Happy New Year 2025!
New Year, New Endeavors: Exploring Tolkien’s Invented Languages
With the dawn of 2025, I am embarking on a journey to regularly share my research on Tolkien’s invented languages and related topics on Substack.
Holiday Projects and Scholarly Reviews
Over the holidays, I engaged in several projects, one of which was writing a review for the excellent open access Journal of Tolkien Research (JTR) for which I am a peer reviewer.
Just posted is my review of the most recent issue of Parma Eldalamberon the linguistic journal dedicated to the scholarly study of the invented languages of J.R.R. Tolkien (the other being the shorter journal Vinyar Tengwar). These are two crucial resources for the study of Tolkien’s languages and are edited and published by a group of scholars whom Christopher Tolkien entrusted with the editing and publishing of his father’s language papers.
Highlights of Parma Eldalamberon 23
The current volume, Parma Eldalamberon 23, offers invaluable insights into Tolkien’s work on the ‘Alphabet of Feanor’ and the development of the Quenya pronominal system for verbs, rooted in Common Eldarin, the imagined source language of Elvish. The papers, dating from the late 1940s to Tolkien’s work in the late 1960s on the definite article and Sindarin mutations, provide a rich tapestry of Tolkien’s linguistic evolution. This volume should be seen and studied as a companion to the last volume Parma Eldalamberon 22, published almost a decade ago, which I reviewed for JTR in 2016 here
Avenues for Exploration
As I mentioned in my review, the information in these volumes opens various avenues for exploration and study of Tolkien’s language invention:
1. Narrative Appreciation: Understanding how Tolkien’s creative development shaped and fluctuated according to his linguistic tastes.
2. Focused Analysis: Delving into specific elements of phonetics, grammar, or morphology to trace their evolution in Tolkien’s language construction.
For instance, the current volume significantly enhances our understanding of the Quenya pronominal system’s development—a puzzle piece in the grand picture of Tolkien’s linguistic invention.
Upcoming Posts
The first set of future posts will revisit Tolkien’s language invention from the 1920s, when he codified the first version of his Early Qenya Grammar while at the University of Leeds. It will build upon a paper I recently gave on this period of Tolkien’s language invention at the International Medieval Conference at Leeds (IMC Leeds) for which I organize the Tolkien sessions (and we have a great line-up coming up in 2025)
I hope these explorations will intrigue both those interested in Tolkien’s languages and those keen on delving deeper into his methodology.
Stay tuned for more linguistic adventures!
Námarië for now.
NB: Many thanks to my colleague and true philologist Dr. Nelson Goering for pointing out in my review of Parma Eldalamberon 23 I say the Finnish third person singular pronoun is hān whereas in fact it is hän - diacritics are not my strong suit!