Talk:Lhammas

history of the text

“ The essay as it stands in The Lost Road can be thus seen as an interpolated manuscript, badly translated by Men in the Fourth Age or even later .... No autograph manuscripts of the Lhammas of Pengolodh were left; the three manuscripts we possess come from the original manuscript through an unknown number of intermediate copies. Only the final chapter of the work of Pengolodh, called Ósanwe-kenta, comes from a much better manuscript and is much less interpolated. It was written as a typescript of eight pages, probably in 1960 .... ”

The two bolded sentences give conflicting context for the passage between: one internal to the subcreation, one external. Are "the three manuscripts we possess" real or fictional? —Tamfang (talk) 22:39, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. All part of Tolkien's frame story. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:26, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I see I won another Ten Year Late Award for that reply... still, better late than never, as they say. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:00, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Lhammas/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 14:32, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: ThaesOfereode (talk · contribs) 13:31, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

Hello, Chiswick Chap. Great looking article you have here. Looking forward to reviewing this one. Comments to follow. ThaesOfereode (talk) 13:31, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:19, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

The following looks worse than it is; it's mostly typographical or clarification issues and recommendations which shouldn't take long. I imagine some of these will probably be somewhat constrained by the source material, so feel free to just let me know when one of my questions is just not covered by your sources. My main concern right now is the Indo-Euopean tree image you have, which I think is overall a quick fix in your SVG program of choice. In any event, I think this should be a quick GAR. Excellent work again. ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:58, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

Prose

• "account of tongues" → 'account of tongues', per MOS:SINGLE
  • Any idea the syllabic breakdown of Lhammas? Not a problem if not, but might be nice to have either /ˈɬɑ.mɑs/ or /ˈɬɑm.ɑs/.
    • The first one.
  • Soft suggestion to put it inside the parentheses with the IPA.
    • Please feel free to do that, I'm not sure of the desired format if I haven't fixed it correctly.
• a scholar of comparative and historical linguistics – I think the linking here could be improved; instead of linking just linguistics, I would recommend linking comparative and historical linguistics.
  • Done.
• meant to imply that his work was [...] – One, I don't think you need to double source this blockquote section. Two, it looks like there's an errant quotation mark at the end of it. Three, unless the original source uses the single quotes for stories, I would use regular quotation marks. Soft recommendation to place a colon before the blockquote.
  • • Fixed, I believe. Only one source is given, Letters ed. by Carpenter. If you want to remove one of the refs to that source, feel free, just do it. I always place the refs like that as it prevents "unsourced" tags from popping up.
  • [[Languages constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien|invention of languages]] seems kind of... WP:EGGy. I expected this link to go to Constructed language or similar. Doubly important since you link this same page again in the following subsection, where it is much less EGGy.
    • Removed the link.
• The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger writes that [...] – Mostly the same as above: no need to double cite, errant quotation mark, stronger recommendation for the colon here.
  • As above.
• author of the high fantasy works → author of the high-fantasy works? – Feel free to push back on this one as I'm not 100%.
  • I find that Wikipedia avoids the hyphen there.
• In the "Theory of Middle-earth languages" section, I don't think you need to cite the same thing four times for this breakdown; either end of the first line or end of each subsequent line, but both is kind of overkill.
  • Once again, it's just to keep the taggers quiet.
• all the languages of Middle-earth descend from the language of the angelic beings or Valar, Valarin, and were divided into three branches → all the languages of Middle-earth descend from Valarin, the language of angelic beings known as the Valar, and were divided into three branches – Easier to parse I think.
  • Done.
  • It says that the "tongues of Men" were influenced by the Dwarven language. First, is this a direct quote? If so, that should be made clearer; if not, I strongly recommend being clearer and just saying "languages" instead. Second, does the source say anything about how the languages were influenced? Loans? Grammar? Seems like a good place to introduce something about Language contact, source material permitting.
    • Said "Mannish languages" which may be less flowery.
  • If all of the languages of Middle-earth are descended from Valarin, where does the Black Speech come from then? Seems odd to bring this up and then not answer the question it raises.
    • Changed "of Sauron" to "that Sauron created".
    • Similarly, if the languages are all descended from one of the three branches, where are the other languages of Men from, since not all of them are from the Oromëan branch?
      • This article is about the Lhammas, which discusses Elvish languages, not Mannish ones; in any case, Tolkien's thought evolved continuously and contained a mass of inconsistencies.
  • Soft recommendation, but I think the parentheses can be removed around the Black Speech sentence. Not sure what it's adding there.
    • Done.
• Laiquendi (Green-Elves) – If this is a translation, use single quotes in the parenthetical per MOS:SINGLE
  • Done.
• Tolkien called 'Elf-Latin', [...] – Unless Tolkien's being translated into English here, I believe double quotations are recommended by MOS:DOUBLE
  • Done.
• first published in Vinyar Tengwar (39) – I'm assuming this means "volume 39". Can we clarify that for the reader?
  • Done.
• sanwe-latya "thought-opening" in Quenya. → sanwe-latya ('thought-opening') in Quenya. OR sanwe-latya (lit. 'thought-opening') in Quenya.
  • Done.
• Pengolodh included it – Who?
  • Glossed
• Incarnates (Elves, and Men) – Errant comma?
  • Removed.
• (cf. hröa) – Can we give a little context for the reader here? Where can they find this undefined term to compare it with?
  • Removed, it's getting off-topic.
  • Does this need a {{lang}} template per MOS:LANG?
    • As above.
• Tolkien later revised the internal history of the Elvish languages – When? Where? How?
  • Answer on a postage stamp: basically, all the time, he was an inveterate fiddler. I've wikilinked Elvish languages of Middle-earth#With The Lord of the Rings for details of major post-Lhammas fiddling-about.
• The essay as it stands [...] – Is this meant to be Lhammas? This is really only described as a "work" or "document", but if it's an essay, shouldn't we be using quotations instead of italics for the title?
  • Document it is.
• tradition of philological study of Elvish languages – I would expand the link here to grab "of Elvish languages" so that this isn't so EGGy. My first thought when seeing this was "Didn't he already link philology?"
  • Done.
• (Númenor drowned) – Is this pertinent to the discussion? I get framing this to LotR, but this one's a bit puzzling.
  • Identifying event of the 2nd Age, not about Elvish languages as such.
  • Mostly just curiosity, but what's the rationale for both of these being in parentheses?
    • As above. Context.
• with diverging branches and sub-branches — though for [...] – Either remove the spaces between the emdash or leave the spaces and convert it into an endash as per MOS:ENDASH.
  • Done, you are welcome to fix such minor things, it's way quicker.
• the Sindar (Grey Elves) – See note about Green Elves. Also, is there a reason "Grey Elves" has a space, but "Green-Elves" has a hyphen?
  • Fixed.
• Tolkienesque character Faramir – Can we choose a better term than "Tolkienesque" here? I think the term signifies something like if another author had written him in the same manner as Tolkien rather than expressing that Faramir is both an analog of and written by Tolkien himself, which is what I'm reading the intent as.
  • Let's say Tolkien figure".

