Customer Reviews

A Gateway To Sindarin: A Grammar of an Elvish Language from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

I was so excited to hear that David Salo, one of the linguists who worked on the Elvish for the Lord of the Rings films, was publishing a book on Sindarin grammar. Since Tolkein never wrote such a thing, it had to be reconstructed, and many attempts to do so exist on the web, with varying degrees of accuracy.

I will not say that this is definitive, because no such thing can exist. But it is useful to have so much information in one place, well organised. My favorite part is the Appendices. These include glossaries of English and Sindarin, a list of Sindarin roots (very nifty!), a glossary of names and what they mean (if you insist on giving your child a Tolkein name, please read it first!) and, best of all, a compilation of extant texts in Sindarin, always the first place you should look for grammar and ideas. I also enjoyed the section on sentence construction. There is no index, though, which is a bit of a bummer, but the table of contents is fairly well organised.

While Mr. Salo does appreciate that people write their own texts in Sindarin, this book is not for beginners, because it is a reference grammar. There are no lessons or exercises, so it should not be the first place you go to teach yourself unless you are really dedicated or have some familiarity with dead and/or fictional languages, the kind most likely to be learned from a book. For others, especially those interested in the languages as heard in the movies, I recommend a stop by Gwaith-i-Phethdain, over at http://www.elvish.org.

For anyone who knows something about this Elvish tongue and wishes to see a comprehensive grammar, this is it. It isn't perfect, and there is plenty to squabble over, but it is a very important start.

Like Dr Johnson's dictionary, David Salo's book is a magnificent but curious and occasionally idiosyncratic achievement. It has the delicious feel of a slightly old-fashioned grammar, and it is most beautifully bound and presented.

Salo takes an interesting approach: he decides in the main body of the text to enter into the fictional world completely, so explanations for puzzling phenomena or inconsistencies in the texts and etymologies must be given in terms bounded by Tolkien's fictional forms. So for example the superseded 'Noldorin' which Tolkien renamed 'Sindarin' after certain regular sound changes is explained as a Noldor-influence *dialect* perhaps spoken in Gondolin. He reaches into Tolkien's world to find a suitable explanation for what was just an authorial change of mind. Well - er, maybe! Another equally interesting approach would have been to have looked at the development of the language in real-world terms, from the point of view of Tolkien's linguistic aesthetics. *Why* is 'aew' more lovely that 'oew'?!

Much of the book is very good simply by virtue of collecting a lot of information in one place in an elegant format. The sections on names and compounds are especially good, as it the dictionary - a great boon to anyone trying to compose texts in a language which is missing a significant number of ordinary words.
Salo's reconstructions are (usually) marked as such, but in the effort to present an overall description of the language, he (in my opinion) does not flag up where alternative explanations are available quite enough. The verb section and the bit on pronouns are probably in the long run going to prove the least reliable, through little fault of Salo's, except perhaps too great a desire for coherence.

I would, slightly guiltily, like to have seen a detailed explanation of his reasoning for the Sindarin dialogues he composed for the film trilogy: this is, as he fully admits, reconstructed Sindarin, but it was a lovely idea and had most beautiful effect. Perhaps the admirable conservatism he shows in 'A Gateway' prevented that. (For example he remains largely silent on the topic of 2nd person verb endings, which he reconstucted as *-ch in the films. This suggestion is modestly tucked away in brackets in 'A Gateway' and two alternatives, *-dh and *-l are also presented.) People seem to get very precious about Tolkien's languages, and there have been some quite aggressive reviews of this book on the net which, frankly, smack of jealousy. No doubt in the future more of Tolkien's writings will be published and parts of the book will be superseded, but for now: what a beautiful, fascinating read. A true tribute to a man who wrote that for him languages had a distinct 'taste'. This is very much to mine.

This book is NOT for those who simply want to learn phrases and so on. Being a student of linguistics, and having a professor whose work is used as the official linguistic analysis in an area of Papua New Guinea, I can say with honesty that David Salo's work is the real deal. I showed this to my professor, and he was completely impressed (a feat in and of itself).

Reading Gateway is not casual; it takes some concentration. I suppose that, if one just wanted Elvish texts, it could be used. I was quite pleased to find him using the IPA in words, as I had wished for that since first finding Lord of the Rings.

The historical chart of the emergence of Sindarin better explains some of the material in The Silmarillion, and the overall historical prose explanation of the development of the different phases of Elvish was most helpful.

I would definitely recommend this to any Tolkien fans that happen to be linguists as well. A majority of fans would not understand, but it is a fascinating read nonetheless.

This book is filled with the intellectual dishonesty of Mr. Salo who distorts and destroys Tolkien's Sindarin while claiming at the same time that he is analyzing it. Noldorin words from the "Etymologies" become through a strange method Sindarin words, elei becomes ely (p. 97), bo Ceven becomes bo Geven (p. 146), etc.. Salo adapts through with wacky theories Tolkien's languages to his liking. Salo made up hundreds of words without ever signaling them to the reader (doler, gannadad, nimminnin, etc.). If you care for Tolkien work you don't need to buy this book.
P.S. "Hannon le" does not mean a thing in Sindarin.

