#elvish

[winternymphaea]

elven circlet, by sweetelvenchestnut on etsy.

[itsallchemical]

Absolutely nobody:

Me:

[elrondlas]

Begging vs demanding. Get you a man who does both. Like Elrond 🧍🏻‍♀️

[truthfultales]

One change and a completely different result. *looks upon it with displeasure*

@gufu-vire and @bananastarion Curious to see what part of Middle Earth you represent.

[beleriandy]

AYOO??? Who was going to tell me that Elvish was an official language in Minecraft???

Like hello??? Have I just been living under a rock???? I probably have-

[gloryfore]

Necklace 🖤

[delphinidin4]

I just need you all to know that the Georgian alphabet (Mkhedruli) is one of the most stunning writing systems I have ever seen.

Even Elvish could never.

I beg you to zoom in and take a look.

(#4 has the signature of the female King Tamar!!)

[wild-woodland]

I did some art! This was a gift for a secret santa art exchange and I'm really happy with how it came out!! The way the background came out makes me think of the paper covers on a hardback book when you take the sleeve off. Also hatching is my new favorite rendering style

[robsth0r]

Ears Of The Elven (Legolas x Human!Afab!Reader)

A/N: So I had this idea... and I needed to write it out so here it is! I love the sensitive elf ear trope so I of course had to write one too. For the “Afab Reader” that is because there is no mention of gender other than the reader being born female so if you’re transmasc that would work too. Anyways hope you enjoy it!

Warnings: Smut/Lemon (18+), Sex.

Word Count: 1089

Extra: There is some sindarin in this chapter so this is the translation of it; Meleth: Love. Meleth Nin: My Love

Legolas was laying in his bed peacefully slipping away into his dreamland. That was till his eyes snapped open as he felt a finger delicately run over the shell of his ear. A rush of pleasure went through his body and he let a shaky breath out.

"Aragorn wasn't joking." I said, in awe. Legolas and I had been dating for around a year or so and being in this position with me currently holding the most sensitive part of the elves body was something Legolas definitely hadn’t thought would happen. I was sitting next to him keeping a firm yet light grip on his ear.

"Quite sensitive?" I leaned down to whisper into his ear, my warm breath sending sparks up and down his spine causing him to shudder. Legolas raised his eyes to glare at me, his sharp gaze looking directly into my soul. My grin grew wider.

"Let… GO." He growled, trying hard to ignore the feather light finger strokes on his ear and how they were affecting him.

"Hmmm… No." I grinned again, reaching across his head to stroke his left ear. The result left Legolas squirming and breathless. The sight of the extremely horny elf next to me was enough for my heart to skip a couple beats. I wondered how it was to have such sensitive ears.

I continued teasing Legolas's ear lobe before leaning down to press gentle kisses all around his earlobe. Every time my lips touched Legolas's sensitive skin it tingled from head to toe, making goosebumps spread across his arms and legs. His heart rate increased dramatically as I moved lower down his body, kissing him along every inch of the way. When I reached the base of his neck Legolas arched into my touch, letting out a moan. I smiled against his throat and slowly began trailing kisses back up his jawline.

When I got there Legolas opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by another groan coming all the way from the back of his throat. I smirked against the side of his face before licking all the way up his long pointy ear, enjoying his gasps and moans.

"Y/n…" Legolas begged, his voice deeper than normally, taking shallow breaths from the pleasure. I hear the warning in his voice but that doesn't stop me. I swing my leg over his chest, securing him under me.

"Gotta say please, Lassy." I chuckled softly and ran my left hand down the side of his torso still keeping my other hand occupied at his ear. I knew the elves didn't like losing control over themselves as it is what elves pride themselves on.

I grinned darkly as my finger reached the tip of Legolas's ear, pinching it lightly earning myself a groan from Legolas. He felt his control snap... thread... by... thread. I hadn't made him lose control even once while we had been together. But if the stories Aragorn had told me about Arwen were anything to go by it could be an interesting night.

I took my hand off of his ear and trailed it down his chest, teasing his waistband. With a flick of my wrist my fingers unfastened it and pulled it over Legolas's hips before slipping his pants down. My hands found his shaft making him twitch. I lowered my head and licked along his length groaning against it and that was enough to make him explode right then and there.

