to indicate that a verb immediately following its subject is lenited. This is not the
case if the verb comes before the subject, as in the sentence tôl acharn "vengeance comes" or literally
*"comes vengeance" (WJ:254; notice that tôl is not here lenited to dôl). Some are skeptical of the rule that a
verb is lenited even where it does immediately follow its subject. We are told that in one version of the
so-called Turin wrapper, the wording Rían pent *"Rían said" occurs; here the verb pent "said" is not lenited
(to bent), even though it does immediately follow its subject. Tolkien surely experimented with different
systems over the years, or there may be something special about the phrase guren bêd enni that causes pêd to
appear in lenited form bêd here. At least it seems certain that a verb is not lenited where it does not
immediately follow its subject, as is evident from the Moria Gate inscription: Celebrimbor o Eregion
teithant [not: deithant] i thiw hin "Celebrimbor of Hollin drew these signs". Perhaps it makes some
difference that the phrase o Eregion "of Hollin" here intrudes between the subject and the verb, perhaps not.
It would be interesting to know whether "Celebrimbor drew" would translate as Celebrimbor deithant or
Celebrimbor teithant - or maybe both are possible.
In Sindarin, adjectives (including participles) following the noun they describe are usually lenited. In
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Sindarin, an adjective normally does follow the noun it describes; you say "isle green", Tol Galen, instead of
"green isle". Galen is here the lenited form of calen "green". Another example of the same is the name
Pinnath Gelin "Green Ridges" or literally "Ridges Green", gelin being a lenited form of celin, in turn the
plural form of calen (plural to agree with "ridges"). The name Talath Dirnen "Guarded Plain" ("Plain
Guarded") contains a lenited form of the past participle tirnen "watched, guarded" (cf. the verb tir- "watch,
guard"). Eryn "wood" + morn "dark" produces Eryn Vorn "Dark Wood" (UT:436, 262). Dor Dhínen "Silent
Land" ("Land Silent") includes the lenited form of dínen "silent" (WJ:333, 338). There are, however, quite a
few attested cases where soft mutation fails to take place in such combination. The name Dor Dhínen just
mentioned also appears as Dor Dínen in a number of texts (so in the published Silmarillion). From LotR we
also remember the Rath Dínen or "Silent Street" in Minas Tirith; we might have expected *Rath Dhínen
instead. (However, the form Barad-dûr instead of *Barad-dhûr for "Tower-Dark" may be explained by the
fact that the words are here practically a compound, as indicated by the dash - though the second element of
compounds are often lenited as well, see below.) Cases of d where we would expect dh may in some
instances be explained (away) as inaccurate transcription on Tolkien's part, since he sometimes substituted d
for dh simply because he found the latter digraph "uncouth" (UT:267). However, we cannot easily explain
cases like Cú Beleg rather than *Cú Veleg for "Great Bow" (beleg "great"; for "great bow" cf. the song Laer
Cú Beleg or "Song of the Great Bow" mentioned in the Silmarillion, chapter 21). Another example is the
name Nan Tathren, "Vale of Willows" or literally "Vale Willowy"; we might have expected *Nan Dathren
instead. We probably have to assume that the discrepancies are simply due to the fact that there were many
variants or dialects of Sindarin; the rules for where soft mutation occurs differed somewhat from dialect to
dialect. (I would advise people writing in Sindarin to let adjectives lenit in this position, though, since this
seems to be the main rule.)
When a word is used as the second element of a compound, it often undergoes changes similar to the
effects of the soft mutation. Tolkien stated (in Letters:279) that "the initials of words in composition" are
lenited (he used the example Gil-galad, that represents *Gil-calad "Starlight"; cf. unlenited calad "light" in
UT:65 - another explanation of the element galad is given in PM:347, though). In RGEO:73, Tolkien
mentions the "the S[indarin] change of medial t > d": in the hymn to Elbereth we have palan-díriel for
*palan-tíriel "far-seeing" (compare the verb tir- "watch, see, guard").
Other examples include compounds like Calenhad "Green Space" (calen "green" + sad "place, spot",
UT:425), Elvellyn "Elf-friends" (El = reduced form of the word for "Elf" + mellyn "friends", WJ:412) or
Nindalf "Wetwang" (a compound of nîn "wet" and talf "flat field", see A Tolkien Compass p. 195). The
uninformed have sometimes assumed that a name like Gildor means "Star-land", sc. that the final element is
the same as in country-names like Gondor, Mordor etc., but "Star-land" does seem like a strange name for a
person. The final element of Gildor is actually taur "king, master", blended with an identical adjective
meaning "lofty, noble". In Gildor, t becomes d by lenition, and unaccented au becomes o. The name is better
interpreted "Star-lord".
The negative adverb avo, that is used with an imperative to express a negative command, causes soft
mutation of following verb: caro! "do (it)!", but avo garo! "don't do (it)!" Avo may also be reduced to a
prefix av-, still followed by the same mutation: avgaro means the same as avo garo. See WJ:371.
A noun is also lenited if it appears as the object of a verb, even if there is no article preceding it. Hence,
Sindarin has an "accusative" of sorts. Notice one sentence from the King's Letter: ennas aníra i
aran...suilannad mhellyn în, "there the king wants...to greet his friends", mhellyn being the lenited form of
mellyn "friends" (and a variant spelling of vellyn as in Elvellyn "Elf-friends" above). The word "friends" is
lenited as the object of the verb "greet". One wonders if the lack of lenition was the reason why Gandalf
misunderstood the inscription on the Gate of Moria: Pedo mellon a minno, "say 'friend' and enter". Gandalf,
as we recall, at first thought it meant "speak, friend, and enter". Normally, mellon should presumably have
been lenited as the object of pedo "speak" (*pedo vellon), but the ones who made the inscription had
evidently ignored the normal lenition rules and given the word mellon in exactly the form it had to be spoken
for the doors to open. (Of course, we don't know exactly how the "magic" or para-technological mechanism
behind the doors worked, but it must have been some kind of artificial intelligence responding to the
sound-sequence M-E-L-L-O-N only.) Perhaps it was because of this Gandalf did not at first understand that
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mellon was the object of pedo "say, speak" and took it to be a vocative instead: "Speak, o friend!" It may be
that the form of Sindarin used in this inscription did not use the lenition of m to mh/v at all, but actually there
is a variant of the Moria Gate inscription where the tengwar seem to read pedo mhellon instead of pedo
mellon. (See J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator, p. 158.)
It was formerly thought that the conjunction a "and" caused soft mutation (a view that was also
reflected in some of the earliest versions of this article). This was because of the phrase Daur a Berhael
"Frodo and Samwise" in LotR3/VI ch. 4: One correctly observed that Berhael "Samwise" is a lenited form of
Perhael and rashly concluded that it was the preceding conjunction a that caused the mutation. However, the
Moria Gate inscription has a minno, not **a vinno, for "and enter". Since mellon "friend" fails to lenit to
vellon in the same inscription, one might think that the inscription is in a form of Sindarin that does not use
the lenition m > v. However, as mentioned above, an alternative form of the inscription occurs in J. R. R.
Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator p. 158. In this version, the word mellon is lenited (mhellon/vellon) - but the
word minno following the conjunction still shows no lenition, once and for all burying the theory that a "and"
triggers the soft mutation. Why, then, is Perhael lenited? The context must be taken into consideration. The
whole sentence goes: Daur a Berhael, Conin en Annûn, eglerio! According to Letters:308, this means
"Frodo and Sam, princes of the west, glorify (them)!" There is not actually any final pronoun "them" in the
Sindarin sentence, as indicated by the parentheses. The object of the verb eglerio "glorify" is of course "Frodo
and Sam", and being objects, these names are lenited. The sentence is simply a rearranged form of *eglerio
Daur a Berhael, Conin en Annûn "glorify Frodo and Sam, Heroes of the West". Hence, it is not only the
name Perhael that is lenited (to Berhael); we must assume that Daur is also a lenited form, the unmutated
version being Taur. (According to LR:389 s.v. TÂ, TA3, "Noldorin"/Sindarin had an old adjective taur
"lofty, noble", used in "ancient titles"; this would be a fitting honorary epithet for Frodo.) - As the example
Daur a Berhael, Conin en Annûn "Frodo and Sam, heroes of the West" indicates, lenition is not carried
through an entire phrase when the latter part merely stands in apposition to the first. The main words, Taur
and Perhael, are lenited - but the phrase Conin en Annûn "heroes of the West", that merely stands in
apposition to Daur a Berhael, is not (hence no "Gonin en Annûn" instead). Cf. also an example like i
Cherdir Perhael, Condir "the Master Samwise, Mayor" from the King's Letter: Herdir "master" is lenited
because of the article preceding it (actually it would have been lenited even without the article, since this
phrase is also the object of a verb), but here, the name Perhael "Samwise" and his title Condir are not
subjected to soft mutation, since they stand in apposition to Herdir (hence no "i Cherdir Berhael, Gondir").
So the rule is that when several words stand in apposition, only the first of them undergoes mutation (and this
probably goes for all the mutations).
NOTE: Tolkien revised the lenition rules repeatedly. One obsolete rule may be mentioned. As noted above, the genitive
may be expressed by word order alone in Sindarin: Ennyn Durin Aran Moria, "Doors (of) Durin Lord (of) Moria".
According to a rule that Tolkien later rejected, the second noun of such a construction is lenited. Therefore, the first draft of
the Moria Gate inscription had the reading Ennyn Dhurin Aran Voria, with Durin and Moria lenited. Compare some
genitive phrases from the Etymologies, LR:369: Ar Vanwë, Ar Velegol, Ar Uiar for "Day of Manwë", "Day of Belegol
(Aulë)", "Day of Guiar (Ulmo)" (b and m leniting to v and g to zero). After the revision, the forms would presumably be
*Ar Manwë, *Ar Belegol, *Ar Guiar instead.
While this may sound like something out of a horror movie (or out of Pinocchio), it actually refers to another
important phenomenon in Sindarin phonology. Just like the article i for singular "the" triggers soft mutation,
the article in for plural "the" triggers nasal mutation: Tolkien explicitly stated that "the nasal
mutation...appears after the plural article in: thîw, i Pheriannath" (Letters:427 - it seems that Humphrey
Carpenter editing this letter thought that "in" is here the English preposition rather than the Sindarin article in,
since he does not use italics!) Other particles triggering nasal mutation would be the preposition and prefix an
"for, to" and the preposition dan "against", also used as a prefix "re-".
The examples Tolkien used in Letters:427 quoted above, thîw and i Pheriannath, come from the
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Moria Gate inscription and from the praise the Ringbearers received on the fields of Cormallen. In the former
we have i thiw hin for "these signs", literally "the signs these". (The shortening of thîw to thiw probably has
something to do with the following hin "these" and doesn't have to be considered here.) Frodo and Sam were
praised with the words aglar 'ni Pheriannath, "glory to the halflings" ('ni being short for an i "to the"). But
why is the article i seemingly used in conjunction with these plural words, when we have already established
that the word for plural "the" is in instead? Another anomaly seems to be that "letters" and "halflings"
suddenly appear as thîw (thiw) and Pheriannath instead of tîw and Periannath, though these words are
attested in LotR itself (Appendix B, the chronology of the Third Age, entry for 1050: "The Periannath are first
mentioned in records..." - while in Appendix E reference is made to the "the Tengwar or Tîw, here translated
as 'letters' "). Both of these problems are solved when we take into consideration the effects of nasal mutation:
I thîw and i Pheriannath actually represent in tîw, in Periannath. The King's Letter has a Pherhael for "to
Perhael (Samwise)"; this represents an "for" + Perhael. If we wanted to say in cirth = "the runes", this would
manifest as i chirth. In terms of diachronic phonology, this whole phenomenon is easily explained. In Old
Sindarin, p, t, k (c) following an n became aspirated, turning into an aspirate ph, th, kh. Compare an Old
Sindarin word like thintha- "fade" (LR:392 s.v. THIN), undoubtedly representing even older *thintâ- with the
common verbal ending -tâ. Hence we also had in tîw > i thîw (th here being aspirated t rather than a spirant þ).
Later, the aspirates turned into spirants and the preceding nasal was assimilated to them, in effect disappearing
(in þîw > iþ þîw, i þîw, normally spelt i thîw in Roman letters).
The nasal mutations of the unvoiced stops p, t, c are thus ph, th, ch. The initial clusters cl, cr, tr, pr
probably behave in the same way as the simple stops when nasal mutation is due (so if we combine words like
claur "splendor", crûm "left hand", trenarn "account", prestanneth "affection" with the preposition an "to,
for", we might see a chlaur, a chrûm, a threnarn, a phrestanneth).
The voiced stops b, d, g behave differently when subjected to nasal mutation. They do not turn into
spirants like the unvoiced stops. There has, however, been some confusion regarding their behavior. Earlier
versions of this article presented the view that n + b, d, g produces mb, nd, ng. There is little doubt that this
was indeed what Tolkien imagined at one stage. This is evident from the example Cerch iMbelain "Sickle of
the Valar" in LR:365 s.v. KIRIK, clearly cerch "sickle" + in plural article "(of) the" + Belain "Valar".