This book presents an exhaustive synthesis and systematization of what is more accurately termed "Neo-Sindarin": that is, an altered, synthetic form of Sindarin not as Tolkien ever conceived of it but instead as cobbled together by Salo himself through selective re-use and modification of attested Noldorin forms (which in fact form the vast bulk of the evidence for Salo's "Sindarin") in admixture with actual Sindarin forms and with forms wholly invented by the author. As such, the book misrepresents itself (throughout, and even in its very title) to anyone looking for a reliable examination and presentation of Tolkien's own Sindarin, but if the actual nature of Salo's "Sindarin" is borne in mind throughout, and if the reader assiduously checks the sources against all of Salo's claims and (supposed) data (that is, where the data are not fabricated by Salo, and to the extent allowed by Salo's sparse and often misleading citation of sources), this book can be useful for the student as an introduction to a more accurate and detailed study of Tolkien's own Sindarin.

From the 1910s to the 1970s, author and linguist J. R. R. Tolkien worked at creating plausibly realistic languages to be used by the creatures and characters in his novels. Like his other languages, Sindarin was a new invention, not based on any existing or artificial language. By the time of his death, he had established fairly complete descriptions of two languages, the "elvish" tongues called Quenya and Sindarin. He was able to compose poetic and prose texts in both, and he also constructed a lengthy sequence of changes for both from an ancestral "proto-language," comparable to the development of historical languages and capable of analysis with the techniques of historical linguistics. In "A Gateway to Sindarin", David Salo has created a volume that is a serious look at an entertaining topic. Salo covers the grammar, morphology, and history of the language. Supplemental material includes a vocabulary, Sindarin names, a glossary of terms, and an annotated list of works relevant to Sindarin. What emerges is homage to Tolkien's scholarly philological efforts.

This book is amazing, but be certain that you're the right audience. <strong>This is a college-level textbook, and make no mistake about that.</strong> It is a very academic and thoroughly researched treatment of Sindarin. If you're looking for "Conversational Sindarin for Fun and Profit", this book is not it. Only buy it if you really have a deep interest in Tolkien's constructed languages. Having said that, it's worth every penny. I haven't seen this much detailed information on Sindarin anywhere else.

Unfortunately I don't seem to be able to give this item zero stars.

Sadly, this book lives up to neither its title nor its promise. For anyone who knows anything about J.R.R. Tolkien's invented languages, this book is not a reliable 'Gateway to Sindarin'. Rather, it is an unacknowledged mishmash of Noldorin of the 1930s (fr. 'The Etymologies'), Sindarin of the 1950s (fr. 'The Lord of the Rings'), and numerous inventions of David Salo himself. It is therefore misleading to call this book 'A Gateway to Sindarin'. It would have been more accurate to call it 'An Introduction to David Salo's Synthetic Reinterpretation of Tolkien's Gnomish-Noldorin-Sindarin language'.

(One might charitably suppose that this was in fact Salo's preferred title, but that there simply wasn't room on the stylized Moria Gate on the cover of his book to accommodate such a lengthy phrase. Perhaps the switch from a Beleriandic mode of vowel-representation to one accommodating vowel-pointing tehtar might have saved some room?)

In all seriousness: the unacknowledged, uncredited, and therefore (one presumes) copyright-violating use of Tolkien's 'Moria Gate' drawing on the cover of 'Gateway to Sindarin' is just the tip of the iceberg. While the book does have an "Annotated Bibliography" (pp.416-435), this is no substitute for a proper citation and referencing strategy. One searches in vain for any accreditation of earlier scholars of Tolkien's languages, not least the editors of Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon, whose publications and analyses of much original Tolkien linguistic material this book silently mines for forms without acknowledging any of their theoretical or methodological contributions. If this book isn't already tied up in Court proceedings it very well should be.

There are several reviews of this deeply-flawed and pseudo-scholarly work online; I urge all would-be purchasers to consult them before supporting the publication of this book (and those like it).

You need to be either a linguist or an ultra-hard-core fan to appreciate this book. Not being a linguist, some of the technical aspects are beyond me but still, what an amazing work; not only by Salo but by Tolkien. The short section with the "historical" background of Sindarin was fascinating; a nice summary. I had no idea that Tolkien had made his languages so complicated. A fascinating glimpse into Tolkien's mind.

The book is what I expected it to be, a reference written by someone who has studied some of Tolkien's writings on language, best used in conjunction with other reference materials if used to learn to compose writings in the language of the elves. Other reviews that have bashed the book sound like sour grapes wallowers. Tolkien was the only expert on the languages of Middle Earth and anyone who claims otherwise is suspect.