The Hobbit: How to Speak Elvish Conlang
This
week, "The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies" aims at taking viewers
on a powerful journey in the final installment of the three-part film
adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. With a production budget for the
trilogy of over $750 million, film creators are guaranteed to bring Tolkien's
magnificent vision for Middle-Earth to life. For Tolkien superfans, this means
brushing up on your "Elvish"!
Celebrated
with a cult-following across the globe, Elvish, a constructed language or
"conlang," is more than a code, like Pig Latin, and more than
fabricated Nadsat slang spoken by the thugs in A Clockwork Orange. As one of
the most well-known of the fantasy languages invented for science fiction film,
television and book, and developed by J.R.R. Tolkien himself, Elvish is
comprised of several thousand words and compelling sentence structure
convictions.
Constructed
languages like Elvish are real languages, made-up of thousands of words created
by fantasy writers, linguists and fans, with real language rules. While an
extensive vocabulary is advantageous to a constructed language, there is a key
differentiator we can see between just a lot of words and real language:
Grammar.
Grammar
is what makes conlangs like Elvish, Dothraki in "Game of Thrones,"
Na'vi in "Avatar," and Klingon in "Star Trek," learnable by
every day superfans. To many, one of the most captivating things about Game of
Thrones is the language created for the Dothraki people. In the first season of
the cult television show, viewers watched along as Daenerys Targaryen struggled
to learn the language spoken by the people she was to assimilate with.
Superfans
of "The Hobbit," "The Lord of the Rings," "Game of
Thrones," "Avatar," and "Star Trek" have dedicated
websites and created resources, dictionaries, apps and translators, to teach
enthusiasts these languages. They have also created online communities where
fans can discuss conlang, create new words based off of the already existing
lexicon, and continue to study Dothraki, Na'vi, Klingon and Elvish.
So
what does it take to be a master of Elvish conlang?
People
can memorize 5,000 words of Russian, and still be unable to construct or
understand a language. This is why people have to know how to put words
together, otherwise a child merely learning a language will be better equipped
to have a conversation that makes sense to others. Real language has patterns
and principles that speakers learn to guide them in constructing sentences.
That is, real language has grammar.
In
learning Elvish, there are a couple of grammar components to keep in mind that
can be understood in relation to the English language. For instance, in order
to make a verb past tense in English, you have to add an -ed, making wash,
washed. Similarly in Elvish, in order to change the word for wash, which is
allu, to the past tense then you have to add an -ne to the word. So washed is
then translated to allu-ne in past tense.
Nouns
in Elvish are different in the way that the noun changes depending on how it's
used in a sentence, just like in Latin or Russian. For instance, the word head
in Elvish is CAS. However, if you duck your head, then the word changes to
CARA. If you butt something then you do it with your CARINEN. When referencing
something in your head, then it changes to CASSE. Tolkien's immense attention
to detail in creating the fantasy world illustrated in The Lord of the Rings
and The Hobbit, complete with multiple functioning invented languages, has
captivated readers and movie viewers for decades.
Elvish
is only one of the many magical languages developed by J.R.R. Tolkien. The feat
of creating language for fantasy has proven to add to viewers and readers
experiences. By transplanting their imagination to a new world, fans are able
to learn the new language and engage with each other, much like their favorite
characters.
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