However, one late example indicates that Tolkien abandoned this "Noldorin" system in Sindarin. In WJ:185,
we have Taur-i-Melegyrn for "Forest of the Great Trees". This is clearly taur "forest" + in plural article "(of)
the" + beleg "great" + yrn "trees". (The word beleg is listed in the Silmarillion Appendix, there glossed
"mighty".) Here, n + b is seen to produce m; by the same system, "Sickle of the Valar" would of course be
Cerch i Melain (not, as before, Mbelain). By analogy, we have to conclude that n + d produces simple n,
while n + g comes out as ng (a unitary sound as in English sing, sometimes spelt ñ by Tolkien, not this
unitary sound followed by a distinct g, as in English finger):
Theoretically, we have long or double consonants here (innúredhil, iññelaidh, immeraid), though this is
hardly reflected in pronunciation. But in the case of the prepositions an "to, for" and dan "against", that
trigger similar mutations, it would be in keeping with Tolkien's general principles to mark this in spelling
(though we lack exactly parallel examples):
an + Dúredhel "Dark Elf" = an Núredhel (rather than simply a Núr...) "for a Dark Elf"
an + galadh "tree" = an Ngaladh "for a tree" (provisory Roman spelling of añ Ñaladh, the
equivalent of which would probably appear in Tengwar writing)
an + barad "tower" = am marad "for a tower"
It is desirable to keep the preposition an clearly separate from the conjunction a "and"; confusion could arise
if we simply wrote a Núredhel, a marad (the first of which might be misinterpreted "and a Deep-elf").
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Before some consonant clusters beginning in voiced stops, such as dr, gl, gr, gw, it may seem that no
particular mutation occurs. In LotR Appendix A, we have Haudh in Gwanûr for "Mound of the Twins" (not
**Haudh i Ngwanûr); cf. also Bar-in-Gwael "Home of the Gulls" (?) in WJ:418 (not **Bar-i-Ngwael). So
combining an, dan, in with words like draug "wolf", glân "border", grond "club" or gwêdh "bond" may
produce simply dan draug "against a wolf", dan glân "against a border", dan grond "against a club", dan
gwêdh "against a bond" (definite plurals in droeg "the wolves", in glain "the borders", in grynd "the clubs",
in gwîdh "the bonds"). Compare Tawar-in-Drúedain for "Forest of the Drúedain (Woses)" in UT:319; the
initial dr is not changed by any visible nasal mutation, even though it follows the plural article in "(of) the".
Cf. also the exclamation gurth an Glamhoth "death to (the) Din-horde (= Orcs)" in UT:39, 54, providing an
attested example of an "to" followed by a word in gl-. It is, however, probable that the final n of dan, an, in
would be pronounced "ng" (ñ) before words beginning with a cluster in g-, and perhaps also so written in
Tengwar spelling.
The clusters bl, br may become ml, mr when subjected to nasal mutation, e.g. an "for" + brôg = a
mrôg (or am mrôg) "for a bear", definite plural i mrýg "the bears". We have no examples, but general
principles may suggest this.
Before m, the preposition an "to, for" appears as am; the King's Letter has am Meril for "to Meril
[Rose]". Dan "against" would surely become dam in the same position (dam Meril "against Meril"). The
plural article in appears as i when followed by m; WJ:418 has Bar-i-Mýl for "Home of the Gulls" (changed
by Tolkien from Bar-in-Mýl with the n intact). Cf. also a phrase like Gwaith-i-Mírdain "People of the
Jewel-Smiths", clearly representing ...in Mírdain. Before words in n, we would again see in reduced to i (cf. i
Negyth for in Negyth "the Dwarves", WJ:338). The prepositions an, dan would be unchanged.
Before s, in is again reduced to i, as in Echad i Sedryn "Camp of the Faithful" (UT:153). The
prepositions an "to, for" and dan "against" may appear as as, das before s- (e.g. as Silevril "for a Silmaril").
No examples show what nasal mutation does to initial r-. In Third Age Sindarin at least, n + r produced
dhr (as in Caradhras = caran "red" + ras(s) "horn"). So perhaps, say, "against a horn", dan + rass, would
produce dadh rass??? Definite plural idh rais "the horns", for in rais? But in First Age Sindarin, or at least in
the Doriathrin dialect, we might see simply dan rass, in rais (compare the name of Thingol's sword
Aranrúth "King's Ire", indicating that the change nr > dhr still had not occurred in his day).
Before l, the final nasal of the plural article in disappear. Compare Dantilais as a name of Autumn in
PM:135; this is transparently Dant i Lais "Fall of the Leaves" (for Dant in Lais) written in one word as a
pseudo-compound. The prepositions an, dan may appear as al, dal before a word in l-.
The behavior of unvoiced L and R, sc. lh, rh, can only be guesswork. An "for" + lhûg "dragon" or
rhavan "wild man" may produce al 'lûg "for a dragon", adh 'ravan "for a wild man" (or, with in = plural
"the", i 'lýg for il 'lýg "the dragons", but idh 'revain "the wild men"). The ' would indicate the loss of a
consonant, the s of the original clusters sl-, sr- that yielded lh-, rh-. See under Mixed Mutation below
concerning the attested (?) example e-'Rach.
Nasal mutation turns h into ch, as in Narn i Chîn Húrin "Tale of the Children of Húrin", i Chîn
representing in Hîn (compare hên "child", pl. hîn). It should be noted that the form Narn i Hîn Húrin
occurring in UT is wrong. In LR:322, Christopher Tolkien confesses: "Narn i Chîn Húrin...is so spelt at all
occurrences, but was improperly changed by me to Narn i Hîn Húrin (because I did not want Chîn to be
pronounced like Modern English chin)." (Cf. MR:373.) Before h > ch, the prepositions an, dan may simply
be spelt a, da (a chên "for a child", da chên "against a child" - ach chên, dach chên would also be a
possibility, but no unmutated Sindarin word begins in ch, so there can be no confusion with a hên "and a
child").
The nasal mutation of hw may follow the same (hypothetical) pattern as lh, rh, e.g. an "for" + hwest
"breeze" > a 'west "for a breeze".
The sounds th, f seem immune to all sorts of mutations. In pl. "the" + thynd "roots" would probably
appear simply as i thynd; in the case of an "for" and dan "against" we might see ath thond "for a root", dath
thond "against a root", or one might simply write a thond (and risk confusion with "and a root"), da thond.
Likewise in > i before f (cf. i-Fennyr for in-Fennyr in LR:387 s.v. SPAN). An, dan might come out as af, daf
before f; in this case, final f would actually be pronounced [f] rather than [v], despite Tolkien's normal
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orthographic conventions. Compare his use of ef as an assimilated form of ed "out of" before words in f-; see
the section about the Mixed Mutation below.
"Mixed mutation" is not a Tolkien-made term; we don't know what he called it. In the published material, this
mutation is nowhere explicitly referred to; we merely observe its effects in a some texts. Sometimes it is
similar to soft mutation, sometimes to nasal mutation, and historically both mutations are probably involved -
hence this mutation may be called "mixed" (but sometimes it differs from both soft and nasal mutation!)
No less than three examples of mixed mutation are found in one sentence in the King's Letter: erin dolothen
Ethuil, egor ben genediad Drannail erin Gwirith edwen "on the eighth [day] of Spring, or in the
Shire-reckoning on the second [day] of April". Here we have three examples of prepositions that incorporate
the definite article in the oblique form -(i)n: twice erin "on the" (or "on" + in "the" > umlauted örin > later
erin), plus ben, here translated "in the", but more literally "according to the" (be "according to" clearly being
the cognate of Quenya ve "like, as"; hence ben genediad Drannail "according to the Shire reckoning"). Other
prepositions incorporating the article in the form -in or -n, such as nan "to the", uin "from the, of the" and
possibly 'nin "to/for the", would be followed by the same mutations (at least in the singular - in the plural we
may see nasal mutation instead, cf. 'ni Pheriannath "to the halflings", for 'nin [= an in] Periannath). But
what kind of mutations are we talking about?
Because of the -n we might expect something similar to nasal mutation, but the sentence from the
King's Letter shows that this is not the case. Consider the phrases erin dolothen "on the eighth", ben
genediad "according to the reckoning", erin Gwirith edwen "on April the second" (literally "on the April
second"). The unmutated form of dolothen "eighth" is clearly tolothen (compare toloth "eight", LR:394 s.v.
TOL1-OTH/OT). Yet we see no nasal mutation (**eri[n] tholothen), but rather a shift t > d that is similar to a
soft mutation. But soft mutation would also lenit g to zero. Even so, genediad "reckoning" and Gwirith
"April" are unaffected when preceded by ben, erin. (We know that the unmutated forms would also show g-;
for genediad compare the verb gonod- "reckon" in LR:378 s.v. NOT, while the month-name Gwirith is
mentioned in LotR Appendix D.) We do not see **erin 'enediad, **erin 'Wirith with regular soft mutation
here.
The singular genitival article e, en "of the" is seen to trigger similar mutations. Consider some of the
names of various tales listed in MR:373. In Narn e·Dinúviel, "Tale of the Nightingale", we see the same "soft
mutation" t > d as in erin dolothen for erin tolothen (for the unmutated form of Dinúviel is of course
Lúthien's well-known epithet Tinúviel). But again we see that no such soft mutation affects voiced plosives
like b, d, g (cf. Gwirith, genediad remaining unchanged): MR:373 also lists Narn e·Dant Gondolin, "Tale
of the Fall of Gondolin", where dant "fall" undergoes no mutation (we know that the unmutated form is also
dant; compare Dantilais for *"Fall of the Leaves = Autumn" in PM:135; the stem is DAT, DANT "fall down",
LR:354). We do not see **e·Dhant with soft mutation.
The origin of these "contradictory" mutations evidently have to do with soft and nasal mutation
operating on different stages in the evolution of Sindarin. We needn't enter into the phonological intricacies
here, but rather simply set out their effects as far as they can be reconstructed - for to a large extent, we have
to rely on reconstruction.
The best-attested effects of the mixed mutation may be inferred from the examples given above. The unvoiced
plosives p, t, c are voiced to b, d, g (pân "plank", caw "top", tâl "foot" > e-bân "of the plank", e-gaw "of the
top", e-dâl "of the foot", and likewise erin bân, erin gaw, erin dâl for "on the plank/top/foot"). The voiced
plosives b, d, g are unchanged (benn "man", daw "gloom", gass "hole" > e-benn "of the man", e-daw "of the
gloom", e-gass "of the hole", and likewise erin benn "on the man" etc.) It is hardly necessary to point out that
there is room for some confusion here, since the phonemic distinction between voiced and unvoiced plosives
is neutralized in this position. Only the context can tell us whether, say, e-gost means "of the quarrel [cost]"
or "of the dread [gost]".
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Before the initial cluster tr-, we would probably see the full form of the genitival article (en), and the cluster
tr itself would mutate to dr, e.g. trenarn "tale" > en-drenarn "of the tale". Original dr, as in draug "wolf",
would behave in the same way, but here there is of course no visible mutation (en-draug "of the wolf"). The
clusters pr and br may both come out as mr, and the article takes the short form e-: prestanneth "affection"
> e-mrestanneth "of the affection", brôg "bear" > e-mrôg "of the bear". The cluster bl may likewise become
ml-, as in blabed "flapping" > e-mlabed "of the flapping". Here the mixed mutation is similar to nasal
mutation. The clusters cl-and cr- would behave more like tr-, being voiced (to gl-, gr-), but we would see
only the short form of the article before them: claur "splendor" > e-glaur "of the splendor", crist "cleaver"
(sword) > e-grist "of the cleaver". On the other hand, the long form en- is used before gl-, gr-, gw-, and these
clusters undergo no change: gloss "snow" > en-gloss "of the snow" (compare Methed-en-glad "End of the
Wood" in UT:153), grond "club" > en-grond "of the club", gwath "shade" > en-gwath "of the shade".
Before words in f-, the example Taur-en-Faroth would seem to indicate that the article appears in its full
form en- (for this example, see the Silmarillion Appendix, entry faroth - Taur-en-Faroth does not seem to
mean precisely "Hills of the Hunters", though). It is very uncertain how words in h-, l-, m-, th- would behave;
possibly the genitival article would take the short form e-, and the initial consonant would undergo no change:
e-hên "of the child", e-lam "of the tongue", e-mellon "of the friend", e-thond "of the root". Perhaps we
would also have short e- before words in s-, but this consonant would probably become h-: salph "soup" >
e-halph "of the soup". Before n- we have long en-; compare a name like Haudh-en-Nirnaeth "Mound of
Tears", occurring in the Silmarillion. Before r- the genitival article may take the form edh- because of the
dissimilation nr > dhr, e.g. edh-rem "of the net", but en-rem may also be permissible, at least in Doriathrin
Sindarin.
This leaves only three initial sounds to be accounted for: all of them descended from clusters in s-, namely lh,
rh, hw from primitive sl-, sr-, sw-. What effect does the mixed mutation have on unvoiced L, R, W? We have
one possible attestation of such a mutation: The phrase Narn e·'Rach Morgoth "Tale of the Curse of
Morgoth" in MR:373. This example indicates that 'rach is what the word for "curse" turns into when
subjected to the mixed mutation. Unfortunately, this word is not otherwise attested, so we don't know for sure
what the unmutated form would be. It has generally been assumed that this is a lenited form of *grach. But if
so, analogous examples suggest that "of the curse" would be *en-grach. It may be, then, that the unmutated
form is actually *rhach, primitive *srakk-, the ' of e·'rach marking the loss of this s (and/or the loss of its
effect on the unmutated form, in which s, though no longer present as a distinct sound, has made the
following r unvoiced: rh). If this is correct, we would expect the mixed mutation to have a similar effect on
lh, hw, e.g. lhûg "dragon" > e-'lûg "of the dragon", hwest "breeze" > e-'west "of the breeze".
The prepositions that incorporate the article as -n or -in would trigger mutations similar to those just described
for the genitival article en-, but there is apparently no variation between forms where n is included and "short"
forms where it is omitted, paralleling the variation en/e: An n representing the article is always present.
(Contrast erin dolothen and e·Dant; we don't see **eri·dolothen paralleling e·Dant or **en Dant paralleling
erin dolothen.)
