[NeumeIndil]

After searching Ardalambion, Council of Elrond and a dozen different sites I've found helpful for Quenya of late, I had no luck finding a Quenya equivalent for "Grandfather". Any suggestions of words to use/subsitute or more places to look are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Neu

[Alassante]

I was told that Grandfather is one of those words that people debate a lot. I used Daeradar for the sindarin version of Grandfather. I got it from either Space or another resident Sindarin guru.

[Alassante]

You can also post on LOTR Fanatics language forum. There are people on there that took the classes:

http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/display_forum_topics.asp?ForumID=42

[SpaceWeavil]

Dunno if you've found this already, or indeed if you'd take suggestions from someone who didn't take courses but learned on their own, (because I learned before I was aware there were courses, not because I was too stupid to, although I may be too stupid...)

If you were doing the same as the Sindarin compound, then you would end up with something like 'Altatar' or 'Alatatar'

SW

[NancyBrooke]

More:

http://www.openscrolls.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1713&highlight=familial

Still more:

http://www.openscrolls.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1452&highlight=grandfather

[NeumeIndil]

We're talking about the paternal grandfather of a Noldoran elf, so I think Space's self-taught brilliance is along the lines of what we need. I'm just the beta, though, so I'll alert my author to your kind suggestions and we'll see what she decides to use. Thank you all for hopping on the topic. I appreciate the input very much.

[Rhapsody]

David Salo's (you know the Tolkien language expert) answer on Noldorin and Sindarin

(The following is based in part on discussions with Philip Jonsson)

For a long time, from its inception down to a point about half-way or further through the writing of The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien called the language we know as Sindarin "Noldorin". The easy explanation for this is the external one: at the time, Tolkien thought of Noldorin as the original language of the Noldor; changed, of course, from their days in Valinor, but nonetheless descended directly from a language of Aman. The Elves of Beleriand had spoken a quite different tongue. Quenya, in this scenario, was the language not of the Noldor, but of the Vanyar (then called 'Lindar'), used by the Noldor for "lore and song and courtesy".
For some reason this explanation ceased to be tenable or attractive; and after a series of sketches departing less or more radically from this idea, Tolkien finally concluded that the Elves of Beleriand, whom he chose to call 'Sindar' or Grey-elves, were the speakers of what had hitherto been called Noldorin and was now Sindarin; and Quenya was the original language of the Noldor, whose spoken form died out (except, possibly, in Gondolin) because of an edict of King Thingol of Doriath which prohibited its use. That's the external explanation. Internally, one would suppose that no explanation at all was needed; the 'Noldorin as original language of the Noldor' story could be disregarded as if it never had been.
That would be the case if it weren't for the fact that, at about the same time as he was revising history and name of Noldorin, Tolkien also changed the character of the language. The vocabulary remained pretty much the same; but the sounds of which Noldorin was composed were systematically altered, e.g. initial lh and rh became l and r, oe became ae, ei became ai in final syllables and monosyllables, ui was in some cases altered to oe, and so on. There aren't a great many of these changes, but they do clearly alter the way the language looks. They aren't haphazard, either.
The underlying structures (derived from the ancestral language which Tolkien had called Old Noldorin, or Kornoldorin, remained almost unchanged. The result was that the older form (which we inevitably call "Noldorin") and the later form of Sindarin show a relationship almost exactly like that of two closely related dialects of the same language. Noldorin is pretty well known, since it's one of the principal languages presented in Tolkien's "The Etymologies" (in The Lost Road, The History of Middle-earth Vol. 5), where it's symbolized by N (for Noldorin) or occasionally EN (for Exilic Noldorin). Sindarin is also well-known, since it's the language in which most elvish names of The Lord of the Rings, the later Silmarillion, and other late writings of Tolkien were written. So in The Lord of the Rings we have Rauros, Rohan, Ringloo -- not Rhauros, Rhochan, Rhingloo.
But we _do_ have Rhu^n ("the East") and Rhosgobel (the "russet dwelling" of Radagast the Brown) -- and these are pure Noldorin. Since such comparable Quenya words as roomen "east" and rusco "fox" (a reddish-brown animal) confirm the roots of these words as RO and RUS(U)K, one suspects that in a sense Noldorin -- that is, a dialect of Sindarin phonologically identical to the Noldorin of the etymologies -- still exists beside the "classical" forms of Sindarin, in which the words should have been Ru^n and Rosgobel.
Well, we know Sindarin had dialects: there were dialects in Beleriand, where (according to Tolkien's essay 'Quendi and Eldar' (in The War of the Jewels, HoME Vol. 11) the Sindar had divided at an early date into the three groups of the coastal Falathrim, the central Iathrim, and the northern Mithrim; there were also dialects in Third Age Middle-earth, one of which (that of Lothlorien) was sufficiently different from the Sindarin Frodo knew that he thought it was a different language! (The Lord of the Rings, Appendix F). Could Noldorin fit in here somewhere? Noldorin can't be derived from "Classical" Sindarin, however; in many ways it is more archaic, showing features (like the failure to change *ei to ai in words like ceir "ship" for Sindarin cair) that can only be understood as resulting from a split away from Classical Sindarin early in its history -- that is, sometime in the First Age. The dialect map of First Age Sindarin, as suggested by the names of the three "tribes" of the Sindar mentioned above, was primarily characterized by a three-way split: there was a variant of the western coasts of Beleriand, the Falas -- "Falathren"; a northern variant -- "Mithren", spoken mostly in Hithlum and Mithrim; and a central variant, probably the most widespread -- "Iathren", the language of Doriath.

