How Can You Learn Tolkien's Elvish Languages?

[@phoule76]

I recommend a semester abroad in Rivendell.

[@takimanislandsgamingchanel4651]

Is it good

[@nydap5506]

👏

[@TimothyChenAllen]

It’s a party school. Pipeweed City

[@lilangels2980]

Lol

[@0ak3nshi3ld88]

Where's it at?

[@edwardbarach2263]

Noel's book, Languages of Middle Earth, a little red paperback, is great. She goes into verb conjugations and everything.

[@jim.rnilsen9]

I love the "Mae govannen" greeting, in my language ( Norvegian) it's sounds like someone with a old dialect greeting with saying "my good friend" min gode venn

[@FC-EXTRA.]

I love this phrase too, it's actually used in the sindarin language too

[@MrYTGuy1]

Legs are literally translated as 'hustle sticks' in my language.

[@TolkienLorePodcast]

😂 How on earth did I do that!?

[@vivanhuber4319]

Wa

[@vivanhuber4319]

Yay

[@frankie9373]

*40s PI voice * "look at 'em getaway sticks"

[@julialuminasalsa]

Thank you for this! It’s been my dream to speak elvish for about 10 years now and i finally have the mental energy and space for it!

[@andrewpankiw2144]

the vinyar tengwar alphabet was printed out on paper at a tolkien exhibition in oxford made by the tolkien oxford society. in the exhibition it showed how some of his fans wrote to tolkien expressing their admiration for his works in elvish. however, tolkien would reply saying they got their grammar wrong. so learning the language must be possible somehow. i think i can recall something like tolkien displayed the alphabet in his book during some of his first publishing before his work became mainstream

[@atanvardo5730]

The Elvish script is referred to just as "Tengwar". Vinyar Tengwar is the name of a periodic on which Elvish material written by Tolkien is published from time to time (it happens in a slow rate, though), insofar as Christopher Tolkien allows the material to come to light. Another periodic like this is Parma Eldalamberon. Regarding the grammar, there is a number of websites with lessons on Quenya and Sindarin (the only two learnable Elvish tongues), dictionaries, articles, translations,... Not all sites are reliable, of course. I can suggest some good ones.

[@username5606]

@@atanvardo5730 hello, may I ask for some suggestions? I am afraid that I'd pick an unreliable source and won't realize it for I do not know the language and can't tell right from wrong.

[@atanvardo5730]

@@username5606 I think the best place to begin learning Quenya and/or Sindarin is the _Council of Elrond_ website ( www.councilofelrond.com ). Both the Quenya and the Sindarin courses on this site are very well-written, in a way that the material they contain is very easy to learn. This makes them ideal for beginners, while they are great also for more advanced students. They are also very "complete" courses, too. I put "complete" between question marks because no Elvish course is really complete. My advice is that you learn from different courses (and this way, you will also be in contact with different points of view and interpretations on grammar, etc., so that you can form your own opinion). The Elvish courses on CoE also contain excercises, which you submit to the languages staff for checking. This is very helpful. The site also counts with other Elvish learning tools like dicitionaries (besides Elvish, other languages from Tolkien's mythology are also covered), articles, translations, discussion forums, study buddies, and even an Elvish names database (in case you want to know how your or someone's name transates in Quenya, Sindarin or quite a few other Tolkien's languages). CoE does not address solely Elvish or Tolkien's languages. It is a site for everything LotR and Tolkien related stuff, so it contains other kinds of material other than languages.

[@atanvardo5730]

@@username5606 Another very good website is Ardalambion ( folk.uib.no/hnohf/ ) by Helge Kåre Fauskanger. It has a Quenya course, but no Sindarin course. His Quenya course is also very complete, although somewhat more technical than CoE's course. But don't be afraid. Even if you don't have any previous knowledge on linguistics (like me), you can learn the language through his course with no problems. The site also has Quenya dictionaries (Quenya-English and English-Quenya), which I think are perhaps the best Quenya dictionaries I can think of, and several articles on various Elvish languages (not only Quenya and Sindarin) and other Tolkien languages too. This is another site which I strongly recommend. Helge Fauskanger is the most famous guy in the universe of Elvish languages (and Tolkien's languages in general).

[@atanvardo5730]

@@username5606 Finally, I also recommend another great site: Eldamo ( eldamo.org/ ). Elvish courses and several articles. It has probably the most "complete" Elvish material on the web. This site also includes Neo-Elvish (Neo-Quenya/Neo-Sindarin)-you can find out what it is on the site itself.

[@Micdrop773]

So glad this popped up it’s nearly 5 am over here in the UK but I’m really looking forward to this video I love all of ur videos keep up the good work my mate 💙‼️💫

[@andrewpankiw2144]

SAAAMMMMEEEEE!!!!!!!

[@SamiP-ik7vj]

Learning even a little Esperanto, Spanish or Latin before an Eldarin language is a good idea. Because in most languages in the world, the letters and letter-combinations don't have several sound values (depending on their position in a word) the way they do in English.