The term "stop mutation" does not occur in Tolkien's published writings on Sindarin, but a reference to this
mutation (by this name) does occur in one of the first entries of the "Gnomish Lexicon" of 1917 (see Parma
Eldalamberon #11). In later material, there is one brief reference to what could also be termed stop mutation.
In WJ:366, we read: "As the mutations following the preposition o ['from, of'] show, it must prehistorically
have ended in -t or -d." Unfortunately, the Professor told us nothing more about these mutations. Our few
examples of o occurring in actual texts would seem to indicate that nothing happens to an m or a g following
this preposition (o menel "from heaven" and o galadhremmin ennorath "from the tree-tangled lands of
Middle-earth" in the hymn to Elbereth, + o Minas Tirith "from Minas Tirith" in the King's Letter), and o also
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has this form before vowels (o Imladris "from/of Rivendell" in RGEO:70, in Tengwar writing; cf. also
Celebrimbor o Eregion "Celebrimbor of Hollin" in the Moria Gate inscription). Tolkien further noted
concerning the development of the primitive preposition et "out, out of" in Sindarin: "[It] retains its consonant
in the form ed before vowels, but loses it before consonants, though es, ef, eth are often found before s, f, th."
We will use ed to illustrate the mutations caused by the final stop, as well as they can be reconstructed. Due to
lack of examples, much of what follows must remain hypothetical extrapolation.
Before a vowel, Tolkien informs us that we see the basic form ed (e.g. ed Annûn "out of [the] West"). But
before consonants, ed appears as e, but the following consonant would often change. If we can trust our
understanding of the phonological evolution of Sindarin, the unvoiced stops t-, p-, c- would turn into spirants
th-, ph-, ch- (the clusters tr-, pr-, cl-, cr- likewise become thr-, phr-, chl-, chr-):
On the other hand, the voiced plosives b-, d-, g- (occurring alone or in clusters bl-, br-, dr-, gl-, gr-, gw-)
would undergo no change: Compare o galadhremmin ennorath "from the tree-tangled lands of
Middle-earth" in the hymn to Elbereth; the word galadh "tree" is unchanged.
The system here sketched refers to "normal" b, d, g; notice that where these sounds come from primitive mb,
nd, ñg, they behave differently. See "The development of nasalized stops" below.
As for the form of ed before s-, f-, th-, we are told that "es, ef, eth are often found" (WJ:367) before these
consonants:
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However, Tolkien's wording "often found" rather than "always found" indicates that e sarch, e falch, e thôl
would be equally permissible. The preposition ned *"in", that probably behaves like ed "out of", should
probably not be nef (but rather ne) before a word in f-, since the spelling nef would cause confusion with the
distinct preposition nef "on this side of". (There would be no confusion if it had not been for Tolkien's idea
that final [v] is to be spelt f in his Roman orthography for Sindarin; nef "on this side of" is pronounced [nev],
but nef as a form of ned would be pronounced [nef]. Ef, nef as forms of ed, ned should strictly speaking have
been spelt eph, neph according to Tolkien's orthographic system, since they are pronounced [ef], [nef] - but
in WJ:367, Tolkien himself uses the spelling "ef"!)
The unvoiced liquids lh, rh may behave like we have assumed that they do under the influence of soft
mutation: turn into thl-, thr-. (It must be emphasized that this is speculation and at best a qualified guess,
which goes for many of the possible effects of the stop mutation presented here. Of all the unattested forms,
only the behavior of the unvoiced stops is relatively certain.)
As for normal, voiced l, r, the general principles of Sindarin phonology (as far as they can be reconstructed)
may suggest that "out of" would here appear in its full form ed, despite Tolkien's statement in WJ:367 that the
final stop is lost before consonants:
This hopefully covers the mutations caused by ed "out of"; ned *"in" would behave in the same way. The
preposition o "from, of" causes the same mutations, but here the preposition itself does not change its form
(no variation corresponding to ed/e). Tolkien noted, however, that o occasionally appears in the form od
before vowels (WJ:367). As mentioned above, Tolkien himself used o Eregion "of Hollin" in the Moria Gate
inscription and o Imladris for "from/of Rivendell" in RGEO:70 (in Tengwar writing). Od Eregion and od
Imladris would apparently have been possible, but not necessary. However, Tolkien noted that od was more
usual before o- than before other vowels, so (say) "from/of an Orch" should perhaps be rendered od Orch
rather than o Orch to avoid two identical vowels in hiatus.
V. LIQUID MUTATION
This mutation represents a leap of faith. It is not mentioned, alluded to or directly exemplified anywhere in the
published material; yet our general understanding of Sindarin phonology seems to demand it. If Tolkien
adhered to his own rules (he did sometimes), we would expect liquid mutation in Sindarin.
We know that following the liquids l, r, Sindarin at one point changed plosives to spirants (UT:265, footnote);
compare Telerin alpa "swan" with Sindarin alph, or Quenya urco "Orc" with Sindarin orch. This does not
only happen in unitary words. The prefix or- "over", clearly separable, is seen to cause a similar change in the
verb ortheri "master, conquer", literally *"over-power" (LR:395, where the stem is given as TUR "power,
control"). There is little reason to doubt that or, also when appearing as an independent preposition "over,
above, on", would trigger similar changes in the word that follows: Stops become spirants.
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G originally turned into a spirant gh, but this sound later disappeared (marked by ' where it formerly
occurred):
It does not matter whether the initial stop occurs by itself or as part of a cluster; it would still turn into a
spirant under the influence of liquid mutation (tr- > thr-, pr- > phr, cl- > chl-, cr- > chr-, dr- > dhr-, bl- >
vl-, br- > vr-, gl- > 'l, gr- > 'r, gw- > 'w).
M, like b, would probably turn into v when subjected to liquid mutation. This change is seen in unitary
words; cf. primitive *gormê (Quenya ormë) "haste" yielding Sindarin gorf (LR:359 s.v. GOR; gorf is of
course just Tolkien's way of spelling gorv, since final [v] is represented by the letter f). Hence:
mîr "jewel" > or vîr "above a jewel" (archaic or mhîr, where mh = nasalized v)
H- and hw- are probably strengthened to ch-, chw-, under the influence of liquid mutation:
For the change h > ch, compare a word like hall "high" becoming -chal when or- is prefixed to produce a
word for "superior, lofty, eminent" - orchal literally meaning over-high, super-high. ("Orchel" in LR:363 s.v.
KHAL2 is a misreading; compare WJ:305.)
The unvoiced liquids lh, rh may become 'l, 'r, as we surmised is the case of nasal and mixed mutation:
The unvoiced spirants f, th, the nasal n and the sibilant s would not be affected, either:
There exists a subcategory of words in b-, d-, g- that needs to be watched, and that must be memorized
separately. In the words in question, b-, d-, g- does not come from b-, d-, g- in the primitive language.
Instead, they were originally nasalized stops mb-, nd-, ñg- (ñ representing the sound of ng as in English sing,
and ñg therefore being pronounced like "ng" in English finger, with a distinct, audible g). In Sindarin, you
cannot readily tell whether the initial consonant in a word like Golodh "Noldo" is a "normal" g, sc. one that
was g all along, or whether it represents earlier ñg-. But it is important to know this, for when mutations are
due, a word that originally began in a nasalized stop behaves quite differently from a word that had a simple
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stop all along. For instance, if the first consonant of Golodh had been a "normal" g, prefixing the article i
would have produced i 'Olodh for "the Noldo" - g being lenited to zero because of the soft mutation triggered
by the article. Cf. one example quoted above, in the section about the soft mutation: galadh "tree" > i 'aladh
"the tree" (LR:298). But the g of galadh was a simple g also in the primitive language (where the word
appeared as galadâ). The g of Golodh, on the other hand, was originally ñg; the word descends from
primitive ñgolodô. When we prefix the article and thereby trigger soft mutation, the resulting form is actually
not i 'Olodh, but i Ngolodh.
Already in Tolkien's earliest "Gnomish" language (ca. 1917), we find the idea that the original nasalized stops
behave in a special way in mutation position. In the Gnomish Grammar of 1917 (published along with the
Gnomish Lexicon in Parma Eldalamberon #11), the principle described is that the original nasalized stops
were preserved when the article is prefixed. Hence we had for instance balrog "demon, balrog" > i mbalrog
"the demon", dôr "land" > i ndôr "the land", Golda "Gnome, Noldo" > i Ngolda "the Gnome". Is this system
still valid in Sindarin? In WJ:383, in an essay dating to ca. 1960, Tolkien indicated that the Sindarin word for
Noldo was "Golodh (Ngolodh)". So the word Golodh sometimes appears as Ngolodh instead. In the essay in
question, Tolkien did not clarify where the form Ngolodh would be used, but the variation Golodh/Ngolodh
seemed to correspond to Gnomish Golda/Ngolda. Earlier versions of this article therefore presented the view
that the soft mutation of b, d, g, where these sounds were nasalized in the primitive language, is mb, nd, and
ng - the original nasalized stops being restored, or rather preserved, in this position.
However, a closer look at Sindarin phonology seems to indicate that it was rash to conclude that the
"Gnomish" system was still valid in later Grey-elven (and demonstrates that Tolkien's early material must be
treated with considerable skepticism if one wants to learn LotR-style Elvish, despite certain claims made by
the editors that the publication of the Gnomish Grammar and Lexicon would throw more light upon Sindarin).
The soft mutation corresponds to how certain consonants or consonant groups develop between vowels. It is
triggered, among other things, by the negative prefix ú-. So if we prefix it to a verb like bartha- "doom",
derived from the stem MBARAT, what do we get? The related word úmarth "ill-fate", where the same prefix
occurs (though with a different shade of meaning), points unequivocally to *ú-martha for "does not doom".
The soft mutation of b, where it represents primitive mb, is therefore m. The soft mutation of d derived from
primitive nd would then be n. This largely corresponds to the development of the mb, nd medially, where they
become m(m), n(n) - e.g. amar "earth" as the cognate of Quenya ambar, or annon "gate" corresponding to
Quenya andon. What, then, about the attested form Ngolodh - apparently the soft mutation of Golodh? Is not
the original initial cluster of primitive ngolodô preserved here, just as in Gnomish? Probably not; we are
merely being confused by an unfortunate deficiency of the English alphabet, the absence of a single letter for
the sound that often spelt ng, as in sing, thing. As already mentioned, Tolkien sometimes denoted this sound
as ñ. This single, unitary sound ñ must be distinguished from ñ + g, which is what the spelling ng denotes in
finger. It seems that in Sindarin Ngolodh, the initial ng is to be pronounced as in sing, sc. simple ñ with no
audible g - whereas in Gnomish Ngolda, the spelling ng indicates a real cluster, pronounced as in English
finger. Hence, the mutation products of g from primitive ñg are not really the same in Sindarin and Gnomish
after all, and the treatment of b, d from mb, nd also differs.
bâr "land, home" (stem MBAR) > i mâr "the land, the home" (not i mbâr as stated in earlier
versions of this article)
dôl "head" (earlier ndolo) > i nôl "the head" (not i ndôl)
Golodh "Noldo" (primitive ngolodô) > i Ngolodh "the Noldo" (sc. i Ñolodh, not i Ñgolodh with
a real consonant cluster)
Update: Since I wrote the above, another relevant example has been published. Tolkien's incomplete Sindarin Lord's Prayer
includes the words i mbas "the bread" (the unmutated word for "bread" being mas/mass, from a root MBAS). This kind of
mutation is surprising in such a late text: For a moment at least, Tolkien seems to have revived the system he used in his
very earliest "Gnomish" language. However, we have also had explicit confirmation of the system whereby b, d, g from
primitive mb, nd, ñg are lenited to m, n, ñ (spelt ng), respectively: It turns out that such a system had come into place
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already in one variant of early "Noldorin"; see the table of mutations published in Parma Eldalamberon #13 p. 120. This
table even provides explicit Tolkienian confirmation of one of the forms listed above, i mâr, still unattested when I
originally wrote this article. This system does seem to fit the general phonology best. I would therefore write i mas, not i
mbas, for "the bread" - irrespective of Tolkien's curious indecision in this matter.
Actual clusters, or nasalized stops, do arise when nasal mutation is due. The plural of bâr "land, home", bair,
occurs in the King's Letter (SD:129), combined with the plural article in, and this combination is seen to
produce i Mbair "the lands". So when in = plural "the" occurs before b or d representing mb, nd, the final n
of the particle is dropped, but the original nasalized stop reappears. In the case of the other particles triggering
nasal mutation, namely an "for" and dan "against", it may be convenient to let the final nasal of the particle
remain in spelling; for instance, "for a land" (an + bâr) may be represented as am mbâr (an becoming am
before m-), and likewise dam mbâr "against a land" (dan + bâr). Similarly an ndôl "for a head" and dan
ndôl "against a head" (an/dan + dôl).
As for the nasal mutation of g from primitive ng, this would on the same principle be ng; so if we want
to say "for a Noldo" (an + Golodh), we would expect an Ngolodh (actually añ Ñgolodh, with ñg like ng in
English finger, with an audible g). This spelling, however, would create a problem. The nasal-mutated form of
normal g (derived from primitive g, not ng) is also spelt ng (e.g. an + galadh = an ngaladh [sc. añ ñaladh]
"for a tree"). Upholding the distinction between ñ and ñg is no problem in Tengwar writing, but when using
our normal alphabet to write Sindarin, we have to use special solutions. The plural Gelydh, when combined
with the article in, might have produced i Ngelydh (sc. i(ñ) Ñgelydh - the corresponding spelling would be
used in Tengwar writing). But presumably to make it clear that the intended pronunciation is indeed i Ñgelydh
and not i Ñelydh, Tolkien used the spelling in Gelydh instead (cf. place-names like Annon-in-Gelydh "Gate
of the Noldor" mentioned in the Silmarillion). In this way - by keeping the n and the g clearly separate when
the intended pronunciation is ñg rather than ñ - the distinction can be upheld. So "for a Noldo" or "against a
Noldo" would also be simply an Golodh, dan Golodh (as if there is no mutation at all - but it should be
realized that the proper or ideal spellings would be a(ñ) Ñgolodh and da(ñ) Ñgolodh, and that the
corresponding spelling would be used in Tengwar writing). When in, dan or an precedes a word in g-,
remember that the final n is pronounced ng as in sing.