But there were other variations in the distribution of these languages, and a number of isolated dialects, brought about by the arrival of the Noldor. They entered Hithlum in the first instance, and adopted the tongue of the Mithrim, North Sindarin. We know a little bit about this language -- enough, in fact, to know that it can't be a candidate for Noldorin, because it was even _more_ archaic, doing things like retaining final and medial -m (as in the name Hithlum) where Classical Sindarin and Noldorin would both have changed the -m to -v or -w. This Northern dialect was brought to the previously unpopulated East Beleriand by the sons of Feanor,and perhaps to Dorthonion by Angrod and Aegnor; at any rate, it was the only dialect of Sindarin that Beren knew (see The Peoples of Middle-earth, pp. 368-9).
We know nothing of the Coastal dialect, except that it was supposed to be archaic. The language of Doriath, after it had been isolated for several centuries, was also archaic and "purer" than the Sindarin found beyond its borders, and was noted in the speech of Turin (see The War of the Jewels, p. 312); and for much the same reason the language of Gondolin was also strange to the ears of Tuor (see Unfinished Tales, p. 44). In fact, it seems as if _all_ varieties of Sindarin spoken in Beleriand are characterized as strange or archaic! -- with the exception of that spoken in Western Beleriand between the Falas and Doriath, an area corresponding exactly with that of the Kingdom of Nargothrond. So it seems as if the common elvish speech of Beleriand was that of Nargothrond, and that this was identical or immediately ancestral to the Classical Sindarin of the Second and Third Ages. But at the end of the First Age, when the remnants of all the great kingdoms of Beleriand were gathered together at the Havens of Sirion and on the Isle of Balar, all the dialects of Sindarin would have been spoken next to each other, and it wouldn't be surprising if Classical Sindarin showed the influence of more than one of them.
Could one of these be identified with Noldorin? I think it is possible. If Classical Sindarin is closest to the dialect of Nargothrond, and if we rule out North Sindarin, only three possibilities remain: the language of the Falas; the isolated dialect of Doriath; and the dialect of Gondolin.
At the time when Tolkien still thought of Noldorin as the original language of the Noldor, he wrote the _Lhammas_ which is found in The Lost Road, and in it he identified five dialects of Noldorin:
a) "the speech of Mithrim and of Fingolfin's folk" -- this would be North Sindarin
b) "the speech of Gondolin and the people of Turgon" -- an isolated dialect
c) "the speech of Nargothrond" -- Classical Sindarin
d) "the speech of Himring and the sons of Feanor" -- another kind of North Sindarin
e) "the corrupted speech of the thrall-Gnomes" -- never identified in later writings, but since captured elves would be typically from the North (near Angband), their language was probably usually a kind of North Sindarin And finally we are told "The Noldorin that lives yet is come in the most part from the speech of Gondolin." The reference is to a Noldorin that is phonologically identical, or nearly so, to the (Exilic) Noldorin of the Etymologies. If we take these words at face value, it means that we can identify the Noldorin of the Etymologies with the Sindarin dialect of Gondolin.
If this is so, then there is a plausible explanation of the _name_ Noldorin, which is plausible even in an interior scenario in which the original language of the Noldor was Quenya.
