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British School Offers Elvish Lessons

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the tongue-of-the-light-footed dept.

Adair writes "A school in Birmingham, England is offering its students weekly after-hours lessons in Sindarin, a conversational form of Elvish invented by J.R.R. Tolkien and based on Welsh sounds." It won't be long now until the Klingon to Elvish translation books are produced.

26 of 356 comments (clear)

  1. Fair enough. by James+A.+H.+Joyce · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was going to say that the school should really be offering lessons in "real" languages which are more widely spoken like German and Chinese, but I suppose the kids would rather learn this than anything else. It's not interfering with their normal schooling either, so this can only be a good thing.

  2. Google? by Texas+Rose+on+Lava+L · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Anyone know if Google supports Sindarin?

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    Rank Presidents by th

    1. Re:Google? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Nope, they've stopped working on new languages a while ago. There are many frustrated speakers of minority languages on the google translation boards, complaining about the fact that google refuses to add new languages, even though they'd get volunteer translators.

    2. Re:Google? by NotoriousQ · · Score: 5, Interesting

      They would have a techincal problem. I believe there is no current standard for elvish characters in unicode. But it seems that the inclusion has been considered for a while (in the Miscellaneous section)

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      badness 10000
  3. Re:if women like liv tyler go there by beamin · · Score: 5, Funny

    More likely a bunch of unwashed geeks in funny clothes...

  4. This just in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Entire class beaten to near death on first day as jocks create a fake class that teaches "elvish" in a secluded barn. Pictures at 11.

  5. Zainab Thorp? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Zainab Thorp, a special needs co-ordinator at Turves Green Boys' Technology College in Birmingham, is offering after-hours classes, where pupils struggle through vocabulary and verb tables.

    Zainab Thorp? It that her elvish name?

  6. So in other words... by ruronikenshin83 · · Score: 5, Funny

    So in other words, they're offerring bullies a central location for all their dork-pummelling needs?

  7. The secret code 8) by Alan+Cox · · Score: 5, Informative

    Welsh has lots of vowels. The secret is that 'w' and 'y' are vowel sounds in Welsh. Its actually fairly phonetic so learning to pronounce Welsh place names isn't too hard, even if "cwmtwrch" initially looks as terrifying as Polish.

    1. Re:The secret code 8) by mlush · · Score: 5, Funny
      even if "cwmtwrch" initially looks as terrifying as Polish.

      The nice thing about Polish is that not only can you read eye charts you can also pronounce them

  8. Re:Why? by mishac · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's no such language as 'Indian'. There are 18 different "official" langauges in India. Hindi is the "national language", but is the first language of only something like 30-40% of the population.

  9. Oddly enough... by _defiant_ · · Score: 5, Informative

    When you write the language, the vowels do not (usually) have their own character. Based on the "mode" you are writing in, you mark the vowels on the character before or after the vowel sound.

  10. Any experience is valuable by sarastro_us · · Score: 5, Insightful

    After learning your second language, each additional one you learn becomes easier. Yes, kids will be more interested in learning Sindarin because is fun, but they're still learning valuable cognative principles for future language study.

    Tolkein's work is fabulious in terms of its depth. He was a great lanugage scholar and it shows in his attention to detail in the languages he created. I don't know if the same thing can be said for those who created Klingon...

    1. Re:Any experience is valuable by sarastro_us · · Score: 5, Informative

      For starters, go here.

    2. Re:Any experience is valuable by belmolis · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The generally poor English conversation skills of Japanese people do not support the position that learning two languages at once works poorly. The fact is that English is poorly taught in Japan. Very few Japanese teachers of English actually speak English themselves. Furthermore, the curriculum and exams, especially the all-important University entrance exams, emphasize the ability to read English, not to speak it.

      An example of a country with succesful, quality language-teaching is the Netherlands. A Dutch high-school graduate will generally be fluent in English and capable of getting by in French and German. In Dutch Universities, classes in the languages taught in high school are conducted in the language. That is, if you major in French at the university level, your classes, including classes in subjects like literature and linguistics, will be conducted in French.

