Re: Nur-ellen (was: Re: Degrees of volition in active languages)

> From: Jörg Rhiemeier
> Subject: Re: Nur-ellen (was: Re: Degrees of volition in active
> languages)
>
> > > P.S. If you think the examples above remind you at Sindarin, this is
> > > because Nur-ellen, being a language of modern-day Elves, is largely
> > > based on it.
> >
> > Ah. Didn't see the PS at first. You're still welcome to explain the
> > development from Sindarin to modern Elvish.
>
> Sure.  The original idea behind the language was that Tolkien's books
> reflect some kind of historical truth, and that there really have been
> Elves in the past who actually spoke Quenya and Sindarin.
>
> The idea behind Nur-ellen is that there are still a few thousand Elves
> around among us - and Nur-ellen is their language.  It is mostly a
> descendant of Sindarin, though influenced by several other little-known
> languages including Nandorin, several Avarin languages, Westron and
> others.
>
> I have recently come up with a more "realistic" background, however,
> according to which Tolkien's Elvish languages are based on languages
> which were actually spoken in pre-Celtic Britain, by a people who are
> the historical core of the Celtic and Germanic tradition of Elves; in
> this second version, Nur-ellen dates back to one of these pre-Celtic
> languages.
> I have noticed that Sindarin is a pretty good candidate for the
> enigmatic pre-Celtic substratum language held responsible for the
> idiosyncrasies of Insular Celtic.
The concultural explanation for the influences of Quenya/Sindarin on amman
iar is that Numenorean mariners, escaping the fall of Numenor were washed
ashore on the coast of amman.  There they mingled with the native speakers
who spoke a language seeming related to Sindarin called Vulanayal.  These
mariners intermingled with the natives of amman iar and over the course of
many centuries the languages of each influenced each other resulting in the
descendent language amman iar (among others).  The influences appear to be
primarily lexical, but several morphophonemic similarities also exist.  It
is not known whether the sandhi/lenition patterns were already present in
the protolanguage or were adopted from the language of the mariners.  The
former is the currently held theory.  Similarly, the umlaut-pluralization
patterns may have been borrowed from the mariners, but because of their
consistent use, it is suspected that they too were already present in
Vulanayal.

> It is currently in quite a mess; I have two conflicting versions of the
> reference grammar at home, both incomplete and out of date, and I am
> busy writing up a new version, which I hope to put on the web next week.
> The verb morphology is still sketchy, and the pronouns in a complete
> mess.
Will look forward to this.

> I will then post further information about the language.
> (See also my follow-up on David Bell's posting.)

Somehow I seem to have missed this.  Could you send me a copy?

David

David E. Bell
The Gray Wizard
    dbell@graywizard.net
    www.graywizard.net

"Wisdom begins in wonder." - Socrates