NOTE: It is interesting to notice the different mutations affecting the collective plural gaurhoth = "werewolves" or
"werewolf-host". Gaur "werewolf" comes from an ng-stem (ÑGAW "howl", LR:377). In the case of a collective plural like
gaurhoth, it is optional whether one uses the singular article i or the plural article in. In one of Gandalf's fire-spells, naur
dan i ngaurhoth! *"fire against the werewolves!", the singular article i is used, causing soft mutation: i ngaurhoth = i
ñaurhoth. But in the Silmarillion, we find the place-name Tol-in-Gaurhoth "Isle of the Werewolves", where the plural
article in is used in front of the same collective plural. The Roman spelling in-Gaurhoth here represents i Ñgaurhoth with
nasal mutation triggered by the final nasal of in, exactly parallel to in-Gelydh = i Ñgelydh "the Noldor".
As for the mixed mutation of b, d, g from mb, nd, ng, the example Narn e·mbar Hador *"Tale of the house
of Hador" indicates that it is similar to the nasal mutation, mbar "house" exemplifying the mixed mutation of
bar (bâr) "house, home, land" (stem MBAR "dwell, inhabit", though this word is not listed in Etym, LR:372).
Hence b, d, g again "revert" to original mb, nd, ng, and just like we have e-mbar for "of the house", we
would see for instance e-ndôl "of the head", en-Golodh "of the Noldo" (provisory Roman spelling of
e-Ñgolodh). But spellings like en-ndôl may also be permissible; compare a name like Haudh-en-Ndengin
"Hill of Slain" occurring in the Silmarillion.
When the article appears as -n or -in directly suffixed to a preposition, as in nan "to the" (na "to" + -n
"the"), this final -n does not seem to be assimilated in any way (at least this is not reflected even in Tengwar
writing):
nan "to the" + bâr "house" = nan mbâr "to the house"
nan "to the" + dôl "head" = nan ndôl "to the head"
nan "to the" + Golodh "Noldo" = nan Golodh (provisory and not wholly satisfactory Roman
spelling for nan Ñgolodh) "to the Noldo"
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The stop mutation following prepositions like o "from/of", ed "out of" and ned "in" would produce forms
similar to the mixed mutation above. The prepositions ed, ned would appear in the short forms e, ne (but e
ñg-, ne ñg- unfortunately have to be represented as en g-, nen g- in Roman spelling; morphologically
speaking, the nasal has nothing to do where orthography forces us to place it):
The liquid mutation probably caused by the preposition or "over, above, on" would have no apparent effect
on b-, d-, g- descended from primitive nasalized stops (while "normal" b-, d-, g- turn into spirants v-, dh-, '-):
The words involved: The words with initial b, d, g representing primitive nasalized stops must be memorized,
and we will attempt to list most of them. As an example of an actual mutation we use lenition (soft mutation);
the other mutations are described above. Where the word in question is a verb and not a noun, I list the form it
would have following the particle i when used as a relative pronoun ("who, which") rather than as the article
"the"; since this is merely a secondary use of the definite article (also found in German), the following
mutations are the same. So from bartho "to doom" we have for instance i martha "who dooms" or "the [one
who] dooms" (verbs with infinitives in -o forming their present tense in -a; see the section on verbs below). In
the plural, the plural article in is used as a relative pronoun, triggering nasal mutation (hence "dead who live"
is gyrth i chuinar = ...in cuinar), so "who doom" or "the [ones who] doom" must be i mbarthar.
barad "doomed" > i marad "the doomed [one]" (contrast the homophone barad "tower" > i varad
"the tower")
bartho "to doom" > i martha "the [one who] dooms"
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bereth "feast, festival" > i mereth "the feast" (but mereth > i vereth may be more usual, cf. Mereth
Aderthad, not *Bereth Aderthad, for "Feast of Reunion" in the Silmarillion)
beren "festive, gay, joyous" > i meren "the festive [one]" (contrast the homophone beren "bold" > i
veren "the bold [one]" - but since Tolkien evidently settled on mereth instead of bereth as the word for
"feast", we should probably read meren instead of beren as the word for "festive")
And miscellaneous:
bâr "home, land" > i mâr "the home" (stem MBAR, but this word is not given in Etym)
both "puddle, small pool" > i moth "the puddle" (MBOTH)
bund "snout, nose, cape" > i mund "the snout" (MBUD)
(These may be somewhat uncertain; David Salo argues that dôl behaves like a normal word in D, hence *i
dhol. Compare the name of the mountain Fanuidhol.)
And miscellaneous:
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golu "lore" > i ngolu "the lore" (the "Noldorin" word golw must become golu in Sindarin)
golwen "wise" > i ngolwen "the wise (one)"
goll "wise" > i ngoll "the wise (one)"
gollor "magician" > i ngollor "the magician"
Golodh "Noldo" > i Ngolodh "the Noldo"
gûl "magic" > i ngûl "the magic"
Golovir "Silmaril, Noldo-jewel" > i Ngolovir "the Silmaril"
gûr "death" > i ngûr "the death" (also guruth, i nguruth) (ÑGUR)
goroth "horror" > i ngoroth "the horror" (ÑGOROTH)
SUMMARY
We will list all the attested and surmised mutations in table form. In the first column, we list all Sindarin
initial consonants and consonant groups alphabetically, in their "Basic" = unmutated form. The soft mutation
is exemplified by the article i = singular "the". To make things more complicated than necessary, there are
two columns for the nasal mutation. The mutations as such are exactly the same, but in the first column
("Nasal I") the examples given involve the plural article in, which is reduced to i in most cases. However, in
the case of the prepositions an "to, for" and dan "against" it is in many cases preferable (and in harmony with
the attested example am Meril "to Meril/Rose") to use assimilated variants of the prepositions instead of
simply reducing them to a, da in spelling, though this happens in some contexts (cf. a Pherhael "to
Perhael/Samwise" in the same source that provides am Meril). The column "Nasal II" suggests various forms
of an. The mixed mutation is exemplified by the genitival article en- "of the", the stop mutation by the
preposition ed "out of", and the liquid mutation by the preposition or "above, on". (Before a word beginning
in a vowel, that cannot be mutated in any way, all of these particles would appear in their full forms, as just
quoted: i ael "the pool", in aelin "the pools", an ael "for a pool", en-ael "of the pool", ed ael "out of a pool",
or ael "above a pool".)
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Special cases: b, d, g derived from primitive nasalized stops mb, nd, ñg:
The mixed mutations described above follow the system seen in such phrases as e-mbar Hador "of the house
of Hador" (MR:373) and possibly Taur e-Ndaedelos "Forest of the Great Fear" (mentioned in LotR
Appendix F as a Sindarin name of Mirkwood). Bar-en-Danwedh "House of Ransom", a name mentioned in
the Silmarillion and clearly incorporating a descendant of the stem NDAN, ought to be spelt
Bar-e-Ndanwedh instead. Perhaps Tolkien thought this looked somewhat uncouth and used a spelling more
palatable to his readers. The full form of the article en "of the" is seen in another name from the Silmarillion,
Haudh-en-Ndengin "Hill of the Slain". Here, a descendant of the stem NDAK is present, and initial nd is
restored following en "of the". According to the system sketched above, this ought to be spelt
Haudh-e-Ndengin instead (cf. Taur e-Ndaedelos), while based on the example Bar-en-Danwedh, we ought
to write Haudh-en-Dengin. We needn't be worried by this. If Sindarin had been an actual spoken language in
a "medieval" age, just like Tolkien imagined, there is every reason to believe that such inconsistencies in
spelling would be quite common - various scribes using their more or less "private" systems, there being no
central authority or language academy that could establish a standardized spelling.
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It is hardly necessary to reiterate that the system set out above varies from certain, attested forms to very
tentative speculation and sheer guesses, with several shades of more or less plausible interpolation between
these extremes. Complex as this system may seem, it may still be over-simplified. Some points may be
commented on:
1) Thr, thl as the soft mutations of rh, lh are phonetically sound, but remain speculative. In one name
mentioned in the Silmarillion, Talath Rhúnen "East Vale", or literally and with Sindarin word order "Plain
Eastern", the adjective rhúnen "eastern" is not lenited in any way, though adjectives in this position usually
are. It would not be wrong, then, to let adjectives in lh-, rh- remain unchanged when they stand in apposition
to a noun. By analogy, neither would it be a great sin to let nouns in lh-, rh- remain unchanged when they
stand as the object of a verb, though "accusatives" are normally lenited. When a word functions as the second
element of a compound, the initial consonant usually undergoes changes comparable to soft mutation, but lh,
rh seem to become l, r in this position. Compare Rhûn "East" with -rûn in he longer word Amrûn of similar
meaning. If thr, thl do occur as mutations of lh, rh, they may most typically appear following particles
ending in a vowel, such as the definite article i or the preposition na "to".
2) We list m, n, ng as the soft mutation of b, d, g representing primitive mb, nd, ñg, but in some cases it
would seem that these sounds behave like "normal" b, d, g, so that the lenited variants are v, dh, and zero,
respectively. One "Noldorin" example is Nann Orothvor "Vale of Black Horror" (LR:355 s.v. DUN), where
orothvor ("horror-black") is a lenited form of gorothvor, the first element goroth "horror" representing the
stem ÑGOROTH of similar meaning (LR:377). It is remarkable that even g representing primitive ñg lenits to
zero in Orothvor. In Sindarin as opposed to "Noldorin", a noun in genitive position would not be lenited, so
we would see Nan(n) Gorothvor without any mutation. But in Sindarin, lenition does occur in comparable
positions, like when an adjective in apposition (following the noun) undergoes soft mutation. We are left to
wonder whether an adjective like goll "wise" (< stem ÑGOL) would appear as 'oll or ngoll in this position;
maybe both would be permissible. Above, we have listed nôl as the lenited form of dôl "head" (< stem
NDOL), but in the name of the mountain Fanuidhol "Cloudyhead" (found in LotR itself and therefore
decidedly Sindarin rather than "Noldorin"), lenition d > dh is seen. Would it then be permissible to use i dhôl
rather than i nôl for "the head"? Had Tolkien decided that the stem was DOL, not NDOL as it had been in the
Etymologies (LR:376)?
3) The lenition m > v is sometimes ignored. Contrast a name like Eryn Vorn "Dark Wood" (UT:436,
262, cf. morn "dark") with Ered Mithrin "Grey Mountains" on the Map to LotR, or Imloth Melui in
LotR3/V ch. 8 - not translated but evidently meaning "Lovely Flower-Vale". In light of the example Eryn
Vorn, we must assume that *Imloth Velui and *Ered Vithrin would have been equally possible - and
conversely, if we can have Imloth Melui and Ered Mithrin, we can presumably have *Eryn Morn as well.
Above we noted that one has to rely on the context to distinguish the lenited variants of two adjectives like
bell "strong" and mell "dear"; e.g. to decide whether i vess vell means "the strong woman" or "the dear
woman". But if the lenition m > v is ignored, we can have the unambiguous phrase i vess mell for the latter
meaning.
4. THE ADJECTIVE
Typical adjectival endings are -eb, -en and -ui: aglareb "glorious" (< aglar "glory"), brassen "white-hot" (<
brass "white heat"), uanui "monstrous, hideous" (< úan "monster") (AKLA-R, BAN, BARÁS). However,
many adjectives have no special endings, and the word-form as such sometimes belongs to more than one part
of speech. Morn "dark" can be both adjective and noun, just like its English gloss.
Adjectives agree with their nouns in number. It seems that adjectives form their plurals following patterns
similar to the noun plurals, e.g. malen "yellow", pl. melin (SMAL). Note that the initial consonant of
adjectives following the noun they describe is lenited (see above).
In PM:358, Aran Einior is translated "the Elder King". Einior is our sole example of the comparative form
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of the adjective; the uninflected form is iaur (seen in the name Iant Iaur "the Old Brigde"). The prefix ein-
seems to be related to the Quenya superlative prefix an-. The prefix may not have the form ein- prefixed to
any adjective; it seems to be umlauted by the following i.
It so happens that we may also have the superlative form of iaur "old"; during the Council of Elrond, the
Sindarin name of Tom Bombadil was given as Iarwain, meaning "Eldest". The ending -wain would seem to
be the superlative suffix. Why not *Iorwain, with the normal monophthongization au > o? (David Salo
answers, "Because you are looking at the direct descendant of a form like *Yarwanya (perhaps, I am not sure
of the exact form of the final element) in which the vowel was in a closed syllable." I don't feel much wiser,
but then I am not so deep into Eldarin phonology as David is.)
5. VERBS
"The Sindarin verbal system is not fully understood - far from it." So began the section on the Verb in my
original Sindarin article, and this is to a large extent true still. However, I have since had the opportunity to
acquaint myself with David Salo's interpretations and theories regarding the Sindarin verb, and what follows
owes very much to his work. David's theories do seem to make a great deal of sense. It must still be realized
that we have desperately few examples to go on, and that many conclusions must remain tentative at this
stage. To be sure, hundreds of verbs are listed in the Etymologies, but we have so little actual Sindarin text
that we cannot always be sure how these verbs are to be conjugated. In Etym itself, Tolkien did sometimes list
a few inflected forms of a verb next to the basic form, but his notes are extremely dense, and often it is not
even made clear what the inflected forms are intended to mean. But if we try to generalize from our few
examples, taking into account everything we think we know about Eldarin phonology, the evolution of
Sindarin and the primitive verbal system as it can be inferred from Quenya, we may arrive at something like
the system we are going to sketch here. The details can certainly be argued. To make this readable, I will for
the most part skip the complex deductions that underlie the following scenario. The actual evidence, as well
as the reasoning underlying the reconstructed system presented here, are presented in a separate article. While
I will claim that the evidence has been thoroughly examined, future publications may well blow parts of the
system sketched below to pieces. Yet I think we can be reasonably sure of the general outlines.