      There are also many societies in which children grow up fluent in two or more languages as a result of using different languages in different contexts, e.g. one at home and another at school. Millions of immigrants to the US, for example, have grown up speaking both fluent English, learned outside the home, and their heritage language: Italian, Yiddish, Chinese, Polish, etc. Swedish Finns, such as Linus Torvalds, grow up bilingual in Finnish and Swedish, and like other Finns, most acquire a good command of English by the end of high school.

      Multilingualism is common in much of Africa. People often speak their local language, a regional African language, such as Swahili, and thelanguage of the former colonial power, which often serves as a national language, such as French or English. To take an admittedly somewhat extreme case, I have a friend from Eritrea who speaks Tigrinya, Tigre, Amharic, Beja, Nara, Sudanese Colloquial Arabic, and Modern Standard Arabic. He's been in the US for a couple of years and his English is imperfect but quite servicable. In all probability, most people who have ever lived have probably spoken at least two languages. Monolingualism is pathological.

    3. Re:Any experience is valuable by eldacan · · Score: 5, Informative

      Where is this language documented?

      Have a look at this page. The first significant pieces of information concerning elvish languages (Quenya, Sindarin, etc.) were published in the Lord of the Rings, appendices E and F to the third volume in particular. Since then, many readers wrote letters to Tolkien, asking for more information, and he answered. Some info was thus published in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.
      Then you have the posthumous works (The Silmarillion with a linguistic index by Christopher Tolkien, based on his father's notes, The Unfinished Tales, the twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth, ...). Most significant is volume 5 from the History of Middle-earth: "The Lost Road and other Writings", which includes The Etymologies, ie. more than fifty pages of elvish roots, and the way they evolved in words in the various elvish tongues (all elvish tongues, and Quenya and Sindarin in particular, are related. All come ultimately from the "Common Elvish"). What's more, most of the names in Tolkien's world have a known meaning.

      As for now: Christopher Tolkien (Tolkien's son) sent photocopies of most of his father's papers that are related to the languages of Middle-earth to a group of people who had been editing a fanzine (Vinyar Tengwar) on this topic for several years, with the authorization for them to publish all the material. Thus more and more information is being published concerning Tolkien's languages. "Small" works are published in Vinyar Tengwar, while more comprehensive ones are published in Parma Eldalamberon (most notable are issues 11, 12, 13 and 14. Issue 11 includes the so called "Gnomish Lexicon", Gnomish being an "early version" of Sindarin, and issue 12 the "Qenya Lexicon", Qenya being an "early version" of Quenya, though this is an over-simplification). There are thousands of pages waiting to be published, including detailed grammatical descriptions, etc.

      Where is the dictionary, verbs conjugations, grammatical constructs, gender treatments etc etc?

      The website Ardalambion given in another comment will give you this kind of information, though it represents the view of its author (Helge Fauskanger), which are sometimes subject to controverse. There is a comprehensive Sindarin dictionary compiled by Didier Willis, which you can download on his website Hisweloke (DragonFlame 2.0 is the best way to get the latest version, but it's a Windows program. However, it uses QT and is licensed under the GPL so anyone is welcomed to port it to Unix).

      To what degree can complex and subtle nuances be expressed in this one-man made up language?

      Tolkien himself wondered how much poetry, etc. an invented language could really reach (see The Monsters and The Critics). But he was of course technically able to build quite complex sentences, with subtle nuances, etc. "one-man language", yet the work of more than half a century (he started devising these tongues in the second decade of the century, and refined them until his death in 1973). However, it's virtually impossible for anyone else to compose a "new" complex elvish sentence, ie a sentence about which one could say "this is true elvish". One reason for that is that Tolkien always changed his mind, his languages were not fixed in any way (though he felt "bound" by the published material). But even if all the published material was "consistent", there would still be huge lacunes in the available knowledge. This may change when more material is published in Vinyar Tengwar / Parma Eldalamberon... But note that most "experts" don't consider "movie-elvish" as genuine. Some even call this neo-Sindarin "mishmash"...

  11. What? by Moderation+abuser · · Score: 5, Funny

    Nah. All the other countries should learn to speak english. We can always just speak louder and slower at them when they don't uderstand.

    --
    Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
  12. Re:Brum by turgid · · Score: 5, Funny
    That reminds me of a joke.

    Noddy Holder goes to a tailors to buy a new suit. The tailor says, "Good day sir, what can we do for you?"

