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02-26-2019, 02:18 PM | #1 | |
Quentingolmo
Join Date: Aug 2017
Posts: 525
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Lambion Ontalë
This thread will continue the Lammas with the next section, the Lambion Ontalë, or Descent of Tongues. This text is roughly equivalent in material and in scope to the original Lhammas in HoME V, but it is much more recent and updated information-wise to the later canon, so it is infinitely preferable to include.
Our basis text is that of "Lambion Ontalë" given in Parma Eldalamberon 18. Wherever the text is different from HoME V/XII, this is marked by an editing mark. The markings are: LO-xx for tracking any changes to the intro text for the Lambion Ontalë. Some conventions of my writing: Normal Text is from the basic text that is mentioned above (when I change the basic-Text it will be mentioned) Bold Text = source information, comments and remarks {example} = text that should be deleted [example] = normalised text, normally only used for general changes <source example> = additions with source information ...... = This section of the paragraph is unchanged from the source. Quote:
LO-02: Continuation of the editing about the Valarin. LO-03: Removed a reference to AElfwine. LO-03.5: Apologies for the weird numbering, but I found this after I had written out the rest of the post and I didn't want to go back and change all the numbers. This reference to Eressea must be removed since we are told in Q&E that the Lammas is written in Eriador. LO-04: Removed a reference to AElwine and 'elf-latin' which is problematic. LO-05: Pengolodh is half-sindarin, he knows the whole language. When this was written, Sindarin was a curiosity, and the language we know now as Sindarin was called Noldorin. This is the source of a lot of changes to this text, but if you bear with them, I think you'll find we can make it work. LO-06: Changed because Dan was changed to Denweg, and Danian to Nandorin. LO-07: Removed a reference to AElfwine and his unnecessary old-english footnote. LO-08: I used both the later names of Denweg instead of the earlier ones. LO-09: Removed the 'Danian' from the reference. LO-10: Another change because of the change of location for the writing of the Lammas and its transmission. LO-11: This is explicitly not true, since later he decided that Quenya was only used as a language of lore in the wider realm of Beleriand, and it did not change much at all. LO-12: If this is from Eressea and Bilbo is translating it, it must have come through the Numenoreans in the Second Age, so no mention of Third Age is allowed. LO-13: This is a simple linguistic update changing the K to C and the q to qu. LO-14: Removed a page reference. LO-15: This is no longer true since he introduced the story of Thingol banning Quenya later on. If anything, Sindarin is the common language, but even that is hardly true everywhere. LO-16: This is changed because of the Valarin we have from Q&E. LO-17: removed because it does not function as an equivalent to latin as a common tongue any longer. LO-18: In the Shibboleth we learn that the Vanyar use the older forms of the language, as well as in pieces of Q&E. Therefore we must change this around. I think my editing here works, even though it is somewhat manipulative. LO-19: Not only can this not be used because of the uncertainty of the Valian years, but the statement is untrue in later canon as well. LO-20: Removed for a reference to the Valian Years. LO-21: The language did not change too much, although it did change somewhat through the influence of Telerin and Sindarin. LO-22: Added to reflect the same point as the last change. The Quenya of the Noldor did not change nearly as drastically as he envisioned it. Remember, he is still thinking of 'Noldorin' as what we now know as Sindarin, which would indeed be a dramatic change. But since that is no longer true, and Quenya was preserved as a tongue of lore, it did not change nearly so much as he indicates here. LO-23: The Falas dialect was a Sindarin dialect, not Noldorin. LO-24: This is a reference to the language on Eressea, but since this work is written in Eriador, I am unsure if and how we should change it. In addition, Sindarin affected the speech of Men more, since Thingol outlawed it. Also, Quenya and Sindarin were both spoken in Númenor, and neither were the common language of the people. We may consider removing this whole paragraph, or editing it severely, but I am unsure. LO-25: If we keep this paragraph, we will at least need to remove this sentence, since the Lammas was written in the second age in Eriador, and so Pengolodh cannot know of the Third Age. LO-26: Update of the name per Q&E LO-27: Same as the last. LO-28: They did not draw closer together, since Thingol outlawed Quenya, which became a book language. Therefore this whole passage is unusable. LO-29: This is a risky change, but we know it is true, and Thingol never took Noldorin refugees into Doriath, since he banned them from his kingdom. LO-30: Removed reference to Danian elves. LO-31: Name update. LO-32: This is a risky one. We may not need to replace it, since some of the Elves did go to Doriath, but in addition, Ossiriand was never destroyed by Morgoth, and the Nandor lived there long into the later ages. Therefore, I am unclear what is meant by the ruin of their realm. We may assume they fled during the War of Wrath, but if so Doriath was already destroyed by the Sons of Feanor, hence my other two options. LO-33: Men are also said elsewhere to learn from the Avari. LO-34: We know some east-nandorin words, since Lorien and Mirkwood are East-Nandorin, and we know some Avarin as well, since we have Avarin words that are mentioned in Q&E. LO-35: Removed Eressea reference. LO-36: I added this section in because nowhere in the Lambion Ontale does Tolkien discuss the very important linguistic development of Sindarin and Thingol's forbidding of spoken Quenya. Much is here that fits well into this material, and I think it is a worthy place to include it, since we did not take it up into the Volume 1 chapters. LO-37: Removed because of the uncertainties of Valian Years. LO-38: This bit from Words, Phrases, and Passages I added to give the necessary explanation of the Mithrim dialect which we learn about later in Q&E, which was a later development. I think this works well here. LO-39: Relevant fact added. LO-40: The word is awkward, and CT himself puts a ? after it as if he is unsure. Therefore I think we should change it. LO-41: The final versions of the ending years of the First Age are