Birth of Middle-earth
On September 21, 1937, a small book was published in England, entitled simply - "The Hobbit", the author was JRR Tolkien, little known outside the scientific world. Readers received the text well, but no one understood how all this threatens the world.
The Tolkien boom struck more than two decades later.
The epic "The Lord of the Rings" came out in 1954/55, the American edition, after which the madness began with the slogans "Gandalf for President", appeared six years later. Then the book and the author were recognized in all parts of the world, in addition to a linguist, he became a popular writer.
Now "The Lord of the Rings" is the most famous fantasy saga, even a person far from fantasy knows that the peoples of Middle-earth speak different languages ​​and that these languages ​​have a vocabulary, grammar and writing.
Surprisingly, in this case, the primary was not the literary text, but the languages.
Tolkien said that his books were written only so that the languages ​​he invented had a home. That he did not get carried away from childhood with the creation of konlangs (from the English constructed language - constructed or artificial language), then we would not have received either "The Hobbit", much less "The Lord of the Rings".
The young man did not forget about his hobby even in the trenches of the First World War, and after the war he chose a scientific career. He became a professor of Anglo-Saxon language and literature, published more than one scientific work, and earned an excellent academic reputation.
So John Ronald Ruel Tolkien approached the creation of conlangs thoroughly and professionally. He did not come up with a set of words connected by grammar - no, he started with the conditions for the emergence of the language, its history, with the people who would speak it, and then watched how the language developed under the influence of various factors.
A mosaic of tongues
It is difficult to say exactly when the work on the languages ​​of Middle-earth began, probably even before the First World War. It is known that in 1931, six years before The Hobbit, Professor Tolkien showed the academic public one of the first examples of what would later become the Elvish languages ​​of The Lord of the Rings; he read the poem Me'tima markirya , or The Last Ark.
It is also known that the work continued throughout Tolkien's life, all of his conlangs were constantly being completed and changed, and therefore it is sometimes difficult to say which forms and options are final.
In total, Tolkien created a dozen artificial languages ​​within the framework of the Lord of the Rings world. Some are known only by name, there is no information about them: these are avarin(aka Lemberin ), the language of the elves who remained in the ancestral home; Westron , the common language of the peoples of Middle-earth at the time of the action of The Lord of the Rings (the book was allegedly written in it); Rohan (a relative of Westron, actually Old English), the language of the inhabitants of Dale (also a relative, similar to Old Norse); orc languages .
We know a little more about others.
For example, there is the secret dwarf language of Khuzdul , in which their famous battle cry Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu! It is pronounced “Baruk Khazad! Khazad ai-menu! ", And translates as" Axes of the Dwarfs! The gnomes are [coming] at you! "
Epitaph on the grave of Balin, King of Moria, in Khuzdul
Invented by the creator of the dwarves Aule; later the language changed, but not as much as the dialects of humans and elves, and the dwarves of all Middle-earth continued to communicate in it, although over time it became more of a language of folklore. It is known that it is dissonant primarily for the elves, but at least one word migrated from Khuzdul to Sindarin - kheled ("glass, mirror") became heledh in the language of the elves .
There is little information about grammar, but it is obvious that it is similar to the grammar of Semitic languages, Arabic or Hebrew: there are root stems of consonants, the meaning of which is modified by vowels.
For example, the stem R-Kh-S means orcs, orcs would be Rukhs, and orcs would be Rakhâs .
Other roots that we know: BND - "top", KBL - "silver", but they can also consist of two consonants, like ZN - "dark, vague, hazy".
Several names, verbs and adjectives are known, only one pronoun. Not enough to draw conclusions other than the most general and obviously conjectural.
Speech for the Nazgl and for the Shepherds of the Trees
Black Speech , the creation of Sauron, belongs to the category of little developed konlangs .
It bears the inscription on the Ring of Omnipotence:
Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
In A. Kistyakovsky's translation, it sounds like this:
And one thing - omnipotent - to the lord of Mordor -
To separate them all, to deprive them of their will
And to unite forever in their earthly vale.
Sauron, the main antagonist of The Lord of the Rings, tried to create languages, he wanted all those who serve him to speak in black speech, but did not achieve the goal. Orcs borrowed some words, for example ghâsh("Fire"), and this konlang of the fantasy world became its own only for the ring-bearing Nazgl. Their
very name also comes from the Black Speech: Nazgûl - "ring ghost (s), ghost (s) of the Ring" - the word does not change in the plural, although the translation does not reflect this fact.
Phonetics is unpleasant for elves, and about grammar we only know that an ergative case model, exotic for Europe, was used. In short - for the subject of the transitive verb (he composes speech), a special, ergative case is used, and not the nominative, as in Russian and other Indo-European, while the subject of the intransitive (he sleeps) everything is as we are used to. There are prepositions and postpositions, there are no articles, the available dictionary consists of several dozen words.
Also a little information, alas.
We know even less about the language of the Ents , the Shepherds of the Trees.
They created it themselves, because they always wanted to speak, and as soon as they heard the elves, they immediately came up with something for themselves.
