Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Appendix F, I The Languages & Peoples of the Third Age

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A black, white, and dark blue striped image with the text Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical, Appendix F, I The Languages & Peoples of the Third Age

At last, I have arrived at the final appendix! Appendix F is divided into two parts with the first covering the languages spoken by the many peoples of Middle-earth during the Third Age, and the second covering Tolkien’s method of “translation” for those languages. Even to the end, Tolkien maintained his character as a typical early to mid-20th century translator. Elvish and Mannish languages in Arda evolved along similar paths as real-world Indo-European languages with the development of a common speech, pidgins and creoles from the merger of two or more languages, categorization of languages as high or low based on the social status of the speakers, codeswitching and reappropriation of slurs, and languages falling out of use to become lost.

Common Speech

Often referred to as a lingua franca in Modern English, common speeches or shared languages have existed throughout history. During the European Medieval period, people in the east part of the Mediterranean developed a Romance language similar to French and Italian to facilitate trade, hence lingua franca or Frankish language.

Other languages served this purpose in different times and places. The Semitic language Aramaic was spoken between the 7th century BC and 7th century AD. This was one common language spoken by people in the Bible, as the empires of Neo-Assyria, Neo-Babylon, and Persia used it as the official language. Even after the empire of Alexander the Great spread Greek, while the Roman empire continued its spread along with Latin, Aramaic continued to be favored in the region. Latin was considered a scholarly language in Europe even several centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, with the practice finally falling out of fashion in the 18th century.

Today, English is the most widely spoken second language (L2), making it an excellent choice for “translating” the Westron found in The Lord of the Rings. Other languages with more L2 speakers than L1 speakers include Modern Standard Arabic, French, Urdu, Indonesian, Nigerian Pidgin, and Swahili. Out of the seven languages mentioned, two were developed specifically as common speeches. Modern Standard Arabic was created for communication between Arabic colloquial dialects, especially in formal writing. It is held in high regard by Arabic speakers, whose dialects are not mutually intelligible. In contrast, Nigerian Pidgin developed organically over hundreds of years to allow communication between coastal urban traders but later became a native language of the ethnically diverse region. It is based on English and incorporates words from West African languages and Portuguese. However, because Nigerians were a colonized people, their language was long considered a form of “broken English”.

In Middle-earth, the Westron was the “Common Speech” and the native language to all but Elves. Most spoke the Westron as a second language, with the dialects of Wos and Dunlendings considered “broken” by Dúnedain and Rohirrim (The Return of the King, 452)

Pidgins & Creoles

Pidgins and creoles appear in regions where people from multiple ethnic groups congregate to trade goods and words. Port cities near substantial bodies of water are centers of commerce and language creation. Lingua franca and Nigerian Pidgin were both developed to facilitate trade but are only two of many languages that evolved in a similar way. These languages are highly likely to go extinct, as their purpose was to serve specific groups of often marginalized people during specific historical periods.

One creole I have briefly studied is Michif, a language derived from Cree and French by Métis People in Canada whose ancestors were French-speaking trader fathers and Cree- or Ojibwe-speaking local mothers. As of 2021, Statistics Canada found that only 1,845 people still speak the language. This decline came in part because Michif was thought to be “broken French” rather than its own complex language combining the words and structures of two different systems.

The African Diaspora from mass enslavement and forcible relocation of Africans through transatlantic trade created the highest number of pidgins and creoles in modern history, including African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in the United States, Kikongo-Kituba in Central Africa, Ndyuka on the Caribbean coast of South America, Kolokwa in Liberia, Haitian Creole, and three dialects of Afrikaans in South Africa. Many of these languages are still going strong, but their speakers face the same negative connotations as shown to Michif speakers.

A few linguists believe English should be considered a creole, between its tendency to absorb words and grammatical structure from other languages and the many dialects of the language across the world. The Middle English creole hypothesis began in early 1977 when American linguists Charles-James Nice Bailey and Karl Maroldt co-wrote the chapter “The French Lineage of English”, which was published in Langues en Contact – Pidgins – Creoles – Languages in Contact edited by Jürgen M. Meisel of Germany. They focused on the influence of Norman French in Middle English.