General: There seem to be two main categories of Sindarin verbs. As in Quenya, we can speak of derived
verbs and basic verbs. The first, and larger, class consists of verbs that were originally formed by combining a
primitive stem with some ending, such as *-nâ (Sindarin -na), *-jâ (Sindarin -ia), *-tâ (Sindarin
-da/-tha/-ta/-na, depending on the phonological environment), *-râ (Sindarin -ra) or *-â (Sindarin -a). Since
all of these end in -a, this class can also be termed the A-stems. The other, smaller class consists of verbs that
come directly from a primitive stem with no suffixes. For instance, nag- "bite" is simply the naked stem NAK
as it appears in Sindarin. Since this category of verbs have present-tense stems in -i-, they may also be termed
I-stems.
Suffixes: In many forms, Sindarin verbs (derived or basic) take endings for number and person. Sindarin, like
Quenya, adds the ending -r to verbs with a plural subject; cf. the phase gyrth i-chuinar "dead that live" in
Letters:417 (cuinar "live, are alive", here incidentally in nasal-mutated form chuinar, being the plural of
cuina "lives, is alive"). Other endings denote various persons. Known pronominal endings include - n for "I",
-m for "we" and apparently -ch or -g for "you". It is possible that the plural ending -r can denote "they" as
well as mere plurality. The verb cuina- "live" can evidently have forms like cuinon "I live" (for *cuinan),
cuinam "we live", cuinach or cuinag "you live" and cuinar "they live". The 3rd person singular does not
seem to have any ending by itself: cuina "(he, she, it) lives". The 3rd person singular can in some cases be
considered the basic form to which the various endings are added to produce forms for other persons and
numbers.
I. DERIVED VERBS
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The conjugation of the derived verbs (A-stems) seems to be fairly straightforward, for the most part involving
simply a series of suffixes. Indirect evidence may suggest that Tolkien would have termed this class the
"weak" verbs.
The infinitive is formed with the ending -o, displacing the ending -a:
The (3rd person singular) present tense is identical to the A-stem itself:
The plural or pronominal endings mentioned above are added to this form: broniar "(they) endure", broniam
"we endure" etc. Notice that the ending -n for "I" causes the final -a to become -o instead: hence bronion "I
endure", dagron "I make war" etc.
The (3rd person singular) past tense of this class of verbs is in most cases formed with the suffix -nt:
Again, plural or pronominal endings may be added, just like in the present tense. If so, the suffix -nt becomes
-nne- before the ending follows:
broniant "endured" > bronianner "they endured" (also plural, e.g. in Edhil bronianner "the
Elves endured"), broniannen "I endured", broniannem "we endured" etc.
For, say, "(they) sang" we would expect linnanner (since "sang" is linnant), but wherever "double nn"
would occur, the verb is probably contracted: "(they) sang" may simply be linner.
The future tense is formed by adding the suffix -tha to the stem:
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Again, plural and pronominal endings can be added, following the same rules as in the present tense. As in the
present tense, the ending -n for "I" causes the final -a to become -o instead: broniathon "I will endure"
(linnathon for "I will sing" is actually attested in LotR). Otherwise, the final -a is unchanged: broniatham
"we will endure", linnathar "they will sing" etc.
The imperative is formed with the ending -o, displacing the final -a. In this class of verbs, the imperative is
therefore identical to the infinitive (see above). The imperative in -o covers all persons (Letters:427); hence
the form is the same no matter whether the command is directed to one person or to several people. One Elf
cried daro! "halt!" to the entire Fellowship as they were entering Lórien; see LotR1/II ch. 6. (In Quenya, it is
optional whether one wants to make a plural/singular distinction in the imperative; we don't know if this can
be done at all in Sindarin.)
The active participle (also called present participle) is an adjective derived from a verb, describing the
condition one is in when carrying out the action denoted by the verb (if you sing, you are singing; therefore,
singing is the participle of the verb "to sing"). In Sindarin, the active participle of derived verbs is formed by
means of the ending -ol, displacing the final -a of the verbal stem:
(The example glavrol is attested, LR:358 s.v. GLAM; cf. also chwiniol "whirling" from chwinio "to whirl",
LR:388 s.v. SWIN. In mature Sindarin, as opposed to the "Noldorin" of the Etymologies, we should probably
read hw- for chw-.) It seems that the adjectival participles so derived do not have an explicit plural form, as
most other adjectives do.
There is also another active participle, that may be termed the perfective active participle. In meaning it is
similar to the normal active participle in -ol described above, except that it does not describe the state of
someone (something) that is carrying out the action of the verb; it describes the state of someone already
having carried out this action. It seems to have the ending -iel, displacing the final -a of the stem (or in the
case of verbs in -ia, this whole ending):
In the case of the numerous verbs in -ia, parallel forms suggest that the stem-vowel should be lengthened, as
in hwíniel from hwinia- above. (The verbs siria- "flow", thilia- "glister" and tiria- "watch" would
presumably behave in the same way: síriel, thíliel, tíriel.) However, this has somewhat complicated
consequences. If we dare to trust the phonological system we glimpse in Tolkien's works, we must often take
into account what the original vowel in these verbs were.
Where the original, primitive root or stem had the vowel A, the perfective participle would show ó
(representing long á, since earlier long á had become ó in Sindarin):
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Notice especially egleria- "glorify" (related to aglar "glory"), that may have the perfective participle aglóriel
"having glorified".
Where the original stem had the vowel O or U, the perfective participle would show ú (representing long ó,
since earlier long ó had become ú in Sindarin):
delia- "hide, conceal" (stem DUL) > dúliel "having hidden, having concealed"
elia- "rain" (stem ULU) > úliel "having rained"
eria- "raise" (stem ORO) > úriel "having raised"
heria- "begin suddenly" (stem KHOR) > húriel "having suddenly begun"
(In archaic Sindarin, it was easier to keep this category apart from the one above, since these verbs earlier
showed ö instead of e: dölia- etc. After ö became e, these verbs must be memorized.) The verb bronia-
"endure" (stem BORÓN-) would likewise yield brúniel "having endured". Indeed it is a mystery why bronia-
does not appear as *brenia-, archaic *brönia-; in all comparable cases, the ending -ia causes umlaut (cf. for
instance delia-, older dölia-, from *duljâ- or later *dolja-).
Other derived verbs than the ones in -ia may show simple umlaut when the ending -iel is added (we cannot be
sure of this). If so, the vowels a and o both become e (again, o became ö in archaic Sindarin, ö later merging
with e):
Verbal stem with the vowels e or i would not be affected by the umlaut:
Verbs with a diphthong (ei, ui, ae, au etc.) would not change, either:
The last of the participial forms we know anything about is the passive participle (or past participle), an
adjective describing the condition of something or someone that is (or has been) exposed to the action of the
corresponding verb: If someone sees you, you are seen; "seen" is therefore the passive participle of the verb
"to see". "Seen" is actually irregular; in most cases, English forms its passive participles by means of the
ending -ed (e.g. killed from kill). Sindarin normally forms its past participles with the adjectival ending -en
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added to the (3rd person singular) past tense. Since derived verbs form their past tenses in -nt, the
corresponding passive participles end in -nnen representing -nten (Sindarin phonology demanding that the
cluster nt becomes nn between vowels):
gosta- "fear exceedingly" > gostannen "feared, dreaded" (cf. gostant as the past tense of the
verb)
egleria- "glorify, praise" > egleriannen "glorified"
eitha- "insult" > eithannen "insulted"
esta- "call, name" > estannen "called, named"
ertha- "unite" > erthannen "united"
gruitha- "terrify" > gruithannen "terrified"
harna- "wound" > harnannen "wounded"
maetha- "fight" > maethannen "fought"
baugla- "oppress" > bauglannen "oppressed"
As the past participle of linna- "sing" we might expect linnannen ("sung"), but as in other cases where
"double nn" would occur, the form is probably simply contracted: linnen.
In form, the past participles coincide with the 1st person past tense: gostannen could also mean "I feared",
egleriannen is also "I glorified" etc. The context must decide how the form is to be understood.
In some cases, where the corresponding verb is intransitive (sc. when it cannot normally take a direct object,
e.g. "go"), the past participle may describe the state that the one performing the verbal action is in having
completed it. For instance, one who goes will thereafter be gone ("gone" is the past participle of "go"). In a
similar manner, the past participle of an intransitive verb like lacha- "flame" (lachannen) may perhaps be
used to describe a fire having flamed. But in Sindarin, it may be better to use the perfective active participle
instead (like lechiel in this case); see above.
Unlike the active participles (we think), the past or passive participle has a distinct plural form (used when the
participle describes a plural word). This is formed by altering the ending -nnen to -nnin, combined with
I-umlaut throughout the word. As usual, the effect of this is that the vowels a and o, where they occur, are
altered to e (but again, e from o was actually ö in archaic Sindarin):
Notice that the ending -a in the verbal stem itself, here the final -a of harna and gosta-, is also umlauted to e:
In the plural, -annen always becomes -ennin.
For a similar reason, it may be that the plural past participle of the verb boda- "ban, prohibit" should be
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bodennin, NOT **bedennin with umlaut o > e, since this o represents an older diphthong au (compare the
related word baw! "no! don't!")
The last form of the verb that we know anything about is the gerund, actually a derived noun, the verbal
action considered as a "thing". In English, gerunds are derived by means of the ending -ing, e.g. thinking from
the verb think. In English, the gerund and the active participle cannot be distinguished by their form; both end
in -ing. However, while the participle has an adjectival function, the gerund is a noun, and in Sindarin, the
two are distinct also in form. All derived verbs, or A-stems, form their gerunds by means of the ending -d:
It seems that gerunds are often used where English would have an infinitive instead. In the King's Letter
(SD:129), Aragorn writes that he aníra...suilannad mhellyn în = "wishes...to greet his friends", literally
"wishes greeting (of) his friends". It is indeed possible that Tolkien had decided to drop the infinitives in -o
and -i (see below concerning the latter), replacing them with gerunds. The infinitives in -o and -i are not
attested in any sources later than the Etymologies. This may not mean much, since our post-Etym evidence is
very scanty, but I would generally use gerunds for English infinitives when writing in Sindarin.
NOTE: As mentioned above, the object of a sentence undergoes lenition (soft mutation). It should be noted that in the
phrase aníra...suilannad mhellyn în = "wishes...to greet his friends" or literally "wishes...greeting (of) his friends", the
object from a grammatical point of view would undoubtedly be the suilannad or "greeting". However, the logical object is
mellyn "friends", and this is the word that is lenited (to mhellyn). The gerund suilannad is not lenited (to *huilannad).
This strongly suggests that the gerund is here perceived as an infinitive, not as a noun that could be lenited as the object of
a sentence; the lenition affects the logical object "friends" instead.
The conjugation of the basic, ending-less verbs (aka primary verbs) is somewhat more complex than that of
the derived verbs. Tolkien may have thought of this class as the "strong" verbs; cf. WJ:415.
The infinitive is formed with the ending -i (not -o as in the case of the A-stems above):
Some verbs inevitably coincide in the infinitive; for instance, can- "call, shout" and cen- "see" would both
have the infinitive ceni. The context must decide which verb is intended. (But as suggested above, Sindarin
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would often use the gerund where English has an infinitive, and here the distinction is preserved: caned
"shouting", but cened "seeing".)
The present tense of these verbs is formed in two different ways. The third person singular, that requires
no further ending, is the same as the verbal stem, but in the case of monosyllabic verbal stems, the vowel
becomes long:
(These may also cover the English compound tenses: "is stopping", "is fading" etc., but we cannot be sure; see
Note (i) below.) Attested examples include blâb as the present tense of blebi- "to flap" (LR:380 s.v. PALAP),
and - with a clearer wording - the entry TUL- in LR:395, where tôl is translated "he comes", thus being clearly
identified as the 3rd person singular of teli "to come". That the form itself is simply 3rd person and not
necessarily "masculine" or even animate ("he comes") is apparent from another attestation, the sentence tôl
acharn "vengeance comes" (WJ:254; according to WJ:301 Tolkien later wrote tûl acharn instead, but
accepting this change would cause such an upheaval in the verbal system and the phonology that it is
probably best ignored at this point). Acharn "vengeance" would not normally be referred to with the pronoun
"he".
NOTE (i): Pêd as the present tense "speaks" is also attested (incidentally in lenited form: bêd) in VT41:11, where it is seen
to correspond to the Quenya aorist quete. Whether Sindarin has an aorist tense distinct from the present tense is unclear; if
so, forms like pêd are probably aorists: "speaks" as opposed to present tense "is speaking".
NOTE (ii): When final, v is spelt f. Therefore, the 3rd person singular present tense of lav- "lick" is lâf. In other forms,
where the v is not final, it would also be spelt v (e.g. levin "I lick" - cf. below).