He flung himself up and secured both my hands in a firm grip above my head, him leaning over me.

"If you do that one more time I'm gonna-" He was cut off by a loud moan escaping my throat as I arched my back letting the night shirt I had on fall exposing my breasts. His eyes darkened as his pupils dilated and he lustfully looked down at me.

Before I could react, he thrusted his cock into my warm core repeatedly, kissing and nippling the skin of my breasts. The pleasure was almost overwhelming but just barely, so I grabbed onto Legolas's shoulder to steady myself as I arched my back even more in pleasure. He grunted as he fucked me hard but with pure desire, my pussy fluttering around him.

He reached his hand down and circled my clit, letting small bits of pleasure seep through me. Legolas now kissed my neck, his tongue licking out over my pulse. Legolas’ fingers worked wonders over my clit as he throbbed within me. Legolas took a glance at me and he could see the pleasure trickling into my eyes as he rocked his cock into me.

“Legolas!” I moaned, my head falling back onto the bed. My cunt tightened and wetness flooded around Legolas’ cock.

“Legolas, oh, right there,” I moaned as he fucked into me a bit faster. His thrusts were rough and hard, his nails biting into my thighs gently as he grabbed my legs, spreading me wider so he could get deeper.

Legolas was bringing me so much pleasure that I couldn’t think of any words other than his name. I babbled it, along with a few expletives, about how much I wanted his cock, how I needed him, and eventually, how badly I needed to cum.

Legolas wasn’t far behind me. He wanted to sink himself so deeply into my body that he could never find the way out. Legolas released one of my thighs and pinched my clit. He rubbed it furiously, daring me to cum. His eyes were wild as he stared down at me, beautiful, throaty groans escaping his body.

“Cum for me, gorgeous. Show your prince how good you feel. Cum all over my cock, meleth.” Legolas grunted. He tapped my clit quickly, and with a shout of his name, I came all over him. My body writhed with pleasure as whiteness blinded me. His name fell from my lips, and as he heard me cry out for him, Legolas came inside of me. He filled me with his cum, pumping himself slowly inside of me.

I couldn't get enough of Legolas. I never wanted to leave him.

We both collapsed next to each other, panting heavily as our breathing calmed.

"I love you," Legolas groaned, rolling us around to make himself comfortable spooning me, "Please never leave me." The plea was laced with love and longing and I turned around in his arms. I kissed his forehead gently.

"Of course, meleth nin." I whispered, stroking his hair. "I'm never leaving you."

[spinnenpfote6]

Remember when Frodo put on a Mithril shirt (aka the elven equivalent of a bulletproof vest) because his uncle wanted him to be safe and then he just looked at himself in the mirror and was like "Mmmh Idk if I look good in this, I mean it makes my ass look fat and the color doesn't compliment my eyes..."

LIKE DUDE, IT'S SUPPOSED TO SAVE YOUR LIFE IN AN EMERGENCY NOT TO MAKE YOU LOOK FASHIONABLE WHILE DYING

[aethuviel]

Gelebor reading the Falmer stone for us.

For the first time (I suppose), here's Gelebor speaking in his own mother tongue.

----------

I did my best with the UESP wiki to put commas and periods, and this was the third of fourth attempt. Each attempt is unique, so in the others, he said "t" instead of "th" on one word, and sadly one had to be thrown because he said "arcaten" instead of "arcten".

[hawkmothmoon]

So folks seem to still love Thranduil, bless you tumblrites

Have some more sketches

I’m better at painting than drawing so here I was trying to strike a balance between being “sketchy” and “realistic enough that you know who it is” which is a struggle for me so uhhh enjoy! I’ll probably do more things like this!

[elrondlas]

Elrond owned that shit 💛

[autistook]

The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) dir. Peter Jackson

[kylobith]

The Languages and Linguistics of Middle Earth

Gin suilannon!

In the context of my minor programme in Celtic studies and languages, I am following a course called From Táin to Tolkien and Beyond, and today, we had a guest lecture about the languages of Middle Earth, more particularly Sindarin. Since it might be useful to some of you (out of curiosity or for your fanfictions), I thought I would share my notes and my conversations with the guest lecturer here. This was a very linguistics-driven lecture, so I will try to add explanations where I can and, hopefully, make the information more accessible. If you have any questions, you can react to this post or DM me! And beware, this is a very long post. So, without further ado, here is what I learnt.