very unclear to me, and I am unsure if this original reading is accurate. Perhaps someone with better understanding of the dates could suggest an edit here? LO-42: Changed from these, bc originally 'these' was referring to the Grey Annals from which this section was lifted, and is now no longer a preface to them. LO-43: This part of the discussion of the language of the Dwarves has not been used by us yet, but should be, and could not be used in the Second Age sections either, due to the abstract linguistic nature of it. LO-44: replaced english idiom (as we have done before with this term.) LO-45: This was an earlier conception that was changed. LO-46: Removed bc the Lammas was written in the Second Age. LO-47: This can probably stay, but I wanted to make sure none objected to it due to its relation to the previous third age comment. LO-48: This information naming the language of the Bëorings and Hadorians is not given elsewhere, and is not (to my knowledge) incompatible with anything later. LO-49: Elvish is no longer sourced from the Valar. LO-50: Technically the Green-elves only aplied to those who came to Beleriand. Silvan seems the more general term, so I have used that. LO-51: They are said to have a different tongue. LO-52: Per the Dwarves and Men insertion above. LO-53: I think this footnote from LQ is worth repeating here. LO-54: It is said that Adunaic comes from this language, so they cannot have been said to forgotten it. It is said that in Hador’s household only Sindarin was spoken, but that the poeple kept the memory of the tongue alive. I need some help figuring out how to resolve this. LO-55: Changed to reflect the change from Danian to Nandorin. We may also discuss here if we even want to include this whole section on abbreviations, since elsewhere we do not use them. The Lambion Ontale was only the first section of a larger work called the Tengwesta Quenderinwa, which went into much more detail about the structure of the elvish language. I discussed with gondowe about including the other sections, but they are purely linguistic and do not relate to history at all. They would require someone with a much much deeper understanding of elvish than I possess to edit. He was against including them, and I am inclined to agree, since they seem to me to lie outside the scope of the project. We may thus remove this abbreviation section, since it won't be used if we do not use the later sections of the Tengwesta. LO-56: If we keep this section, we need to change this. There was no Noldorin dialect of the Falas, since there were no Noldor there. LO-57: Because we are going to change Hith. to Mith. (because of the Mithrim language) it changes places alphabetically. LO-58: This is the proper place alphabetically for it. Whew that was a lot. Hopefully this chapter can make some sense to you all. |
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03-01-2019, 07:12 PM | #2 | ||
Wight
Join Date: Mar 2014
Posts: 121
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Great job on this chapter Arcus! Some great editing and careful thought clearly went into it. I will admit to not being an expert in the languages Tolkien created, so I'm sorry I don't have more substantive comments.
LO-04 I recently re-read Appendix F in LotR, which actually uses the term "Elven-latin". Are we removing any reference to "Elf-latin" even though it is in the published LotR? The first rule of the project is that published works during Tolkien's lifetime take priority. I'm OK with the change of removing references to "Elf-latin" if it was Tolkien's later idea and it makes the history and linguistic situation more coherent, I just wanted to make sure you knew the term was used in Appendix F. LO-05 I interpreted "of which a little is known to us" as referring to its long and changeful history. LO-03.5 and LO-12: Is this text from Eressea or Eriador? If it's from Eriador, does it have to be from the Second Age? LO-18: Let me make sure I understand this change. In Tolkien's later conception, do the Noldor use "both sounds and forms that are more archaic and nearer to the written Parmaquesta"? Or did Tolkien reject that idea? I get that the Vanyar use the older form of the language, so it makes sense to change "the usage of the Vanyar" to "the usage of the Noldor", but I don't understand why the change "in fact the Noldor" to "in fact the Vanyar" must needs be made. LO-21: How about just removing "much"? In LO-11 "greatly" was removed to achieve the same effect. LO-24: It seems fine to me to keep this paragraph (with the removal of the end as in LO-25. Even though the work was written in Eriador, Pengolodh could still have knowledge of the language of Eressea. Also, it doesn't say Noldorin is the common language of the Numenoreans, it just says it was "spoken by the high men" there. LO-28 I think we can keep the last sentence, which serves as a nice segue: Quote:
LO-32 This seems risky to me. The "ruin of their realm" could be interpreted not to mean the complete destruction of Ossiriand, but the casualties they took as reported in "The Coming of Denethor" in HoME XI: Quote:
LO-40 I agree "Finrodians" is awkward, but do we know it was just the sons of Finarfin who influenced the Beor-folk, i.e. Galadriel had no influence? Maybe we should change it to "the people of Finarfin"? LO-41 I will have to look into this more. LO-47 I think this is fine as a footnote, since footnotes imply editorial additions which could come later. LO-54 Couldn't the Men east of the Ered-Lindon who held to their speech be the ones who develop Adunaic? LO-55 I personally would vote for removing this section if we do not use the abbreviations later. One last point: since we include some information about the language of the Dwarves and Men in this chapter, could we include more material from Appendix F of LotR? Have we used that material elsewhere? |
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03-02-2019, 05:23 PM | #3 | |||||
Quentingolmo
Join Date: Aug 2017
Posts: 525
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LO-04: He changed the sense in which he meant the term. In Appendix F, he uses 'elf-latin' to refer to its quality as a language of lore and antiquity. But here he uses it to refer to its quality as a common tongue between various peoples, as Latin was for the christians in middle-ages Europe. Therefore I changed it. In addition, Appendix F is written from the Point of view of Tolkien the professor, whereas the Lambion Ontale is written from the point of view of Pengolodh of gondolin, who would of course have no such word as 'elf-latin.'
