Subject: ...seems legit.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-06-28 05:30:00 UTC
For the record, I am entirely a fan of the time-travel experiments.
Mainly because, c'mon, how frustrating is it to have to wait a few decades/centuries for this stuff?
(Though I'd love to have a technical discussion, too...)
I've recently discovered that there seems to be a long-running, slow-burning, and extremely virulent war between the two sides of the discussion of Tolkien linguistics.
On the one hand, you have people like David Salo (who did the Sindarin for the films) and Helge Fauskanger (Ardalambion); they take the stance that it's possible and desirable to collate standardised versions of Sindarin and Quenya, which can be treated like, say, Basque - people can take a course, read a dictionary, and write in them.
On the other foot, you have the view of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship: Carl F. Hostetter (Vinyar Tengwar) and the editorial team for Parma Eldalamberon. They believe that Tolkien's languages should be seen as an evolving process (which is part of why PE is publishing Tolkien's linguistic papers in chronological order), and according to Hostetter's Elvish as She Is Spoke (top link on that page), that:
'the best way to develop real linguistic knowledge of the Elvish languages as Tolkien thought about and described them [...] is this: [...] Engag[ing] first in deep and thoughtful study of all that Tolkien himself wrote, of the modes of expression that he employed in his Elvish compositions, and of the subjects of expression that interested him, [...] will provide [...] both the inspiration and the means to make new expression in the languages as they actually are...' (Paraphrased from the final page before the footnotes).
The implication seems to be that, while one can make some effort at using the Elvish languages now, the best way to do it would be to wait for absolutely everything to be released, then read through it all in order, possibly with a degree in linguistics to help out.
And, I suppose, I agree - that would lead to the best results. But on the other hand, I don't think it's reasonable to ask me to wait fifty years and take a few university courses before I'm allowed to try my hand at Quenya. I have no doubt that Ardalambion has errors, both in its assumptions and in that it doesn't account for unpublished material - but it's there now, and the linguistic papers aren't. Nor will they ever be, for me - I just don't have the skillset to learn Quenya from the original texts. I'd rather make a few mistakes and play with something beautiful now.
But if I were just stating that, I wouldn't need to post here. ;) What does anyone else think? This is delving into linguistic philosophy, I guess. For that matter, what do you think Tolkien would have thought? Would he even have wanted people using his languages? If he'd lived to today, would he have settled on a final form yet? (Iiiii'm gonna say no) What does it all MEAN?!?!?
Er, sorry. Got a little carried away with that last.
hS
Well - to state/restate the obvious, languages evolve. English is changing every day, both in slow and gradual ways and in more immediate ones; some of these changes are welcomed, some are scorned, which is which depends mostly on the racial and socioeconomic status of the population where the change is seen to have originated*, but most eventually do make their way into standard lexicons, only to be pushed out later...
But how does this relate to a fictional language, like Tolkien's Quenya and Sindarin? As far as we know, the populations who "originally" used them aren't around, still using them, allowing them to evolve as they get used conversationally. In that sense, they are essentially dead languages; like Latin, or Old English, the point of learning them tends to be for very specific purposes of understanding either a document - Elvish poetry, for example - or a very, very specific subset of people. So to that extent, it makes sense to treat them... well, like Basque. You read the materials, you learn the languages, and then you use the language in whatever way you had intended - say, to write poetry or communicate with excellent geek friends.
The thing about the evolving process of Tolkien's work being published, I guess, in the way it seems they're doing it, is that it feels really artificial. Languages evolve in a very organic, messy, chaotic process, taking their cue from pretty much every aspect of the cultures they inhabit and other overlapping languages and cultures. If these languages are going to evolve they'd do so by being spoken. Which means, quite possibly and if enough people start picking them up, that they'll wind up evolving in two different directions - a vernacular, informal version (which, given the predilections of linguists and the folks likely to learn Elvish, is still going to be probably quite formal), and the version that the scholars eventually come out with in a few decades when all of Tolkien's work has been pored over enough times.
Either way, interesting times!