In the case of polysyllabic basic verbal stems (usually verbs with some prepositional element prefixed), there
is no lengthening of the vowel, and the 3rd person singular present tense is identical to the verbal stem itself:
osgar- "cut around, amputate" > osgar "cuts around, amputates" (this form is explicitly
mentioned in LR:379 s.v. OS)
In all present-tense forms except the 3rd person singular, some ending is required, as outlined initially. These
endings are added to a form of the verb that is identical to the infinitive, hence with the ending -i and umlaut
where the verbal stem has the vowel a or o (while i and e are not affected in any way):
dar- "stop, halt" > derin "I stop, halt", derir "(they) stop, halt" (with multiple subjects, e.g. in
Edhil derir "the Elves halt"), derig/derich "you stop", derim "we stop"
fir- "fade, die" > firin "I die" etc. with the various endings
ped- "speak" > pedin "I speak" etc.
tol- "come" > telin "I come" etc.
osgar- "amputate" > esgerin "I amputate" etc.
This form has long been thought of as the perfect tense, which was also the view presented in earlier versions
of this article. This was primarily because of Gilraen's linnod in LotR Appendix A: Onen i-Estel Edain,
ú-chebin estel anim, translated in a footnote as "I gave Hope to the Dúnedain, I have kept no hope for
myself" (emphasis added). However, in light of other examples, it may be best to see ú-chebin as a
present-tense form (and translate "I do not keep [any] hope for myself"), assuming that Tolkien's perfect-tense
translation "I have kept no hope for myself" is slightly free and makes a concession to natural English. (It used
to be unclear what the basic form of ú-chebin is; removing the negative prefix ú- "not" and the soft mutation
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h > ch that it triggers, we are left with hebin "I keep". This could come from hab-, heb- or hob- "keep", the
umlaut neutralizing the vowels in the form hebin. However, the stem KHEP "retain, keep" published in
VT41:6 must be the root underlying this verb; hence the basic form is evidently heb-.)
The past tense of basic verbs involves a nasal suffix or infix, though it is sometimes assimilated beyond
recognition. We will first concentrate on the 3rd person singular forms, since the other forms, in turn, may be
derived from them.
In the case of basic verbs in -r, an -n is simply suffixed to the stem (a remnant of a longer past tense ending
-ne, still current in Quenya):
Verbal stems in -n probably behave in the same way (cen- "see" > cenn "saw"). As for verbs in -l, the ending
-n is probably assimilated to it (pel- "wither" > pell "withered"). We lack examples, but extrapolations from
Quenya would point in this direction.
When it comes to verbal stems ending in -b, -d, -g, -v, -dh, the nasal element denoting past tense would
manifest as an infix instead of as a prefix. That is, it is not added to the final consonant of the stem, but
inserted before it. This has some consequences that might surprise students not familiar with the evolution of
Eldarin. In Sindarin, b, d, g, v, dh following a vowel descend from earlier p, t, c, b (or m) and d, respectively.
But where the nasal infix intruded between the vowel and the consonant, this change could not take place:
The infix "shielded" the consonant from the vowel that would otherwise cause it to change. Hence b, d, g
seemingly reverts to p, t, c following the infix. Actually they do not revert; they simply never changed:
had- "hurl" > pa.t. hant "hurled" (original stem KHAT; this past tense is actually listed in
LR:363)
cab- "jump" > pa.t. camp "jumped" (original stem KAP)
dag- "slay" > pa.t. danc "slew" (original stem NDAK; Sindarin c = k).
(It will be observed that the nasal infix, that most often manifests as n, is assimilated to m before p.)
Presumably dh from earlier d likewise reverts to its original quality:
One attested case is gwend (or gwenn) as the past tense of a verb gwedhi "to bind" (LR:397 s.v. WED-,
where the infinitive is given as "gwedi", but this is surely a misreading for gweði = gwedhi; compare the
related word angweð = angwedh). However, Tolkien noted that gwend was later replaced by gwedhant
(spelt gweðant in LR), as if this were a derived verb *gwedha-; perhaps the past tenses in -nd were somehow
disliked by the Elves (/by Tolkien). It may be that the past tense rend "sowed" (not directly attested in
Tolkien's papers) was likewise replaced by redhant in later Sindarin.
Verbs of more than one syllable would have past tenses in -nn instead of -nd, if we dare to trust our
reconstructed Sindarin phonology. There are only two such verbs known: neledh- "go in, enter" (pa.t.
nelenn?) and edledh- "go into exile" (pa.t. edlenn?). The latter verb is not directly attested, but is
reconstructed from "Noldorin" egledh- (LR:368 s.v. LED).
Verbs with final -v may also be slightly special. In most cases, post-vocalic v would come from earlier b, so
certainly these verbs at one point ended in -mb (the nasal infix manifesting as m before b, just as before p).
But final mb became simple m in Sindarin. (Cf. WJ:394, where Tolkien states that primitive *lambê "tongue"
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became lam in Sindarin, surely representing earlier *lamb. Compare the "Noldorin" form lham(b) in LR:367
s.v. LAB, that would correspond to Sindarin lam(b).) Hence, basic verbs in -v may have past tenses in -m, for
-mb:
lav- "lick" > lam (for lamb) "licked" (the noun lam "tongue" is related and shares precisely the
same phonological history)
As mentioned above, the forms so far derived are 3rd person singulars. Other forms are quite easily derived
from them by means of the same endings that were mentioned above: -n "I", -m "we", -r "they" or just
plurality, etc. The question is, what connecting vowel do we add between the verb and the ending? In terms of
phonological history, we would definitely expect e: The Sindarin form corresponding to Quenya quenten "I
said" would be expected to be *pennen. However, our one-and-only example points in a different direction,
and this is one of the cases where we must generalize from one single form, with great consequences for an
entire class of verbs. I would have liked to have other (and in particular later) examples, to make sure that this
was not just a passing whim in Tolkien's evolution of "Noldorin"/Sindarin, or indeed a misreading on
Christopher Tolkien's part.
The example in question is found in the Etymologies, LR:363, stem KHAT "hurl". Here we have a verb hedi,
clearly the perfectly regular infinitive of had-, but then two forms explicitly identified as "pa.t." are listed:
hennin and hant. The latter is transparently the 3rd person singular, "(he/she/it) hurled", formed from had-
with a nasal infix according to the rules we have tried to sketch (indeed using this example). But hennin, with
the ending -n that is known to mean "I", must be the 1st person past tense: "I hurled". The change nt >
intervocalic nn is what we would expect on phonological grounds, but it is surprising that i is used as the
connecting vowel before the pronominal ending is added. It would be tempting to dismiss hennin as an error
for hannen, but the umlaut a > e is exactly what we would expect when there is an i following in the next
syllable. We do know cases of confusion a/e and e/i in the texts produced by various editors trying to decipher
Tolkien's handwriting, but to assume that Christopher Tolkien managed to misread two vowels in the same
word, and that the result just happened to beautifully comply with Sindarin phonology, may be assuming too
much. It may be that JRRT imagined that forms like hannen had been reformed on analogy with the
corresponding present-tense forms (in this case hedin "I hurl"), the connecting vowel i and therefore also
umlaut being introduced in the past tense as well as the present: hannen > hennin.
Accepting this example, we must formulate this rule: All past tense forms of the basic verbs, except for the
3rd person singular, are formed by adding -i- and the appropriate ending to the 3rd person singular itself:
gir- "shudder" > 3 pers. sg. pa.t. girn "(he, she, it) shuddered" > girnin "I shuddered", girnim
"we shuddered", girnig/girnich "you shuddered", girnir "(they) shuddered"
cen- "see" > 3 pers. sg. pa.t. cenn "(he, she, it) saw" > cennin "I saw" (etc. with the various
endings)
As the example hant > hennin indicates, the connecting vowel i triggers the normal umlauts in the syllable
before it, a and o both becoming e:
dar- "stop, halt" > 3 pers. sg. pa.t. darn "(he, she, it) halted" > dernin "I halted" (etc.)
nor- "run" > 3 pers. sg. pa.t. norn "(he, she, it) ran" > nernin (archaic nörnin) "I ran" (etc.)
The example hant > hennin also illustrates another phenomenon: Not all the final consonant clusters
occurring in the past tense can remain unchanged when they are no longer final at all, but have become
intervocalic because an ending has been added. The clusters -nt, -nc, -mp become -nn-, -ng-, -mm- instead:
ped- "speak" > 3 pers. sg. pa.t. pent "(he, she, it) spoke" > pennin "I spoke" (etc.)
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dag- "slay" > 3 pers. sg. pa.t. danc "(he, she, it) slew" > dengin "I slew" (etc.)
cab- "jump" > 3 pers. sg. pa.t. camp "(he, she, it) jumped" > cemmin "I jump" (etc.)
gwedh- "bind" > 3 pers. pa.t. gwend "(he, she, it) bound" > gwennin "I bound" (etc.)
lav- "lick" > 3 pers. pa.t. lam "(he, she, it) licked" > lemmin "I licked" (etc.)
As for the future tense, we must assume that the ending -tha is relevant also for this class of verbs, but
obviously some connecting vowel is required. While we have no direct examples, analogy with other forms
suggests that an i would be inserted before this ending. This i would cause the normal umlauts where
appropriate. In short, the future tense of a verb of this class may be constructed by adding -tha to the
infinitive form (see rules above):
dar- "halt" > inf. deri "to halt" > future deritha "will halt"
ped- "speak" > inf. pedi "to speak" > future peditha "will speak"
gir- "shudder" > inf. giri "to shudder" > future giritha "will shudder"
tol- "come" > inf. teli "to come" (archaic töli) > future telitha (archaic tölitha) "will come"
These (3rd person singular) future-tense forms may then be further modified with the normal endings, just as
in the case of the derived verbs: telithon "I will come", telitham "we will come", plural telithar "(they) will
come" etc. (As usual, -a becomes -o before the ending -n for "I", hence telithon rather than **telithan.)
The imperative of the basic verbs is easily formed with the ending -o:
Three of these are attested in LotR: An Elf halted the Fellowship with the command daro! when they were
entering Lórien. Pedo "speak, say" is found in the Moria gate inscription (pedo mellon, which should be
translated "say friend", though Gandalf at first took it to mean "speak, friend"). Sam speaking in tongues in
Cirith Ungol used the phrase a tiro nin, Fanuilos! "o look towards me, Everwhite!" (a title of Varda); see
Letters:278 or RGEO:72 for translation.
The active participle of this class of verbs would probably take the ending -el (for older *-ila):
However, where the stem vowel is i, this ending seems to be expanded to -iel (it may be that this only occurs
following the consonants n, l, and r, and that the extra i materializing after them reflects their being
palatalized by the vowel i occurring before them at an older stage of the language):
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The perfective active participle seems to have the ending -iel combined with lengthening of the
stem-vowel. The vowel i would simply become long í:
fir- "fade, die" > fíriel "having died, having faded" (or simply "dead, faded")
glir- "sing" (/"recite") > glíriel "having sung" (/"having recited")
tir- "watch" > tíriel "having watched".
(It will be noticed that vowel-length alone distinguishes tiriel "watching" from tíriel "having watched".
Compare RGEO:73, where Tolkien explains that while palan-diriel means "gazing far away", palan-díriel
has a perfective meaning: "having gazed far away". In these words, -diriel/-díriel are simply lenited forms of
-tiriel/-tíriel.)
This lengthening of vowels probably occurred so early that the subsequent changes affecting long vowels
must also be taken into consideration. Earlier é, á, ó would be expected to manifest as í, ó, ú, respectively -
reflecting a change that took place at the Old Sindarin stage:
It seems that neither of the active participles so derived (in -el and -iel) have distinct plural forms.
The passive participle (or past participle) of this class of verbs can be constructed by adding -en to the 3rd
person singular past tense form (see rules above):
dar- "stop" > 3 pers. sg. pa.t. darn "(he, she, it) stopped" > passive participle darnen "stopped,
halted"
sol- "close" > 3 pers. sg. pa.t. soll "(he, she, it) closed" > passive participle sollen "closed" (the
latter form being all that is attested of this verb: LotR refers to the Fen Hollen or "Closed Door" in Minas
Tirith, hollen presumably being a lenited form of sollen)
tir- "watch, guard" > 3 pers. sg. pa.t. tirn "(he, she, it) watched, guarded" > passive participle
tirnen "watched, guarded"
(The latter is attested in the Silmarillion, in the name Talath Dirnen "Guarded Plain": Dirnen is the lenited
form of tirnen.)
Again, when another vowel comes to follow them, final -nt, -nc, -mp, -nd, -m become -nn-, -ng-, -mm-,
-nn-, -mm-, respectively:
ped- "speak" > 3 pers. sg. pa.t. pent "(he, she, it) spoke" > passive participle pennen "spoken"
dag- "slay" > 3 pers. sg. pa.t. danc "(he, she, it) slew" > pass. part. dangen "slain" (attested in
LR:375 s.v. NDAK)
hab- "clothe" > 3 pers. sg. pa.t. hamp "(he, she, it) clothed" > pass. part. hammen "clothed"
redh- "sow" > 3 pers. sg. pa.t. rend "(he, she, it) sowed" > pass. part. rennen "sowed"
lav- "lick" > 3 pers. sg. pa.t. lam "(he, she, it) licked" > pass. part. lammen "licked"
These passive participles in -en would have plural forms in -in, causing the normal umlauts: a and o both
become e:
(Compare the Haudh-en-Ndengin or "Hill of Slain" mentioned in the Silmarillion; ndengin is a form of
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dengin.) As usual, the vowels e and i would not be affected in any way:
Finally we have the gerund, the verbal noun, that may also be used to translate English infinitives (see
above). The gerunds of basic verbs are easily formed with the ending -ed:
cab- "jump" > cabed "jumping" (as noun, = "a jump, a leap")
cen- "see, look" > cened "looking"
glir- "sing" > glired "singing"
tol- "come" > toled "coming"
The Sindarin verbs cab- "jump, leap" and cen- "see, look" are actually attested as gerunds only! According to
the Silmarillion, the gorge where Túrin slew Glaurung was called Cabed-en-Aras or "Deer's Leap"
("Jumping-of the-Deer"). The verb cab- is obviously to be referred to the stem KAP "leap" listed in the
Etymologies (LR.362), but it is not mentioned there. Cened "looking" occurs as part of the compound
cenedril "looking-glass" in RS:466.