Content

• Overall, the page would probably be much easier to follow if I had even half an idea of what LotR is like below surface level; I have to admit that most of my interaction with Tolkien is with his linguistic work. I don't really have a recommendation as to how to dumb it down for a reader like me other than the few prescriptions I made above, but I think WP:ONEDOWN is functionally satisfied here in the same way you would expect a reader of Parabolic subgroup of a reflection group to have a more-than-basic understanding of algebra.
  • Yes, this definitely isn't where I'd recommend a Tolkien novice to start! We can certainly consider adding some more context if we decide that's appropriate.
• Kind of a minor point, but is there any literature on how the work was received at publication or how modern scholars of Tolkien view this work against the rest of his oeuvre?
  • We'd want to know how it was seen in 1937, but nobody saw it then. In 1987, it was just a small part of the 5th volume of The History of Middle-earth and I am not aware of detailed comments on it at that time. Scholarly attention, cited in the article, has been interested in the development of Tolkien's ideas, rather than marking it for quality.
• Another minor point: given the kind of work is kind of vague, is there a way we can incorporate an image and/or infobox for this work? With notes above, {{Infobox essay}} does exist.
  • I think the images we have are about the best we can do at the moment. None of them seem to me to be well-suited for an infobox thumbnail, and in any case they fit best where they are in the text.

Images

• The image from The Lost Road is great, but it's really hard to read. Is there a way we can make this clearer using {{clade}} or something similar?
  • You mean the detail of the Tree of Tongues? It shows Tolkien's own drawing and handwriting, so no, it's specifically not replaceable. It can't be made at higher resolution because of the fair-use rules; however, it's here to show Tolkien's style and approach, while the other diagrams are here to show the content, of which the snippet of Tolkien's diagram is just a fragment, with lines running into and out of the part shown.