*of course, eventually the "bad" dialects of English, because they're spoken by a demographic generally disapproved of by gatekeepers, becomes cool and rebellious, and catches on, leading to essentially appropriation of a dialect by restless and rebellious youth, leading to backlash by the original speakers of said dialects, leading to a lot of confusion about whether it's okay to speak a dialect of English that's been used as a tool of oppression for social credit if you're never likely to be oppressed by those selfsame gatekeepers, or whether it's just a part of linguistic culture that dialects catch on over time. For more information, see ~23% of Tumblr.
Obviously, the ability to speak Quenya or Sindarin is quite young - or, as some would say, not yet there! And the data coming out of ELF is going to lead to revisions of what we 'know', so the speakable Exilic Quenya of twenty years hence will not be the same as it is today.
But... what about in a hundred years? All of Tolkien's data should be available by then, which means Quenya courses and wordlists can be as 'up to date' as possible - though of course not matching what was in Tolkien's head, because he almost certainly didn't write most of it down. But when a stable, consensus Quenya exists - will it evolve in the way you're talking about, creating a vernacular version? I guess that would depend on there being communities which use it (rather than just fanfics using the same rote phrases over and over). Maybe something like Second Life could have Quenya (and Sindarin - showing my bias, there!)-only regions.
Or, of course, we could start a whole spaceship speaking it. That would probably do it too.
I think the transition to 'vernacular' Quenya will come when people start coining their own... not words, but roots. At the moment, we want to stay close to Tolkien, which leads to doing things like trying to paraphrase 'window' as 'lightdoor' - something that natural languages rarely do. Can a consensus Vernacular Quenya (Seventh Age Quenya? Atani Quenya?) come into existence with actual new words? I don't know; it seems like we'd get a proliferation of dialects and creoles long before we got a stable version.
But give it a century or two... hmm.
hS
It's probably true that we'd get a proliferation of dialects and creoles first - the test would be whether they came together into a stable language, or went off in their own directions, evolving into entirely separate language sub-groups. I'd love to see what such a population would look like in a few hundred years - with the internet, it's especially interesting. Language doesn't usually evolve (especially from so small a beginning pool) in ways such that all the areas can (and likely will) speak to each other so often.
On the five hundredth anniversary of the release of the film that popularised it – the original, Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings – it seems appropriate to examine the place the Elvish language, Quenya, has taken in our society.
This language, invented in the Late Middle Ages by J.R.R. Tolkien, has something of a cult following: a startlingly large number of the system's communities use some form of it. But the forms in question are as diverse as the populations that employ them. The dominant varieties are:
Helgan Quenya
This variant is closest to the original work of Tolkien; it strives to employ only words and grammatical constructs attested in his works. Unfortunately, this also makes it rather limited in vocabulary: it is rarely employed in vocal speech, being rather confined to text-based systems, where its limits can be worked around at length.
Third Age Exilic Quenya (Reconstructed)
The North American nation of Laurelindórenan began its existence using an even more restricted form of Helgan Quenya – they utilised only words dated from the period of the writing and publication of The Lord of the Rings. However, the impossibility of running a country with such a limited language soon led to compromises and expansions. Some hundred and fifty years later, 3AEQ(R) is a thriving, living language, with speakers numbering in the millions.
Grelvish
Perhaps the most wide-spread of the Quenya languages, Grelvish is also the most conservative. Originally created from a combination of Quenya and Sindarin, its wordlists have long ago taken on the status of holy writ. Any Grelvish speaker who dares to alter the sacred language faces exile – or worse.
Élvîshë
More of a writing system than a true language, Élvîshë adds random accents and extraneous final 'ë's to English words. It is the official orthographic system of the newly-terraformed 'Vénûsë'.
Finno-Quenya and Elf-Latin
While functionally unrelated, it makes sense to group these languages together: they each borrow words and grammar from another language (Finnish and Latin, respectively) to expand and complete the Quenya corpus. Finno-Quenya is virtually the only Quenya language spoken in Europe, while Elf-Latin has recently been adopted as the official ceremonial language of the trans-Uranian science stations.
Neo-Qenya
Rather than utilising Tolkien's incomplete later writings, Neo-Qenya draws on the pre-Lord of the Rings 'Qenya' language. Strange and alien-sounding even to other Quenya speakers, it is perhaps no surprise that Neo-Qenya has become widely spoken in the Martian hinterlands.