LO-05: I do not see how this could be what he meant. At the time this was written, he had invented no 'Sindarin' as we know it. To him it was an unknown language. That is what he refers to. In addition, we now know a great deal about its development, so we can hardly say not much was known about that either. LO-3.5/12: We have this quote from Q&E: Quote:
Quote:
LO-18: I think I am confused by your question. Here is the original version of the text: Quote:
Quote:
LO-21: Good point, I agree to only remove 'much.' LO-24: Very well, but I think we should change 'language' to 'languages' due to the fact that both Quenya and Sindarin were spoken there: Quote:
LO-28b: Agreed. LO-32: You are correct, I had not considered this. I will leave it as is. LO-40: Perhaps 'children'? 'People' makes me think of those elves who stayed behind with Finarfin in Valinor. LO-54: That's true, but we are told explicitly that the Edain were the ones who founded Numenor, and they were given the island because they fought in the war of wrath. Therefore, Adunaic must be derived from them. LO-55: Yeah I am inclined to remove it. Last Point: I had not thought of this, but it is true that portions of Appendix F might fit nicely in here. However, we would need to be selective, since Appendix F is largely focused on the issue of 'translation' from these languages into English, and so is often outside the scope of the Lammas. But any information on Westron from there would fit nicely into this work. Last edited by ArcusCalion; 03-02-2019 at 05:37 PM. |
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03-03-2019, 08:05 PM | #4 | |
Wight
Join Date: Mar 2014
Posts: 121
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To those comments I don't respond to, I agree.
LO-18: OK, I get it now. LO-40: I think "children of Finarfin" is probably the safest choice. Although I do like the sound of "Finarfinians". LO-54: Then I think the only explanation must be that not all Men abandoned the language. The addition of "many" makes this more clear. I added in parts Appendix F; almost all of the changes are references to events/people/places in the Third Age. There is lots of good stuff, it would seem a shame if we didn't use it anywhere. The section in Appendix F on Elves is a summary of what is included here, and the section on the Dwarves explicitly talks about their relationship with Men in the Third Age (or is a repeat of what is already included here). I propose adding this to the end of what you already have: Quote:
LO-57: Reference to the War of the Ring LO-58: The Rohirrim don't appear in the histories until the Third Age. LO-59: The Dead Men of Dunharrow refers to a people of the Third Age. LO-60-62, 64: References to the Rohirrim. LO-63: Explanation of words used in LotR LO-65: Uruk-hai don't appear until the Third Age. LO-66-68,70: Third age stuff LO-69: Explanation of the usage of the word "Troll" It seems that the decision to make this work The Lammas is somewhat restricting since we can't include anything about the Third Age. Could we say in LH-01 that this is "based on" or "derived from" the in-universe 'Account of Tongues'? |
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03-03-2019, 10:17 PM | #5 |
Quentingolmo
Join Date: Aug 2017
Posts: 525
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I see the issue with this being 'the Lammas.' This is something we must discuss as a group. Personally, I am open to the idea of being more vague in the language, since we know we do not have the full Lammas, since Q&E is said to be Aelfwine's summary of a part of the Lammas, and the Osanwe-Kenta is said to be his summary of a part of it as well where Pengolodh talks about osanwe. However, even if this was a summary of the Lammas and not the true thing, it would still not include Third Age stuff. Buuuut we have put information out of time in other areas so I am torn. I would like Fin's opinion on this.
As to the addition, it looks good at the moment. We may need to look into HoME 12 to see if there are any expansions that can be made, since there is much that relates to the formation of Appendix F there. |
03-04-2019, 07:56 PM | #6 |
Wight
Join Date: Mar 2014
Posts: 121
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I'm not saying ours would be a summary of an in-universe Lammas, but that it would be based on the in-universe text. In which case additional material about the Third Age has been added to it. Maybe by Bilbo himself later in the Third Age. It feels incomplete as a document discussing the history and evolution of the languages without giving the full picture, i.e. Third Age stuff. I will see if there's anything from HoME 12 we could include.
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