Sunday 5 March 2017

Sindarin And Sign

Sindarin and Sign are "...requirement[s] for initiation into the Dunedain."
-SM Stirling, The Protector's War (New York, 2006), Chapter Four, p. 119.

Not being a Tolkien expert, I had to google Sindarin. Tolkien surpasses all in the creation of fictional languages, even starting with a language, then imagining its speakers and their history. He was able to do this only because he was immersed in the study of many real languages.

Some other fiction writers imagine alien languages but are unable to tell us very much about them.

CS Lewis
Solar

Poul Anderson
Temporal
Exaltationist
Anglic
League Latin
Eriau
Planha

Larry Niven
The Hero's Tongue
The Puppeteer language

Star Trek
Vulcan
Klingon

Needless to say, I would like to know more about the Andersonian languages, particularly the Temporal tenses for time travel. For Planha, it is preferable to have a body covered with feathers although human choth-members are able to converse in the vocal part of the language.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I assume League Latin is more or less like the Latin YOU personally know from your own studies. And probably includes loan words from the languages of non human intelligent races.

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
Yes but Latin changed from Classical to Medieval until, of course, it became Italian etc. I expect the League would use a simplified form with as you say lots of loan words.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Certainly! I realize Classical Latin was changing to Medieval or Vulgate Latin by the time of St. Jerome's Vulgate translation of the Bible. And then slowly evolved into such Romance languages as French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, etc.

I can imagine the Latin of the Polesotechnic League being a simplified form of Vulgate Latin, with many loan words from nonhuman languages.

Sean