✽ Notes on Historical Linguistics, Manuscript Tradition and the Languages of Tolkien's Middle Earth by Dr. Aaron Griffith

✣ Shared histories of languages and manuscripts are often visualised with tree diagrams to see the evolution and how they branch out

✣ Little material was published about Middle-Earth and the Elves during Tolkien's lifetime -> Most of it is part of the Legendarium -> Main periods of writing (here we only mentioned the writing processes or when a project was finished, not when they were published): - The Lost Tales (1916-1926): infancy of the Elvish languages - Sketch of The Silmarillion (1926-1930): revision of The Lost Tales and some changes brought to Elvish - Quenta Noldorinna (1930): further reworking and significant expansion of the sketch - The Hobbit (1933): originally intended as an unrelated story - Quenta Silmarillion (1937): fullest expansion of The Lost Tales and significant refinement of the languages - The Lord of the Rings (1950s): use of the mythology of all the earlier writings as a basis, reworking of the languages and massive changes in their interrelations - The Silmarillion (post-1948): based on Quenta Silmarillion, which was heavily revised after The Lord of the Rings

✣ Tolkien rarely dated his works and compositions, so it is difficult to establish a precise creative process or linear chronology of the changes brought to Middle Earth. However, he did leave us some clues: - Absolute Dating -> occasionally, Tolkien did attach dates to his manuscripts, but it remained a rare occurrence - Relative Chronology -> some compositions are dependent on changes to earlier works, so a logical chronology can be estimated (this can also be made possible by the scrap papers from Tolkien's personal records and drafts) - Handwriting -> can be misleading, but it can be a helpful tool to date pieces of distinctly different chronological layers - Nomenclature -> Tolkien frequently changed character names, so particular names can be matched with letters and extracts in which they appear - Christopher Tolkien -> his manuscript order from the twelve-volume The History of Middle-Earth series

✣ Critical asymmetry -> languages frequently split into dialects and other languages of their own, but when manuscripts are retraced according to their version of the same text (think of Arthurian romances and oral tradition being recorded at different points in time and therefore presenting different themes or characters), narratives (stories) cannot be regrouped as easily -> However, there are 2 relations between stories and languages: 1. How changes can propagate in a language system or narrative tradition 2. The relations of language families in real- (at the time of composition) or book-time (time as it passes in the stories)

✣ In natural language, change moves forward in time. This is a trend which also applies for errors in manuscript copies (irregularities in tropes, character changes, etc.)

✣ In stories, a plot development can be carried forward just like a sound can evolve in a language. However, change can occur backwards, too. For example, if a character's ancestry is modified, this can change the whole manuscript history of the story being written (by this, understand that the story must be readapted to fit the new information to maintain some consistency).

✣ Historical linguistics is concerned with the study of language change and the formation of language families (Romance languages, Germanic languages, Slavic languages, etc.). It does so by examining and comparing systems from different languages to see if they can be retraced to an original, common system (Welsh and Irish stemming from Proto-Celtic, for instance).

✣ Some of Tolkien's languages were intended to be related. The following languages and dialects are related in a clear, 'historical' structure, which mimics the way that languages evolve in our world: - Quenya - Sindarin - Lindarin - Noldorin - Telerin - Doriathrin - Ilkorin

✣ Elvish languages were constantly revised by Tolkien, making it challenging to determine a single 'history' (or creative process) of Elvish tongues. In their case, it is more accurate to speak of a series of histories or continua, which refer to the times at which Tolkien brought significant changes (often 1916, 1937 and post-1948). A tree diagram is thus no longer fitting to visualise them all. The diagrams overlap in a three-dimensional visualisation instead, with each layer representing the changes of each major revision.

✣ Some changes were brought solely for aesthetic purposes. Tolkien found the phonetics of Welsh and Finnish particularly pleasing to the ear and, therefore, based Sindarin and Quenya on their structures. As you probably already know, these are the two most-developed languages in the lore of Middle Earth, but he fleshed out at least four other Elvish languages (Telerin, Ilkorin, Doriathrin and Danian). There were generally more changes in Quenya (abbreviated Q).

