Parma Eldalamberon 11

Parma Eldalamberon 11 I·Lam na·Ngoldathon: The Grammar and Lexicon of The Gnomish Tongue
Author	J.R.R. Tolkien
Editor	Christopher Gilson, Patrick H. Wynne, Arden R. Smith, and Carl F. Hostetter
Illustrator	Adam Christensen (front and back cover)
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.

From this issue onwards the journal is dedicated to publishing Tolkien's original materials.

There are two manuscripts 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 1984. In 1991, regretting that the entire lexicons were not available back then and noting the unlikelihood of their publication in a book, Christopher agreed to publish them in Parma Eldalamberon. These lexicons were published, as the "Gnomish Lexicon" and "Qenya Lexicon", in Parma 11 and Parma 12 respectively.

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Contents

• Cover: "Goldogrin" — Adam Christensen

• Foreword

• "I·Lam na·Ngoldathon: The Grammar and Lexicon of The Gnomish Tongue" — J.R.R. Tolkien, eds. Christopher Gilson, Patrick H. Wynne, Arden R. Smith, and Carl F. Hostetter
  • "The Gnomish Grammar"
  • "The Gnomish Lexicon"
    (contains about 3000 entries)

• List of abbreviations

• Back cover — Adam Christensen

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" ("the Tongue of the Gnomes"), 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

• Order the issue on Eldalamberon.com (currently out of print)
• Parma Eldalamberon 11 on Archive.org

• A New Q(u)enya Lexicon, a PE 11 reading companion