The Cellar Read by Tolkien Glǽmscribe Mathoms News
Quenya Sindarin Telerin Qenya Gnomish & Noldorin
Adûnaic Westron Khuzdul Black Speech Valarin
Old English – Tolkien Old English Middle English
Gothic Old Norse Finnish Welsh Latin
Pengoloð and Ælfwine
English
Quenya
Tengwar

    ()
Manen lambë Quendion ahyanë[?]
How did the language of the Elves change?



 ⸱ ⸱    :
‘Mana i·coimas in·Eldaron?’ maquentë Elendil.
“What is the life-bread of the Eldar?” Ælfwine asked.



    ⸱:⸱
Sin quente Quendingoldo Elendilenna.
Thus spoke Pengoloð to Ælfwine.

Commentary
These few sentences appear in a set of essays dated from the 1950s and gathered by Christopher Tolkien under the title Teachings of Pengoloð in The Peoples of Middle-earth. They are supposed to be answers given by Pengoloð, the loremaster from Gondolin settled in Tol Eresseä, to some questions of Ælfwine, the Anglo-Saxon seafarer of the Early Middle Ages and Tolkien’s longtime imagined mediator of his legendarium into the later ages.

Both characters are mentioned by their Quenya name, which is adapted by form and meaning from their respective names in Sindarin (or Noldorin) and Old English: Pengoloð becomes Quendingoldo and Ælfwine becomes Elendil. Unlike the glosses in the sources, we have chosen for narrative clarity to revert the proper names to their original form in the translation.

The text is transcribed in tengwar or “letters of Fëanor” according to the classical mode for Quenya described by Tolkien in the Appendix E to The Lord of the Rings and used for instance by the Namarië manuscript in The Road Goes Ever On p. 65. We made use of Johan Winge’s typeface Tengwar Annatar.  Open this mode in Glaemscribe

References
Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel. The Peoples of Middle-earth. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins, 2002. 482 p. (The History of Middle-earth; XII). ISBN 0-261-10348-2.

The works of John Ronald Reuel and Christopher Tolkien are under the copyright of their authors and/or rights holders, including their publishers and the Tolkien Estate.
Quotations from other authors, editors and translators mentioned in the bibliography are under the copyright of their publishers, except for those whose copyright term has ended.
Last update of the site: September 22nd 2019. Contact us: