I can’t believe I’m actually posting such a nerdy question, but oh well.
What is the singular of ‘Rohirrim’? I’ve found, by a quick google search, that many Spanish and German sites say the singular is ‘Rohir’, but that sounds to me suspiciously like a lot of modern conjugations.
Of course, if Tolkien himself didn’t specify, I suppose the question is moot. Any wisdom, dopers?
There will be genuine Tolkienn experts along in a moment to provide the definitive answer.
My WAG, though, is that “Rohir” is the singular. I’m guessing Tolkienn picked up the suffix “-im” from Hebrew, as that is used to make plurals (cherub to cherubim, seraph to seraphim).
I believe it is rohir.
Ask a mod to move this thread to Cafe Society, and Qagdop the Mercotan will be along to tell you more about Tolkien eytomology than you ever wanted to know.
Actually, “Rohirrim” isn’t itself Rohirric, but an “old Anglicized” rendition. What we read as English in LotR is a translation of the Red Book, which was written in “common speech”. It must be kept in mind that despite its rendition into something resembling old English, Rohirric is not the ancestor of common speech.
“Rohirrim” itself is actually Elvish. I’m not at home with my <i>History of Middle Earth</i> so I can’t tell you offhand if it’s Quenya or Sindarin – I’ll guess Sindarin. As such, “rohir” is the proper singular.
Actually, “rohir” is perfectly good English as it might have evolved from Old English, but didn’t. Roh is one of several O.E. words for horse (cf. steed, nag, mount, stallion, mare in modern English), and here means “host, army, people of” – so Rohere* would have been an Old English term for “horse-host, horse-people,” i.e., a tribe whose identifying characteristic was their tendency to do most things in company with their horses. This would have been modernized to “Rohir” (as a singular) in modern English, with a meaning of “person who is a member of the horse tribe.” As such, it was borrowed into Sindarin as the name for the “Rohanese” people.
Rohirrim, despite its (probably intentional) similarity to the Hebrew plural form, is not strictly a plural, but a collective form. The suffix “-rim” is added to Sindarin personal nouns to mean something like “the ___ese people, taken together as a group; the totality of the ___ese people.”
So, like “Gondwanaland” (which literally means “the land of the land of the Gond people”), “Rohirrim” is a solecistic double collective – it means “the people of the people of the horses.”
This lines up nicely with the fact that Tolkien was, among other things, trying to create a putative English mythopœsis and origin story. Elvish is supposed to be the ancestor-tongue of English.
quibble. JRRT actually preferred “Rohirian” for the language of Rohan.
Touché. I was (in case anyone is playing along at home) pulling that from the Ardalambion site’s page on “various mannish tongues”.
Well, sorta. Archaic elvish influenced all mannish tongues, as most (if not all) branches of men learned their first languages (or had them influenced by) the Avari, or dark elves, who refused to essay the journey to Valinor.
It was the 3 houses of men, the Edain, whose language was most influenced by the elves of the light, and that was mainly by the Sindarin tongue (even though only Thingol was truly an elf of the light), tho they did get exposed to Quenya too.
But Rohirian was supposedly derived from near kin of the Edain, but not the Edain themselves, tho some Edain who refused the call to Numenor may have joined them after the destruction of Beleriand.
Of course, the common tongue, Adunaic, was heavily influenced by the Numenorians when they came back to first teach, then exploit middle-earth.
So basically it’s complicated, and JRRT never got all the knots unsnarled. Visit Ardalambion for more details, and explanations by actual linguists.
Nice site cite! 
Hantanyë
Mae govannen
Since this is about a fictional language, I’ll move this thread to the Cafe Society forum.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
Fictional?
Indeed, if we’re in café society we can go all freewheeling with philosophy. To wit:
What is it that makes a language “fictional”? While Quenya and Sindarin (which is what we’re really talking about, not Rohirian) were originally “created” by one man, they have grown beyond his own work. There exists a group of people who study the languages and extend them, as well as writing new works (say, the new passages in the LotR movies). What’s so much more fictional about elvish languages than finno-ugric ones?
And, in conclusion: ilyë altallë nar haryë men.
Are you saying that the Finno-Ugric languages were originally created by one man and then extended by others? I’m just confused as to the reason for selecting the Finno-Ugric languages for your example rather than another language family. (I imagine it was more or less random, perhaps influenced by the fact that to Americans it is somewhat, but not entirely, obscure language family).
In conclusion I have this to say:
*Head päeva hea härra
või kas to olete naine?*
Are you saying that the Finno-Ugric languages were originally created by one man and then extended by others? I’m just confused as to the reason for selecting the Finno-Ugric languages for your example rather than another language family. (I imagine it was more or less random, perhaps influenced by the fact that to Americans it is somewhat, but not entirely, obscure language family).
In conclusion I have this to say:
*Head päeva hea härra
või kas te olete naine?*
Mostly that it’s as little related to most languages as Quenya is.
Terribly sorry about the double post, I went for the ‘preview’ button but somehow hit the ‘post’ button instead. Not only that, but I realized I had a typo in the Estonian at the end of the post. So I hit my browser’s stop button as fast as I could and reposted, hoping to have caught the mistake, but I guess I failed.
(Oh, and apologies to any Estonian speakers if I messed anything else up, I am not a native speaker and I haven’t had much chance to practice since I graduated.)