weird Elvish question

[arethinn]

Eldarin, that is (at least I think so).

I was just skimming through my copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and found an odd pencilled notation in the break between two paragraphs in "The Mirror of Galadriel": initha calenin. (Actually it's written ínitha calenín. A personal habit of mine is to use acute accents as a way of notating a stressed syllable and that's probably what's going on here, although I can't be 100% sure.)

I can't for the life of me figure out what it could translate to and Googling for it as a phrase gets no results (so it's not some other attested phrase I just happened to scribble down here for some reason). "cal-" is a Quenya element signifying "light" or "shine", but I can't make sense of "calenin" and "initha" looks like it would have to belong to Sindarin if anything (since it shows "th" where Quenya would favour "s", as Isil and Ithil, the Moon).

Is stumped. Any geek can send halp (including to say "that can't be Elvish, it must just be your brain being weird, and please stop scribbling in your books")?

Comments

[digitalsidhe]

I'm pretty rusty, but IIRC, -nin is the Quenya instrumental case, so calenin would be "by means of light". For example, cenuvalwe calenin = "we see by means of light".

Whoops, except that a brief double-check shows that the proper instrumental case ending is -nen, not -nin. Ummm... a missing space between cale and nin, hence meaning "light to/for me"? (Cf. the nin in Si man i yulma nin enquantuva?, "Who shall now refill the cup for me?".)

I don't know if that helps any. I have no Sindarin, so I can't help on the other word.

[arethinn]

Yeah, I'm starting to think I just decided to use the page as note-paper for a random bit of glossolalia, which is a weird thing for me to do - write it in an unrelated [?] book, that is, and not not some other scrap of paper. I can't picture what I'd have been doing that I'd have had a pencil but no other paper around.

[demophon]

Hi, the husband of maewyn (and major geek) here. She showed me this question, so I thought I'd give it a crack. This line has been given me problems since she showed it to me as I cannot for the life of me find an exact translation.

The use of accents in (Sindarin especially) elvish can make for a totally different meaning to a word. For instance, "nin" means "me" while "nín" means "my". As memory serves, "nin" in Quenyan means "for me", as I just noticed the other commentor also noted. The interesting part is the "cale" as "cal-" does mean "light" in Quenya (as "calad" does in Sindarin, with the -ad often being dropped in word forming), but if the word is actually "calen" then it's definitely Sindarin as "calen" means "green". So from that end, it could be translated as "my green" or some variation of "my light" in Sindarin, or "light for me" in Quenya.

The trouble is the "ínitha" as only word in Quenya or Sindarin that I can find starts with í is the word "ínias" which means "annals". I do agree with you that the use of "th" over "s" does seem to suggest Sindarin over Quenyan, but that still leaves the question of what the latter part of the word is supposed to be.

It might be nîth/youth, ithil/moonlit, ha/it, or some combination of everything, or just some word I don't know. Remember that in Sindarin, like letters are combined into one spelling, so the "moonlit youth" could be written as "nithil" as opposed to "nîthithil", and of course, that's what makes it tricky.

That's about the extent of help I can be right now.

[arethinn]

This is very cool, but seems to confirm my suspicion that it was a strange choice of note paper for glossolalia rather than actually something in Quenya or Sindarin that I was noting down for later reference.

if the word is actually "calen" then it's definitely Sindarin as "calen" means "green".

Eh? I'd have expected lego/laigo/laego (Q laiqua), as in Legolas. Or am I tripping over Mirkwood Elvish not being strictly Sindarin?

[demophon]

Well, yes and no. While "laeg" does mean "green", it means it in more of a "fresh green" (like vegetation) sense, and "calen" deals more with only the color.

On an interesting note, "laeg" also means "keen" or "sharp" which adds a few levels to Legolas's name. ;)

[arethinn]

Yes, so I read when trying to look up an exact ref for this question.

While "laeg" does mean "green", it means it in more of a "fresh green" (like vegetation) sense, and "calen" deals more with only the color.

Elves have lots of words for shades of green -- WHO KNEW?

:)

Yes, I did know this, and figured this might come into play, it's just that I didn't find a cite for "calen", which I keep wanting to map to "galen" or "ngalen" (I'm not sure that's even a valid Q transformation? shouldn't it be Q = S if anything?)

On an interesting note, "laeg" also means "keen" or "sharp" which adds a few levels to Legolas's name. ;)

Also so I've read - probably the source of the one comment "did you see ___ " " ___ " "Only you could, sharp-eyes" or something like that (forgive me, I don't have the book in hand).

[arethinn]

"Only you could, sharp-eyes"

Ahh, lol. I'm mixing up my ElfQuest with my LotR. Very much not the same thing! Pay this idea no mind...

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

Do you mind if I repost with attribution?

[arethinn]

What, the whole thing? I guess, but doesn't just linking make the most sense?

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

According to google, initha == strategy and calenin == greener, both in Quenya. YMMV, I don't know how well researched these sources were, they had no attributions.

[arethinn]

You might be interested in a couple of the replies on the DW post: http://arethinn.dreamwidth.org/1599215.html#comments