Some verbs that by their form would appear to be A-stems in effect sit on the fence between the two
conjugations outlined above. An example is the verb drava- "hew". In most forms it is probably a
well-behaved A-stem: infinitive dravo, present tense drava, future tense dravatha, imperative dravo, active
participle dravol, gerund dravad. But in the past tense we would expect the form *dravant, which does not
occur. In Tolkien's notes as reproduced in LR:354 s.v. DARÁM, he gave the 1st person past tense as
drammen ("I hewed"), pointing to a 3rd person form dram ("he, she, it hewed"). (There was also an irregular
past tense dramp, that we need not concern ourselves with here - see part IV below.) A past tense dram is
precisely what we would expect if this were a basic verb, with stem drav- (infinitive **drevi) instead of
drava- (inf. dravo). Another example is the verb nara- "tell" (infinitive naro, LR:374 s.v. NAR2); the Old
Sindarin ("ON") past tense is given as narne, implying that the Sindarin past tense would be narn rather than
**narant. In short: A number of A-stems form their (3rd person sg.) past tense as if the final vowel did not
exist; the past tense is formed according to the rules of the basic verbs instead. Our few examples suggest that
this group includes most verbs with a single consonant before the final -a, as long as this consonant is not th
or ch (representing earlier consonant clusters). Ignoring the final vowel and employing the same rules as for
the basic verbs, we would arrive at past tense forms like the following:
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(Concerning the shift o > u in groga-, loda-, soga-, toba- > pa.t. grunc, lunt, sunc, tump, see section IV
below.)
A number of three-syllable verbal stems in -da must also be assigned to the mixed conjugation: aphada-
"follow", athrada- "traverse", gannada- "(play a) harp", lathrada- "eavesdrop", limmida- "moisten",
nimmida- "whiten" and tangada- "make firm": past tenses aphant, athrant, gannant, lathrant, limmint,
nimmint, tangant, or with endings aphanne- etc. (The "Noldorin" past tense lhimmint, that would
correspond to Sindarin limmint, is mentioned by Tolkien in LR:369 s.v. LINKWI.)
Long vowels would probably be shortened before the consonant cluster arising in the past tense:
When further endings are to be added (to produce forms other than the 3rd person singular), the connecting
vowel is here e, as the example drammen "I hewed" demonstrates.
NOTE: Since these verbs might seem to jump over to the I-stems in the past tense, we might have expected the connecting
vowel i as in hennin "I hurled", hence **dremmin "I hewed", but this is not the case. This might support the theory that
the connecting vowel i in the past tense arose on analogy with its use in the present tense ( hedin "I hurl"). The verb drava-
does not have i in the present tense (drava "hews, is hewing"), and hence does not show i in the past tense, either. Instead
we find e, like we would expect on phonological reasons alone: drammen.
As usual, final -m, -nc, -nt, -mp becomes -mm-, -ng-, -nn-, -mm- between vowels:
drava- "hew" > dram "(he, she, it) hewed" > drammen "I hewed", drammem "we hewed",
drammeg/drammech "you heaved", drammer "(they) hewed"
laba- "hop" > lamp "hopped" > lammen "I hopped" (etc. with the various endings)
loda- "float" > lunt "floated" > lunnen "I floated" (etc.)
soga- "drink" > sunc "drank" > sungen "I drank" (etc.)
The passive participle would be derived with the ending -en, just as in the case of normal basic verbs. Thus,
as usual, the past participle is identical to the 1st person singular form, hence drammen could also be
"hewed" as a participle, sungen is also "drunk" etc. These participles would have plural forms in -in (causing
umlaut), in other words behaving just like the passive participles of normal basic verbs. See rules in section II
above. (The umlaut product of u, where it occurs, would be y. Hence the plural form of sungen would be
syngin.)
As noted above, these verbs probably have active participles in -ol, like normal A-stems (drava- "hew" >
dravol "hewing"). The perfective active participle would presumably be formed according to the rules of the
I-stems, as if the final vowel did not exist. Hence we would see the ending -iel combined with lengthening of
the stem-vowel, í, ó, ú representing í, á, ó (drava- "hew" > dróviel "having hewed", soga- "drink" > súgiel
"having drunk"). If the vowel is long already, we must assume that it simply stays long (síla- "shine" > síliel
"having shone").
By adhering to the rules above, one would get most of the verbs right - assuming that the Sindarin verbal
system has been correctly reconstructed. We are left with a happily quite small number of special cases. Some
of them are readily explicable in terms of the phonological evolution Tolkien imagined, some may reflect the
shifting whims of the Language-maker, some are downright weird - hopefully not implying that our
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reconstruction of the Sindarin verbal system is flawed with major shortcomings and failures to second-guess
Tolkien's intentions.
Original U surviving before a nasal: At one point in the evolution of Sindarin, original u in very many
cases became o. For instance, the verb soga- "drink" comes from a stem SUK. However, this change did not
occur before a nasal, like n or m. So if a verbal stem containing the vowel o < u has a past tense form
involving nasal infixion, the original quality of the vowel would persist before this consonant. Hence, Tolkien
noted that the 3rd person sg. past tense of soga- is sunc (LR:388 s.v. SUK, though the form sogant was also
valid, the verb being transferred to the normal A-stem class). Other likely cases of the same phenomenon (not
directly attested in Tolkien's papers):
groga- "feel terror" > 3 pers. sg. pa.t. grunc (original stem RUK)
loda- "float" > pa.t. lunt (stem LUT)
nod- "tie, bind" > pa.t. nunt (stem NUT)
toba- "cover, roof over" > pa.t. tump (stem *TUP)
tog- "lead, bring" > pa.t. tunc (stem TUK)
NOTE: In the Etymologies, LR:378 s.v. NOT, the verb nod- is given as "nud-", but this would contradict everything we
think we know about Sindarin phonology. The verb toba- [inf. tobo] is derived from a stem TOP in LR:379, in which case
the past tense would be tomp, but the Quenya verb untúpa "covers" in Namárië in LotR suggests that Tolkien had decided
that the stem was TUP instead, though a distinct stem TUP occurs in Etym.
Grunc, lunt, sunc and tump would appear as grunge-, lunne-, sunge-, tumme- before the normal
plural/pronominal endings - grunger "(they) felt fear", grungen "I felt fear" etc. If the example hant >
hennin (LR:363 s.v. KHAT) holds, we would in the case of nunt and tunc see the connective vowel i before
the normal endings are added. This i would trigger umlaut u > y, so (with the normal change of intervocalic
nt, nc to nn, ng) we would have for instance 1st person sg. nynnin "I tied" and tyngin "I led, I brought". (But
groga-, loda-, toba- would belong to the mixed conjugation, with e rather than i as the connecting vowel, and
hence no umlaut either: grungen "I felt fear", lunnen "I floated", tummen "I covered".)
The past participles of all the verbs we are dealing with here can be formed, quite regularly, by adding -en to
the 3 sg. past tense (with the normal changes in final consonant groups when they become intervocalic
instead):
groga- "feel terror" > pa.t. grunc > passive participle grungen
loda- "float" > pa.t. lunt > passive participle lunnen
nod- "tie, bind" > pa.t. nunt > passive participle nunnen
soga- "drink" > pa.t. sunc > passive participle sungen
toba- "cover, roof over" > pa.t. tump > passive participle tummen
tog- "lead, bring" > pa.t. tunc > passive participle tungen
And again, we would see umlaut u > y in the plural forms of these participles: gryngin, lynnin, nynnin,
tymmin, syngin, tyngin. (A few of these verbs, "feel terror" and "float", may not normally have passive
participles, though - since they are intransitive.)
But in the case of groga-, loda-, soga- and toba-, it may also be permissible to take the easier path and simply
let them go as A-stems (Tolkien made an explicit note to this effect in the case of soga-). Hence we would
have (3 pers. sg) past tenses grogant, lodant, sogant, tobant (-nt regularly becoming -nne- before endings),
and past participles grogannen, lodannen, sogannen, tobannen (pl. gregennin, ledennin, segennin,
tebennin - or archaic grögennin etc.)
Impersonal verbs:A "Noldorin" impersonal verb bui "it is necessary, one must, one is compelled to"
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appears in the Etymologies; in Sindarin it would have to become boe. We have no examples, but it can
probably be used in such contexts as boe maethad in Yrch "it is necessary to fight the Orcs". (English "must"
may be expressed as "it is necessary for X to do Y": Boe 'nin Edhil maethad in Yrch "it is necessary for the
Elves to fight the Orcs" = "the Elves must fight the Orcs"; boe anim baded "it is necessary for me to go" = "I
must go".) Perhaps boe has no inflected forms for tense etc.; nothing of the kind is suggested in the
Etymologies.
Another impersonal verb is elia- "rain". The "Noldorin" impersonal form expressing "it rains", namely oeil [=
öil], later eil, is given in the Etymologies (LR:396 s.v. ULU). In Third Age Sindarin, the form would be ail.
The past tense, denoting "it rained", could be aul or regular eliant. We may conjugate the verb like this:
infinitive elio "to rain", present tense ail = impersonal 3 sg. form "it rains", past tense eliant or aul =
impersonal 3 sg "it rained", future eliatha = "it will rain", imperative elio "rain!", participle eliol "raining"
(perfective úliel "having rained"), gerund eliad "raining". A verb with this meaning would hardly have any
passive participles. The form would be eliannen, or, if we use aul as the past tense, olen.
Various irregular verbs: In Gilraen's linnod, the word onen (or in some editions of LotR, ónen) is used for
"I gave". This would seem to be the irregular past tense of the verb anna- "give" listed in the Etymologies (if
the verb were regular, the past tense should be **annant, with annannen > annen for "I gave"). Onen points
to a 3rd person singular form aun "(he, she, it) gave", that could be regularly derived from an older past tense
áne (compare óne as the past tense of the Quenya verb onta- "beget", LR:379 s.v. ONO; given the fact that
Sindarin anna- corresponds to Quenya anta-, it is not implausible to assume that a past tense áne may have
existed at some stage, and it is actually attested in QL:31). Aun becomes one- when an ending is to be added,
the diphthong au being monophthongized to o. Suggested conjugation of anna- "give": Infinitive anno "to
give", present tense anna "gives, is giving", irregular past tense: 3 sg. aun "gave" with endings one- (onen "I
gave", onem "we gave" etc.), future annatha "will give", imperative anno "give!", active participle annol
"giving", perfective participle óniel "having given", past participle onen (pl. onin) "given", gerund annad
"giving". Notice that there is no umlaut in the plural form of the past participle (onin, not **enin for archaic
**önin), because o from au is not umlauted like this.
In LR:375 s.v. NDAM, a verb damna- "to hammer" is listed, with a (3rd person sg.) past tense dammint. Both
forms are positively weird. There can be no doubt that damna is a misreading for damma-, the form we
would expect on phonological grounds; cf. mm in the past tense. The past tense "dammint" is very strange.
We would definitely expect dammant. Where does the i in the past tense come from in the first place, and if
it is to be there at all, why does it not cause the a to umlaut to e (i.e. demmint)? If we accept this past tense
form (with endings damminne-), we would also have to use damminnen pl. damminnin as the passive
participle. But personally I am strongly inclined to dismiss dammint as a misreading for dammant, in which
case the verb would be perfectly regular.
The verb drava- "hew" would regularly have the past tense dram (with endings dramme-). According to
LR:354 s.v. DARÁM, an irregular (3rd person sg.) past tense dramp was used in poetry - as if the verb were
**draba- instead. This form was apparently used in addition to, not instead of, the regular past tense. With
endings, dramp and dram would both appear as dramme- anyway (e.g. the 1st person pa.t. drammen that is
mentioned in this entry in the Etymologies).
As mentioned above, the regular past tense of the verb gwedh- "bind" is gwend (with endings gwenni-), but
Tolkien indicated that an irregular past gwedhant (as if this were an A-stem **gwedha-) came into use
"later". The regular past tense had come to be regarded as archaic or poetic. When the change occurred, it may
be that the passive participle "bound" was also altered from gwennen to gwedhannen. Presumably, the verb
was still inflected as a regular "primary" verb otherwise (infinitive gwedhi, present tense gwêdh or before
endings gwedhi-, future gwedhitha, imperative gwedho, active participle gwedhel, perfective participle
gwídhiel). Perhaps the verb redh- "sow" underwent a similar development, so that the regular past tense rend
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The verb soga- "drink" would regularly have the 3rd person singular soga "(he, she, it) drinks", but LR:388
indicates that the 3rd person sg. is actually sôg (as if this were a primary verb sog-). When endings are to be
added to produce other forms than the 3rd person sg., we may use the regular present-tense stem soga- (hence
sogon [for **sogan] "I drink", sogam "we drink" etc.) The (3rd person sg.) past tense is either regular sunc
(with endings sunge-) or irregular sogant (with endings soganne-); Tolkien indicated that both are valid. The
passive participle "drunk" would then be either sogannen (pl. segennin) to go with the past tense sogant, or
sungen (pl. syngin) if one prefers the past tense sunc. Hopefully, the verb soga- "drink" is otherwise a
normal, well-behaved Mixed Conjugation verb, as the infinitive sogo (given in LR:388) would suggest.
Hence future sogatha "will drink", imperative sogo "drink!", participle sogol "drinking" (perfective súgiel
"having drunk"), gerund sogad "drinking" (as noun).
