User:Double sharp/Telerin

Telerin
Created by	J. R. R. Tolkien
Date	c. 1915–1973
Setting and usage	The fictional world of Middle-earth
Purpose	constructed languages artistic languages fictional languages Telerin
Writing system	Latin; Elvish writing systems: Tengwar (mainly)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)

Telerin (pronounced [ˈtɛlɛˌrin]), is a fictional language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, and used by the Elves in his fictional universe that is commonly known as Middle-earth.

Tolkien began devising the language at around 1915 and re-structured the grammar and phonology several times until Telerin reached its final state. The vocabulary remained relatively stable throughout the creation process. Also the name of the language was changed by Tolkien from Solosimpe to Telerin. It is the third-most developed of the Elvish languages, after Quenya and Sindarin, but unlike those two languages, Tolkien never named a specific inspiration for Telerin, while Quenya and Sindarin were inspired by Finnish and Welsh respectively, but it has been suggested that Telerin was influenced by Latin and Italian. Another notable feature of Tolkien's Elvish languages was his development of a complex internal history of characters to speak those tongues in their own fictional universe since he felt that, as with the historical languages he studied professionally, his languages changed and developed over time not in a vacuum, but as a result of the migrations and interactions of the peoples who spoke them. The name Telerin is actually a Quenya word: Telerin names for the language are Lindalambe and Lindārin.

Within Tolkien's fictive universe, Telerin is one of the many Elvish languages spoken by the immortal Elves, called Quendi ('speakers') in Quenya and Pendi in Telerin. Telerin translates as "the language of the Teleri". After the Elves divided, Telerin originated as the speech of the third clan of "High Elves" or Eldar, the Teleri, who left Middle-earth to live in Eldamar ("Elvenhome"), in Valinor, the land of the immortal and God-like Valar. Telerin did not play a major part in the later Ages, as the Teleri were little involved in historical events, except for the Kinslaying at Alqualondë.

The longest published Telerin text by Tolkien is one sentence long. At his death Tolkien left behind a number of unpublished writings on Telerin and later Tolkien scholars have prepared his notes and unpublished manuscripts for publication in the journals Parma Eldalamberon and Vinyar Tengwar, also publishing scholarly and linguistic analyses of the language. Although Tolkien never created enough vocabulary to make it possible to converse in Telerin, some poetry and prose has been written in Telerin: this has required conjecture and the need to devise new words, in effect developing a kind of neo-Telerin language.

External history

Development

The development of Telerin may be divided into four stages:

1. pre-Etym-Telerin: The earliest Telerin of 1920–5. These are very different in style from all the later stages and as such is mostly obsolete for the study of Tolkien's final vision of Telerin. Some phonological developments were in place at this time already (e.g. kw > p; rya > ria). This Telerin has a much greater Latin and Italian flavour than later stages, in which this influence is reduced to just being a faint similarity:
2. Etym-Telerin: The few Telerin words mentioned in The Etymologies, written 1937–8. These forms begin to follow Tolkien's final vision of Telerin and need only minor updating, if at all.
3. Q&E-Telerin: Telerin as seen in the essay Quendi and Eldar, written 1959–60. These give new Telerin words and phrases and some derivational rules for Telerin, and the relationship of Telerin to Quenya and Sindarin begins to surface.
4. late Telerin: Tolkien's last conceptions of Telerin, in various late essays written 1967–9. These give more words, rules, and finally finish describing the relationships between the Eldarin languages and the internal history of Telerin in Arda – work that was begun at the Q&E-Telerin stage.

Internal history

This section is currently severely incoherent. That will change soon.

The Elvish languages are a language family of several related languages and dialects. The following is a brief overview of the fictional internal history of Telerin as conceived by Tolkien c. 1965.

It has been observed that the "degree of proximity" to the light of the Valar affects the development of both languages in terms of phonology, morphology and semantics. The division between Light Elves and Dark Elves that took place during the Sundering of the Elves is reflected in their respective languages. Telerin seems intermediate between Quenya and Sindarin.

"The names Findaráto and Angaráto were Telerin in form (for Finarfin spoke the language of his wife's people); and they proved easy to render into Sindarin in form and sense, because of the close relationship of the Telerin of Aman to the language of their kin, the Sindar of Beleriand, in spite of the great changes that it had undergone in Middle-earth. Artafindë and Artanga would have been their more natural Quenya forms..."(PM:346)