A-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lindor-burĂşm is the only available phrase, and when trying to pronounce it, it should be borne in mind that the tones that were probably in the Ents are not marked in any way. Tolkien describes the speech of the Shepherds of the Trees as slow, resonant, filled with many shades of meaning that change with the pitch.
The structure of the sentence is unclear, translation into human or even elvish language can only be approximate.
Gods and Atlantis of Middle-earth
Valarin , the dialect of the Valar demigods, the oldest of the languages, is interesting because the creatures who spoke it are not limited by crude bodily phonetics. A number of words from it ended up in Quenya and Sindarin, and even in Adunaic , the most developed language of humans.
There are suggestions that when creating the Valarin, Tolkien looked for inspiration in Akkadian, but this is only a hypothesis. Difficult pronunciation, many vowels, long words, and almost no information about grammar, except the fact that the adjective is placed after the noun.
For example, Aþâraphelûn Dušamanûðân - "Arda Distorted"
Adunaic, the language of Numenor, Atlantis of the world of Middle-earth, arose from the primary languages ​​of people under the influence of elvish (to a greater extent) and dwarf, but for a long time it developed in isolation.
We got few
texts on it, mostly excerpts: Kadô Zigûrun zabathân unakkha ... - "And so ... the humiliated wizard ... he came ..."
... Bârim an-Adûn yurahtam dâira sâibêth-mâ Êruvô ... - " The Lord of the West broke the earth with the permission of Eru ... ”
Bâ kitabdahê! - "Dont touch me!"
Tolkien partially described the grammar in a separate article, and this is a unique case. Here we have two- and three-letter roots from consonants, as in Dwarf, a frank borrowing from Semitic languages, although a "characteristic vowel" is added to the consonants, which changes the meaning, therefore the bases KIRIB and KARAB mean different things. Four grammatical genders: in addition to masculine, feminine and neuter there is also a common one, words are distributed according to these genders in a strictly logical manner. Besides the singular and plural, there is a dual; nouns are divided into "strong" and "weak", this is a kind of analogue of animate-inanimate in Russian.
The rudiments of the system of tenses are outlined, a list of about a hundred words is available.
Origin of the Elvish languages
Much more than any of the previously mentioned languages, but much less than in the elven konlangs, which will be discussed later.
Much is known about these languages: Quenya, a high Elvish dialect based on Finnish, Latin, and Greek; Sindarin, a language of the gray elves that grew out of the Celtic languages, primarily Welsh. They write poems in Quenya and Sindarin, defend dissertations on them, including in Russia, write textbooks, so in a sense they have become alive.
Tolkien described a whole group of related elven dialects, how they changed and grew from one another. The first was the proto-elven, aka Quenderin , from which all other languages ​​of the Wonderful People originated.
It is characterized by short exclamation words, built according to the VCV model , that is, vowel, consonant, vowel. This is how the very first elvish word ele looks like , which means something like “Here! Look! ”, But already dele will“ walk ”, and aba , for example, will“ refuse ”.
The proto-elven split into avarin, which was mentioned earlier, and the general elven, or eldarin . From the second originated Quenya and Sindarin, as well as many intermediate and dialectal forms.
Quenya
"Namariye" in Quenya
Quenya, aka High Elvish, is probably Tolkien's most well-known and beloved language. The term Quenya ( quenya , or quendya ) - adjective derived from the same stem as Quendi - "elves", so that it simply means "elf".
He retained many of the archaic features of the proto-elven.
Quenya phonetics in some ways was created by Tolkien on the basis of Finnish, although he does not copy the latter. There are five vowels, they can be short or long, there are a lot of diphthongs, that is, combinations of vowels that are considered separate sounds; hissing consonants are excluded; words, as a rule, cannot begin with a combination of consonants, and cannot end with them either.
Nouns change in nine (or ten) cases and four numbers. The nominative, instrumental (aka instrumental), accusative, genitive and dative are well known to us, but here are also the possessive, local, separative, approximate, and sometimes the tenth is also distinguished, which Tolkien himself only mentioned; therefore it is called the "mysterious" case.
The numbers are singular, plural, dual and fractional, the latter is frankly exotic, whether it is in natural languages ​​is unknown. A fractional number denoted a part of objects from a set, and if you add a definite article to it, it will simply mean "a lot."
The definite article is there, but there is no indefinite.
Verbs are divided into several classes, their various forms are formed using endings, prefixes and, in some cases, lengthening the vowel base.
Quenya has a big problem with pronouns, not least because Tolkien has reworked their system more than once. It is only obvious that pronouns in this koglang are not separate words, but endings attached to a verb or noun.
Here is an example of High Elvish:
Valar empannen Aldaru mi kon-alkorin ar sealálan taro ar silankálan ve laure ve misil. The sentence is found in Tolkien's notes and can mean something like this: "The Valar planted Two Trees in the sacred garden, and they grew tall and shone like gold [and] like silver."
And here is Lament of Galadriel, aka Namárie, the longest Quenya text from The Lord of the Rings:
Ai! laurie lantar lassi sĂşrinen,
yéni únótime ve rámar aldaron!
