Grelvish
- "I don't know if I should cry or laugh when I read something like this, or if I should just look away."
- ― Thorsten Renck, Elfling Message 34930
Grelvish, or Grey Company Elvish, is a debased fanon form of "elvish". It is used primarily by roleplaying sites.
Origin
Grelvish originated on Tel'Mithrim, or "the Grey Company", an RPG players' online community. The website's FAQ mentions that they "simplified the grammatical structure [of Tolkien's Elvish] and expanded the dictionary heavily". The language meant by "elvish" seems to be Quenya, though Sindarin is used as well. It is simplified to the standards of a native English speaker since the grammar as laid out, follows English structure.
It is used primarily for interjectional phrases in roleplaying, and as such it has been copied by several other sites.
Characteristics
Trademarks of Grelvish are long words with strange plural markers (ea, ie, oo) and double vowels (these replace the accents in the original languages, but not consistent). There is also an affinity with apostrophes. The pronoun "amin" for the first person in all its forms is also a trademark.
Some obscure Elvish words from Tolkien's corpus have found new translations. For example vedui means "last" in Sindarin, but the creators of Grelvish considered it a greeting, since it appears in Glorfindel's greeting to Aragorn.
Linguistic response
Grelvish tended to be mistaken for authentic Tolkien's Elvish by new fans during the hype of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings who sought online for further info about the strange languages heard in the movies.
