Re: Quenya/Silindion (Was: Starlings' Song: Nindic Translation)

aniye daniel andreasson writes:

<SNIP>

> What's probably confusing me is that a lot of words look
> the same but mean different things (tarkil, lond-, ainu-,
> lune-, koa-, etc.).
Hmm, yes..I know what you mean. I think those just came about as a result of
choosing to develope my root-words in such a way so as to make them become
words with a phonology similar to Quenya, so yes, in that way, they are
inspired by Quenya. But, contrary to popular opinion :-), I didn't rifle
through the Lost Road and it's etymologies and then just change the meaning
hehe :) No not all. Rather, each of these words, and all the others have an
interesting history of their own. Like, *tarkil* unlike the Quenya word meaning
"numenorean", comes from two roots: *TAR and *KIL, which basically means
*HIGH-DOME* or something to that effect. Which reminds me, another reason why
Quenya and Silindion have a bit in common is similar root structure. They're
basic structure is CVC(V), with Silindion's ancestor also allowing (quite a few
actually) CRC and CV and CCV roots, where R is a syllabic consonant. In
Silindion's ancestor, even VC is allowed, although in that case an initial s-
is!
 in many words prefixed.

> > -Cya pronominal endings..yeah, very dirrectly Quenya inspired, but
> > note it's only a genitive ending. TA "that", might as well have been
> > from Indo-European. In fact, a lot of ROOTS are Indo-European
> inspired,
> > or, the semantics of ROOTS are Indo-European inspired. Ve "as"..yeah,
> > from Quenya.
>
> Aha. Anyway. What I'm trying to say is that my main conlang (or
> rather first/closest to my heart conlang) Rinya is and always
> has been very influenced by Quenya, but I want it to have a
> slightly different feel. I've tried several styles but none
> have really hit the spot. That's why I'm interested in your
> approach, to see how you've gone about it. Silindion inspires
> me to start anew with Rinya (I already have some ideas in my
> head). If you see what I mean.
 Yes indeed! :) Well, The History of Silindion is in order I see. Let's take
you back to 1997 and a rainy day in late October. Sitting at my dining room
table I suddenly was inspired to in my words at the time "create my most
perfect language". And so an entire binder was filled with ROOTS (of the
strangest type, I've never seen something that weird before), following that
was a short list of cases and some morphological processes. I created some
words, and then, I guess, I went on my merry way.
 Months later, in Spring of 1998, this time in Upstate Newyork, beside my
familly's lake in the woods, I began to write down small scraps of ROOTS and
words derived from those ROOTS, at that time there were about 10 or so ROOTS.
Coming back home, I found the old binder and took 3 to 4 ROOTS of the thousand
or so that were in there, and (unfortunately) put much of the other contents of
the binder in the garbage.
 Over the next few years, the ROOTS would grow from 13 to the approximately 281
that exist today. New ROOTs would come in either when I needed words for poetry
or prose that I was writing, or, just when I thought the vocabulary was
impoverished in someway. ROOT CONCEPTS were drawn from lists of Indo-European
roots primarily and some from the roots of Quenya as found in the Lost Road,
but the actual phonetic form of ROOTS was merely what I found to be
aesthetically pleasing as well as something that fit into the phonological form
of the ROOT at the time (the phonology of the ROOTS themselves has changed a
bit as well). Sometimes the phonetic form was drawn from mangled Greek: such as
NOY- HOLY it comes from some Ancient Greek word for "temple" I'm not sure what
the word is at the moment.
 Now, I rarely look for new concepts in the Lost Road Etymologies, but rather,
I go to the Oxford English Dictionary, or the American Heritage dictionary, and
I research as thoroughly as I can the etymology of the word in English before I
make any roots.
 So, I guess, in conclusion, I began the Silindion project with totally A
PRIORI roots, then drew inspiration from Quenya and Indo European, and now,
mostly just Indo-European.

> > and anyone who's interested...visit the website:
> > http://erelion.free.fr/  put together by Christophe Grandsire. :)
>
> I have! :
Any comments? I'd always like to hear any.

Elliott LAsh