May 2019

Ingolmor náquetir, sa i enwa sa atani *yestaner telkonta talusset yéni *lindóre yá antane alta *nista *oliendenna silúmie atanion; sí meneldili *etsastear vinya nó manen enke san tule. Elenion téma *verehtane *Élikombelvasse ter loar *lindóre, ar si karaitie anyane ingarya epe hya nó loar *yundóre yá. I *verehtaler vistaner Ardo vilya ha tyáre rimbe *helletindi i tintaner aparuivi; aldaron úme firne ar palde *salquenori nostaner. Atani samner analta *ekesta termare qui tolunente talunta ar pollente kene *hairenna.

*Minaþurindor utúvier anyára kauma Angalnóreo endasse, mi Leicestershire. I túvie valdea an i kauma *aldaparmallo karinwa loar *yutuxainen *neltuxa yá - toine engwi senyave queletyar ter i yéni, epetai rie *tinkine ar *kennassie tamnar termarir; mal si kauma, yalle *mamuti tuvine Siveriasse, né *vortaina mottosse. Sí eke lien kenda manen yáre tánor kárer taite tamnar ya anta men *ekesta hanya manen *yárontarilvar oiner yéni yá.

*aldaparma n. "tree bark"

*yutuxainen card. "two thousand" (Eldamo)

This a repost of an earlier [Old] Sindarin phonetics post. In the early post I assumed that this was a Sindarin-only rule, but I have since found some clear examples of this sound change in Quenya (-waiti > -woite and ñwa-lōth > olos), so I’ve revised my notes to allocate this a sound change to Primitive Elvish.

✶stressed [wŏ] became [wa]; [wŏ́] > [wa]

Participium relativum is a construct found in many languages where the participle, instead of being in a relative clause, is thrown to the beginning of the sentence as part of a prepositional phrase. Consider The man, who was sitting on the terrace, admired the silver Moon vs Sitting on the terrace the man admired the silver Moon.

This kind of construct is found in both the Quenya and the Noldo-Sindarin lines of Eldarin languages.

Enkenuvanye kenasta i halle oronti, i luini?

Lintie hostar i yéni, ta óla i *haire asinte...

​​​Will I see again maybe the tall mountains, the blue ones?

Swiftly the years pile up, and the distance is growing with them...

AQ. initial [s] plus continuant became voiceless continuant; [sm-|sn-|sr-|sl-|sj-|sw-] > [m̥-|n̥-|r̥-|l̥-|j̊-|w̥-]

In Ancient Quenya, any initial [s] appearing before a voiced continuant vanished, unvoicing the following consonant in the process. This occurred before nasals m, n, liquids l, r, and the semi-vowels y, w. Tolkien described this process in some detail in both the first and second versions of his outlines of Quenya phonetic development (OP1, OP2) from the 1930s and 1950s respectively.

I was originally planning on doing a bunch of research and organizing all of my notes before starting to write about Quenya phonetic developments. However, that’s turning into a real slog and I am finding the need to break up the basic research with some writing. I have therefore decided to write some draft posts once certain phonetic rules are properly organized.