Talk:Sindarin

As you may know, the Editorial Team of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship is still publishing Tolkien's notes on the languages, and according to the attendees of the latest Omentielva conference, Parma Eldalamberon's 23rd and 24th issues are on the way as well. Thus, our understanding of the languages, or at least the amount of documents that we have on them, keeps growing. Consequently, every article that was published before one of the E.L.F. publications is bound to have outdated information, although even the seemingly up-to-date works tend to have the same, due to the fact that interest in Tolkien's languages mostly faded after the early 2000s and few people remain active and discover all the implications of tiny details via collaboration.

The Sindarin page on Tolkien Gateway is similarly full of outdated information. For example, the details on the past conjugation of basic verbs belong to an era before Parma Eldalamberon #17 (2007), arguably the most important document on Tolkien's languages. Today, we know unequivocally that the mentioned is instead formed with "nasal infixion" for the final consonants B, D, G, and "vowel lengthening" for the rest, with "augmentation" for both. To exemplify, the verb car- "to do" employs the vowel lengthening (and augmentation) method and becomes agor "he/she did", and agóren, agórel "I did, you did". Evidence of this formation was present long before PE17 or PE22, but due to the lack of published information it was considered to be "irregular" in the early 2000s, whereas we now have access to more than a few examples for it.

Thus I suggest removing such details from the page, instead offering a brief overview like the one on Quenya. I do not recommend replacing outdated parts with updated ones because in time these could become obsolete as well, with a new publication of the source material. The details within the "Quenya Grammar" page is also problematic in that regard, even though Tolkien was more consistent with Quenya. There is already a great amount of misinformation on the internet when it comes to Elvish languages, and so Tolkien Gateway should take steps to avoid adding to it.

Elaran 09:24, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Please edit the page to change this information. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 10:15, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

OK, I have to apologise. I had not appreciated from the above remarks quite the scope and scale of the change you were proposing which - to me - is a complete hollowing out of the article. And I think needs a much wider debate first (which is why I have reverted the edit).

I agree that there is information here that needs updating, but my preference would be to update not just remove all information altogether; I would also prefer the article to be kept up-to-date with latest developments rather than have nothing at all. I also don't fully understand the need to remove the pronunciation information, or the Etymology and Names sections.

It would be helpful to know your mind on the changes you think need making to Phonology, Nouns, Pronouns, Verbs, Dialects, Etymology, and Names section. The example you gave above relates to Verbs specifically. Thanks. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 15:26, 17 February 2019 (UTC)