Yéni ve linte yuldar avánier
mi oromardi lisse-miruvĂłreva
AndĂşne pella, Vardo tellumar
nu luini yassen tintilar i eleni
Ăłmaryo airetári-lĂrinen.
SĂ man i yulma nin enquantuva?
An sĂ Tintalle Varda Oiolosseo
ve fanyar máryat Elentári ortane
ar ilye tier unduláve lumbule
ar sindanĂłriello caita mornie
i falmalinnar imbe met,
ar hĂsie untĂşpa ​​Calaciryo mĂri oiale.
Sà vanwa ná, Rómello vanwa, Valimar!
Namárië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar!
Nai elye hiruva! Namárie!
And the translation into Russian:
Ah! Leaves fly in gold in the wind,
Years, countless, like the wings of trees.
Long years passed like swift sips of
Sweet honey in the stately halls
beyond the West, under the blue arches of Varda,
where the stars tremble
from the sounds of her song, the song of the Holy Queen.
?
,
, ,
.
.
.
,
! , !
, ! !
It remains to tell about Sindarin, the common elven language of Middle-earth in the era of the "Lord of the Rings".
He, like Quenya, descended from the proto-elven, but changed more.
Tolkien created this conlang, relying primarily on Welsh, which he really liked, but again the professor did not copy the grammar of the source language at all.
Phonetics is more complicated than Quenya, because there are fewer restrictions and more phonemes. There is a definite article, but unlike the high elvish one, it has the plural form, plus there is a separate article in the genitive case.
But there are only three times, and the dual is considered obsolete and almost never used, the singular and plural remain; the adjective agrees with the noun in number. The number of cases has also significantly decreased, apparently, there are three of them left - nominative, genitive and dative, and the last one is dying out.
The plural is formed not by the ending, as in Quenya, but by changing the vowels at the root of the word: amon ("hill") becomes emyn ("hills"), aran ("king") becomes erain ("kings"). There are a lot of patterns of change, vowels change - or not - according to complex rules.
There are basic and derivative verbs, both are conjugated in different ways. Again, suffixes are used, as well as a change in the vowel of the root.
The famous song from The Lord of the Rings is written in Sindarin: ď€
A Elbereth Gilthoniel
silivren penna mĂriel
o menel aglar elenath!
Na-chaered palan-dĂriel
o galadhremmin ennorath,
Fanuilos le linnathon
nef aear, sĂ nef aearon.
It can be translated according to Tolkien's interlinear as follows: “O Elberet, Kindling the Stars, snow-white sparkling, sparkling like precious stones, the glory of the tending host of stars. Looking into the distance from the forest-covered lands of Middle-earth, to you, Ever-White, I will sing on this edge of the Sea, here, on this edge of the Ocean. "
Tolkien languages ​​in cinema
Aragon and Arwen Speak Sindarin
Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogy, couldn't get past Tolkien's conlangs. The world of Middle-earth on the screen would not have become real if it had not sounded in its native dialects, if the elves had not spoken in Sindarin, the dwarves in Khuzdul, and the Ents in their Shurum Burum.
Tolkien himself did a tremendous job, but even Quenya did not become a full-fledged language in which you can easily write texts, armed with grammar and vocabulary. Therefore, the film crew needed a professional linguist, and not just a simple one, but in the subject, and the choice fell on David Salo, an American linguist and conlanger, the author of the book "Sindarin's Gate".
The libretto of the songs for the film was written by screenwriters Fran Walsh and Philip Boyens, and already Salo translated them into the required languages. To do this, he had to think out, to compose, according to well-known rules, words that Tolkien did not have. As a result of his writings, such a term appeared as neo-Sindarin, denoting innovations introduced into the general elven. Quenya and Sindarin, Adunaik and the language of the Rohans, Khuzdul and Black Speech also found life and music, although they do not sing in the latter, they only pronounce the inscription on the Ring of Omnipotence.
For example, the song from the soundtrack to the first film, "Lament for Gandalf" ("Lothlorien") is written in two languages ​​at once, the first part in Quenya, the second in Sindarin:
A Olórin i yáresse
Mentaner i NĂşmenherui
TĂrien i RĂłmenĂłri
Maiaron i Oiosaila
Manan elye etevanne
NĂłrie i melanelye?
Mithrandir, Mithrandir, A Randir Vithren
Ăş-reniathach i amar galen
I reniad lĂn ne mĂłr, nuithannen
In gwidh ristennin, i fae narchannen
I lach Anor ed ardhon gwannen
Caled veleg, ethuiannen.
The word-for-word could be:
Olorin, once
Sent by the Lords of the West
To keep the Lands of the East The
Wisest of the Maya
What made you leave
That which you loved so much?
Mithrandir, Mithrandir, Gray Wanderer
You will no longer walk through the green fields of this land
Your path ended in darkness
Ties are torn, spirit is broken The
flame of Anor has left this World
The great light went out.
We have before us a dozen and a half languages ​​- enough to make speaking such a vast world as Middle-earth. Two are developed to such an extent that they are studied by linguists, about five more can be pronounced and read at least something, the others are mostly mentions.
And this is much more than in any other fantasy universe, literary or cinematic ...
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