# Lord of the Rings...in Elvish? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 2, 2009, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340 "2009-10-02T13:42:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![NoCoolUserName](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5fc32e/32.png) [@NoCoolUserName](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoCoolUserName)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2009, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/1 "2009-10-02T13:42:05Z")
Surely someone has translated LotR into Sindarin or Quenya? Is it available in an actual book? On-line? Or am I going to have to cut back on smoking pipeweed? ---
**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2009, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/2 "2009-10-04T00:02:55Z")
I think the first press run of such a book might be about 11, and you would probably find maybe 9 of them in the cheap bin a few days later. Or am I mistaken and more people speak Elvish than I think? * * * “Thank ya! Thank ya very much…” Elvish has left the building. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2009, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/3 "2009-10-04T01:08:09Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > I think the first press run of such a book might be about 11, and you would probably find maybe 9 of them in the cheap bin a few days later. Or am I mistaken and more people speak Elvish than I think? They apparently were able to sell Hamlet in Klingon… ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2009, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/4 "2009-10-04T01:19:34Z")
Parts of the Red Book were translated from Quenya already - it would be somewhat perverse to translate them back again! ---
**Author:** ![Cunctator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/43a26b/32.png) [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2009, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/5 "2009-10-04T10:28:10Z")
Go and listen to a performance of the Lord of the Rings symphony. It’s sung almost entirely in Elvish. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2009, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/6 "2009-10-04T14:48:24Z")
I’ll get you a definitive answer to this question as soon as I get a reply on a E-mail mailing list that I subscribe to. Some of the people there know as much about Elvish as anyone alive. Really, when Christopher Tolkien has questions about Elvish, he asks these people. The temporary answer though is that it would take far too much time to be worth it. Also, there are far too many words in _The Lord of the Rings_ with no known equivalent in Elvish. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2009, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/7 "2009-10-04T15:07:27Z")
Here’s the definitive reply: No one has ever attempted it. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2009, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/8 "2009-10-04T15:19:19Z")
If this ever does happen, it most likely would be done on the Internet somewhere. Cyberspace, Geek-dom, and insomnia are a powerful combination. But maybe you should start with something smaller, like _Les Miserables_. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2009, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/9 "2009-10-04T21:07:31Z")
> [@](#): > > I think the first press run of such a book might be about 11, and you would probably find maybe 9 of them in the cheap bin a few days later. Or am I mistaken and more people speak Elvish than I think? Well, first of all, there are well more than 11 people who speak Elvish. But second, and more importantly, such a book would probably have a considerable market among non-Elvish speakers, as well. I can’t read Elvish myself, but I certainly think it’d be cool to have a book in it. ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2009, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/10 "2009-10-04T22:31:52Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > I think the first press run of such a book might be about 11, and you would probably find maybe 9 of them in the cheap bin a few days later. Or am I mistaken and more people speak Elvish than I think? > > * * * > > “Thank ya! Thank ya very much…” > Elvish has left the building. I think more people speak Elvish than Klingon, and as mentioned, there was a publication of _Hamlet_ into Klingon. Hardly any of the people who own the Klingon _Hamlet_ speak it well enough to read it; lots of people know a few words, or maybe a lot of words, but very few people know it well enough to form syntactically correct sentences. Slate had a good [article](http://www.slate.com/id/2217815/pagenum/2) a while back. I think a translation of LOTR into Elvish would have great novelty value, and you could probably make a limited run at profit. ---
**Author:** ![TWDuke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e495f1/32.png) [@TWDuke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TWDuke)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2009, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/11 "2009-10-04T23:19:09Z")
> [@appleciders](#): > > You could probably make a limited run at profit. Not without permission from the Tolkien Estate – and good luck with that. Unlike **The Lord of the Rings** , **Hamlet** is of course public domain. But I don’t think that there exists a published lexicon or grammar of any of Tolkien’s languages sufficient to translate a full novel or play without making a bunch of stuff up, which would seem to diminish its potential worth to Tolkien fanatics. Although people still read **The Silmarillion** , so there’s that. ---
**Author:** ![Saltire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saltire/32/553_2.png) [@Saltire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saltire)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2009, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/12 "2009-10-04T23:32:27Z")
The Tengwar of Feanor are easy to apply to almost any language. Seems to me it would be much easier to write the English LotR text in the Elvish characters than to translate the English to Sindarin or Quenya. I’d definitely buy that one, as I could read it with a bit of practice with the characters. I don’t think I’ll ever master an Elvish language. In fact, the Elvish characters on the title page of most editions of The Lord of the Rings are in English, if you use the Appendix to work them out. From memory, the Tengwar say, “The History of the War of the Ring and the Return of the King, as seen by the Hobbits and told to John Ronald Ruell Tolkien.” I once tried to create a Tengwar font. I did it on an Apple IIe in 1984, so it never quite worked out. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2009, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/13 "2009-10-04T23:43:49Z")
In fact, according to the recent book _In the Land of Invented Languages_, there are more people who can sort of kind of speak Klingon than who can kind of sort of speak Elvish. Neither is anywhere close to the number who passibly well speak Esperanto, where there even a few native speakers (in the sense that they learned it as a child as their first language). Elvish fans tend to consider themselves scholars, like someone who has learned Sumerian or some such, who feel it necessary to limit themselves to the vocabulary used by Tolkien. Klingon speakers are fans though and have no problems with creating no words. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2009, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/14 "2009-10-05T00:43:42Z")
This site is a good resource for and link to JRRT’s various languages: [move.to - This website is for sale! - move Resources and Information.](http://move.to/ardalambion) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2009, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/15 "2009-10-05T13:38:33Z")
Here’s another useful website: [http://www.elvish.org/](http://www.elvish.org/) ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2009, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/16 "2009-10-05T13:59:14Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Here’s another useful website: > > [http://www.elvish.org/](http://www.elvish.org/) Yeah, that’s a great website too, and referenced at Ardalambion. Their info in Parma Eldalamberon 17 is great! It demonstrates that Sauron’s original name was once Mairon (pronounced Myron, apparently)! In one document, Sauron ruled Numenor as Tar-Mairon, which translates as “King Excellent”. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2009, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/17 "2009-10-06T03:13:13Z")
Sheesh, I wrote: \> . . . and have no problems with creating no words . . . I meant: \> . . . and have no problems with creating new words . . . ---
**Author:** ![caligulathegod](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/caligulathegod/32/9685_2.png) [@caligulathegod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/caligulathegod)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2009, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lord-of-the-rings-in-elvish/512340/18 "2009-10-06T09:08:27Z")
That Tolkien created multiple languages for Lord of the Rings is more or less apocryphal. If I’m not mistaken, there really isn’t actually such a thing as Elvish. Other than the odd phrases and theoretical bits of grammar to project a verisimilitude, the “language” consists of little more than root word etymologies used to construct names. Now, that’s not to say there wasn’t a huge effort put into this. He created a proto-language and worked out the evolution of it into two different languages. He wanted an internally consistent method of creating names, but I don’t believe he intended anyone to hold conversations, let alone write books, in Quenya or Sindarin.