The Elves at first shared a common language, Primitive Quendian. Among the Eldar, i.e. those Elves who undertook the Great March to Valinor and Eldamar, Primitive Quendian developed into Common Eldarin. Some of the Eldar remained in Beleriand and became the Grey Elves; their language developed into Sindarin. The Vanyar and Noldor continued to Eldamar ('Elvenhome') and founded the great city of Tirion, where they developed Quenya. But the Teleri came too late for the first embarking of Tol Eressëa over Belegaer the Great Sea, and when it came to the second embarking, they wished to still see the stars under which they awoke at Cuiviénen. Thus Ulmo set Tol Eressëa just off the shore of Valinor, so that the Teleri could see the stars and yet dwell within sight of Aman;(Silm:Ch.5) this long separation from the Vanyar and Noldor caused their language to diverge from Quenya. Telerin was held by some elves to be a dialect of Quenya; the two languages were somewhat mutually intelligible (PM:332), but the Teleri considered it to be a separate language and Finarfin, a Noldo, is stated explicitly to have learned it, showing that they were further apart. Telerin itself descended from Common Telerin, almost certainly through Old Telerin; Common Telerin was spoken by the Teleri on the march from Cuiviénen to Valinor: notably, it had turned primitive kw to p at a very early stage, as seen from the fact that this change even occurs in some Avarin languages (cf. an Avarin word penni < kwendî).(WJ:410) Common Telerin yielded Sindarin and Nandorin in Middle-earth.

1. Development of initial Primitive Quendian consonants in Telerin

	plosive				nasal	fricative	approximant	trill
	voiceless		voiced
	plain	aspirated	plain	prenasalized
labial	P→p	PH→f	B→b	MB→b, emb	M→m
dental	T→t	TH→f	D→d	ND→d, end	N→n	S→s	L→l, gl	R→r
palatal-dental	TY→*t	*THY→*þ	DY→*d	NDY→*d	NY→n	SY→*s
palatal-velar	KY→t	KHY→þ	GY→*d	ÑGY→*g, ang			Y→y
plain velar	K→c	KH→h	G→g	ÑG→g, ng, eng	Ñ→∅	Ȝ→∅
labial-velar	KW→p	KHW→f	GW→b	ÑGW→m, emb			W→v
glottal						H→h

Originally the diphthong eu became ū in the Telerin of the 1930s;(Etym) late Telerin is sometimes said by Tolkien to have eu merge with iu(VT48:7), but there are also attested words from this period such as ceura "renewed" that leave eu unchanged.(VT48:7). The diphthongs ai, ui, au, and iu had remained unchanged from Common Eldarin, but the Common Eldarin diphthongs ei, oi, ou, ae, oe had become ē, ui, ō, ā, and ā respectively. The loss of oi is a distinct conception from the Telerin described in Quendi and Eldar, which contains forms such as Elloi "Elves". Telerin au remains av when followed immediately by a vowel, and becomes o when final (e.g. heco "excluding"); conversely, in general, v becomes u after consonants. The Common Eldarin vowel ǭ (IPA: [ɔː]) is realized in Telerin as ā.

Phonology

Consonants

Telerin has a very conservative phonology compared to all the other Eldarin languages (Quenya being the second most conservative). (Ardalambion) The Telerin consonant system has 5 major places of articulation: labial (involving the lips), dental (involving the tongue and the back of the teeth), palatal (involving the tongue and the middle part of the roof of the mouth), velar (involving the back of the tongue and the back part of the roof of the mouth), and glottal (involving the vocal folds). Unlike Quenya and Sindarin, there is a complete absence of voiced fricatives; it is not known if voicless approximants and liquids occur in Telerin. The voiced stops b, d, and g are far less restricted in position than in Quenya, and many more consonant clusters are permitted. The following table presents the inventory of classic Telerin consonants, together with their orthographic representations in angle brackets.

2. Telerin Consonants

		Labial		Dental		Palatal	Velar	Glottal
		bilabial	labiodental	plain	post-dental
Occlusive	voiced	<b> b		<d> d			<g> ɡ
	voiceless	<p> p		<t> t			<c> k
Fricative			<f> f 1	<s> s 2	<þ> θ 3		<ch> (x) 4	<h> h
Nasal		<m> m		<n> n			<n> ŋ 5
Liquids	central			<r> r
	lateral			<l> l
Approximants		<v> w				<y> j

¹ Originally bilabial [ɸ].

¹ Telerin [s] is dental, and not alveolar like Quenya [s]. Telerin [s] may thus be more narrowly transcribed [s̪].

² Telerin [θ], like Vanyarin Quenya [θ], is post-dental (and could be more narrowly transcribed [θ̠]). It was previously interdental, as in English.

³ [x] is attested only in early Telerin material and may or may not be present in Tolkien's later conception of the language.

⁴ [ŋ] may or may not be phonemic in Telerin, but certainly occurs at least as an allophone of [n] before other velar consonants. Tolkien constantly changed his idea on this, sometimes stating that it was actually a Telerin phoneme, but no attested words have bare /ŋ/ without /ɡ/ or /k/ immediately following.