NOTE: The actual wording in LR:388 s.v. SUK is "N sogo, 3 sg. sôg, pa.t. sunc, asogant (sogennen)". Sogo is clearly the
infinitive "to drink", sôg is identified as the 3rd person singular (present), and sunc is likewise identified as the (3rd person
singular) past tense. However, asogant cannot be a correct reading of Tolkien's text. It is very difficult to understand where
this a-prefix could come from, and moreover, such a prefix would in all likelihood cause soft mutation of the initial s, so
that we would have the form **ahogant. What Tolkien actually wrote in his less-than-calligraphic handwriting must have
been "sunc, or sogant", alternatively "sunc, and sogant" - a small doodle representing or or possibly and being misread as a
by Christopher Tolkien, and prefixed directly to the following verb. The form sogennen must be the passive participle
"drunk", but since the past participle is derived by suffixing -en to the past tense (nt regularly becoming nn between
vowels), we must conclude that "sogennen" is a misreading for sogannen.
The verb thora- "fence" is stated to have the passive participle thoren "fenced" (LR:393 s.v. THUR). Thoren
suggests a past tense thaur. The verb may go like this: Infinitive thoro "to fence", present tense thora
"fences, is fencing", irregular (3rd person sg.) past tense thaur (with endings thore-, e.g. thoren "I fence, I
am fencing"), future thoratha "will fence", imperative thoro "fence!", active participle thorol "fencing"
(perfective thóriel "having fenced"), passive participle thoren "fenced" (pl. thorin), gerund thorad. Notice
that the perfective participle is thóriel instead of **thúriel, and that there is no umlaut in the plural form of
the participle thoren (pl. thorin, not **therin). As in the case of other verbs, this is because o, ó here
represents the diphthong au.
The verb trenar- "recount, tell to the end" is stated to have the (3rd person singular) past tense trenor or
trener (LR:374 s.v. NAR2). Regularly, we would expect **trenarn. The verb may go like this: Infinitive
treneri "to recount", 3rd person present tense trenar "recounts, is recounting" (with endings treneri-, hence
trenerin "I recount", trenirem "we recount" etc.), irregular past tense trenor or trener (with endings either
trenori- or treneri-, hence trenorin "I recount" etc.; the alternative form trenerin would clash with the
present tense), future treneritha "will recount", imperative trenaro "recount!", active participle trenarel
"recounting" (perfective trenóriel "having recounted"), passive particle ?trenoren (plural trenorin)
"recounted", gerund trenared "recounting". Notice the absence of umlaut in the form trenorin ("I recount" or
the pl. form of the passive participle "recounted"). We would probably not find trenerin, since the o of
trenorin may represent au (in turn derived from long á, a lengthened version of the vowel of the stem NAR2;
trenor may reflect a primitive past tense *trenâr-).
In the entry MBAKH in the Etymologies (LR:372), we read: "Q[uenya] manka- trade; makar tradesman,
mankale commerce. N[oldorin] banc, banga." What are we to make of this? Banga- is surely the "Noldorin"
> Sindarin word corresponding to Quenya manka-, hence the verb "to trade". But what does banc mean? If
banc is a form of banga-, it would most likely be an irregular 3rd person past tense: "(He/she) traded"
(instead of regular bangant). Again assuming that the example hennin "I hurled" can be trusted, we would
have bengi- before endings, e.g. bengin "I traded", bengir "(they) traded" etc. The passive participle would
also be bangen (pl. bengin) rather than bangannen (pl. bengennin). But I will not rule out the possibility
that banc is not intended as a form of the verb banga- at all; it could be a noun "trade", corresponding to (but
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A possible revision of the system: One passage in the essay Quendi and Eldar from about 1960 suggests
that Tolkien had carried out a major revision in one part of the Sindarin verbal system (WJ:415). Reference is
made to
...a primitive past tense, marked as such by the 'augment' or reduplicated base-vowel, and the long
stem-vowel. Past tenses of this form were usual in Sindarin 'strong' or primary verbs: as *akâra
'made, did' > S agor.
The new rules for the derivation of the past tense of primary verbs are quite easily reconstructed: The vowel
occurring in the verb is prefixed, but in the verbal stem itself, a, e, o are altered to o, i, u, respectively
(representing the "long stem-vowel" â, ê, ô, since the quality of such long vowels were changed in Old
Sindarin). The vowel i would not change. The initial consonant would undergo soft mutation when a vowel is
prefixed to it, p > b, t > d, c > g (hence agor from car-), b > v, d > dh, g > zero, m > v, s > h. (The
consonants f, th would be unchanged.)
Of course, this would contradict the earlier system glimpsed in the Etymologies, where, for instance, the past
tense of gwedh- is explicitly given as gwend (or later gwedhant) instead of ewidh. Etym also has sunc and
sogant rather than ohug for "drank". Moreover, pent instead of ebid for "spoke, said" is attested outside the
Etymologies. We must await the publication of more material before we can determine to what extent Tolkien
carried out this revision - whether this was really intended to be the new way of deriving the past tenses of
primary verbs, fully obsoleting the earlier system that we have tried to reconstruct above. For the moment, I
would accept agor as the past tense of car- "make, do", but otherwise largely continue using the "classical"
system. Perhaps Tolkien's wording - that agor-type past tenses were "usual" rather than universal - implies
that one could to some extent chose which way to form the past tense (it is clear from several texts that
Tolkien imagined that there were many varieties and dialects of Sindarin). We may let car- "do" go like this:
Infinitive ceri, present tense: 3 sg. câr "(he, she, it) does", with endings ceri- (cerin "I do", cerim "we do"
etc.), irregular past tense agor "did" (before endings agore-, e.g. agoren "I did"), future ceritha "will do",
imperative caro "do!", active participle carel "doing", perfective participle córiel "having done", passive
participle coren (or carnen?) "done", gerund cared "doing".
The question of umlaut in prefixes: A number of Sindarin verbs have a prefixed (typically prepositional)
element. The question is, should the vowel in such prefixed elements be umlauted in the forms of the verb that
require umlaut? Consider the verb aníra- "wish to, want to". This, as far as we can tell, consists of two
elements: a verb íra- "wish" with the prefix an- "to", hence literally "to-want" = want to. The passive
participle of this verb would probably be anirnen. But what about the plural? Anirnin or enirnin with umlaut
throughout the word?
Tolkien's notes seem less than consistent. The verb osgar- "cut around, amputate" includes the prefixed
element os- "around". The infinitive esgeri, listed in LR:379 s.v. OS, shows umlaut throughout the word (not
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*osgeri, the prefix being exempted from umlaut). On the other hand, the verb orthor- "master, conquer"
(literally "over-power", with or- meaning "over") shows no umlaut in the infinitive, which is listed in LR:395
s.v. TUR as ortheri. If esgeri from osgar-, why not *ertheri from orthor-? Alternatively, if ortheri from
orthor, why not *osgeri from osgar-?
Perhaps this is to some extent optional. WJ:379, dealing with noun plurals, suggests that the "affection" or
umlaut was originally carried through the word, so that a compound like orodben "mountaineer" in older
times had the plural oerydbin (= örydbin, classical Sindarin erydbin). But later, to the extent this word was
recognized as a compound orod-ben "mountain-person", only the second element was umlauted in the plural:
orodbin. So perhaps esgeri "to amputate" later became *osgeri instead, and perhaps ortheri represents earlier
*ertheri.
govad- "meet, come together", infinitive gevedi, present tense gevedi- (add the appropriate
ending, except in the 3rd person singular, that is govad), past tense gevenni- (3 sg govant),
future geveditha, imperative govado, participle govadel (perfective govódiel), past participle
govannen, gerund govaded
gonathra- "entangle, enmesh", inf. gonathro, pr.t. gonathra, pa.t. gonathranne- (3 sg
gonathrant), fut. gonathratha, imp. gonathro, part. gonathrol (perfective genethriel), pp.
gonathrannen (pl. genethrennin), ger. gonathrad
gonod- "count up, reckon, sum up", inf. genedi, pr.t. genedi- (3 sg gonod), pa.t. genenni- (3
sg gonont), fut. geneditha, imp. gonodo, part. gonodel (perfective gonúdiel), pp. gononnen,
ger. gonoded
genedia- "reckon", inf. genedio, pr.t. genedia, pa.t. genedianne- (3 sg genediant), fut.
genediatha, imp. genedio, part. genediol (perfective gonúdiel), pp. genediannen (pl.
genediennin), ger. genediad
(Notice that in the latter verb, go- appears in umlauted form in all forms except the perfective participle
gonúdiel "having reckoned". The closely related verbs gonod- and genedia- would have identical perfective
participles.)
This group of verbs incorporating the prefixes ad- "re-" and an- "to" would probably not change them to ed-
or en- where umlauts may be thought to occur, though we have no clear examples:
adertha- "reunite", inf. adertho, pr.t. adertha, pa.t. aderthanne- (3 sg aderthant), fut.
aderthatha, imp. adertho, part. aderthol (perfective aderthiel rather than ?ederthiel), pp.
aderthannen (pl. aderthennin rather than ?ederthennin), ger. aderthad
anglenna- "approach", inf. anglenno, pr.t. anglenna, pa.t. anglenne- (3 sg anglennant), fut.
anglennatha, imp. anglenno, part. anglennol (perfective anglenniel (rather than ?englenniel),
pp. anglennen (pl. anglennin rather than ?englennin), ger. anglennad
aníra- "desire", inf. aníro, pr.t. aníra, pa.t. anirne- (3 sg anirn), fut. aníratha, imp. aníro,
part. anírol (perfective aníriel rather than ?eníriel?), pp. anirnen (pl. anirnin rather than
?enirnin), ger. anírad
osgar- "cut round, amputate", inf. esgeri, pr.t. esgeri- (3 sg osgar), pa.t. esgerni- (3 sg osgarn),
fut. esgeritha, imp. osgaro, part. osgarel (perfective osgóriel), pp. osgarnen (pl. esgernin), ger.
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osgared
A long, clearly independent prefix like palan- "far and wide" may not show any umlauts:
palan-dir- "view far and wide", inf. palan-diri, pr.t. palan-diri- (3 sg palan-dir), pa.t.
palan-dirni- (3 sg palan-dirn), fut. palan-diritha, imp. palan-diro, part. palan-diriel
(perfective palan-díriel - hardly ?pelen-díriel), pp. palan-dirnen (pl. palan-dirnin, hardly
?pelen-dirnin), ger. palan-dired
5. PRONOUNS
Attested Sindarin pronouns include:
1st person sg: Independent pronoun im "I", also the ending -n; cf. also nin "me", genitive nín "my", also
anim "for myself" (evidently an "for" + im "I, *me") and enni "to me".
2nd person sg: The ending -ch, assuming that agorech does mean *"you did"; cf. also the reverential dative
pronoun le "to thee", said to be of Quenya origin (RGEO:73), and lín as the genitive "thy, your".
3rd person sg: E "he", genitive dîn "his" (this could probably also be spelt dín, cf. lín "your" above). The
word den in the Lord's Prayer translation may mean "it" as object; if so, it could likely cover "him" as well
(and then dîn possibly covers "its" as well as "his", since the words are obviously related).
1st person pl: Ending -m "we" (in avam "we won't", WJ:371), evidently men and mín as independent
pronoun "we" or "us", also ammen "for us" or "of us" (for *an men; an "for, to", men = "us"?). "Our, ours"
is vín.
2nd person pl: none found, unless -ch covers both sg. and pl. "you" (cf. PM:45-46)
3rd person pl: hain "them" (prob. also subject "they")
When added to a stem ending in -a, the pronominal ending -n "I" seems to change this vowel to -o; contrast
avam "we won't" with avon "I won't" (WJ:371, ava = "won't"). Cf. also linnon "I sing" and linnathon "I will
sing"; the stems are evidently linna and *linnatha, "sings" and "will sing" (hence *linnam "we sing",
*linnach "you sing"?)
Though an independent word for "my" is given in UT:54 (nín), there also exists an ending -en that can
express the same meaning. It is attested in the word lammen "my tongue" in Gandalf's invocation before the
Gate of Moria (LotR1/II ch. 4; see RS:463 for translation). Compare the Quenya ending -nya "my". A second
attestation of the corresponding Sindarin ending became available in July 2000, when a sentence including the
word guren "my heart" was published in VT41:11, 15. Presumably Sindarin has other pronominal possessive
endings as well, but only -en "my" has been published. Since Tolkien elsewhere uses independent pronouns
for "my" and "his", it may be that he changed his mind back and forth as to whether Sindarin used endings or
independent genitive pronouns.
In addition to the genitive pronoun dîn "his", the King's Letter also has în: The king wishes to greet mhellyn
în phain, all his friends. Though în, like dîn, is translated "his" in English, it appears that this is actually a
reflexive genitive pronoun, referring back to the subject of the sentence. In Sindarin there may be a distinction
that is not regularly expressed in English. Two sentences like *i venn sunc haw în and *i venn sunc haw dîn
would both translate as "the man drank his juice" in English, but the first means "the man drank his (own)
juice", while the second means "the man drank his (someone else's) juice" (Norwegian mannen drakk saften
sin vs. mannen drakk saften hans, if I may refer to my mothertongue).
Under the stem S- in the Etymologies, some "Noldorin" pronouns are listed, but whether they are valid in
LotR-style Sindarin is not known: Ho, hon, hono "he", he, hen, hene "she"; ha, hana "it". The plurals are
given as huin, hîn, hein, evidently meaning "they" referring to a group of men, women and things,
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respectively. Hein would later appear as hain because of regular sound-change; cf. the Moria Gate
inscription: Im Narvi hain echant "I Narvi them [= the letters] made". Moreover, the "Noldorin" pronoun
huin would appear as *hýn in (Third Age) Sindarin.
Ardalambion Index
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