✣ What was originally Noldorin (abbreviated N) in the 1916 and 1937 versions is now Sindarin (abbreviated S). After 1948, Noldorin became a dialect of its own, and its place in the language tree shifted. The terms and grammar remained rather consistent from one version to the next. -> example: 1916: N Balrog 'fire demon' (bal- 'anguish' + -róg 'strong') 1937: N Balrog 'fire demon' (bal- 'torment' + rhaug 'demon') 1948: S Balrog 'demon of might' (bal- 'might' + raug 'demon')

✣ Such modifications reflected the major changes brought to the stories (especially to what we now know as The Silmarillion), but they also mirror the natural linguistics evolution of real-life languages. This causes a problem, namely in the emergence of 'linguistic orphans', or words whose etymology was no longer valid because the linguistic or sound laws that birthed them in the first place were removed. -> example: Eärendil (Q 'lover of the sea', ayar- 'sea' + -ndil 'lover') 1916: eären was the genitive form (or possessive form) of eär, so the compound made sense. 1937: eäron replaced eären, but Tolkien remained particularly attached to the previous version because of the Old English éarendel -> this created a disruption in etymology, so he declared that eär/eären meant 'sea'

✣ Major sound changes introduced with The Lord of the Rings

✣ Tolkien introduced lenition in some grammatical cases. In Celtic languages, it is a rather common occurrence. It consists in the softening of a consonant at the start of a word according to certain rules. For example, the sound [p] is softened into a [b]. My knowledge of Irish is non-existent, but it is something which happens in Middle Welsh (c.1100-c.1400) and Modern Welsh. -> example: before 1972, Tolkien suggested that the name Gil-Galad ('star of brilliance', 'brilliant star') was lenited, which means that the second component of the name stems from the word calad (lenition causes the c to soften into a g). -> However, he stated in a letter in 1972 that lenition no longer occurred if 'the second noun functions as an uninflected genitive' (in other words, that the possessive is not marked with an apostrophe, 'of the', or any other marker that applied in Sindarin). This explains the merging of ost 'start' + giliath 'fortress' into Osgiliath 'fortress of the start'. If giliath was lenited, the name would instead be Osiliath or Ostiliath (when lenited, g disappears at the head of the noun). -> There is one noted inconsistency regarding the 'rule' above, and it is the case of Eryn Vorn 'Dark Forest'/'Forest of Darkness'. Eryn is a plural form of oron 'tree' and morn acts as a noun (but it is usually the adjective for 'black, dark' and morne is the noun referring to 'darkness, blackness'). Due to Welsh vowel change rules in certain plural forms, morn becomes myrn, and this very same plural form should accompany eryn (both adjective and noun adopt a plural form). Instead, we find a singular form of morn which is lenited (m becomes v). This is possibly an error accidentally left in by Tolkien.

✣ The nature of Noldorin/Sindarin makes Elvish languages rather realistic in their evolution compared to real-life languages, because irregularities occur. Dr. Griffith argues that languages naturally show irregularity because of gradual changes and borrowed words, but he acknowledges that accidents are sometimes just that. Accidents.

✽ Notes on the lecture by Dr. Aaron Griffith

✣ A general interest in creating new languages emerged in the 19th century. It was believed to be a tool which could help resolve political conflicts by creating a sense of cohesion and avoiding miscommunication. This is evident in the creation of Esperanto.

✣ In most cases of invented languages, the language was invented first, and the world or context they belonged to was formed from there. Tolkien worked exactly the other way around.

✣ Tolkien aimed to create an English myth, because he considered that England lacked its own mythology. King Arthur is generally considered Celtic in essence (possibly Welsh) and therefore could not apply as an English myth. This could explain why he retained the Gregorian calendar throughout The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It served as a familiar bridge between Middle Earth and England/the real world.

✣ In original maps of Beleriand, there used to be land west of Ered Luin (the Blue Mountains northwest of the Shire). This was changed in later maps, which Tolkien designed and drew himself. Often, Arda was depicted as a globe with several continents. Afterwards, Tolkien decided that Arda was, in fact, flat.