More recently, linguist Richard J. Watt of Germany used a chapter in his book Language Myths and the History of English to argue against what he called “the myth of the creolization of English”, especially Middle English, and how these myths influenced “pop linguistics”. He was particularly focused on a chaotic debate he had found on an unnamed internet forum between undereducated and ill-informed linguists, which seemed to be the equivalent of taking seriously the conversations at the academic conference lunch table where the undergraduates sat.

A third linguist, John McWhorter, who previously appeared in my review of the MasterClass Black History, Black Freedom, & Black Love created a comprehensive system for defining creoles in a series of thirteen articles, which he later compiled into a book Defining Creole. He focused on the influence of Old Norse on Old English that led to a different grammatical structure than found in Germanic languages, although this did not make English a creole.

The Westron language was based in Mannish speech with Elvish influence, making the language a creole. It had evolved from a language spoken by the “Fathers of Men”, also called Atani or Edain, specifically the “Three Houses of the Elf-friends”. Their migratory path included many years in the continent of Beleriand, which drowned in the Sea at the end of the First Age. Instead, the survivors were given the big island Númenor or Westernesse, where they were called Númenóreans or Dúnedain meaning “Men of the West”. They spoke the Elvish languages Sindarin and Quenya in addition to their ancestral Mannish language Adûnaic. They later learned words from “the languages of lesser men” to create the Westron. This ranking brings us to another issue: high versus low languages.

Those “High” and “Low” Languages

People from Germanic populations may have heard the terms like “High German” and “High Dutch” contrasting “Low German” and “Low Dutch”, but the purpose of these elevation terms has varied. According to The History of German by Joseph Salmons, the oldest of these languages, Old High German, was spoken between 750 and 1050 AD, and it gradually evolved into Middle High German, then Early New High German, and eventually Modern Standard German, which is spoken in the present day. Low German was a different language whose descendants included Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, and some of English. In the 16th century, Martin Luther led the Protestant reformation and translated the Bible into his own dialect of German, but he relied on the standardized ways of writing created by High German speakers in the government. Because of the widespread availability of these Bibles, High German became the accepted form of the language.

Low German languages flourished outside of what became Germany even if they were deemed inferior. By the 17th century, Dutch colonists took pride in their own language. After the surrender of Nieuw-Nederland to the English in 1664, Dutch colonists continued to speak Leeg Duits or Low Dutch, preserving their dialect at home and during services in the Dutch Reformed Church. During the 18th and 19th century, Dutch farmers or Boers who colonized South Africa called their official language Hooghollands or High Dutch. They disdained the development of what is now Afrikaans, referring to the new language as Cape Dutch or kombuistaaltdje [kitchen Dutch].

Similar divisions of languages within the same language families took place in Middle-earth. Elves divided themselves between West-elves or Eldar and East-elves such as “elven-folk of Mirkwood and Lorien”, also called Silvan Elves. East-elves seemed to be a lower class colonized by upper class Eldar. Only the languages of Eldar were recorded in The Thain’s Book, the in-universe manuscript containing The Lord of the Rings. Eldar who had gone to the Undying Lands spoke Quenya or High-elven, while Eldar who remained in Middle-earth spoke Sindarin or Grey-elven. These two languages were from the same family and distinctly different than the languages of Silvan Elves, which they replaced. Quenya was considered the “High” language, which Tolkien called “elven-latin” (Return, 453), while Sindarin was the colloquial language.

The Dúnedain dialect of Westron and the variant used by Rohirrim were considered “a more gracious and antique style” (Return, 455) to the “broken” varieties spoken by Wos or Wild Men and Dunlendings. Hobbits were accused of speaking their dialects “freely and carelessly” (Return, 456), perhaps with less concern about noun declensions and verb tenses than their uptight counterparts in Gondor and Rohan, and likely having the best slang.

A Brief Note on Codeswitching

I will talk about codeswitching significantly more in future posts, as this occurs during significant plot points throughout the text, but it is worth defining codeswitching for readers who may be unfamiliar with the term. A fairly dry explanation courtesy of Britannica defined the practice as the “process of shifting from one linguistic code (a language or dialect) to another, depending on the social context or conversational setting”. People who speak a non-dominant code may switch into the dominant code to be taken seriously or fit in, but they might also do this automatically or come from a family where both codes are spoken. Linguistic studies in the United States have historically focused on codeswitching among speakers of Spanish and African American Vernacular English, especially among middle class speakers who switch between their home language and the General American English of the workplace. The term has become more recognizable in recent years with Code Switch debuting as a blog in 2013 and an NPR podcast in 2016.

