Sindarin at a Glance
Tolkien's Languages
Course 1 · Chapter 6 · Sindarin at a Glance
Chapter 5 showed Quenya as a language of endings. Sindarin works differently. It changes the start of words, changes vowels inside them, and keeps its endings short. This chapter is a sketch, as the last was; the full treatment belongs to the planned Sindarin Grammar 1 course.
Quenya and Sindarin Side by Side
| Quenya | Sindarin | |
|---|---|---|
| Plural of "man" | atan → atani (ending added) | adan → edain (vowel changed) |
| Roles of nouns | Case endings | Little case; small words and mutation instead |
| Start of a word | Stays the same | Changes (mutates) after some words |
| "The" | i | i (and it triggers a mutation) |
| Verb person | Suffix (-n, -lyë, -s) | Suffix (-n I, -g you, -r they) |
Mutation: The First Letter Changes
A Sindarin word may begin with a different consonant depending on the word before it. The original form is the radical; the changed forms are mutations. Welsh does the same, and so do Irish and Scottish Gaelic. The source describes three kinds, soft, hard and nasal, and gives this table:
The soft mutation happens when the preceding word ends in a vowel, as with the article i. The hard mutation follows a word ending in a plosive, and the nasal follows a nasal. The exact triggers were never fully settled by Tolkien, and scholars disagree on the details.
Plurals by Vowel Change
Most Sindarin plurals do not add an ending. They change a vowel in the word, a process called i-affection. English does the same in "man → men" and "foot → feet".
A second plural, the collective, uses an ending such as -ath or -rim: elenath "all the stars", Nogothrim "the race of the Dwarves".
Verbs
A Sindarin verb is a stem plus endings, as in Quenya, but the forms are different.
The pronoun endings are short: -n "I" (excluding you), -m "we" (including you), -g "you" (informal), -dh "you" (formal), -r "they". The past tense is complicated and poorly attested; one ending is -ant in teithant "made marks, wrote", which Tolkien compared to Medieval Welsh.
Pronouns Join Prepositions
As in Welsh, a pronoun can fuse with the preposition before it: annin "for me" and inni "to us". A possessive can sit on a noun as an ending: lamm "tongue" becomes lammen "my tongue".
Reading a Greeting
The greeting from Chapter 1, Mae govannen, is built from a word meaning "well" and a past participle of a verb of meeting, and is usually translated "well met". The form depends on the grammar of Tolkien's later notes; treat its parts as taken from the standard analysis, not from this chapter's tables.
- "Sindarin is Quenya in a simpler form." The two have different sound systems and different ways of building words.
- "The first letter of a word never changes." In Sindarin it often does.
- "Plurals always add a letter." Most change a vowel inside the word.
Hands-On Exercises
Give the plural of adan, orch and galadh. Say what kind of change makes each plural and compare it with the English "man → men".
📄 View solutionUsing the mutation table, give the soft mutation of t, p, c and d. Then apply it to gwath after i, and say what the result means.
📄 View solutionFrom the verb forms of gir-, work out what girin, girir and giro! mean and name the ending that shows the person or mood in each. Then say two things that make Sindarin grammar unlike Quenya's.
📄 View solutionChapter 6 Quick Reference
- Mutation: the first consonant of a word changes after some words (soft, hard, nasal): gwath → i 'wath
- Plural: mostly by vowel change (adan → edain); collective endings -ath, -rim
- "The" = i
- Verbs: infinitive -i, present -i + person ending (-n I, -g you, -r they), imperative -o, future -tha
- Pronouns fuse with prepositions: annin "for me"
- Differs from Quenya: bends words instead of adding endings