XI Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2019

John Ronald Rowell Tolkien is famous not only for writing the legendary Lord of the Rings, but also for creating two fictional languages: Black Adverb and Quenya. Basically it was precisely because of the fact that during his long life Tolkien could come up with two artificial languages ​​and the well-known Lord of the Rings was written, for Tolkien wanted artificial languages ​​to be inserted into the works and then they could be published . Now they produce dictionaries on the "elvish" language and they are very popular and in demand.

Quenya (Quenya) - an artificial language, designed by John. R. R. Tolkien. In the legendarium is one of the elven languages ​​- speech noldor and vanyar. The word Quenya is translated as "adverb, language" or, in contrast to other languages, "elvian adverb, elvish language."

Since childhood Tolkien began to feel the craving for foreign words. As a child, he was fascinated by the Gaelic names that he saw on coal platforms. When he became a teenager, he learned that his younger cousins ​​shared this predilection - they invented a "bestial" language, the words of which were based on the names of animals. Tolkien quickly mastered this language, and then they came up with a new cousin from one of the cousins. They gave him the name "nevbosh" - "new nonsense." This mixture of English, French and Latin was more of a narrow circle of initiates than of a harmonious language system. His next attempt was the language "nafarin", he was much better organized. The basis of the new language was Spanish - this was reflected in the influence of the guardian of Tolkien, a Spanish priest.

Then Tolkien took up the Gothic - one of the ancient European languages. Nowadays nobody speaks Gothic - it is a dead language, but thanks to its antiquity it helps to explain the facts of many subsequent languages, including ancient English and German words. For fun, Tolkien created new Gothic words from preserved ancient roots.

He forgot about the Gothic language, discovering Finnish, which at the time seemed just as mysterious. For Finland at that time had not yet gained independence. Many Finns spoke Swedish. Tolkien was fascinated by Finnish grammar. Soon after he discovered books on the Finnish language, he began to invent Kwenya, the ancient Elven language, which became extremely important for the Lord of the Rings.

Let us focus more on the “black dialect” of high style.

The black adverb is a fictional language developed by JRR Tolkin. In the legendary "The Lord of the Rings" is an artificial language, created by Sauron for his servants. Replaced numerous dialects of orcs. Tolkien mentioned the existence of two forms of language: ancient, used by Sauron himself, Nazgul and olog-hai, and more simplified, used by the Barad-Dur army at the end of the Third Epoch.

An example of a high style of black adverbs - the inscription on the One Ring:

Ash nazg durbatulûk,

ash nazg gimbatul,

ash nazg thrakatulûk,

agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

Literal translation:

One Ring to rule everyone

It is most important,

It will bring everyone together

And he will make it in darkness ...

In the formation of a black adverb, not everything is so simple: the word Nazgul = Nazguul = Nazg + guul = Ghost of the Ring, the double g turns into one. By the way, Guul translates as "Ghost" in the sense of English. the words "Wraith," not "Spirit." By the way, I would like to mention that the word "Nazgul" is not inclined. In English, the word "Nazgul" is written without s, in case the ring ghosts were some. By itself, the word Nazgul already implies the nine ghosts of the ring in one person, and not in English, not in Russian, it is not inclined and is not used in the plural. The spell of the Ring contains less vowels and more noisy consonants, including explosive (p, b, t, k, g) and fricative (f, v, s, z, etc.).

It is known that in addition to talent for linguistics, Tolkien was a gifted calligrapher. In the story of the legendary, Tengvar created Feanor, an Noldor elf, based on the earlier Sarati alphabet and used this script to write most of Middle-earth languages, both elven (Quenya, Sindarin), and other nations languages ​​(Westron, Black Adverb). Depending on the phonology of the language, various applications of tengvar are used.

The structure of the Tengvar writing system includes 24 characters, divided into 4 rows (témar) and 6 steps (tyeller). For the dental and labial consonants, the 1st and 2nd rows (tincotéma and parmatéma) are used, the 3rd one is used for palatal and ellar, and for the velar and labiovellar ones - the 4th. The 1st and 2nd steps are used for deaf and voiced occlusive consonants, 3 and 4 for deaf and voiced slit, 5 for the nasal and 6 for semi-vowels. Additional signs are also combined in steps, and signs of the symbol and essl exist both in direct and in inverted versions.