Introduction to Elvish

Elvish has two main dialects: Quenya and Sindarin. Quenya, or High Elven, was the language of the Elves in Valinor. Sindarin, or Grey Elven, was the language of the Elves who never came to Valinor; Sindarin also became the principal language of the Elves who left Valinor for Middle-earth (read The Silmarillion for these stories). Quenya is based on Finnish and Latin, while Sindarin is based on Welsh. The two languages are very similar at times: for example, the Quenya word for "moon" is isil, while the Sindarin form is ithil. The Quenya word for "sun" is anar, while the Sindarin form is anor.

"Grelvish"

Many web sites attempt to teach Elvish, and Grey Company is one of them. Their Elvish, sometimes called "Grelvish", is not really Elvish at all. The site says it is loosely based on Tolkien's Quenya--it is VERY loosely based. Grelvish is very widespread--type in "Elvish phrases" on a search engine, and half the sites you'll come up with will be Grelvish. What's wrong with Grelvish? It has grammatical mistakes all over. Examples: they say amin means "I, me, or my" (there are actually words for each of them), they say verbs do not conjugate (instead of "I am, you are, it is...", Grelvish says it would be "I is, you is, it is"), they say namárië is spelled namaarie, and they say imperative (commanding) verbs end with "a"--they end with "o" (as in lasto "listen", tíro "look", and edro "open"). Some of the more popular Grelvish phrases are "Amin mela lle", "Auta miqula orqu", "Lasta lalaithamin", and "Arwen-en-amin". None of the Elvish words or phrases given in this section are Grelvish.

Pronunciation

A-U tried to write out pronunciation for each each word in each section, but there are at least three pronunciations that are very hard to write out:





U The letter U is pronounced "oo"--this may seem easy to write out, but in words like dûr (dark), if I wrote "door", then readers would think it was pronounced "dore". The best way to think of this pronunciation is the word "do" with an R added onto it.





CH This is one of the hardest pronunciations to write out. If the CH is at the end of a word (like lach "flame'), then it is pronounced almost like the Scottish "loch". If the CH is at the beginning of a word (like chae "earth"), the nearest pronunciation is an H. For example, chae would be pronounced more like "hi" than "chye". This is not an exact pronunciation (and neither is the pronunciation of lach). DH DH is pronounced like TH, but there are two ways of pronouncing TH in English: TH as in "hath", and TH as in "these". Elvish words with DH in them (like Hadhafang "Throng-cleaver") use the TH as in "these", not "hath".

English to Elvish:

Words are in Sindarin, unless noted by a "Q", those are in Quenya. Some entries are not actual words, but roots of words.