Lhammas

The Lhammas (pronounced /ˈɬɑmɑs/) is a work of fictional sociolinguistics, written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1937, and published in the 1987 The Lost Road and Other Writings, volume five of The History of Middle-earth series. The word lhammas is a Noldorin word meaning "account of tongues".

Text

The Lhammas was written in 1937. It exists in three versions. The two long versions, A and B, are closely similar, so Christopher Tolkien published B in The Lost Road and Other Writings, annotating it with A's minor variations on the text. The third, latest, and much the shortest version is the Lammasathen.^[1][2]

Name

In Tolkien's later development of his languages, he essentially replaced Noldorin with a related language, Sindarin, the native tongue of the Elves of Beleriand. He changed the rules governing initial l- and r- whereby they ceased being devoiced. This changed the document's name to lammas (/ˈlɑmɑs/).^[3][4]

Theory of Middle-earth languages

The Lhammas as published presents the theory that all the languages of Middle-earth descend from the language of the angelic beings or Valar, Valarin, and were divided into three branches:^[2]

• Oromëan, named after Oromë, who taught the first Elves to speak. All languages of Elves and most languages of Men are Oromëan.^[2]
• Aulëan, named after Aulë, maker of the Dwarves, is the origin of the Khuzdul language. It has had some influences on the tongues of Men.^[2]
• Melkian, named after the rebellious Melkor or Morgoth, is the origin in the First Age of the many tongues used by the Orcs and other evil beings. (This tongue is unrelated to the Black Speech of Sauron.)^[2]

Ósanwe-kenta

The Ósanwe-kenta, or Enquiry into the Communication of Thought, was written as a typescript of eight pages, probably in 1960, and was first published in Vinyar Tengwar (39) in 1998. Within its fictional context, a frame story, the text is presented as a summary by an unnamed editor of the last chapter of the Lhammas. The subject-matter is "direct thought-transmission" (telepathy), or sanwe-latya "thought-opening" in Quenya. Pengolodh included it as last chapter to the Lhammas because of the implications of spoken language on thought-transmission, and since the Incarnates (Elves, and Men) use a spoken language, telepathy can become more difficult with time (cf. hröa).^[5]

Analysis

Frame story

Tolkien later revised the internal history of the Elvish languages, stating that the Elves were capable of constructing their own languages, but did not update the Lhammas to be coherent with this. The essay as it stands in The Lost Road and Other Writings can be thus seen as an interpolated manuscript, badly translated by Men in the Fourth Age or even later: "For many thousands of years have passed since the fall of Gondolin."^[2] In Tolkien's frame story, no autograph manuscripts of the Lhammas of Pengolodh remained; the three surviving manuscripts came from the original manuscript through an unknown number of intermediate copies.^[2] A tradition of philological study of Elvish languages exists within the fiction; Tolkien mentions that "The older stages of Quenya were, and doubtless still are, known to the loremasters of the Eldar. It appears from these notices that besides certain ancient songs and compilations of lore that were orally preserved, there existed also some books and many ancient inscriptions.^[6]

Realistic language family

The Lhammas and related writings like "The Etymologies" illustrate Tolkien's conception of the languages of Middle-earth as a language family analogous to Indo-European, with diverging branches and sub-branches — though for the immortal Elves the proto-language is remembered rather than reconstructed. This "concept of increasing separation" was also employed for the Sundering of the Elves in Tolkien's legendarium.^[8][9]

The Lhammas indicates on Tolkien's diagrams of the "Tree of Tongues" that there were at various times some thirty Elvish languages and dialects.^[2][10]

Changing views of Elvish linguistic history

After he had written the contemporaneous Lhammas and The Etymologies (also published in The Lost Road and Other Writings), Tolkien decided to make Sindarin the major language of the Elves in exile in Beleriand. As such, it largely replaced Noldorin; eventually Tolkien settled on the explanation that after the Noldor returned to Beleriand from Valinor, they adopted the language used by the Sindar (Grey Elves) already settled there.^[11] The Lhammas thus represents a stage in Tolkien's development of his Elvish languages (and of the Silmarillion legendarium), documented also in The Etymologies and an essay, "The Feanorian Alphabet".^[12][7]

Bill Welden, writing in Arda Philology, comments that "the High-elven tongue of the Noldor", mentioned by the Tolkienesque character Faramir in a draft of The Lord of the Rings,^[13][7] sounds, and looks from the "Tree of Tongues" in the Lhammas, as if it must be Quenya "as we would expect". But, Welden writes, it's actually "almost exactly" Sindarin, which Tolkien derived from Welsh. Further, the version of The Lord of the Rings that he submitted to his publisher relied on "pretty much" the same conception of the Elvish language family, with Noldorin instead of Sindarin as the language of Gondor. Tolkien tried several schemes to make the change to Sindarin work in terms of rates of linguistic change. Because the Noldor's use of Sindarin was rather sudden, he settled on a radically new scheme: when the Noldor arrived back in Middle-earth from Valinor, they adopted the native language of Beleriand where they settled. The Elves of Beleriand were Sindar, Silvan Elves who had never gone to Valinor. The Noldor had been speaking Noldorin, a dialect of the ancient language of Quenya, and it had changed little, unlike Sindarin. The Lhammas and The Etymologies had been describing Sindarin (but calling it Noldorin). Tolkien hastened to redraw the "Tree of Tongues", in a version recorded in Parma Eldalamberon 18 to accomodate this restructuring.^[7]

See also

• The Etymologies, another document from the 1930s about Elvish languages

References

Sources

• Fimi, Dimitra (2009). Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-2302-1951-9.
• Flieger, Verlyn (2002). Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World (revised ed.). Kent State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8733-8744-6.
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1990). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The War of the Ring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-56008-X.