Grey Company Elvish, often contracted to Grelvish[note 1], is a constructed language loosely based on several sources, though mostly Quenya. It was developed by Tel'Mithrim, or "the Grey Company", a guild of roleplayers in the game Ultima Online, who blended mythology from both Tolkien's works and the Forgotten Realms setting of Dungeons and Dragons.[1]
Origin and controversy
I don't know if I should cry or laugh when I read something like this, or if I should just look away.
According to the guild's website, “simplified the grammatical structure [of Tolkien's Elvish] and expanded the dictionary heavily”.[1] The simplified grammatical structure follows English. The dictionary's origins are Quenya, though Sindarin as well as non-Tolkien sources also served as inspiration.[2]
Despite the website clearly stating that it did not intend to be Tolkien's Elvish, Grelvish was often mistaken for it.[3] New fans introduced through adaptations like film series often stumbled upon the Grey Company's website (or derivatives thereof), to the consternation of older fans.[4]
Characteristics
Grelvish has several characterics that distuingish it from Tolkien's languages. Its vocabulary has long words with plural markers (ea, ie, oo), and double vowels which replace Tolkien' long vowels, though not consistently. The pronoun amin is used for the first person in all its forms. Apostrophes are also used heavily.[3]
Sometimes obscurer words from Tolkien have been reutilized with different meanings. Vedui, meaning "last" in Sindarin (lenited), was reinterpreted as a greeting in Grelvish, likely since it occurred in Glorfindel's greeting to Aragorn.
A well-attested greeting is vedui il'er meaning "Greetings everyone". Here, il'er which intended to mean "everyone" could be analyzed to il for "every, all" (from canonical Elvish Root (IL cf. ilya) and er "one" (from ER, cf. Eru). Of course, this compounding is not the way Tolkien's Elvish works. The Quenya word for "everybody" is ilquen.
External links
- Phrasebook (archived)
Notes
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Frequent Questions", archived from the original. Grey Company
- ↑ "Grey Company Elvish". FrathWiki
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 . "FAQs". RealElvish.net
- ↑ . "Elvish Linguistics Unofficial FAQ". The Elvish Linguistic Fellowship