[@neniugrava]

Eĉ Tolkien mem lernis Esperanton antaŭ ol li faris la elfajn lingvojn :)

[@nefla2]

​@@neniugrava hard to belive, cause Tolkien started to create Elvish in childhood.

@@nefla2Esperanto (1887) is 5 years older than Tolkien (1892).

[@MrDuck797]

This channel seriously deserves way more subs. I will steal a million from Pewdiepie and give them to you.

[@LMinem]

As you point out, there is more than one language spoken by Tolkien's Elves. However, hearing people say, "I want to learn Elvish." irritates me somewhat. It is like hearing somebody say "I want to learn European."

[@FC-EXTRA.]

True, it's just like English. There are a lot of dialects of to this language, Australian English, British English, and American English

[@Kielimies]

It just bears remembering that in light of Tolkien's notes from the 1960's (published in _Parma Eldalamberon_ #22) one ought to use Sindarin future forms like *carathon* "I shall do (it)" instead of "cerithon" (the old reconstruction theory promoted at sites like Ardalambion).

[@uriah-s97]

Just finishing up the lotr, and I just gotta say I would have like to listen to the conversation between Gandalf and Tom bombadil, just saying.

[@TolkienLorePodcast]

Indeed!

[@nerdify710]

This definitely helped! I think it was me who asked the question but im not sure what video it was on

[@TolkienLorePodcast]

You and one other had similar questions.

[@ATREIDESDUNCAN88]

There is a book that was made with every word and is a dictionary but it was made for a linguist.

[@FC-EXTRA.]

Thanks for this video I'm actually been trying to learn sindrin but I couldn't find any course

[@ATREIDESDUNCAN88]

There is a made language of Elvish called silver speech. Arvendase. It is on Amazon by the silver elves.

[@erathor9120]

I tried once via some videos... it got hard when they started how to pronounce stuff differently.

[@PincheCubano]

Love this work brother. Do you do custom translations By chance?

[@TolkienLorePodcast]

I guess that depends on what you want. I’m no Elvish expert, but I can write transliteration a in Elvish script and I know a smattering of Elvish words and grammar.

[@RigaldoVulpes]

How do you say "House of the Golden Leaves" in Sindarin and in Quanyan? I would really appreciate it.

[@TolkienLorePodcast]

Not sure about that one. Laure is the root for golden in one of the two, and of course Legolas means green leaf, I think in Sindarin, but my off-hand knowledge doesn’t go beyond that so I’d have to research through the glossaries in the Silmarillion and History of Middle-earth series to tell you more, and regardless I’m not up on the grammar so I wouldn’t get it perfect lol

[@RigaldoVulpes]

@@TolkienLorePodcast I would respect the research and help of a Tolkien scholar like you than an amateur like me haha.

[@Gilruin]

Sindarin: bâr in lais 'lórin ([m]bâr' house, in 'the', lass 'leaf' > plural lais, glórin 'golden' > 'lórin after noun, the genitive simply happens by putting the words on after the other), Quenya: már i laurie lassion (már 'house', i 'the' laurea 'golden' > plural laurie, lasse 'leaf' > genitive plural lassion). An accent means the vowel is long, a circumflex that it is over-long.

[@RigaldoVulpes]

@@Gilruin Thank you so much for helping me and also informing me. :)

[@DINOLOVER6717]

@@TolkienLorePodcast wait, so when Gandalf says Legolas Greenleaf in the movies he’s basically saying “Greenleaf Greenleaf”…? 😟

[@Bigred7642]

Sorry man, but nobody wants to scour a million novels to hopefully piece together some words. There are people that have already learned it, is there anyone teaching it who has already learned it?

[@thomasgallaher9538]

You are saying Sindarin wrong. There is no schwa on the “a” and the accent should be on the penultimate syllable as sin-DAR-in.

[@TolkienLorePodcast]

I know, but every now and the lazy southern comes out on top lol

[@thomasgallaher9538]

@33ForestAve page 1116 of Lord of the Rings “In words of two syllables it (the stress) falls in practically all cases in the first syllable. In longer words it falls on the last syllable but one” For more info look in the book.

[@TolkienLorePodcast]

The appendices in LOTR and pronunciation guide in the Silmarillion are the only solid sources I know of

[@TolkienLorePodcast]

You left out the important part of that quote though. For longer words the stress falls on the second to last syllable when it contains a long vowel, diphthong, or vowel followed by 2+ consonants. In other cases it would be the third to last syllable. Which is why actually the stress in “Sindarin” would be on the first syllable, not the second. My laziness in pronunciation extends only to not giving the “a” the proper pronunciation.

[@regularstan6212]

Rootwords are the worst way to learn a language. My ukrianian parents learned that the hard way when they lookup up the root words for hotdog

[@vivanhuber4319]

My elf sent me a letter it's so small

[@horrormaus5181]

But elves are tall ... like normally diced people 0-0 why is the letter small ?

[@imriyashaul7791]

Is this a Hilda reference?

[@vivanhuber4319]

@@imriyashaul7791 it's true

[@imriyashaul7791]

@@vivanhuber4319 Amazing