At the end of the First Age, as kingdom after kingdom fell to Morgoth, the survivors gathered at the Havens of Sirion, all except those following the sons of Feanor, whose last stronghold was on Amon Ereb in the east.
The Havens were founded by Falathrim after the ravaging of the Falas following the Nirnaeth. Already Dorthonion and Hithlum had been destroyed, and the sons of Feanor scattered. These Havens would later be swelled by refugees from Nargothrond, Brethil, and Doriath as these areas were overcome by conquest or civil war; and these refugees spoke for the most part Central dialects, and were with few exceptions either Edain or Sindar.
With the fall of Gondolin, however, an entirely new element entered the Havens. The people of Gondolin were a mixture of Noldor and Sindar, and some of the Noldor among them even maintained Quenya as a speech. The Sindar of Gondolin had been originally the Sindar of Nevrast, a remote western region bordering on both the Falas and West Beleriand on the south, and on Hithlum to the north -- though travel from the north was much more difficult. Nevrast must originally have been populated from the south, though whether by elves speaking a Coastal or Central dialect is uncertain; if their language can be identified with Noldorin, a Central dialect is much more likely.
The dialect of Nevrast-Gondolin cannot have been heard openly for centuries, and must have been utterly strange (though certainly comprehensible) to the Sindar at the Havens. Given the great number of Noldor among the exiles of Gondolin -- probably greater than the entire number of Noldor already at the Havens, who can only have been very few -- it would be no wonder if the Sindar of the Havens called the speech of the exiles of Gondolin "Noldorin"* -- or the language spoken by the people called Noldor. In just the same way the people of England have called the dialect of Northumbrian _English_ spoken north of their border "Scottish" or "Scots"; when the existence of another tongue spoken in Scotland is brought to their attention, they are obliged to refer to it as "(Scots) Gaelic".
As long as Tuor and Idril, or their son Earendil ruled the Havens, Noldorin would have been a prestige dialect; perhaps not spoken by many, but still associated with high-class language. So it is not surprising if it left traces in the general character of the common tongue. After the fall of the Havens, though, the normal tendencies of speech of the surviving Sindar would have reasserted themselves. The Sindarin known in Numenor, and later used by the Exiles, seems to have been Classical Sindarin (which was spoken as a native language even by many of the Edain).

*The word the Sindar would actually have used is of course not "Noldorin" -- this is a Quenya word -- but "Golodhren", the language of the Golodhrim or Noldor. This word does not seem to appear in full in any of Tolkien's published writings. However, in a note to the story of Maeglin, referred to in The War of the Jewels pp. 317-18, Tolkien wrote as a name for Turgon's sister "Rodwen Los in Golodh..." -- of which Christopher Tolkien notes "last letters illegible." But it is very likely that the actual word used was Golodhren, and that this is given as the name of a language.

Neume, from one beta to another: if you can't find the correct word for grandfather, do try to find a way around it. These things can give you a headache sometimes Maybe this person has a nickname for his or her grandfather that gives a personal touch to it. I'd rather go for this option.

[NeumeIndil]

Wow. (Finishes scribbling notes). Thanks, Rhapsody.

[Rhapsody]

You welcome Neume, but Space's suggestion seems very good to me as well. She's really good with Quenya.