Parma Eldalamberon 11

Parma Eldalamberon 11 I·Lam na·Ngoldathon: The Grammar and Lexicon of The Gnomish Tongue
File:Parma Eldalamberon 11.jpg
Author	J.R.R. Tolkien
Editor	Christopher Gilson, Patrick H. Wynne, Arden R. Smith, Carl F. Hostetter
Illustrator	Adam Victor Christensen (cover art)
Publisher	Elvish Linguistic Fellowship
Released	8 August 1995
Format	Paperback journal
Pages	76

Parma Eldalamberon 11: I·Lam na·Ngoldathon: The Grammar and Lexicon of The Gnomish Tongue is the eleventh issue of Parma Eldalamberon, a journal of linguistic studies of the Elvish languages and names in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

There are two notebooks written around the time of The Book of Lost Tales, which contain the earliest dictionaries of the Elvish languages. Christopher Tolkien included some of them in the Appendices of the Lost Tales.

In 1991, regretting that the entire lexicons were not available and noting the unlikelihood of their publication in a book, Christopher approved to published them in Parma Eldalamberon. These, the "Gnomish Lexicon" and the "Qenya Lexicon", were published in Parma 11 and Parma 12 respectively.

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Contents

• Foreword

• i·Lam na·Ngoldathon "Goldogrin"
  (the original title of the 150-page notebook, which is later referred to as the "Gnomish Lexicon" by Christopher Tolkien)
  • The Gnomish Grammar
  • The Gnomish Lexicon
    (contains about 3000 entries)

• List of abbreviations

Description

This issue presents the "Gnomish Lexicon" (selections from which were published in the Appendices to The Book of Lost Tales) in its entirety. This is the dictionary of the language called Goldogrin, or I-Lam na-Ngoldathon, which Tolkien eventually transformed into the Noldorin of "The Etymologies" and later into the Sindarin of The Lord of the Rings. This issue also includes Tolkien's own partial grammar of Gnomish, contemporary with the lexicon, which covers the inflections and syntax of the article, noun, and adjective. The lexicon itself also contains much grammatical information, frequently citing verbs in both their present and past tenses, and nouns in both singular and plural. Other parts of speech are also well-represented in what is a quite comprehensive dictionary, and there are a number of sample sentences in Gnomish.

The original lexicon fills a 150-page notebook and consists of about 3000 entries. Compiled in 1917, this remarkable document reveals the well-spring of Tolkien's linguistic genius in its 'Celtic' mode. It also displays the basic phonological nature of the historical relation between Noldorin and Quenya at its inception, with numerous etymological annotations and the citation of many cognates, some of which are Quenya words that occur nowhere else.

External links

• Official product on Eldalamberon.com (currently unavailable)