Frodo was known in Middle-earth as an expert at codeswitching due to his skill in speaking multiple dialects and languages with the correct accent. Despite his proficiency in Elvish languages, Frodo could not understand all accents and dialects in an uncontrolled environment. When Legolas talked with his kinfolk Haldir, Orophin, and Rúmil upon entering Lothlorien, Frodo believed he heard the Silvan language, as “the speech that the Silvan folk east of the mountains used among themselves was unlike that of the West” (Fellowship, 383-385). Instead, his friend Legolas had codeswitched into a different dialect of Sindarin and spoke with a heavy Silvan accent, “as pointed out in The Thain’s Book by a commentator of Gondor” (Return, 453). As someone acquainted with academic humor, it is incredibly funny that Tolkien created a footnote featuring an unnamed in-universe linguistic expert who analyzed Frodo’s writing before sending an annotated copy back to the Shire at the request of Pippin’s (and Sam’s!) great-grandson. It does not matter if you were the Ringbearer and saved the world if your linguistic analysis was wrong.

Reappropriation: Slang or Slur?

Many words were originally used as slurs but have now become in-group slang. It goes without saying that if one has to call a word by its first letter, followed by -word, then one is not a part of the in-group that has reappropriated the word. Plenty of resources on the history of these terms exist and are written by members of the in-group if you are interested in learning more, but that discussion does not fit into the scope of my blog at this time.

Here are terms that have been reclaimed to the point that their derogatory origins are nearly forgotten. Yankee was once disparagingly applied to Dutch colonists by British colonists in the Americas and later was intended as an insult for Americans, who grew so proud of the term that they wrote songs and named a baseball team after it. The word Jesuit for members of Societas Jesu [Society of Jesus] was used to mean “crafty” or “deceitful” by the society’s many enemies, both Catholic and Protestant. Similarly, Methodism was a term for the methodical Christian movement founded by brothers Charles and John Wesley. Another Christian group, the Religious Society of Friends, were founded by George Fox and called Quakers for “fits of shaking during religious fervor”.

For the more artistic set, Impressionists or école impressionniste was the name given to an art movement that started in France during the late 19th century, which focused on capturing the moment with quick brushstrokes instead of delivering an overly refined painting. Finally, the terms geek and nerd have evolved from being “sideshow freaks” to almost cool, or at least normal enough that you can tell typical people about your historian blog without getting quietly shown out of the room.

Hobbit was what Shire-folk called everyone in their race, but it was originally given to Harfoots by Fallohides and Stoors based on the Rohirrim word holbytla or hole-builder, in contrast to “halflings” in Mannish languages and periannath in Elvish languages (Return, 456). To me, this implied that “Hobbit” was originally slang, if not a slur. Based on how the three “breeds” of Hobbits were presented in the prologue, Fallohides and Stoors tended to be less numerous but more politically powerful and physically larger, allowing them to easily subjugate the more numerous but smaller Harfoots. However, the text mentions that members of the three breeds amalgamated to an extent by the end of the Third Age, although the “rustic” hobbits were implied to have mostly Harfoot ancestry. Since the ruling class of mostly Fallohide Tooks and somewhat Stoor Brandybucks now had a few Harfoot ancestors, perhaps from an upper class that existed prior to colonization, this reappropriation was supported by the highest level of society.

Can a Language Be Evil?

Naturally occurring languages cannot be evil. However, constructed languages can be created with a deliberate purpose, and the purpose could be good or evil. Occult languages and alphabets are still popular throughout the West, although many “alphabets” are really just ciphers or puzzles. One of the best known languages was invented during the late 16th century, when polymath John Dee, who advised Queen Elizabeth I, collaborated with occultist Edward Kelley to create Enochian, a constructed language that they claimed was given to them by angels.

Sauron set out to construct the evilest possible language, which is also the nerdiest possible way to be evil. This is humorous to me, but likely unintentional on Tolkien’s part. While most villains only create weapons of mass destruction or plunder valuable resources — two things Sauron certainly did — he had the time to sit down and write grammars and classroom material for his extra evil language, then teach it to a diverse population.