Gemination, common with the voiceless stops, is indicated with a doubled consonant. (VT47:12,23,32,42)

Morphophonemics and allophony – talk for consonants

Vowels

3. Telerin Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i(ː)	u(ː)
Close-mid	e(ː)	o(ː)
Open	a(ː)

Telerin has five vowels, and a distinction of length. The short vowels are /a, e, i, o, u/ and the long ones are written with an macron as /ā, ē, ī, ō, ū/. The precise quality of the vowels is not known, but their pronunciation is likely closer to the "pure" vowels of Italian and Spanish than to the diphthongized English ones. The precise function of the acute accent in Telerin is not precisely known: it always indicates stress, but sometimes seems to indicate vowel length as well.

Diphthongs

4. Telerin Diphthongs

	Offglide
	Front	Back
i		iw (ju?)
e		(ew)
a	aj, (aːj)	aw
o	(oj)
u	uj

Seven Telerin diphthongs are known, attested throughout various stages of its development: /ai, āi, ui, oi, au, eu, iu/ (the last written iú, possibly indicating that it is a rising diphthong [ju], in contrast to the other diphthongs which are known to be falling). Unusually, one long diphthong (āi) is known, in the word gāialā (from the primitive Elvish root GAYA, Common Eldarin gāyā), which also contains the sole known example of a primitive final long vowel being preserved in any Eldarin language.(Ardalambion) However, Tolkien's latest ideas seem to have been to remove the diphthongs /oi/ and /eu/, having them became /ui/ and /iu/ in Telerin respectively, and given the Telerin word gaiar "Belegaer", also derived from the root GAYA, the presence of /āi/ in late Telerin is also uncertain. This would reduce the number of Telerin diphthongs to four in Tolkien's final vision of Telerin: /ai, ui, au, iu/.

Syllables and stress

Telerin stress rules may not conform precisely to Quenya or Sindarin stress rules. As mentioned above, Telerin employs two diacritics: the macron, which definitely refers to vowel length, and the acute accent, whose precise function is unknown and inconsistent. It has been suggested that they could both refer to vowel length, with the macron either being synonymous with the accent or marking overlong vowels, but the latter meaning has been noted to be implausible due to the large number of overlong vowels it would create. Another possibility is that the acute refers to stress, but this is done inconsistently, and the only cases where this is certainly the meaning are in the words avá "don't!" and ciúra "renew". If Ciriáran "mariner king" is stressed on the á, which is possible though not certain, then a stress rule can be deduced that i between a consonant and another vowel (historically derived from y, as it appears in Quenya) cannot receive stress, as Quenya and Sindarin stress rules would have the stress on the second i.

Grammar

The grammar of Telerin is mildly agglutinative and suffixing, i.e. different word particles are joined by appending them, but to a much smaller extent than Quenya. It has basic word classes of verbs, nouns and pronouns/determiners, adjectives and prepositions. Nouns are inflected for case and number. Verbs are inflected for tense and aspect, and for agreement with subject and object. The following describes Tolkien's latest conception of Telerin grammar.

Nouns

Telerin nouns have at least two numbers: singular and general plural ("plural 1"). There also exists a formation that could be identical in meaning to the Quenya particular/partitive plural ("plural 2"). The dual probably also exists, but is nowhere attested certainly.

For plural 1 the suffix is always -i. When the singular form ends in a or u, a diphthong is formed with the suffix -i. When the singular form ends with e, the plural has plain i (ei being nonexistent in Telerin); when the singular ends in o, the plural has ui. No nouns end in i in the singular.

For plural 2 (speculative) the suffix may be -m, e.g. in edulam (presumably "many elves", given *edul "Elf" and eme "many" being the source of this ending). Tolkien only gives this in -am, -em, and -um: presumably either nouns ending in -o use a different ending or use -um. Nouns ending in consonants had lost a vowel from Common Eldarin and presumably kept this vowel in plural 2.

The presence of a dual form is suggested by yūnece "twelve" being described as the dual form of enec(e) "six". The dual may thus be expressed in Telerin simply by the prefix yū- (cf. Quenya yúyo "both"), which elides with the initial vowel of the noun.

Telerin nouns are declined for case, but to a much smaller extent than Quenya. Telerin probably has only four cases. These include the two primary cases, nominative and genitive, and one adverbial case: allative (of which the dative, the only probable unattested case, is a shortened form). The presence of further cases is unlikely, and the other cases of Quenya are most likely usually expressed by prepositions in Telerin.

Adjectives

In middle and late Telerin, adjectives follow the noun they modify.(WJ:369) Some common derivational endings are -ia and -na (for general use), -ima (-able), -re and -ra (completion), -rin (material or language), and -ya (for ordinal numbers). Adjectives do not have attested plural forms.

Prepositions and adverbs

In Quenya, there are many similarities in form between prepositions and adverbs since the grammatical case already determines the relation of verb and object: the same is true for Telerin. For example, avad "away" is related to the obsolete allative ending -da, always found as -na grammatically.