✣ Backstory of the Elves (I have no knowledge of The Silmarillion, so if I did not use the right terms or names, please feel free to correct me!): - Elves first came into existence in Cuiviénen and were invited by the Valar to join them in Valinor, meaning that they had to cross the continent and the ocean - Not all Elves made it to Valinor, however. Some decided to separate from the main group and settled in different areas of Middle Earth, like in Greenwood (later known as Mirkwood). This caused the language they spoke to evolve into different dialects and, sometimes, completely separate languages - Elves returned to Middle Earth after the war against Morgoth (S; Q Melkor), aided by Númenorians - The West was physically separated from the rest of Arda by a 'cut' through the ocean. The gods then shaped Arda into a globe, but once past the portal to the Undying Lands, it was flat again.

✣ Most often, Tolkien did not provide translations of the phrases he peppered into his works, mostly because he believed that nobody would be interested in them. Once he received enthusiastic letters from readers, he decided to attach them to later versions. He did regret publishing the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, however, because the changes felt too 'final' and he felt as though he took away his own liberty to make further revisions to the material (once it's published, you cannot go back).

✣ Tolkien created quite a lot of poetry to match the phonological aesthetics of Sindarin and Quenya.

✣ Outside The Lord of the Rings, the longest source we have in Sindarin is The King's Letter, which was originally supposed to be part of the epilogue in The Return of the King but was not in the final version because he wrote it in the 1970s. In this letter written entirely in Sindarin, Aragorn (then King Elessar) invites Sam, Rosie, and their children to visit him and Arwen in Minas Tirith.

✣ Sindarin grammar is tricky to reconstruct because of the lack of sources on the matter and the complicated grammar revisions that Tolkien brought. However, we do know that it is loosely based on Welsh, which he confirmed in 'English and Welsh' in The Monsters and the Critics (published posthumously in 1983). He aimed to recreate the same 'pleasant' sounds that he found in Welsh for Sindarin. If the reader knows how to pronounce the Welsh alphabet, then they can easily pronounce Sindarin.

✣ Secondary sources on Sindarin: - A Gateway to Sindarin by David Salo. Salo worked as a language consultant on the films, but his book has been criticised by Tolkien scholars because it tends to ignore the changes between 1937 and 1948 and it treats Noldorin as a dialect of Sindarin, which is no longer the case from 1948 onwards. - The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth by Ruth S. Noel

✣ Primary sources are very incomplete, but the main ones we can use to observe the language are the following publications: - The Lord of the Rings - The Lost Road and Other Writings - The War of the Jewels - The Peoples of Middle-Earth

✣ As established in the previous section, Sindarin follows some of the grammatical rules present in Welsh and pre-modern Welsh. We encounter mutations, especially lenition (also called 'soft mutation' because of the sounds becoming softer, e.g. p becoming b), and they play a crucial role in the structure of Sindarin. Below is a comparison of soft mutation/lenition in the context of Welsh and then in Sindarin. -> Welsh: dyn 'man' + teg 'attractive' = dyn teg 'attractive man' merch 'girl' + teg 'attractive' = merch deg 'attractive girl' -> soft mutation after a feminine noun, t is softened into a d -> Sindarin: Perhael 'Samwise' (literally 'half-wise') Berhael 'Samwise' -> lenition when used as a direct object in a clause, p softened into a b Carm Dum 'Red Valley' (capital of Angmar) -> uses tum 'valley', but it is lenited when acting as an adjective or an adverb, t softened into a d

✣ Other forms of mutations exist in Sindarin, but this part of the lecture is quite technical and does require a basic knowledge of Welsh or Middle Welsh to be comprehensible. Feel free to message me if you wish to know more about them.

✣ Mutations arose from sound changes that affected phrases (intonational units). In other words, they are groups of words that have a single principal accent (or stress) to fluidify the manner of speech and convey a sense of emphasis. For instance, not every word is stressed separately in the sentence 'I am going to the supermarket'. The stress is applied by the speaker to highlight their meaning. Is 'I' emphasised to insist that it is 'I' who is going to the supermarket? Is 'supermarket' stressed to insist that it is the supermarket that I am going to, and not another location?