• I'm kind of concerned about the phylogentic map of the IE languages in that example image you have; it has odd choices which depart in some notable ways from the "neo-traditional" model typically used by mainstream linguists (see here, p. 5). There are other models proposed by reputable linguists (ibid., p. 6), but none of them mark Iranian as distinct from Indo-Aryan if Baltic and Slavic are marked together. I'm curious what source you were working out of; was it one of Tolkien's? Similarly, I am admittedly sympathetic to the Italo-Celtic model, but why here? Why is Balto-Slavic (seemingly?) marked from the same source as Germanic? (NB: this is an older, now-outdated theory, but I'm not sure if you are intentionally referenced it) The image and the use of east–west is a great way to show the parallels, but the way the real-life languages are shown as linked is misleading.
  • It's specifically important to show the "Italic" as Quenya is called by Tolkien "Elf-Latin". The diagram captures a now-long-gone moment in linguistic history, not the modern view (whatever that might be). I'm not specifically opposed to your SVG tweaks below, and may implement them (tonight) for the sake of harmony, but with this "contemporary with Tolkien" view it may well be that none of them are really improvements. There is also a risk they could mislead readers into thinking we're representing the modern position. I've added "in Tolkien's time" to the caption, which might in itself be enough to resolve the issue.
    • Can you give me a source for this being the understanding at the time? I have some understanding of the development of the branching research, but I'm not as familiar with them as I am about current models. ThaesOfereode (talk) 15:15, 26 June 2025 (UTC)
      • I think (months after working on the article) that all there is is the source already there, which says that Tolkien intentionally mapped the real-world tree when making his own tree; and the undeniable fact that Tolkien could not have been working from a tree after his death. I can say that the mapping fits a Tolkien pattern of making calques such as the Shire of England and numerous others. I'll have a go now at fixing up your SVG comments which may suit both the in-his-time tree and the modern one so the issue vanishes.

I tried messing with the SVG a bit, but I'm way out of practice on Inkscape and figured you might have an easier time with it. What I recommend is:

• • Merge Iranian and Indo-Aryan into Indo-Iranian
    • Done.
  • Make the lines showing the departure of Indo-Iranian and Anatolian as separated by space; they don't share a uniquely close phylogenetic relationship and I think this kind of makes it seem like they might.
    • Done.
  • Make the lines showing the departure of the westward-bound languages as similarly separated
    • Done.
  • Consider splitting Celtic and Italic (I admit the prevalence of this cladistic proposal in the literature doesn't necessarily warrant deletion if you're moved by the arguments AND you keep the question mark, but I would suggest sticking with the neo-traditional model to be as uncontroversial if possible)
    • Done; though with the ? and the importance to Tolkien this might be better closer.
  • Probably add "most of the Indo-European language tree" to the caption since we're missing Albanian and Armenian.
    • Done.

Sources

I will begin a source review once the above is done, but is there a reason you mark such large page clusters with the ref name strategy instead of {{sfn}}? It will be easier for the curious reader (and me during review) if you can mark each statement with the page(s) the statement is from, rather than citing the full cluster of pages you used. Not disqualifying necessarily, but curious at least about the thought process. If you really like the ref name strat, can I at least request the addition of {{rp}} for the page numbers?

I've just kept the referencing simple; the "clusters" are mostly only a very few pages, e.g. 3 for [3] Flieger, 3 for [4] Carpenter, 4 for [5] Shippey. Basically where there is a relevant section or chapter I just point to that. The rp template isn't used anywhere in WikiProject Middle-earth.

@Chiswick Chap: Apologies on the delay. I expected to see a change to the image on my watchlist, which is obviously a much less elegant work around than you've done instead. A source review to follow, chosen by RNG to hit 25% of citations (36 fn → 8 checks); please refer to this version for numerical reference.

• 2b – AGF
• 5 – Y Affirms that the languages have a primacy over the rest of the worldbuilding
• 6 – Y Ibid ut supra
• 8e – AGF
• 8i – AGF
• 10 – AGF
• 11b – AGF
• 13a – Y Can't check the book itself, but a Google Books assist does confirm this section exists.

Since a lot of the sources I don't appear to be able to access, I also did a spot check of links (12, 15) and they all appear to be faithfully cited, so I don't really have a problem AGF'ing the rest. Sources appear to all be reliable. Passing now; great work, Chap. ThaesOfereode (talk) 20:17, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.