Quoth Jared Angell
I worked a little on Elvish a very long time ago. There just wasn't enough agreed-upon information to get a good handle on it. I've seen/bought/read various grammars of Quenya, which are routinely trashed by authors of other grammars... I now have Salo's book on Sindarin and maybe I'll flip through it, especially now since I happen to be re-reading Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. Sindarin was the more widely-spoken Elvish, but Tolkien left more information on Quenya. Actually what would be even cooler would be info on Westron, the "common tongue." That's what the characters in Tolkien's head were speaking, not English. Many of the place- and character-names are translations from Westron into English, by way of the ancient roots of each (i.e. ancient obsolete roots in the fictional history Tolkien made up for Westron being translated into ancient obsolete roots in English, and then run forward in time to come up with an equivalent name.)Wow, why doesn't he speak Elvish? Anybody speak Elvish?On 10/25/07, *Matt Arnold* <matt.mattarn@gmail.com <mailto:matt.mattarn@gmail.com>> wrote:Mark Sholsen will know. He speaks Lojban, Hebrew and Klingon. Ask forclsn on the Lojban IRC chat. -EppcottOn 10/25/07, C Phillips <gardenduchess@gmail.com <mailto:gardenduchess@gmail.com>> wrote: > i don't know where else to ask and you guys seem the best liguist assistance> so....i was hopeful
You can find some Elvish speakers floating around the constructed language community--including among Lojbanists. Ivan Derzhanski, a great contributor to Lojban, has also done a lot in the "tolklang" community. There is, or at least was, an awful lot of controversy and anger in that community, though, so tread carefully.
Any other languages you want to know about? I have a couple more... ~mark