✣ Mutations are inherited from Welsh and its earlier forms. The same is true between Pre-Sindarin (or what Tolkien then referred to as Noldorin) and Sindarin. -> Welsh: atar evolved into adar 'bird' (lenition of t into a d) -> Sindarin: atar evolved into adar 'father' (same pattern)

✣ No cases in Sindarin verbs, unlike in Quenya. This means that there is no Nominative, Genitive, Dative or Accusative.

✣ Like in Welsh, again, some plural forms of nouns involve what we call a vowel change. This means that according to a regular pattern, the vowels contained within a noun are not the same between their singular and their plural forms. In Sindarin, the vowel change and suffixes help to mark plurals. As far as I'm aware, the changes are identical in Welsh, so if you wish to use Sindarin in your own work, have a look at the vowel changes rules and you should be able to form your own plurals. Please note that it occurs with both non-final and final syllables. -> examples: - adan 'man' -> edain 'men' - certh 'rune' -> cirth 'runes' - annon 'gate' -> ennyn 'gates' - amon 'hill' -> emyn 'hills' - mellon 'friend' -> mellyn 'friends' - Dúnadan 'Man of the West' -> Dúnedain (u is not affected)

✣ Suffixes are another way to mark plurals. -> examples: - harad 'south' + rim 'multitude' = Haradrim 'Southrons, Men of the South' - hadhod 'dwarf' + rim 'multitude' = Hadhodrim 'Dwarves (as a race)'

✣ Compounds are common as well. -> example: - morne 'darkness, blackness'/morn 'dark, black' + ia 'pit, gulf' = Moria

✽ Questions I asked Dr. Griffith directly and his answers

✣ Q: In your article and in the PowerPoint presentation, you sometimes mark terms with an asterisk first (e.g. *rokko-khēru-rimbe when you discuss the origin of the term 'Rohirrim'). What does this notation refer to? ✣ A: An asterisk before a form means that it is not actually found anywhere, but we assume it must have existed. In this case, *rokko-khēru-rimbe is the form of Rohirrim as it would have been pronounced in Old Sindarin, but we don't actually have the word anywhere in a written text

✣ Q: For Rohirric/Rohanese, we know that the language that Tolkien based it on was Old English and that terms were directly borrowed from it (e.g. grīma 'mask' or þeoden 'lord, prince, king'), or that names and phrases from Beowulf have been peppered in the lore of Rohan (e.g. Éomer is a character mentioned once, and the first line sung by Miranda Otto in the 'Lament for Théodred' is a line from Beowulf as well). Unfortunately, it seems that the sources on the languages are few, but do we know his reasoning or process in tweaking and applying Old English to create Rohirric/Rohanese? Do we know, perhaps, how the grammar differed from Old English? ✣ A: We don't really know anything about the language of the Rohirrim. Tolkien chose Old English as a sort of cipher. What I mean is: the language of Middle Earth is called Westron, and the Rohirrim spoke a very archaic dialect of it. Tolkien represented this by having them use Old English/archaic forms. He talks about this in one of the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, though I don't remember which one.

✣ Q: In your opinion, is it realistic to compose texts in Quenya or Sindarin, considering that we do not really have a cultural context behind them that is fully explicit? By this, I mean that since idioms and certain concepts are intrinsically tied to their cultural context, is it possible to actually use the Elvish languages to compose new texts altogether? ✣ A: It is possible to compose texts in Quenya and Sindarin. People do it. Obviously, some things are simply impossible to know: how would you say 'computer' or 'shopping mall'? And for other things, we cannot really know since only Tolkien really had the 'true understanding' of Elvish languages and cultures necessary for some text production. That said, people do do it. I don't know much about it, though, I'm afraid.

For those who are interested, I have Dr. Griffith's article, the PowerPoint presentation with sources and vocabulary on it, as well as a handout with Noldorin and Old Noldorin. Dr. Griffith also sent me some extra sources, let me know if you want me to send them to you! If you have questions, I can always try to contact Dr. Griffith again, he is the coordinator of my Middle Welsh course, so I'm bound to bump into him again, and he is genuinely excited to discuss all things Tolkien :) @konartiste @from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras @lucifers-legions @emmanuellececchi @hippodameia

[angelicfeather]

27 July 2024 🍃🌿🌱