    "I'd like a new suit please."

    "Very good sir, we have something here that might be to your liking. How about these nice purple velvet flares?"

    "Super, says Holder.

    "And sir, how about a nice purple velvet jacket, with flares lapels to match?"

    "Excellent."

    "Now, here I have a nice frilly, lacey white shirt. What does sir think of that?"

    "Just what I'm looking for."

    "Kipper tie, sir?"

    "Oh, thanks mate, milk and two sugars please."

    --
    Stick Men
  13. Re:So now.... by starling · · Score: 5, Funny

    The American education system?

  14. What's wrong with that? by jeffasselin · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've put some time myself in learning Sindarin and Quenya. Not to a conversational level, but enough to be able to say simple phrases and understand them. Enough to understand a lot of the dialog in the movies, and to translate most place-names in LotR and the Silmarillion as I (re-)read them.

    I can also read and write Tengwar, the Elvish writing system (at a slow pace). There are a number of resources available on the web at the moment for all this.

    http://www.ardalambion.com/

    is one of the best, with links to other resources on the web.

    http://www.elvish.org/gwaith/language.htm

    is also a good resource.

    What's more, every year more of the professor's material on those languages is published, and more knowledge of those tongues is acquired so that the information gets refined. Actual teaching of the language is great, as others said it increases interest in languages in general, which is good.

    Before looking seriously at Elvish, I learned English, German, and Latin (my first tongue was French). I can usually figure out written material in Italian and Spanish. So my interest in Elvish was NOT alone but only part of a general interest in languages, and learning the basis of those made-up languages made me aware of certain concepts of language which are not always readily apparent in real-world languages, but yet are useful for a deeper understanding of them.

    --
    If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
  15. UT-Austin has this... by rebelcool · · Score: 5, Informative

    LIN 312 is a linguistics class on the languages of middle earth.

    It's a real class for which you get real credit.

    course description

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  16. Klingon by mraymer · · Score: 5, Informative
    . I don't know if the same thing can be said for those who created Klingon...

    From kli.org:

    The Klingon language is something truly unique. While there have been other artificial languages, and other languages crafted for fictional beings, Klingon is one of the rare times when a trained linguist has been called upon to create a language for aliens. Add to this more than a quarter-century of the Star Trek phenomenon, a mythos that has permeated popular culture and spread around the globe. These factors begin to explain the popularity of the warrior's tongue. Klingon was invented by Marc Okrand, for use in some of the Star Trek movies. He invented not just a few words to make the Klingons sound alien, but a complete language, with its own vocabulary, grammar, and usage.

    --

    "To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking

  17. Re:if women like liv tyler go there by slipgun · · Score: 5, Funny

    Like Janet Jackson is just Michael dressed up as a girl?

    Isn't Michael normally dressed up as a girl anyway?

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    SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
  18. Re:if women like liv tyler go there by MartinB · · Score: 5, Funny
    Like Janet Jackson is just Michael dressed up as a girl?

    Well have you ever seen them in the same room together?

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    The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's

  19. Re:Instead of Elvish... by MurrayTodd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When I was a kid I was really resentful of people trying to decide my curriculum based on what they thought was useful. I had the ability to dedicate a fantastic amount of concentration and study on whatever interested me, and "later usefulness" had no bearing on this.

    If kids get excited about learning Elvish or Klingon, by all means we should embrace their excitement. That will lead to "ins" in their intellectual development we could never guess at.

    Today's curriculum seems to be based so much on practicality and very little on imagination. No wonder Generation-Y seems to lack enthusiasm about the world. We're trying to mold them into "practical little cogs" by McDonalds-izing their world.

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    Murray Todd Williams
  20. Linguistics vs. Language by Orinthe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've seen quite a few posts on this topic, so I thought something might need cleared up:

    Linguistics != Language

    All of these 'prior art'-esque posts about how their school or some other school has some course in sindarin or quenya or klingon or this or that fail to notice that teaching about the linguistics of a language has little to do with teaching the actual language.

    Linguistics is basically about the structure of language. You can learn everything there is about the linguistics of a language without being taught how to speak it (in the sense that reading an RFC doesn't generally relate much to actually using whatever protocol or what-have-you that it's written on from a user-standpoint).

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