more about Elvish

Shelley at Burningbird wrote this about a Guide to Elvish**: “If you’re a Tolkien fan, or interested in linguistics, David Salo’s new book on the linguistics of Elvish, Gateway to Sindarin, A Grammar of an Elvish Language from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is out now.”

“From the 1910s to the 1970s, author and linguist J. R. R. Tolkien worked at creating plausibly realistic languages to be used by the creatures and characters in his novels. Like his other languages, Sindarin was a new invention, not based on any existing or artificial language. By the time of his death, he had established fairly complete descriptions of two languages, the “elvish” tongues called Quenya and Sindarin.”

I’m tickled pink about this, having posted some time ago about Elvish study in a UK school, and about the surprising connection to the Finnish language.

In fact, a Finnish IT student (probably graduated by now) Harri Perälä did very extensive research (in English) into Quenya, the other language created by Tolkien that resembles Finnish. Fascinating stuff!

More about Tolkien’s languages.

Addendum March 21.05: Tolkien’s Elvish prayers** – This site reveals some Elvish words and text. Found via mirabilis**

Edited March 12th, 2012: Sadly many links marked ** no longer exist and have been removed. However here is an interesting wikipedia page on author David Salo with information about his research and book. The name “Salo” is a very common Finnish name so I wonder if he has Finnish roots?

November 23, 2004 in Books, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric, Linguistics by Marja-Leena