Lost Languages

All lost languages are extinct, but not all extinct languages are lost. The most ancient recorded historical languages surviving in written form are often found in the Middle East, such as Sumerian, Minoan, and Elamite. The cuneiform invented around 3500 BC for the language isolate Sumerian was later used to record Akkadian, the Semitic language spoken in Assyria and Babylon. Minoan was spoken by the ancient people of Crete who wrote in Cretan hieroglyphs during the early Bronze Age and later in a writing system currently called Linear A. While the written language has not yet been deciphered, the number of documents available means that the system will likely be figured out some day. Elamite was another language isolate, which used three different language systems in its history: two types of cuneiform and Linear Elamite. Only in 2022 did archaeologist Francois Desset and his team of linguists announce that they might have decoded some of the language.

In contrast to extinct languages with written records, truly lost languages may have used no writing system, even though written documents may have referred to the language or its speakers. Smaller indigenous languages often fall into this category. Cochimí was spoken by people living in Baja California, and the only surviving words are versions of the Lord’s Prayer recorded in its dialects by Jesuit priests. On the other side of the world, Crimean Gothic was spoken by Goths, or a Germanic people, who had moved to Crimea in Ukraine. The only written record of this language came from a letter written by Flemish diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq from the Holy Roman Empire. He received the information not from a Crimean who “looked like a Fleming or a Dutchman” but by his friend who “was a Greek by birth and by language, but… had acquired fair acquaintance with their language”. Through these one hundred or so poorly attested words, linguists have tried to understand what Crimean Gothic might have been like.

Tolkien created many fictional languages, but he notably left some “unrecorded”. The people called Dunlending by outside groups had their own language, but the only surviving word was Forgoil meaning “strawheads”, the name they gave to the blond Rohirrim. Both Men of Bree and Hobbits lost their own language, with Hobbit language loss coming before recorded history in Middle-earth, as “they seem always to have used the languages of Men near whom, or among whom, they lived” (Return, 456). Stoors were unique in using “ a language related to Dunlendish before they came north to the Shire”, which included names like Déagol and Sméagol.

Since Ents were originally taught to speak by Eldar, they spoke their own dialect of Quenya and used Sindarin for names along with speaking Westron. Their own unrecorded languages, Entish, was “slow… repetitive, indeed long-winded… They used it only among themselves; but they had no need to keep it secret, for no others could learn it.” (Return, 457) Merry and Pippin attempted to write the only surviving snippet of Entish, which Tolkien described in a footnote as “probably very inaccurate”. They tried their best, but they are very small.

Finally, Dwarves kept their language Khuzdul a secret, even using Northern Mannish nicknames in public while hiding their “secret and ‘inner’ names, their true names… Not even on their tombs do they inscribe them” (Return, 459). Besides a few place names and a battle cry, the language had disappeared. It is unclear how many non-Dwarves knew Khuzdul. While Elves like Celebrimbor and Galadriel had close friendships with Dwarves, and both Bilbo and Frodo spent time with them, they may still have been considered an “alien race” and only heard snippets of sentences, or they could have been nearly fluent. With the taboo against writing down the language, it is impossible to know which.

Conclusion

Professional linguists have attempted to learn and expand upon Tolkien’s fictional languages since they first appeared in print. The most cited source is A Gateway to Sindarin, punning on the Gates of Moria in true Tolkien fashion, published by David Salo as a how-to guide in 2007 after consulting for Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings. Websites like Parf Edhellen, RealElvish.net, Eldamo, Ardalambion, and The Council of Elrond act as multiple language guides with varying levels of quality in webpage design. Conlangers have expanded upon Tolkien’s original languages in Amazon’s The Rings of Power, along with the Dwarfish language Khazalid appearing in the game Warhammer.

For the hypothetical animated musical, I have decided to only use the language that appears in the text. If Elves whisper among themselves unintelligibly, then that is what the viewer would hear. Additionally, important lines noted to be in another language but transcribed in-universe in Westron then “translated” into English will be spoken in English. I am doing this not because I am a “purist” and think only the original text is a valid choice, although I would keep dialog much closer to the original text than previous attempts to adapt the books, but because my area of focus has always been history rather than linguistics. I would rather devote my research time to architecture, costume, and foodways than hypothesizing how to conjugate Sindarin verbs. Plenty of respect would be paid to Tolkien’s background in philology, but not with the extreme enthusiasm given by a true linguist.


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