Seventh Age Unified Quendian
Originally created as an effort to 'modernise' and 'update' the holy Grelvish (and thus to demonstrate that it was not truly divine), 7AUQ has since become a popular tongue in its own right. The fastest-growing of the Quenya group, it blends Quenya and Sindarin into a cohesive and unique whole which has been deliberately shaped to allow forms of artistic expression not available in other languages.
For the record, I am entirely a fan of the time-travel experiments.
Mainly because, c'mon, how frustrating is it to have to wait a few decades/centuries for this stuff?
Alternate title: Truth, what's it stranger than?
A Swede named Susanne Vejdemo wrote an academic paper on 'two Swedish LARP-languages', one derived from Quenya, the other from the Black Speech (... yeah). The language she designates as Q3 is probably what my Finno-Quenya would look like in reality (but for a different Scandinavian language, naturally).
(The paper was presented at Omentielva Minya; 'Arda Philology 1' is the transcripts from that conference)
hS
Treat it like Latin.
Latin, for all that the classical civilizations are still studied, is a dead language. Quenya and Sindarin have the same problem; the original speakers are all dead, what with never being alive in the first place. We're going to have to invent new words for things that didn't exist in the cultural context of Second- and Third-Age Middle-Earth, kind of like how the Welsh word for microwave is popty-ping and the Blackfoot word for horse, ponokamita, translates literally as "elk-dog" - and contrary to what you've said, this happens all the time when new cultural influences come into play for a particular culture with a particular language. German's famous for compound words that go on forever. English is the ultimate mongrel language, what with being invaded by everyone and then invading everyone else.
Otherwise, well... what's the point of learning it at all? It can't be to read documents in them, because like you said, eventually we'll run out of Tolkien's material. So learning it becomes based around the creation of new works, and that in turn necessitates the creation of new words. You're right, there will be a lot of different dialects springing up as a direct result of this, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing; the Quenya-speaking community is comparatively tiny, so the really stupid stuff can get weeded out while the words that people actually want to use will stay.
Finally, the Welsh word for jellyfish is piskodden-wibblywob. I may have misspelled it, but I assure you I am not making that up. =]
But you did raise an interesting question. Personally, I wouldn't have an issue with reading all those papers, but then again, I'm going into English and linguistics have always interested me. In the meantime, I'm not going to refrain from using Elvish. It seems to me that it's very unfair for them to make us wait. Like you said, I'm ready now.
But on the other hand, I want to have my Elvish as correct as possible. I hate to make mistakes, especially when someone put so much work into it. This of course re - and I forgot what I was saying.
I don't think Tolkien would have a finalized version. Only dead languages are static. I also don't get the idea he would mind people using it much, though he might wish they would all study harder or something. I know I would.
... I just don't think I'd understand them, or be able to construct a model of (any stage of) the language as a whole from it. Still, though, I do plan to by the collected back-issues of Vinyar Tengwar when I have the cash on hand.
I think part of the difference is that the ELF view Tolkien's works as a process, which only ended because he inconsiderately died. And that's true... but to me, at least, Middle-earth - Arda - Eä - is a world with a concrete (if fictional) existence. The ELF way of looking at things is the same as the viewpoint that claims there can be no 'canon' of the First and Second Ages - that the only sections of the world that have a solid history are those covered in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
But I don't accept that. While doubtless Tolkien would have changed things further had he had more time - he didn't. And for those of us who treat Middle-earth as a 'real' world, it has to have an actual history. There is a concrete timeline of the First Age - even if we don't know it. Equally, there is a Third Age Exilic Quenya - even if Tolkien never finalised one. The ELF study Tolkien's work as he invented and modified his languages; Ardalambion tries to look at the way the people of Middle-earth spoke. The earlier stages of the linguistic development are as irrelevant to that goal as the tale of Beren the elf, his love Tinúviel, and Telvido the Prince of Cats, is to looking at the life of Luthien of Doriath.
hS
Soooooooo inconsiderate.
I probably wouldn't understand them completely, but I would try.
I agree with you though. In order to figure out what to do with history and languages, I pretend like Middle-earth (and other fictional places) is real and view it the same way I would view, say, Germany. There are very limited reasons for knowing pre-Middle-Ages German. There are reasons, but being able to speak current German is not really one of them.