Ardalambion

Of the Tongues of Arda, the invented world of J.R.R. Tolkien

NOTE: When I write á, é, í, ó, ú, I hope you see the vowels a, e, i, o, u with an accent on your screen. Similarly, I hope you see the same vowels with a circumflex when I write â, ê, î, ô, û (e.g. in Barad-dûr). When I write ä, ë, ö I hope you see a, e, o with a diaeresis (two dots over): Manwë, Eärendil, Eönwë. If some other weird characters turn up instead, at least you know what it should have read!

This web page is dedicated to Christopher Tolkien

Introduction:

Why I made this site
And who am I anyway?
Tolkien's Not-So-Secret Vice

The tongues of Arda:

Quenya - the Ancient Tongue
Sindarin - the Noble Tongue
Adûnaic - the Vernacular of Númenor
Westron - the Common Speech
Telerin - the Language of the Sea-Elves
Doriathrin - the Mothertongue of Lúthien
Various Mannish tongues - the Sadness of Mortal Men?
Nandorin - the Green-elven Tongue
Old Sindarin - between Primitive Elvish and Grey-elven
Khuzdul - the Secret Tongue of the Dwarves
Entish - Say Nothing That Isn't Worth Saying
Orkish and the Black Speech - Base Language for Base Purposes
Valarin - Like the Glitter of Swords

Invented languages from Tolkien's youth:

Animalic - "crude in the extreme"
Nevbosh - new nonsense
Naffarin - at least we know that "vrú" means ever

Other Resources:

Index to the Etymologies - where do you find the word you so desperately need?
Probable Errors in the Etymologies - where Tolkien's handwriting proved too tough!
Quenya Corpus Wordlist - not all the words known, but a good many still!
Do you have trouble reading or printing some of the articles on this page?

Miscellaneous:

Satanist (?) Uses the Black Speech - Sauron's Esperanto* isn't quite dead yet!
Now We Have All Got Elvish Names - or at least the readers of Tyalië Tyelelliéva do!
BLASPHEMY: "Auld Elvish" from Bored of the Rings!

Links of Interest:

The Elvish Linguistic Fellowship - information about the journals Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon
The Tolkien Language List - join the Tolklang!
The Tengwar - read about the most beautiful script of Middle-earth and download Daniel S. Smith's fonts!
Leonid Korablev's Tolkien-inspired art - often with Tengwar calligraphy in Elvish!
The Tynntangial page - with some Quenya vocabulary stuff (and yes, this is where I stole the background for this page!)
An English-Quenya wordlist - quite comprehensive!
La faculté des études elfíques - with information about Tolkien's languages in French!
Tolkien's language page - nice try, but don't trust Ruth Noel, Kasper!
Mellonath Daeron - the Language Guild of the Forodrim. Several good Quenya texts!
Chris O'Prey's Tolkien page - with some language stuff!
Edhel's Inn - with some Quenya poems...not perfect, but not bad, either. Untranslated!
Elendor - some vocabulary stuff; seems incomplete
The Top 10 Model Languages - what, Quenya second after Esperanto?!
The Language Construction Kit - a MUST if you feel the urge to make your own language. Really excellent!