Philology and Language Studies: Invented Languages

Three notable works on Tolkien’s creative philology appeared this year. By far the larger of two first publications from Tolkien’s manuscripts is Qenya Noun Structure, which forms issue 21 of Parma Eldalamberon, the continuing book-form presentation of the major texts of this material (Mountain View, CA: Parma Eldalamberon, 2013). One of the shorter volumes in the series, it contains a foreword by editors Christopher Gilson, Patrick H. Wynne, and Arden R. Smith (iv–xxii) describing the otherwise unannotated (except for textual footnotes) texts that follow. These are technical grammatical studies, mostly in narrative form with a few tables. The foreword informs us that “the types of Elvish script used . . . are early varieties of the writing system later known as the Tengwar” (xi). The documents are the following:

• “Declension of Nouns” (early 1930s), declensions and outlines for some 80 nouns, which being “reminiscent of the ‘Qenya Declensions’ from the late 1920s, three versions of which were included in” Parma 16 (iv), are editorially designated Version 4 of this sequence (1–41).

• “Qenya Declensions,” two groups of tables further revised from the material in the above and accordingly designated Versions 5–6 (42–54).

• “Primitive Quendian Structure: Note on Final Consonants,” dated 1936 (55–61).

• An untitled sheet associated with the previous (probably 1944), editorially titled “Common Quendian: Declension of Nouns” (62).

• A document simply titled “Nouns” (probably 1940s, no later than 1952) (63–65).

• “Notes for Q[enya] Declensions” (1940s), based on “Nouns” and probably written soon afterward (66–69).

• “Common Eldarin: Noun Structure” (probably 1951–52), originally titled “Early Inflexional Elements and Final Consonants in Eldarin” (70–86), including discussion of adjectives and the Elvish concept of “personification,” in effect an early draft of “Of Naming” (Morgoth 214–17).

In an issue of the Tolkien linguistic publication Vinyar Tengwar, Carl F. Hostetter has presented an extensive philological analysis of the very brief texts in early Sindarin that Tolkien wrote, apparently in the early 1950s, on a sheet of paper that he wrapped around some plot synopses for The Children of Húrin. The present texts are mostly titles for that story, specifically naming the principal character in Sindarin as Túrin Túramarth. The sheet has accordingly been designated “The ‘Túrin Wrapper’ ” (Vinyar Tengwar 50: 3–26), perhaps (as John D. Rateliff has suggested) in allusion to the Shroud of Turin.

The third notable publication of the year in this area is volume 4 of Arda Philology, or Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Invented Languages, Omentielva Cantea, Valencia, 2011, edited by Beregond, Anders Stenström (Stockholm: Arda Society, 2013).

Arden R. Smith begins the volume by describing his personal experience in “Editing Tolkien’s Alphabets” (1–17), beginning with his joining the Elvish linguistic publication project in 1992 and continuing through his work on The Qenya Alphabet (Parma Eldalamberon 20), published in 2012, soon after this article was presented as a talk at the Valencia conference. It is well illustrated with Smith’s transcriptions of the material he consulted in Tolkien’s papers, to demonstrate the kind of work he did on them. He addresses practical issues like the difficulty of scanning Tolkien’s manuscripts cleanly into computers. In contrast to this informal talk transcription, Smith’s “Phonetic Symbols in Tolkien’s Early Alphabetic Materials” (62–81) is a detailed technical catalogue of Tolkien’s practice in using IPA and other phonetic symbols to indicate the pronunciation of the characters in the Alphabet of Rúmil and the Valmaric script.

Georgia Kyte briefly speculates on “Mystery and Magic in Distant Lands: The Names of the Ithryn Luin as Clues to Their Role and Importance” (18–27), suggesting that the renaming of the Blue Wizards from the bland (in her view) Alatar and Pallando to the more sonically resonant Morinehtar and Rómestámo correlates in sound as well as meaning with a recasting of their mission from futile to perhaps effective (23–24). But the very fact that they remain mysterious and elusive is part of their appeal to readers.

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