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 Consequently, every article that was published before one of the E.L.F. publications is bound to have outdated information, although even the seemingly up-to-date works tend to have the same, due to the fact that interest in Tolkien's languages mostly faded after the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The Sindarin page on Tolkien Gateway is similarly full of outdated information.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 I do not recommend replacing outdated parts with updated ones because in time these could become obsolete as well, with a new publication of the source material.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)

The result was as "hollow" as the Quenya page, which simply offers brief information on its history and inspiration, as it should. But if there should be more, the page should first be cleaned up until proper information is made ready. The Etymology and Names sections could stay, as well as Phonology (better renamed to Pronunciation) with a few updates. Vowel mutations should be updated (better yet, removed) and the Consonant mutations need to go immediately, as well as everything about the verbs (which are mostly taken from outdated Neo-Sindarin sources). I do not see the point of presenting the pronouns (which also need an update) without a full system which only up-to-date Neo-Sindarin can provide. Finally, the Dialects section confuses internal and external developments.

— Elaran 20:49, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

It has been a week. Have you made a decision? In case I fail to reach you again, I will at least delete the Verbs section (as it is not only old but comes from Neo-Sindarin sources which Tolkien's notes have debunked long ago). And I would like to emphasise that "uninformative" would be better than "misleading".

— Elaran 21:38, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

As I said above, I would like to hear from other editors before are major revisions to this article has been made, and none have yet done so. There is no rush. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 11:49, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

It has been a month now, none seem to be interested. I maintain multiple communities on the subject, whose members include figures like H. K. Fauskanger, Roman Rausch, and many others. And I believe that I speak on behalf of all when I say that the page needs serious and immediate revision, which is hopefully enough in the absence of other editors. But as you do not allow destructive edits, I can provide constructive ones instead, going over each section and updating them with information from latest publications like PE22. I had chosen the former because this update can also become obsolete with a new publication, but it would be far less likely since the amount of information that we now have is far greater than what we had in the early 2000s (i.e. the era from which the page derives its outdated information). If the upcoming changes are not agreeable to you, you can revert them back again.

— Elaran 16:15, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Dunedain of Arnor?

What is the history of this language among the Northern Dunedain? Was it still used by the Northern Dunedain by the time of the War of the Ring? Sources?--72.141.101.9 15:41, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

On phonetics

As the article suggests, my expectation is that ui is a single diphthong, so words like Anduin or Bruinen have only two syllables each (instead of three as I usually hear them pronounced by English-speakers). That would at least make sense considering that ui originates from umlauted u. However, poems such as A Elbereth Gilthoniel expect eight syllables per line, which would require Fanuilos be pronounced Fa-nu-i-los instead of the expected Fa-nui-los. LotR Appendix explicitly refers to ui as a diphthong, but also says it's pronounced like English "ruin", which is bisyllabic, but English doesn't have a pure ui diphthong, and I suppose "ruin" hits closest.

Likewise, i between a consonant and a vowel is supposed to be a glide rather than a full vowel, so Gilthoniel is Gil-thon-iel, but again the aforementioned poem instead consistently suggests Gil-tho-ni-el, mí-ri-el, and so on. To some extent I wonder if it's simply non-standard pronunciation used to force-fit into the meter like Latin poetry sometimes does (although it seems too consistent), or perhaps A Elbereth is an older text written before Sindarin phonology was standardized by Tolkien. Either way I'm not sure if the phonology is unambiguously described anywhere, or if most of it is just conjecture. Or maybe I'm giving too much weight to a single short poem. --162.158.203.39 00:14, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

The talk page concerns our article on Sindarin and its improvement and not the topic itself, i.e. the mechanics of Sindarin. The article says that "ui" is a diphthong because the Appendix says so. How we are to read "A Elbereth", and if there is an inconsistency, it is another matter, and perhaps it concerns that article (if we decide to include its metrics). Sage 17:27, 19 June 2022 (UTC)