September 2020

One notable feature of Sindarin is that it often uses adjectives adverbially, as in: noro lim, noro lim Asfaloth “run swift, run swift Asfaloth” (LotR/213). This can occur only when the adjective could conceivably be an attribute of the verb’s subject, as in this example where “swift” is applicable to the subject (Asfaloth). As Tolkien described it:

Comparison is Sindarin is a bit tricky. We have what appears to an intensive or superlative prefix ro- (< rau-) as in rovaed, which may mean “*very shapely” or “*most shapely” (PE17/147); this suffix seems to be the equivalent of Q. ar(i)- which elsewhere was described as “virtually superlative” (PE17/56).

One notable feature of Sindarin adjectives is that they generally appear after the nouns they modify:

There only two currently published questions in Sindarin (and none in its conceptual precursors): linnathol? “will you sing?” from 1969 (PE22/167) and man agorech? from the early 1950s (VT50/5), untranslated but almost certainly meaning “what have we done?” using the late-1940s, early-1950s 1st pl. inclusive pronominal suffix -ch (VT50/21-22). These two questions give us a fair amount of information, though.

This skips the entry on the Sindarin subjunctive, because I need to revisit Quenya subjunctive first.

This post skips as small bridging entry.