As mentioned above, prepositions seem to suffice to express many of the Quenya noun cases in Telerin. It has been suggested that the ablative may be formed from the preposition *et ("out (of)", as in Quenya) and the genitive, as in Russian: the Telerin translation of Quenya Et Eärello Endorenna "Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth" may thus be *Et Gaiaro (H)endorena. The locative may thus be expressed with the preposition *mi "in"; the same happens in Quenya, but much more restricted.

Number words

According to Tolkien, the elves preferred duodecimal counting (base 12) to the decimal system (base 10). Nevertheless, the Telerin vocabulary of number words is largely decimal, though there exists a special word for 12.(Parma Tyelpelassiva) The numbers 1–10 are presented below (reconstructed forms are marked with an asterisk *, and wrong forms with a double asterisk **). (VT48:6, 21)

5. Number words for numbers 1 to 10

Cardinal numbers		Ordinal numbers
Telerin	English	Telerin	English
er, min	one	minya	first
tat	two	tatya	second
nelet	three	nelya	third
canat	four	canatya	fourth
lepen	five	lepenya	fith
enec, enece	six	enetya	sixth
otos	seven	ototya	seventh
toloþ, *tolot, *tolod	eight	tolodya	eighth
neter	nine	neterya	ninth
pai, pain	ten	paianya	tenth

Only cardinal numbers are attested for any higher numbers: 11 minipe; 12 yūnece, yumpe; 13 nelpe; 14 campe; 15 lepempe; 16 enempe; 17 otospe; 18 tolpe; 19 neterpe. These are made from the roots for the words for the numbers 1 to 9 and the root KEWE- "new, fresh, anew, repeated", except yūnece for 12 (literally "twice six").

The presence of -y- after consonants in the ordinal numbers, uncharacteristic of Telerin (which usually changes -y- to -i- after consonants), has been suggested to be due to Quenya influence or due to a special adjectival suffix only for ordinal numbers. The word ototya for "seventh" is due to an analogical substitution of the ending -tya: the original Common Eldarin form was otosjā, which would yield Telerin **otosya.

Vocabulary

Proper nouns

The lexicon of Telerin has many proper nouns.

Findarāto "hair-noble"; Angarāto "iron-noble"; Ambarāto "top-noble"; Alatāriel(le) "maiden crowned with a brightly radiant garland"

Telporno "silver-tall"; Telperimpar "silver-fist"; Daintāro "saviour of the Dani"; Findo "grey one"; Ciriāran "mariner-king";

Baradis "Lofty Lady"; Ēde "Rest"; Bala "Power"

Audel "Elf of Aman"; Ello "Elf (general)"; Vaniai "Vanyar"; Goldo "Noldo"; Linda "Teler"; Hecello "Elf of Beleriand"

Goldolambe, Goldōrin "Quenya"; Heculbar, Hecellubar "Beleriand"

Greetings

Elvish greetings can be expressed both by voice and by hand, and often involve a combination of the two. Elvish greetings are often, but not always, used just prior to a conversation. From the Lord of the Rings it appears that Elves do not have a very elaborate greeting ritual.

• The Quenya word Namárië is a reduced form of Quenya á na márië, literally "be well". It is a formula used in Tarquesta for greetings and also for farewell. The Telerin cognate is not attested in Tolkien, but the known phonological development from Common Eldarin to Telerin would result in *Namagrie.
• The Quenya greeting Elen síla lúmenn' omentiëlvo! was a very old traditional formula in an elevated style and used between two people (or two companies of many people) each going on a path that crosses that of the other: "A star shines upon the hour of the meeting of our ways". This formula was also used in Telerin: Ēl sīla lūmena *vomentie nguo!
• The most usual formula used by the Noldor in farewells is Áva márië! "Go happily!", or Máriënna! "To happiness!". The Telerin cognates would be *Āba magrie! and *Magriena! respectively.

Other phrases

Only a few other Telerin phrases are known (as opposed to single words):

• Olue cava, cava Olue, and *cava ria Olue, all meaning "Olwë's house".(WJ:369)
• Abā care! "Don't do [it]!"(WJ:371)
• Ōre nia pete nin "My heart tells me"(VT41:11)

Writing systems

Most of the times, Tolkien wrote his invented languages using the Latin script, but he devised a number of original writing systems to match the internal histories of his languages.

Elvish writing systems

Is there a tengwar mode for Telerin anywhere???

None attested by Tolkien, but here's a plausible reconstruction of it.

Latin alphabet

Tolkien's spelling in Latin letters of Quenya was largely phonemic, with each letter corresponding to a specific phoneme in the language: it uses all the letters of the Latin alphabet except j, k, q, w, x, and z, and uses the special letter þ additionally. blah blah blah.

Notes

Yes, the referencing is currently terrible. It will be remedied before I actually dump this into mainspace.